Labour ‘turning a blind eye’ to Traveller encampments | Politics | News

Labour is accused of “turning a blind eye” to Traveller encampments by ending a requirement for councils to count the number of caravans twice a year. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said the Government is “concealing the truth and masking the true scale of the challenge local residents and the police face”. The former policing minister claimed Labour is pursuing a “soft-touch approach” which is “letting communities down”.

A count will no longer be held in July, and instead, an “annual snapshot will be collected in January”.Tories fear that unauthorised encampments during the summer months will go unrecorded. Mr Philp claimed a new approach is needed to tackle the illegal occupation of land, and that quitting the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and repealing the Human Rights Act (HRA) is essential. In a landmark decision in 2024, a High Court judge ruled that a law which allowed police to ban Gypsies and Travellers from areas and gave the the power to seize accommodation was “incompatible” with the ECHR.

Mr Philp said: “All too often, travellers pitch up, illegally occupy a site and refuse to leave. There is often environmental damage and other crime associated with these illegal occupations. Local residents complain to the police, but nothing happens. Not because the police don’t want to do act – but because they can’t. The last Conservative Government changed the law, but the courts have since then stopped those laws being used, saying they are incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.”

Last year’s July caravan count found 4,464 unauthorised caravans, an increase of 448 (11%) from July 2024.

Mr Philp said: “It’s no surprise that on Labour’s watch, things are getting worse… Labour have let the problem get out of control, so they’re trying to hide the facts, hoping nobody notices.”

Once the UK has left the ECHR and scrapped the HRA, he said: “[We] will then change the law to back the police with the power to ban travellers from returning to camps indefinitely. We will also empower police to remove travellers if requested by the landowner. We will make it an offence to trespass with a vehicle after being told to leave. And we will scrap the ban on removing trespassing travellers if there is no alternative site nearby. That’s how we to things under control. And we are the only party who will do it.”

Sarah Mann, the chief executive of the group Friends, Families and Travellers, was unimpressed by the Shadow Home Secretary’s words.

She said: “The Conservative Party already gave its anti-Traveller policies a go last time round and faced swift defeat in the courts. Those policies didn’t do much to reduce the cost of living crisis or improve health outcomes for anyone, so repainting the whipping post may not be the best use of public resources.

“This rhetoric not only fuels stigma but actively divides communities. Meanwhile, it achieves nothing.

“The real solution is simple – support safe stopping places and give local authorities what they need to meet their duties, otherwise everything else is just political theatre.”

The 2021 census found 71,440 people in England and Wales gave their ethnic group as Gypsy or Irish Traveller – 0.12% of the population. A further 103,020 gave their ethnic group as Roma, the equivalent of 0.2% of the population.

When announcing the changes to the caravan counts, the Government noted that the UK Statistics Authority said that the twice a year snapshot model was “not appropriate for capturing information about unauthorised sites”. It added that the data is “not used for the policing of illegal sites and trespassers”.

The Government has committed to exploring “options for collecting data on unauthorised sites”.

A spokesperson said: “Police and council powers to take action on illegal encampments have not changed. We remain clear that illegal sites will not be tolerated.”