John Denham: Announced new policy

New government measures to tackle unauthorised traveller encampments have been denounced as "racist" by a leading expert.

On Friday the Home Office and the new Office of the Deputy Prime Minister jointly announced a "radical overhaul" of current policy.

They promised a twin-track approach focusing on clamping down on nuisance while improving the provision of permanent sites for travellers.

But Rachel Morris, coordinator of the Traveller Law Research Unit at Cardiff Law School, described the policy as "racist" and said it would cost taxpayers more money while failing to tackle the underlying issues.

And Morris - who has acted as an adviser on the subject to the former Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions, the Welsh assembly and other governmental and European bodies - warned the government that its policies may be in breach of race equality and human rights laws.

"If travelling people and their accommodation needs are to be treated differently from people in housing and their accommodation needs, particularly under race relations legislation and also under European law, that different treatment should be justified. I don't see any justification for that in here," she told ePolitix.com.

"When you ask for justification the government keeps going back to an issue of behaviour, and I think that's racist because the message they are sending to settled society is that travelling people have a propensity to bad behaviour stronger than that of other groups in society.

"You don't see them sending this kind of message about any other group."

The government has promised tough powers for the police to move on unauthorised traveller camps, coupled with changes to its current spending rules so the £8 million being spent on the Gypsy Site Refurbishment Programme from April 2003 can also provide funding for temporary sites.

The government wants more temporary, transit and emergency stopping places for travellers. The new approach is currently being finalised, and details of the local authority bidding process will be announced in the autumn.

The police will be given new eviction powers in areas where local authorities have made adequate provision of temporary sites for the number of travellers that regularly pass through their area.

Home Office minister John Denham said the government was committed to providing a balanced framework for dealing with unauthorised camps that "recognises the needs and concerns of both the settled and traveller communities".

The government is to draw up new guidance for police and local authorities dealing with unauthorised camps.

"The guidance will emphasise that the same standards of behaviour and regard for the law are expected from all sectors of the community, including regard for public health, proper disposal of waste and the conduct of business activities," said the government.

Housing minister Tony McNulty said the new policy was a "positive step".

"Our strategy is balanced and fair. The standard of behaviour of travellers should be the same as that expected of the settled community and does not mean turning a blind eye to anti-social behaviour," he said.

But while ministers put the emphasis on providing extra camps and clamping down on anti-social behaviour, Rachel Morris said that to link the two issues amounted to racial discrimination that would not be acceptable if applied to any other minority group.

She said the issue of criminal behaviour was a "different issue altogether" from the subject of travellers not having enough places to stay, and ministers were wrong to link the issue.

"It really is as if, say, every time they talked about making sure there was appropriate housing association accommodation for Black and Asian communities that they talked about things like Yardie gangsters or the Bradford riots...The focus with travellers is always on that behaviour issue."

Morris also told ePolitix.com that the government's approach to the subject raised other legal issues.

"It's all enforcement based, and therefore is treating travelling people differently than other racial groups. Given that the government have placed a positive duty on themselves to promote equality of opportunity and good race relations, I'd like to know how they justify that."

She agreed with the proposition that travelling people should be held to the same standards of behaviour as others in society, but added that they already were.

"They are policed a great deal more than settled people because those that don't have a lawful stopping place constantly attract the attention of local government and police officers, and local media and local people," she told this website.

For the three years from April 2001 the government has made £17 million available to local authorities to improve and refurbish existing sites. The final year of the current programme will be affected by the new rule changes.

The government said its revised approach would inform spending reviews for subsequent years.

But Morris noted that while there were mechanisms to plan 25 years ahead for housing, "that is not the case for travelling people".

And she questioned whether the government had thought through the linkage between evictions and the provision of new sites.

"Which is going to come first, the new site or the moving people on?" she asked. "If you have increased powers of eviction...you just keep moving the same people round and round even more."

"It's far more expensive to keep moving the same people round and round than it is to provide sites for them."

There are also social costs for travelling people in terms of social exclusion, lack of education and lack of access to healthcare, she added.

"I think what they are doing is feeding the ignorance that exists in society about travelling people and in the process are making it impossible for their own policies to succeed."

Asked if she thought the government wanted to appear tough on the issue, Morris said: "Yes, absolutely. It's actually disingenuous, its not going to resolve a thing.

"Those people who are upset about encampments, who've had negative experiences, might be made to feel better by hearing this kind of thing, but it doesn't actually resolve the situation for them."

In 1994 the law was changed to remove the duty on local authorities to provide sites for travellers, with groups told to build the sites themselves, Morris said.

"Now every time people try to buy land and get planning permission to live on it, planning permission is almost always refused, statistically disproportionately to other kinds of planning applications.

"A lot of the reason for that is whenever local people hear there is a Gypsy site planned there's an uproar, and part of the reason there is an uproar is they've got this message from central government that its ok to not want Gypsies as neighbours, regardless of what they are like as individuals."

There is an "acceptability" about treating travellers unfairly, she said, while the needs of the groups themselves suffered because of their "invisibility".

"What is visible is not real travelling people. What they are talking about in this announcement is the travelling people who behave badly.

"Yes they exist, yes they need to be tackled, as do people in the settled community who misbehave. The laws already exist to do that. There doesn't need to be a special law for travelling people."