Gypsies and Travellers

Kate Green Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I am grateful to colleagues who have stayed and I will be more than happy to take interventions.

On the sunny morning of 26 May this year, an eight-year-old boy climbed over the fence of a Traveller site in my constituency to chat to the Minister’s predecessor, Baroness Susan Williams, a local farmer whose land we were on, and to me. He was a delightful boy, but his prospects are destined to be much less good than many children of his age. A 2014 report from the Office for National Statistics shows that he is far less likely to gain any qualifications compared with the rest of the population, is more likely to be out of work and is likely to have worse health. The report found that 60% of adult Travellers had no qualifications, compared with 23% for the rest of the country, and that 20% were unemployed compared to 7% for the national population.

In 2016, in the fifth-richest nation in the world, this boy was living on a site with no proper sewerage system and no legal water supply, and he had not been in school for several weeks despite the best efforts of the local authority. I also question the quality of home schooling provided by parents who have themselves low levels of educational attainment.

The site he lives on has had three major incidents of modern slavery, a recent murder, frequent fighting between different Traveller groups, and significant sub-letting of pitches to vulnerable groups and some east Europeans in often the most atrocious of conditions. I do not believe that our current Traveller policy is in the best interests of that young boy and that is one reason why I am calling for the Department for Communities and Local Government to undertake a complete review of legislation affecting planning, law enforcement and housing allocation for Travellers.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, this is a subject that deeply concerns me, as it does him. He is right to talk about the need for a cross-governmental review. Would he include in that list the Department for Education? As he rightly says, the educational outcomes for those children are very poor. Too often, because schools do not meet their needs, they end up with substandard home schooling.

[Andrew Selous]

I most certainly would, and the Home Office needs to be engaged as well.

The settled residents of my constituency have had a very difficult summer and it is no exaggeration to say that many are living in fear. One local farmer has had four fires on his land started by Travellers, and he has had to employ a student to walk in front of his combine harvester to pick up all the metal and other items fly-tipped on to it by Travellers.