Law of Trespass (Hansard, 15 January 2002)

§ Mr. Andrew MacKay (Bracknell)

Any reasonable person watching news unfold during the Christmas recess will have been truly shocked at two cases in which farmers had their barns invaded by so-called "revellers" and very little action was taken. It might be recalled that, in the Lincolnshire case, the farmer said that he felt more like a farmer in Zimbabwe than in part of the United Kingdom. In the Essex case, outrageously, when the farmer cut off the electricity to the barn, he was arrested by the police and held in his local police station until 5 o'clock in the morning. My right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst) is taking that matter up with both the police and Ministers at present.

It might be hoped that those incidents were unusual and isolated, but I regret to report that that is not the case. I want to illustrate what has happened twice in my constituency during the last six months. With your indulgence, Mr. Winterton, I shall read some correspondence that illuminates a serious problem.

The first invasion took place on town council playing fields in Bracknell. I shall read from the experienced and well-regarded town clerk Barbara Rumbold's letter to our chief constable, Sir Charles Pollard, dated 27 July. She says: On the evening of 10th July gypsies with six caravans moved onto the Wildridings Playing Field, one of our many sites for football pitches in the town. Notice to remove themselves from the site was issued at 9.30 am on the 11th. This group was joined by a further eleven caravans on Saturday the 14th. During this time several requests were made to Bracknell Police to remove them from the site either under Section 61 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 or under the Byelaws for the site granted by the Secretary of State in 1983… Whilst occupying this land they chased my own staff off the playing field and made it difficult for any local people to enjoy…their own open space. As the local police were not prepared to move them, quoting their reluctance in view of the Human Rights Act, we instructed Common Law Bailiffs and the gypsies moved off the site at 7 pm on Tuesday 17th. They moved only across the dual-carriageway to our Ringmead Playing Fields—also football fields. I rang the Bracknell Station when I learnt of their apparent destination and was informed that Officers had been despatched as the caravans were blocking an adjacent bus lane. Your Officers then allowed them to occupy the playing field that is of sufficient size only for one football pitch that has suffered considerable damage Again more phone calls to Bracknell station failed to result in any action to remove what soon became a much larger camp site, eventually growing to thirty-three caravans when they were evicted by Bailiffs at 8pm on Sunday the 22nd. The Ringmead encampment became particularly offensive as it was so close to local residents. I would add that I spoke to several local residents who contacted me in fear of their property and safety. Mrs. Rumbold goes on to say: The whole site was badly contaminated when vacated, the gypsies having defecated indiscriminately anywhere on the site and having left a particularly foul mess all along the shrubs adjacent to the fence of one particular house My staff have cleared this disgusting mess consisting of both human and canine excrement, dirty nappies, toilet paper. clothing used as toilet paper, female sanitary goods, bags of vomit, general household waste, heaps of concrete, soil and other building 63WH materials from the site. It would appear from what we collected that washing had been stolen and goods taken from shops as some of the clothing was still on hangers. My Council and the residents of both Wildridings and Great Hollands feel that they should have expected better service and co-operation from the local police. Nothing was done to ensure that the local community could peacefully enjoy their own playing fields for which residents pay their Council Tax. We have Byelaws in Bracknell…that are routinely enforced against the local residents to prevent the fouling of land by dogs yet the gypsies were able to foul the land without penalty. If local residents had indecently exposed themselves on open ground as the gypsies did they could very well have been arrested. Local motorists and pedestrians were put at risk by the manner in which the gypsies drove on and off the site and on local roads with little regard for the safety of others. Harassment took place in local shops and neighbourhood centres. Whilst we appreciate that some form of dialogue has to be kept open with the gypsies, it was particularly galling for my staff to see the friendly way in which the gypsies were approached by your Officers. As a minor local authority, this Council has no responsibility whatsoever for gypsies but will incur considerable costs for the two actions so far undertaken for us by the Bailiffs, to say nothing of the clean up costs. The gypsies are still in this area and have been observed checking out more of our football grounds. To the best of my knowledge since January the Bracknell Forest Borough Council have moved gypsies on some twenty-two times. The cost to the local Council Tax Payers is unwarranted and unnecessary. As you very well know, there is little point in erecting fences, gates, height restriction barriers etc., as these are no deterrent to gypsies who are determined to enter land. They simply remove them or cut the padlocks on gates required for our own access and such criminal damage is ignored. Bracknell is obviously now known as a soft touch where the Police will take no action. You have the powers to remove them but will not use them. It is much easier to keep telling residents that it is down to the local authority to remove them. My Council, on behalf of the residents of Bracknell is seeking your assurances that you will issue instructions to local Officers to ensure that gypsies will be promptly removed in future using your powers under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. Also that whenever possible they will be deterred from entering local parks and playing fields. Local residents would…prefer that the Police went back to being a 'Force' and enforced the law as there is little evidence of 'Service' being offered to the local community. I, too, made representations to the chief constable, as I was shocked and appalled at these events. The reply from his superintendent of specialist operations, Stephen Evans, beggars belief. On 16 August, he wrote to me to say: Our policy is based on relevant legislation and the Code of Practice issued by the Home Office in conjunction with the Department of Transport and the Regions. I am sure that you will be aware that the Code of Practice quite clearly sets out considerations that should be taken by all relevant Authorities when dealing with traveller encampments. Our approach to traveller encampments is aimed at being lawful, proportionate and within the guidelines set out in the Codes of Practice. Your letter suggests that we were slow to act"— in this particular case. He continued: This is not the case. Our officers attended these encampments as soon as they were established and made an assessment as to the appropriate course of action. At two of the three encampments, 64WH our judgement was that it was not appropriate to invoke our powers under Section 61 of the Crime and Disorder Act. This is of course a subjective decision, but it is made in accordance with our policy guidelines and it takes into account all relevant factors, including the codes of practice. Having made such a decision we do not walk away from the problem. Our policy is to continue to monitor traveller encampments, to provide high visibility reassurance patrols, to deal with incidents". That is hardly reassuring to my constituents.

Stephen Evans then makes the following outrageous statement: Travellers are an extremely emotive issue and a decision by us not to invoke our powers under Section 61 is rarely greeted favourably by local people. However I am sure you would agree that it would be cavalier to misuse this power in inappropriate circumstances or to act outside of recognised good practice. If circumstances are such that in our judgement Section 61 should be used then we will not hesitate to use it. However we will be equally robust in not exercising this power if the circumstances are not appropriate. You mention in your letter the issue of Human Rights, which is one of the factors that we will consider. My interpretation of the Human Rights Act is that it applies equally to all groups and sections of society and it is within those parameters that we must operate. The Minister will not be surprised to learn that my constituents, the town clerk and others were deeply angered by that totally inadequate response.

Just one month ago, a further incident occurred on public property that also cost council tax payers a lot of money. In his letter to me of 14 December, Mr. Bob Lewin, the highly respected principal and chief executive of Bracknell and Wokingham college of further education, said: I am reluctant to bring you a problem but I hope you will understand my concerns in this case At about 6.00pm on Thursday 6 March a large group of travellers was required to leave the town centre car park on Bull Lane, Bracknell. They drove out of the car park, straight into our student car park off Bull Lane which serves our Wick Hill Centre. The attached report prepared by our site manager gives some details. He proceeded to outline the following concerns: This is the second time this year we have had travellers on this site. They are no respecters of property or people's sensitivities (e.g. students aged 11–90 use the footpath from Bull Lane to the Garth Hill School and to the College. The travellers' vehicles were parked across the path on both occasions. You can imagine the threat to their security this causes would-be users of the footpath). Why on earth should we have to put up with this? Being a public sector organisation we cannot of course resort to the methods private land owners use to rid themselves of unwelcome visitors. The police took no action to stop the travellers entering our site. They were there; their comment was 'they have to have hard standing'. I happened to be at the Wick Hill site that evening and witnessed the chaotic situation as we helped our students move their cars from the student car park to the much smaller staff car park off Sandy Lane. No student would have considered it safe to leave their car in the car park—which in the event was completely filled by the travellers' cars, vans, caravans and lorries. See also my site manager's comments. The impression he gained was that the police wanted the public car park cleared for the Saturday market and Christmas shopping and the College was somehow expected to cope with the travellers. As the enclosed report shows, the travellers caused damage and left an appalling mess. The College has to meet the cost of clearing this up and replacing damaged property. We lose students of course on these occasions as they are scared away by the travellers. You should know that we cannot use permanent barriers on the site (which in any case I suspect the travellers would destroy): we allow parents of the Sandy Lane Primary School to use the area 65WH as a drop off point when driving their children to school and we have thousands of students who are eligible each year to use the car park; the issuing of tickets (or any other control system) would be impractical therefore. The entrance to the car park does have a gate. We could not close and lock this on Thursday as this would have trapped our students and their cars. We will be installing a height barrier. After our last invasion we had to erect bollards around the site as the travellers broke through a hedge to gain access. This all costs us money, of which we do not have enough. I shall quote in part from the report to which he refers, from the site manager Stan Wears. He says: I asked if he"— that is the police inspector— could stop the rest of the travellers who were still on Albert Road car park, but I didn't get any support and he seemed to be wanting them all on our site rather than splitting them up, which seems to the College quite bewildering. I explained we had parents bringing in children during the day to our nursery and Sandy Lane Infant and Junior school, and naturally our own students who would feel threatened by the situation, to which he offered police officers to monitor the situation the next morning. While we were talking all of our students came down…and removed their cars… The Bracknell Forest Borough Council officers seemed to be more supportive than the Police and as Sites Manager I was quite perplexed by the Police and their lack of support in the situation. Our staff felt threatened on the Friday and naturally I had to keep going to the site on a regular basis especially during Saturday and Sunday… I arrived at Wick Hill on Sunday…to find the site empty but in a disgusting state, rubbish strewn all over the site, rubbish bags, boxes, gas bottles, rubble and children's toys some usable, some broken. I checked the nursery area and found the hut/storage unit had been broken into over the weekend, which explained the toys all over the site. The grass area had also been used as motorbike run and was cut up and damaged. The College will have to bear the costs for extra staffing hours regarding security, cleaning and two skips (£250) to remove rubbish. I had to spend late Sunday pm cleaning the car park to make it usable for Monday am. Assistant site managers have also had to be used to help clear up the mess. We also had Priestwood Families"— Priestwood is the neighbouring council estate to the car park— asking us why the travellers were there and that they felt intimated by their presence. Naturally, I again made representations to the police. This time, I had a reply from the assistant chief constable, territorial policing, Mr. Steve Love, who said: Our local police commanders often feel caught between a rock and a hard place on this issue. Although the police have a power under section 61…to order travellers to quit land, they have no power to direct them where to go when they do quit—they can simply drive down the road onto somewhere else. Nor do they have the power to stop somebody entering onto land in the first place—I myself have stood, without police powers, watching vehicles drive past me onto a recreation ground. The law and the guidance then require them to balance the human rights of the travellers with the occupier of the land. Because, temporarily at least, the land represents the home of the travellers as soon as they have arrived on it, any eviction of them represents potentially quite a serious infringement of their human rights. It is the same story again.

Not surprisingly, the excellent Mr. Bob Lewin, principal of the college, was not impressed with the deputy chief constable's inadequate response. In a letter that I received today, he says: 66WH Whilst I suppose the human rights of College staff were not infringed when the travellers moved onto our car park, our ability to go about our lawful business most certainly was curtailed! I believe that in Scotland, the Police or the local authority can impound sound systems if they are used in such a way as to annoy neighbours. Is there a basis here for a way of dealing with trespassers—'if you don't move on, we'll impound your lorry'?… As you may be aware, a group of travellers moved onto the borough's car park off Bull Lane last week. My caretakers maintained a twelve hour guard on the entrance to our Bull Lane car park for three weekdays and carried out additional surveillance at the weekend until the travellers had moved on—to ensure they did not move into our car park at times when we could not have the gates locked. The cost to the college of further education, which is already hard pressed, is huge. The cost to council tax payers, where there are natural budgetary restraints, is great. Ordinary, innocent people—hard-working, normal, straightforward people who live around Bracknell—want to get on with their lives in peace, but they want protection under the law when they are invaded by this scum. They are scum, and I use the word advisedly. People who do what these people have done do not deserve the same human rights as my decent constituents going about their everyday lives. Either the police are not doing a proper job, in which case I hope that the Minister and the Home Secretary will issue directives to police constables to take appropriate action, or Parliament in general and the Government in particular have inadequate legislation.

I return to Assistant Chief Constable Steve Love's letter of 3 January, in which he states: There are a number of things which could be done at your own level without which we are unlikely to make much more progress. These include"— I should be interested in the Minister's comments on these suggestions— a legal power, when the police or a local authority directs travellers to leave land, to also direct that they will not return, that nobody else will enter that land, for a period of, say, 12 months, and a minimum distance that they must go having left that land. His second point is that he needs a positive statement that would stand up in law to the effect that there will be a presumption that the human rights of the occupier or owner of land will outweigh the human rights of someone who parks a caravan on it and claims occupation. Thirdly—I appreciate that this goes beyond the Minister's remit, but I sympathise with the point—he says that he needs direction to the Inland Revenue to really take a grip on the 'cash in hand—no overheads' economy, which underpins a lot of traveller activity. I am not convinced as to who is in the wrong, but I know that my innocent constituents, the residents of Bracknell, are in the right. I initiated this afternoon's debate to establish how they can be properly protected. It must either be for the police to carry out their duties properly, directed by the Home Secretary, or for us as a Parliament, and for the Minister representing the Government, to strengthen the law so that the police can carry out their duties. We cannot have a situation in which ordinary decent people's lives are made a misery, they are under threat, their environment, their homes and their family's lives are ruined for a time and where the cost to individuals, taxpayers and hard-pressed organisations such as Bracknell and Wokingham college have to be met out of their own funds.

67WH I shall be fascinated to hear what the Minister has to say. I appreciate that most of this will be new to her, but as she does not have long to wind up I would also appreciate a more detailed written response from her or the Home Secretary, because it is vital that this matter is tackled once and for all.