Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Martin Docherty-Hughes Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading - Day 2
Tuesday 16th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP) [V]]

On the day the Parliament of Scotland seeks to place the United Nations convention on the rights of the child at the heart of our nation’s legal system, the British Parliament seeks to criminalise thousands of Gypsy and Traveller children for daring with their families, in the 21st century, to live their traditional and historic way of life. Imprinted on vellum, this archaic legislation will enshrine centuries of resentment, bigotry and racism, entrenching inequalities and proscribing specific ethnic groups, even against the advice of the police forces of England. It is a law that facilitates the narrative of exclusion, well exposed in recent weeks when Dochertys like me, merely for being from the Traveller community, are excluded from the life of the state.

As a Scottish constituency MP, I see this is a direct attack on the Scottish Traveller community, which this Parliament refuses to recognise as a distinct ethnic group—Scots who will be at the mercy of Dickensian attitudes, and exposed to imprisonment and financial ruin by the mother of Parliaments. As the co-chair of the all-party group on Gypsies, Travellers and Roma, I see this as a misguided, reprehensible attack on the ancient and historic rights of the nomadic peoples of these islands. It is clear that England’s green and pleasant lands are not for the likes of us, and the Conservative and Unionist party does not give a damn who knows it.