Gypsies and Travellers (Hertfordshire)

But apparently not in St. Albans. I was not demonising Councillor Brazier; I think that I was trying to demonise the hon. Lady. Another reason that I enjoyed the debate, and that it substantially changed my mind, was that I had always felt that the Government were carrying out some great Stalinist plot, whereby they merely looked at the figures, sent down to their people and said, ““Give us more pitches; give us more figures,”” in the way in which the great dictator used to say, ““I want more tractors; I want more tanks; I want more executions.”” Apparently, there is no logic at all. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) put it rather well. At times, I felt that he was describing a combination of King Lear and the Red Queen in ““Alice in Wonderland””. The Government are essentially saying, ““Supply us with pitches. We know not where, and we know not in what number, but they will truly be the wonder of the world.”” My hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) made a magnificent point. It apparently does not matter whether there is a local connection or whether local Travellers have sites, just so long as there are sites. Local provision does not matter at all. It is possible under the system to provide as many sites as one likes. Travellers could come in from entirely different parts of the country, leaving Travellers in Hertfordshire without pitches, and still the Government’s criteria would be met. I have been remiss in not congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans (Anne Main) on securing the debate. I thought that she put her point across civilly and reasonably, and she showed a marked understanding that these decisions are not easy. It is immensely difficult to decide where pitches are going to go, and the conflict between the settled community and Travellers can be injurious to good community relations. Where those decisions work and there is an established understanding, things are excellent and we can be proud. However—I agree completely with Trevor Phillips on this point—in truth, in a lot of parts of the country that conflict is exactly what is happening. The regulations and the decisions from the regional bodies do not accept that, because the formula is difficult and incomprehensible. As my hon. Friend said, there is a feeling that such decisions are being bulldozed through by a remote authority and that they are a done deal. My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke) raised the difficulty of green belts and other areas, and of finding brownfield sites. He made the reasonable point that not that many sites are available on the green belt. A sensible community might eventually have to come to that decision, but we must clearly demonstrate beyond peradventure that the authority and the council have gone through the correct process before that decision is taken. My hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere rightly said that the Government must accept some responsibility. He clearly demonstrated that the whole process is about ticking the box, and showed that his local community feels extremely badly done by. My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) said that it was important for a sustainable approach to be taken and he is absolutely correct. The Minister has clearly not enjoyed the debate. Her body language and attitude have shown that she has not been entirely happy, and nor has she had much support from her own side. She could, no doubt, have done without such support as came from the Liberal Democrats. Perhaps I could give her some solace. We are not entirely critical of the Government. We recognise that they have moved some way since we presented our seven point action plan some time ago. They have moved towards us, particularly in making some moves to tackle some of the more flagrant abuses, such as those typified by the encampment at Crays Hill. We also recognise that the Government understand the importance of private authorised sites and the role that they can play. However, waiting for the regional spatial strategy to be ticked off before sorting out the authorised sites is a mistake, as it is leading to a drift. In particular, circular 01/2006 from the Department for Communities and Local Government has led to a number of decisions on planning whereby sites that would be singularly inappropriate have been allowed to go through while people are waiting for the spatial strategy to arrive. Essentially, Travellers’ sites are being developed based on drift rather than authority. I shall conclude as I started. Such decisions are difficult. Tensions tend to rise. Above everything, people want a feeling of equality before the law. The settled community and the travelling community want to be in roughly the same position so that planning permission should not, must not and cannot be given to the travelling community in circumstances in which it would undoubtedly be turned down for the settled community. Until that is firmly established in the public’s mind, there will be resistance, as we have seen this afternoon. Until the Government can demonstrate clearly that they want to treat all their citizens in equal measure, a significant part of the population will not believe that the Government come out of this with clean hands—forgive the use of the word—and a degree of integrity.