Eric Pickles has denied ‘intentional’ racial discrimination against travellers maintaining that rules for green belt development should be the ‘same for all’.

On Wednesday, the high court ruled that both human rights and equality laws were breached by the Brentwood and Ongar MP and his “calling in” of planning applications “discriminated unlawfully against a racial group".

Mr Pickles’ department said the government amended planning policy on travellers, to “increase protection” of the green belt.

Conservative planning minister Brandon Lewis said: “This government makes no apologies for seeking to safeguard green belt protection and trying to bring a sense of fair play to the planning system.”

“The government’s planning policy is clear that both temporary and permanent traveller sites are inappropriate development in the green belt."

However, a spokesman for the Traveller Movement charity accused Mr Pickles of embarking upon “an unlawful crusade to try to drive the UK’s Gypsies and Travellers into the sea”.

He said: “Justice has been done and the Secretary of State’s policy of ‘calling in’ Traveller site appeals for his own personal determination has now been found to have had no regard to fundamental principles of British law.

“This is a remarkable blunder by the Secretary of State and Mr Pickles can’t say he wasn’t warned. Gypsy and Traveller organisations and legal representatives have been repeatedly warning him that the policy was unlawful since it was introduced in 2013.”

A spokeswoman for the communities minister rejected the accusation of discrimination but accepted the courts ruling. 

She said: “We consider this to be an administrative issue, and we accept the technical points made but we do not accept that there was any intentional discrimination.

“We will re-consider the appeals with due process.”