Kemi Badenoch has pledged a crackdown on illegal traveller camps, declaring she will “stop two-tier justice” by giving police sweeping new powers to evict trespassers and prevent their return.
The Conservative Party leadership contender set out plans to allow officers to remove travellers at a landowner’s request and to block them from an area indefinitely. The proposal forms part of a wider policy platform that hinges on the UK leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, a move she argues is essential to implement the changes.
Badenoch’s Plan: New Powers and a Break from Strasbourg
Under current law, police cannot evict travellers from private land unless they have caused significant damage, disruption, or distress. In 2022, the Conservative government passed legislation to strengthen these powers, including the ability to ban individuals from an area for up to 12 months. However, Badenoch contends these measures have been systematically thwarted.
“For years, towns and villages across Britain have been forced to accept criminality in their communities, but each measure we have used to deal with illegal traveller sites has fallen foul of the ECHR,” she said. Her solution is to first leave the Convention, thereby ending the power of what she terms “foreign courts to frustrate the will of Parliament.”
Alongside leaving the ECHR, Badenoch confirmed the party would scrap the Human Rights Act, which incorporates the Convention into UK law, and replace it with a “British Bill of Rights.” To enforce the new approach, the Conservatives plan to recruit 10,000 more police officers over three years at an estimated cost of £800 million.
The Legal Hurdle: A High Court Ruling on Discrimination
The central obstacle Badenoch identifies stems from a High Court ruling in May 2024. The court found that key provisions of the 2022 Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act were incompatible with the ECHR.
Specifically, the court ruled that extending police powers to ban Gypsies and Travellers from an area for up to 12 months breached Article 14 of the Convention, which prohibits discrimination, when read with Article 8, the right to respect for private and family life. The judges recognised that the severe lack of lawful stopping places for these communities, combined with a year-long exclusion order, placed a disproportionate and uniquely burdensome effect on them, amounting to unjustified race discrimination.
This ruling forces Parliament to review the provisions. It underscores a fundamental tension highlighted by human rights groups: that legislation criminalising unauthorised encampments fails to address the chronic shortage of adequate, culturally appropriate accommodation for Gypsy and Traveller communities, a point often summarised as the need for “provision not prohibition.”
Incidents Fuelling the Debate
The political focus on the issue is driven by a series of high-profile incidents. In Hertfordshire, travellers near the village of Flamstead recently barged onto green belt land and began laying concrete, according to a parish councillor who claimed they wielded iron bars, brought “lorryloads” of material, and damaged cars.
In a separate case last month, a Buckinghamshire village alleged a group of travellers was “holding them to ransom” by demanding over £600,000 to purchase the land they occupied. Elsewhere, locals in Shipley Bridge, Surrey, complained that travellers had turned their village into a caravan park by renting out pitches for nearly £1,000 a month.
The scale of the issue is also visible in urban areas. In Bristol, the number of travellers and van dwellers has grown, with an estimated 800 people living in 650 vans across the city. Other recent incidents include an unauthorised encampment in the car park of Teignbridge District Council’s headquarters in Devon and, in November 2025, the establishment of an illegal camp next to Britain’s largest nuclear weapons facility.
Badenoch argues that “too many” people have had to tolerate the behaviour of a minority who undermine the rule of law. “The measures will stop the two-tier justice that so often plays out when these sites appear, with law-abiding citizens powerless as travellers go unpunished for crimes that other communities simply wouldn’t get away with,” she said.
The Labour Party, in response, stated it recognises the importance of protecting public spaces and that the existing powers for police and local authorities are designed to ensure effective enforcement where disruption occurs. A Labour spokesman added that the party plans to recruit 13,000 extra neighbourhood police and PCSOs.
