Bradley Thomas, MP for Bromsgrove and the Villages, is backing a crackdown on illegal traveller sites to tackle unauthorised developments with new freedoms gained by leaving the ECHR.
Across the country, communities are forced to tolerate illegal encampments and breaches of planning laws, as well as antisocial behaviour and petty crime, by a small minority of travellers. In many areas, the authorities lack the power and sometimes the will to stand up for local residents and enforce the law.
A Government led by Kemi Badenoch will never sit by and accept criminality going unchecked. That is why she has developed a robust and deliverable plan to end the two-tier treatment of travellers and ensure equality under the law for all communities.
Her five-point plan will:
- Use new freedoms gained by leaving the ECHR and scrapping the Human Rights Act to back the police with the power to ban travellers from returning to encampments indefinitely, and the power to remove travellers if requested by the landowner.
- Rebuild hard deterrence by making it an offence to trespass with a vehicle after being directed to leave.
- Scrap the ban on removing trespassing travellers if no alternative site is available in the area.
- Stop the abuse of the retrospective planning applications and end the lawfare which frustrates the law being enforced.
- Reverse Labour’s changes that weaken greenbelt and open countryside protections, undermining planning enforcement and helping a small minority of travellers game the system.
The previous Conservative Government tightened the rules, but laws passed by our Parliament were effectively blocked by the courts because of Human Rights legislation.The democratically elected Government’s plans to ban travellers from returning to unauthorised sites within a year were thrown out by judges who claimed they would be discriminatory.
The Labour Government – including then-Attorney General Lord Hermer – capitulated to Strasbourg’s diktats and opted for just a three-month no-return period instead. This is effectively useless, as travellers can simply rotate around a handful of sites in any given area.
By leaving the ECHR and scraping the Human Rights Act, we can go further than the previous Government and impose indefinite returns bans as one of a number of key measures to tackle the problem.
Bradley said: “The Government has failed to tackle unauthorised traveller developments in Bromsgrove and the Villages and across the country. Those who break the rules must be punished. That is a basic principle that must apply equally to all communities.
“Yet a small minority of travellers are getting away with things we would never tolerate among the wider population. It’s time for tough action to get this problem under control.
“Our plan will give the authorities the backing they need to crack down on traveller lawbreaking, putting local residents first and ensuring equality before the law.
“This plan will be helpful in tackling illegal traveller encampments which continue to blight Cofton Park.
“I’m calling on the Government to adopt this plan, as it is only Kemi Badenoch who has a plan to tackle unauthorised traveller developments.”
