Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Communities: Inequalities

Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Boswell’s compelling and personal speech. I declare my interest as president of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Gypsies, Travellers and Roma—an interest that I am very proud of. I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, on tabling the debate and thank her for being a continuing inspiration who has respect across the whole House for the way that she has kept at this issue over many years. We are at a pivotal moment.

The Women and Equalities Committee, chaired very ably by Maria Miller, castigated this and indeed successive Governments quite correctly for inertia—my noble friend Lord Boswell used exactly the right word, because that is what it is. There is no lack of intention: there is in fact a unity of purpose. The committee rightly honed in on some of the problems that we had and made strong recommendations. The Government accepted them. In the dying days of when I was still a Minister, I remember a cross-departmental meeting to take forward this strategy. I came out of that meeting and what amazed me was the unity of purpose. People across different wings of the party, with different backgrounds, all said that something had to be done. There was a unity of purpose in different departments. Justice was represented there, as were health, education, the Home Office and HCLG, and I came out of that meeting thinking that we had a real opportunity to do something, and we must.

We have all referred to some of the incredibly worrying statistics on health, education and abuse and the need to involve more people from the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities in public life. To have examples with whom people can identify is of crucial importance in moving this forward. I was particularly pleased to see a young member of the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, Samson Rattigan, receive an honour in the last honours list. That was great news. These are our communities. One of my proudest moments as a Minister was laying a wreath on the grave of a Gypsy VC in Scunthorpe, Jack Cunningham. Nothing could illustrate better that this is all of us, and for too long we have acted against and not helped the other.

One person has been pivotal to progress. I had a couple of meetings with him, one at the Appleby Horse Fair, which noble Lords will know is central to Gypsy, Roma and Traveller life—and a great festival it is—and one when I met him individually. Billy Welch is the head Gypsy, and someone who really needs to be involved in any strategy to help drive it forward. He is a man of great energy and ability and we would be extremely unwise not to harness his skills and ability to bring people together.

There are some positive signs. We fund things such as GATE Herts, which works with victims of hatred against the GRT community. Sherrie Smith does great work there. Friends, Families and Travellers, with Sarah Mann and Abbie Kirkby does great work and I would like to mention it on the record. I was also very proud that the Government were represented at the 75th commemoration of the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Holocaust at Auschwitz-Birkenau. I was no longer a Minister when that came round, but so committed was I to the event that I went out as an individual under my own steam, because it was an extremely important moment. Civil servants were there and the Government recognised the importance of it.

Central to all of this is the Race Disparity Unit, which is one of the great things that the last Government introduced, driven by the then Prime Minister, Theresa May. But it is no good having that data if we do nothing with it. I put down a Question last week to ask what was happening to it and the response was, “We are still collecting the data”—I paraphrase slightly. We need to do something with the data, for goodness sake, and move the dial. We have a real opportunity in this Parliament to do just that and make a real difference. I am pleased that this debate was tabled. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, again.