Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, first, I must express deep gratitude to all those noble Lords who spoke in favour of this amendment: the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, the noble Lords, Lord Howarth and Lord Alton, the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and, finally, the noble Lord, Lord Bach. There was not a single contrary voice in the whole debate and your Lordships have demonstrated the concern which arises from these amendments and from the situation of Gypsies and Travellers in general. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, there are in fact 2,000 caravans on unauthorised sites, which are therefore legally homeless at the moment. As the noble Lord, Lord Bach, said, the problem is that they have no option but to trespass. The answer that my noble and learned friend the Minister gave to the first of these amendments, the ones which deal with legal aid for persons liable to eviction, was not satisfactory because that was the whole point of the amendments. It is all very well to say that they will have access to legal aid under paragraph 28 if they are not trespassers, but all of those 2,000 caravans, except those which are on sites owned by the Gypsies and Travellers themselves, are in fact trespassers and have no option. When people are thrown off a site such as Dale Farm—there is another one at the moment in Meriden, where the local authority is similarly kicking people off a site that they own and have developed themselves—they will have no alternative but to camp on the roadside or to try to sandwich themselves into an authorised site where there happens to be a little space left on one of the pitches, only to find that the local authority there takes steps to secure their removal immediately. I am grateful to my noble and learned friend for his remarks on the challenges to an injunction under Section 187B or an order under Sections 288 and 289, but I asked him whether it was not preferable to have these spelt out in the Bill, and I hope that between now and the next stage the Government might consider the wording necessary to do so. I believe that it would be possible to quote my noble and learned friend’s remarks in a court of law if there were any doubt about the matter, but it is always best to have things spelt out in statute if you can. The debate has raised issues that go far wider. In concluding his remarks, my noble and learned friend spoke about the £60 million that was allocated by the Department for Communities and Local Government for the construction of new sites. Unfortunately, very little progress seems likely to be made on that front; in none of the cases where grants have been made has there been either an application for planning permission or steps to identify the land. I rang around some of the local authorities and housing associations that had received money under that heading. They all told me that they were at an extremely preliminary stage and that when they get around to identifying particular pieces of land, they will come across the problem that so many of your Lordships have spelt out today: there will be immediate opposition from local residents that will make it very difficult for them to proceed. In spite of the fact that this money is available, your Lordships should not imagine that it will lead to any immediate progress on the provision of those sites—nor, if by some miracle they were completed overnight, would they solve the problem. Speaking from memory, I think there are 600-odd pitches in the allocations but altogether there are 2,000 caravans on unauthorised sites, so they would cope with only 30 per cent of the need that exists. In these circumstances, it is vital that Gypsies and Travellers have access to legal aid for all the purposes dealt with in this amendment. I hope that before we get to the next stage my noble and learned friend and others in the Government will consider what we have said today and think about restoring the right to legal aid, particularly in the amendments that are dealt with early on in this group. As far as we have got, though, I am grateful to my noble and learned friend, and I am sure that we will have further advice from the Community Law Partnership when we come to the next stage of the Bill. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 73 withdrawn. Amendment 74 not moved. Amendments 74A and 74B Moved by