Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280
- 287)
TUESDAY 13 JULY 2004
CHIEF CONSTABLE
ALASTAIR MCWHIRTER,
QPM MA
Q280 Chairman: It has been said to
us that in Southern Ireland the police, Customs and Excise, the
Revenue have all been getting tougher with some of the travelling
communities and that has produced quite a few moving to this country.
I do not know whether that is true or not, but what would be the
impact if you actually got tougher with these groups? Would they
simply move to places where life was a little bit less law enforcing?
Mr McWhirter: I cannot answer
that question; I do not know the numbers coming from Southern
Ireland. I have heard anecdotally the same thing as you have in
relation to that particular point. However, I think that the ability
to identify individuals who are causing problems, the ability
to follow them and serve them with notices or serve them with
bills in relation to it and/or indeed to take civil action against
them in order to recover debt, would discourage people. What I
want to do is to modify their behaviour, not to stop them carrying
out their way of life.
Q281 Mr Betts: In your submission
you expressed some dissatisfaction with ODPM in the length of
time it has taken to publicise and disseminate the new "Guidance
on Managing Unauthorised Camping" that the Department has
produced. If I can paraphrase what you said, rather than a formal
launch it sort of fell in the water. Is this a criticism you still
hold?
Mr McWhirter: It was not meant
to be a criticism. The point I was making was that it has not
been formally launched and I think it deserves a formal launch.
The point I was making is that it is still under consultation
because they are looking at points in Sections 62(a) to (e) and
there is further consultation taking place. My understanding is,
since I wrote the submission, that it is going to be more formally
launched so I am encouraged by that. If I had a criticism I think
it would be over the long gestation period of the document in
the first place. We started work on it in 2001 and finally in
2004 it saw the light of day, so it has taken a long time. I think
it is a good document despite that and far, far better than the
1998 document.
Q282 Mr Betts: What difference will
people see when it is formally launched?
Mr McWhirter: I genuinely think
that at a local level it will make a difference. I think it has
a clarity and practical use that the previous documents did not
have. I think it is genuinely a good guide for police and local
authorities to work to and I think if people follow its contents
effectively and well then they will be prepared to deal with issues
when people move into an area and be able to deal with those much
more effectively. The difficulty is that all the responsibility
for this in the past has fallen between different departments
in local authorities—very often the legal department or
the environmental health department—but nobody had it written
into their job description. Very often if there were Gypsy and
Traveller liaison officers appointed by the local authority they
did not have a clear line of command back to people in the centre
or access to funds to be able to deal with things. Gypsies and
Travellers are one of those things which nobody wants to talk
about or deal with until there is suddenly a large group of them
moving into the area. Suddenly it moves to the top of the list
and as soon as they move off it moves back to the bottom of the
list again. People need to have plans in place to be able to deal
with that. This new guidance is helpful in encouraging that to
happen. Its difficulty will be that there will still be places
in the country who rarely have Travellers moving in who will not
make plans and who will suddenly be faced with a situation where
a large group move in, set up camp and they do not have the plans
nor the liaisons that need to be in place with the local authority,
the police and other agencies in order to make a smooth response
to a large group moving onto a common or moving onto a playing
field.
Q283 Mr Betts: You appear to have
some concerns about the additional powers granted to the police
under the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003, that they really are
not very much use to you. Can you elaborate on that?
Mr McWhirter: Yes. I think the
powers themselves are useful powers if there were transit sites
to move people onto. There are difficulties associated with the
powers. The powers have difficulty in the sense that one can imagine
going on to an unauthorised site—and this is what the consultation
that is going on has been about—and saying to people, "We
would like you to move off now, please, out of the district council
area because there is a transit site available that you can move
to" and them saying, "Yes, well there are only 12 pitches
on there and there are 15 of us here, which are the ones you are
not going to move on? We travel as a family group." Those
are practical things that we can overcome. We think it is a useful
power; we were consulted in the process. However, it needs local
authorities to take up the option of having transit sites and
we all know that is proving more difficult even though there is
money available.
Q284 Mr Betts: Trying to recap what
you are saying to us this morning, is it: provide more sites and
then we can take a more effective action towards the unauthorised
camping?
Mr McWhirter: I think that is
part of the process; I do not think it is all of the process.
I do think the silo issue about treating it as a very local problem
when in fact we have a regional and national problem is one that
needs to be addressed and that can only be addressed by sharing
information in an effective and proper way.
Q285 Mr Cummings: Drawing from your
considerable experience, what sort of site management works best?
Mr McWhirter: I think that the
site management that seems to work best is where you have a dedicated
site manager who is on that site and who can work with the people
rather than somebody who has it as an additional responsibility
and who is transient and who may not have the knowledge to be
able to build up relationships. The people who are particularly
good—some of whom have given evidence to you as part of
the group who came to speak to you—are the people who I
have had admiration for over the years, who build relationships
with the Travellers, they often know the people who regularly
come every year and that relationship pays off because as a result
people behave well because they are dealing with people whom they
know and trust.
Q286 Mr Cummings: How do the police
and other authorities tackle issues of conflict such as those
that arise between families fighting in power struggles? How can
these be resolved?
Mr McWhirter: In the same way
as we deal with them in the settled community which is often not
very well, I am afraid, because dealing with internal family matters
is a difficult thing for the police and very often we only deal
with the outward manifestation when people commit criminal offences—ie
when there is violence or threats that are made—and then
we have to deal with it. What we often have then is conflicting
views about what happened, who said what and to whom and what
threats were made. With the Gypsy and Traveller community that
is made even more difficult because very often they will not speak
to us, they will not tell us what is going on and we will get
reports, for example, of someone with a shotgun in the street
and we will go and deal with what is essentially a firearms incident
and find that we are dealing with a domestic dispute.
Q287 Mr Cummings: You also say in
your evidence that Travellers privately complain about being intimidated
but very rarely make an official complaint to the police. So there
is evidence of intimidation.
Mr McWhirter: Anecdotal evidence
often through third parties but in terms of actual reports to
the police it becomes very difficult. The suggestion is that what
often happens is that somebody will think that they would like
to take over a site which other people are on and we will get
power struggles over that particular site.
Chairman: I think we will have to close
this part of the session at that point. Thank you very much for
your evidence, Chief Constable. Can we have the next set of witnesses,
please?
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