The Traveller Law Reform Bill

Traveller Law Reform Conferences

Notes for editors

 

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The Traveller Law Reform Bill is the product of a process over more than four years of discussion and collaboration by Gypsies and Travellers and their organisations and the statutory and voluntary sectors (including representatives from the police, local authorities, education and health providers, churches, equality organisations, lawyers and planners). The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust has funded the technical drafting of the Bill which was undertaken by the Traveller Law Research Unit at Cardiff Law School, part of Cardiff University. The Bill was launched on 31 January 2002. A revised version of the Bill was adopted and read in the House of Commons by David Atkinson MP on 10 July, and was intended to receive its second reading in Parliament on 19 July. However, this was interrupted by a Labour Whip; it is therefore not clear at present what the Bill's future progress might be. However, a new Traveller Law Reform Coalition may yet make great strides.

The process formally commenced in 1997 when a proposal was made to create a common 'platform' to take forward the reform debate. This reform process has already produced a number of conferences and a law reform document published as Gaining Ground: Law Reform for Gypsies and Travellers (launched at the House of Lords on 31 May 1999), and accompanied by a number of significant and positive governmental policy changes, including:

  • planning development advice;
  • advice from the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions [now Office of the Deputy Prime Minister] concerning toleration of unauthorised encampments;
  • NHS guidance specifically drawing attention to the health care of Gypsies and Travellers;
  • amendments to the housing repair grants regime to include caravans on publicly-owned Gypsy sites;
  • ministerial endorsement concerning the 'best value' implications for local authority site provision and toleration policies; and
  • voting rights for Gypsies and Travellers.

Clearly, however, there have also been a number of negative developments, most notably in the tenor of political comment and press coverage of Gypsy and Traveller issues: the stigmatisation of Gypsies and Travellers, essentially as an evil underclass. As recently as 15 January 2002, an MP described Gypsies and Travellers, in a House of Commons debate, as 'scum' not entitled to human rights. If for example Jewish or Black people had been spoken of this way, there would have been an international outcry. Worse yet, the racist (and barely noticed) announcement of a racist new Government policy on 5 July puts development in this field back more than 30 years.

Many of the clauses in the Traveller Law Reform Bill make important amendments to remove discriminatory statutory provisions. The Bill's most significant innovation, however, concerns the extent to which it seeks to remove from the political stage decisions concerning site provision and site 'toleration'. In effect it creates self-enforcing provisions; measures which do not depend upon 'political will' for their subsequent enforcement.

This is to be achieved by:

  1. Creating a Gypsy and Traveller Accommodation Commission which will be responsible for assessing the need for sites throughout England and Wales.
  2. Local authorities will be required to facilitate site provision (by e.g. providing for planning permissions for owner occupied sites, 'tolerating' historic sites and collaborating with Housing Associations which will have power to provide develop and manage sites).
  3. Local authorities which have failed to facilitate the provision of sufficient sites will have greater difficulty in evicting illegal encampments on their own land; likewise planning inspectors will have to have regard to such a failure when determining applications by Gypsies and Travellers for permission to develop their own sites.

An example of the other provisions in the Bill (designed to remove discrimination between the laws that apply to Travelling and non-Travelling people) concerns Gypsy site developments. Since 1994 there has been no duty on local authorities to provide accommodation for Gypsies and Travellers and no central government grant available to fund site construction. On the other hand, local authorities have a duty to house certain people and the Housing Corporation has major resources to support the construction of public housing. The Bill removes the discrimination by extending the Housing Corporation's powers to use its resources to support caravan site development.

The Bill is the first major initiative in relation to the law affecting Gypsies and Travellers since the Caravan Sites Act 1968 (repealed in 1994). The CSA was introduced as a Private Members Bill by Eric Lubbock MP (now Lord Avebury). Lord Avebury chairs the TLRU Advisory Committee consisting of representatives of many Gypsy and Traveller organisations, which has also been influential in shaping the terms of the Bill.

Notes for editors

  • See the Commission for Racial Equality's guidance notes on Travellers, Gypsies and the media.
  • The Traveller Law Research Unit was a specialist unit within Cardiff Law School at Cardiff University. The Unit, from 1995 to 2002, undertook research for a number of charitable foundations, and aimed to promote law reform, policies and services of benefit to Travelling people.
  • There are between 200,000 and 300,000 Travelling People in the United Kingdom. The majority of these people are Gypsies - whether English, Welsh or Scottish - and Irish Travellers, racial groups under the protection of the Race Relations Acts. At least 1/3 of these people have no safe, legal and secure stopping place, and many such people have no access to water, refuse disposal and other essential services. See further data here or on our information page.