§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. MacArthur.]
§ 10.7 p.m.
§ Mr. Victor Goodhew (St. Albans)I am grateful for this opportunity to raise a subject which has created a considerable problem in Hertfordshire, namely the question of the itinerant caravan dweller. It is particularly noticeable in my constituency of St. Albans, and I know that my hon. Friends the Members for Hertfordshire, South-West (Mr. Longden) and Hertford (Lord Balniel) are also interested. It is a problem which has two sides. There is, first, the question of the caravan dwellers themselves, and then there is the problem which their way of life creates for others in the vicinity where they stay. The caravan dwellers are, firstly, the Romany families, whose numbers seem to be dwindling because they are gradually settling down to normal ways of life. They do not create the same problem which arises in the case of other caravan dwellers. There are only about a dozen Romany families in Hertfordshire, and they have been catered for by the Barbara Cartland-Onslow Trust.
The second type of caravan dweller is the didicoi, and this term covers a range of different people who move 1525 about the country, sometimes over only a limited area. Although their number varies, they seem to be increasing. Most of them are scrap metal dealers, and one thing which is immediately noticeable is that since they have no fixed abode they do not pay rates or taxes and would seem, therefore, to that extent to be parasites on society. These people have their own problem in that they are unable to park their vehicles permanently on the roadside and are pushed from pillar to post. One appreciates that they choose this way of life and one sympathises with them, but one also realises that some sort of solution must be found which will not result in encouraging too many people to indulge in this way of life, which is not compatible with modern conditions when there is a shortage of agricultural land and over-crowding.
One has to look at the interests of other people in a locality in which the didicois and other caravan dwellers may wish to rest. One finds a hideous mess of scrap metal along the sides of the pleasant lanes of Hertfordshire which are gradually being turned into mere junk yards. This has an adverse effect on people who live in the neighbourhood. Fences are pulled down and used for firewood, and the land becomes foul because there is no sanitation where these people choose to live. There is no water supply available to them and they have to go around the neighbourhood badgering the residents for water, and when their demands become too great or inconvenient and they are refused they tend to be abusive.
One also finds complaints of theft, but I discount these in many cases because others regard the presence of caravan dwellers in their area as a camouflage allowing them to indulge in theft and put the blame on the caravan dwellers. I was interested to hear of a constituent who had an old car he had finished with. One of these people called with a lorry loaded with iron bedsteads and kitchen stoves and asked if he had any scrap metal he wanted to dispose of. My constituent offered his old car and the man gave him £5 for it. My constituent accepted the £5 and went off to play golf. When he came back he found that the lorry driver had gone but the whole of its contents had been dumped on his grounds, which 1526 shows that much of the scrap metal these people collect is not disposed of for cash.
Fines are obviously not sufficient to deter people from breaking the law. The maximum fine for causing litter is £10. The maximum for camping on the highway is £2, and the maximum for lighting a fire close to the highway is £2. If one looks at the very expensive equipment which most of these people have one realises that such fines are no real deterrent. Most of them have large and expensive modern lorries and caravans which are not like the old horse-drawn caravan described in the song "Where my caravan has rested". They also have portable television masts supported by guy ropes and their living accommodation is up-to-date. With all these signs of money earned from scrap metal dealing it is clear that they enjoy their position in which they pay no rates or taxes.
Although the police do all they can to see that these people do not cause annoyance, it is difficult to trace them when they are constantly on the move. In the last year of which I have figures, 1962, Hertfordshire Constabulary instituted 593 prosecutions, but in spite of that the problem remains unsolved. The Government have taken certain action, and in 1962 a circular was sent out to county councils suggesting that they should make a survey to discover how many of these itinerant caravan families were in their areas and then to consult district councils and other local authorities to see if they could find permanent sites on which these people could dwell. We found hi the County of Hertfordshire that whilst we only had a dozen true Romany families, we had 89 families of didicois and other nomadic families. I understand that since that survey was completed in 1962 the number has gone up to an estimated 100, so it is clear that this is a way of life that is attracting additional people, and is not a dwindling problem.
The moment one suggests making permanent sites one comes up against the fact that everyone agrees that that is a splendid idea until one suggests that the site should be near where they live. That is one of the principal difficulties that any county council or other local authority will come up against as soon as it starts implementing that proposal.
1527 One can well understand why people have these feelings. It is only a few months ago that, just outside the boundary of my constituency, a field owned by the county council was suddenly invaded by a number of caravans. The moment it was seen that they were not "turfed off" at once, the number started increasing. There were complaints from residents in the neighbourhood about trouble over water supplies, and so on, and rather than have those complaints continue, the county council had a water pipe put in.
That installation was heard about by people as far away as Birmingham—people even in Ireland heard about this water supply—and in no time we had more than 60 caravans on the site, and a most hideous conglomeration of scrap iron as well. Here was a site close to the junction of the M1—one of the finest motorways in the country—and another road, and every traveller on the M1 saw not only all the lorries and caravans, but all this hideous mass of junk that went with them.
That has taught us certain lessons. We have been fortunate in having in my area a ratepayers association in Bricket Wood that has taken a keen interest in the matter and has tried, through me, to have a deputation received by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government. At the time it attempted to do this there was an application for this site to become a temporary caravan site, but that is now finished, and I hope that the experience in this area may be of help to my right hon. Friend in looking at the whole matter anew.
One thing that everyone would agree about is that it will be necessary to have a nationally co-ordinated programme to deal with this problem because it is quite clear from our experience with this one site, which was not even an official site, that the moment it is known that a site is available in a county, people come from far and wide to use it. Therefore, unless there is a co-ordinated programme, the county councils will shy off and no one will want to be the first to start.
Again, these caravan sites will cost money—because they must have a 1528 water supply, sanitation and, presumably, hard standing—and if one is to be fair to the population at large it is only right that these sites should be self-supporting, that those occupying them should pay a proper economic rent, and that there is no burden on the ratepayers in the vicinity.
Another factor is the size of the sites. It is absolutely certain that if one is to think in terms of sites to take 12, 20 or more caravans, one only expands the problem. If we have large sites, there is a tendency for intermarriage amongst the families there so that one only enlarges the number of people who are likely to pursue this way of life, whereas, if they can be split into smaller units, one is the more likely to break them down and absorb them into the community—which is, I believe, the only final answer.
My constituents feel that one caravan per site should be the maximum. That is not easy to arrange, because of the expense, but I should have thought that the sites could be limited to family units, so that a family with four or five caravans at most would be the limit. There would not then be this tendency to intermarry.
There is also the important factor of education. An important point here is clearly that the children of these people should be properly educated and then one hopes that they will become normal members of the population instead of itinerants. If they are to be educated and we are to have a site with 20 to 30 caravans on it outside a village, the load on the local education is quite impossible to sustain. Here again, therefore, there is a good argument for having limited sites. If we are to look at this question now, I hope that we shall look at it in terms of this sort of arrangement, of a co-ordinated plan with smaller sites and with the object of trying to rehouse and rehabilitate these people in time so that the sites will gradually disappear.
If we do not do this I can well see that others living in bungalows and small houses may decide that they can have a caravan site the moment somebody else vacates it, that it is cheaper, that they will pay lower rates and rents, and they will have a caravan too. Our aim should be to try and see that this 1529 is a problem that dies over the years and that people are absorbed in the normal community rather than that we should perpetuate it.
I should have thought that something could be done also about controlling the scrap dealer. When my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-West (Sir D. Kaberry) introduced a Bill, I thought that it would cover this very problem but I am told that this is not so. It seems to me absurd. For instance, if in my 7-acre field alongside my cottage in my constituency I started to deal in scrap metal and I had a couple of old cars there, the county council would be on me like a ton of bricks, and quite rightly. It would say that this is a residential area and that I was using it for commercial purposes. Yet we are allowing other people to use for this purpose very similar parts of the country which they do not own or even rent.
We should have some form of licence for all scrap dealers so that there is not this indiscriminate buying and selling and then dumping on the roadside or in the fields of what remains that cannot be sold off. I sometimes wonder whether it is not possible to have a proper agency for dealing with the large scrap produced by cars taken off the road. People are quite rightly outraged when they find the countryside completely spoiled by people who are making a good living tax-free and rate-free at the expense of their fellow-countrymen. I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to tell me that the Government are looking anew at this matter and that they will take some initiative in trying to bring the local authorities together.
If we are merely going to issue advisory circulars I do not think that this is enough. We must have a co-ordinated programme with a limited size to sites and some means of controlling dealing in scrap metal. If we do that we can hope that these people will gradually be absorbed and will benefit from the Welfare State in which we live, having contributed a fair share towards it.
§ 10.24 p.m.
§ The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. F. V. Corfield)My hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans (Mr. Goodhew) has raised a question which I think is one of the most difficult, 1530 although relatively small, with which we are faced. The problem arises not because these people live in caravans but because the are itinerants and not only because they are mobile but because it is their way of life to move. It is an immensely difficult problem to see how we can compete with this, as my hon. Friend himself puts it, without encouraging people to add to the queue.
We have recently had what I regard as a rather tragic instance of this in Kent. There is no doubt that Kent County Council, perhaps with a little prodding but nevertheless with some degree of enthusiasm, has endeavoured to find sites and to encourage its district councils to find sites for the gipsy population normally centred in Kent. Recently, as hon. Members will have seen, we had a case at Sittingbourne where a large number of people swept down, as my hon. Friend put it, from far and wide on the news of a new site being provided, or likely to be provided, in a rural district in Kent. These people, on investigation, were found to have come from as far as Lancashire in the North and Wales in the West. People had flocked in from areas which hitherto had had no real problem because the land shortage there is not what it is around the great conurbations and where they had managed to fit into the rural life without causing a nuisance or outcry.
When they concentrated at Sitting-bourne, the result was a tremendous outcry. The local council, the Sitting-bourne and Milton Urban District Council, which had been one of the first to come forward and try to find a permanent site, was literally besieged during a council meeting by a public indignant at the mess and nuisance that these people who had arrived from far and wide had caused. In the result, the local council, which had in every respect behaved with the greatest restraint and responsibility, was virtually forced, in the face of public opinion among its own electorate, not only to move these people on but to cancel its original ideas for providing a relatively small permanent site for the gypsies normally based in Kent.
This is one of the dilemmas facing us. The hon. Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Dodds)—I am sorry that he is not here—has done a great deal 1531 to bring the public conscience to bear on this matter, but, of course, we are, in a sense, reaching the stage when the publicity which is necessary to arouse the public conscience is also arousing public anxiety in the places where one wants, or it is desirable to have, sites. In a sense, therefore, the publicity is counterbalancing itself. This is well illustrated by what happened at Sitting-bourne.
From a national point of view, as the House will realise, the problem really centres on the conurbations. I have no doubt that there are plenty of itinerants in the North, in Wales and in the Border counties, but there the land problem is not so acute as it is in the conurbations. There also, people are absorbed without causing nuisance, and they probably move from one traditional site to another as some of them, particularly the Romanies, have done for centuries.
Around the conurbations, on the other hand, there is the pressure on land. Also, as my hon. Friend said, there are the pressures of scrap dealing and other associated trades in the centres of population. Moreover, there is the problem that the traditional sites have been developed or in other ways made unsuitable for occupation. I think that one must regard it as a problem concentrated in certain areas. In the Home Counties around London it is, perhaps, the worst. There are certain counties in the Midlands affected too, but it is around London that the main problem arises.
Although there is a demand for a general survey, the difficulty is that the survey is not likely at present to give very accurate figures, even if one takes it on a certain date. As my hon. Friend has said, as soon as there is rumour of a site, all sorts of people come in who have nothing to do with Kent, Sussex, Surrey or Hertfordshire, as the case may be. In the Home Counties, it is only fair to say that Kent has taken the lead and has really done a very great deal since the circular to which my hon. Friend alluded, very largely—I am only too willing to pay credit where it is due—as a result of the publicity and pressure of the hon. Member for Erith and Crayford.
Now we have the situation that Kent, having taken the lead, instead of get- 1532 ting any alleviation of the burden, is tending to attract the didicois, gipsies or whatever one likes to call them, from areas which have not been as conscientious. The House will realise that my right hon. Friend has no direct powers in this matter. It is a local authority responsibility. Local authorities have the powers and my right hon. Friend has no power to give them directives, so that our efforts are confined to persuasion.
If we were looking round the Home Counties, we would give a good pat on the back to Kent, a not quite so heavy one to Hertfordshire and precious little elsewhere, except to Hampshire, which has tackled the problem in a totally different way. Hampshire has said that this is a welfare problem and it is treating it on a county council basis, making hutted camps available and treating the people as welfare cases, with the express purpose of training them, so to speak, to be decent tenants of council houses.
I am glad to say that Hampshire has had the co-operation of a number of urban and rural district councils in the county, who are finding the houses as best they can for the people whom the county welfare authorities regard as suitable to occupy them. This seems to me to be an inspiring way of tackling the problem. I rather think, however, that we want both ways because, as my hon. Friend has said, there are at least two types of itinerant.
There is the genuine Romany, who seems to be a dwindling race and does not give much trouble. Also, there is a subdivision of what my hon. Friend broadly called the didicois. There are the people who are interested predominantly in scrap-metal dealing but also in logs, second-hand clothing and that type of thing. At the bottom end of the scale, although I admit that they merge, there are the genuine social misfits, some of whom have been in council houses and have proved either such appallingly unsatisfactory tenants that they have been moved out or have moved out themselves through complete inability to adjust themselves to the sort of society which the vast majority of us regard as the sensible way of organising our lives.
I think, therefore, that we probably want two approaches. We want the welfare approach of Hampshire and we 1533 want the small local authority organised site approach of Kent. But we certainly want a great deal more effort in the other Home Counties and in certain other counties round the conurbations. I am most anxious that we should get a bigger effort and a more fair sharing of the load round London in particular. I assure my hon. Friend that I shall be making every effort to get the local authorities together again to see what we can do in this direction. I had a conference with them about a year ago and there is no doubt that this has produced results.
I will not bore the House with a list of possibilities, probabilities, near certainties and certainties, but even outside Kent and Hertfordshire there are a number of sites which, we hope, will come forward. Every time, however, that we have the sort of incident that occurred at Sittingbourne, there is an enormous public outcry and we suffer a setback. We find that when a site which has been suggested either by a public-spirited private owner or by a local authority is going through quietly, it immediately encounters enormous resistance, planning inquiries and the rest, and it may well be that in the end it is impossible to grant the planning permission or to establish a site because of the local outcry or, possibly, for other good planning reasons. So we have to try to keep a balance.
1534 I agree with my hon. Friend that the problem of stopping these scrap dumps from being left all over the place is a very considerable one. The trouble is that if we establish a camp without land allocated for this, the people will not stay. Some of the people in the Sitting-bourne incident actually came from one of the new sites at Strood because they objected to paying the very modest site fees. On the other hand, it is very difficult, if they are really on the move, to tie them down and to get a conviction under the Litter Act.
I assure my hon. Friend that we regard this as a serious problem, but we also recognise that it is a question of holding a balance, because we do not want to encourage this way of life. I am sure that everybody will agree that the thing to do is to persuade these people to settle in houses where they can get steady jobs and steady education and so on. At the same time, we do not want to go to the other extreme of registering these people as second-class citizens and of insisting that they settle here or there. We want to preserve local responsibility and to make sure it is lived up to. This it will be my endeavour and that of my right hon. Friend to do. I am sure that the House will realise that, with no power of direction, there are limits to that, but we will do our very best by persuasion.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at twenty-four minutes to Eleven o'clock.