Gypsies and Travellers
Debate between Ranil Jayawardena and Andrew Selous
Andrew Selous
What my hon. Friend shows is that the current policy is very bad for community cohesion. I want good community cohesion between everyone in our country.
Residents in another of my villages are terrified that a plot of agricultural land will be bought by Travellers at auction shortly. I do not think they intend to farm it.
Mr Ranil Jayawardena (North East Hampshire) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and congratulate him on securing this important debate. Is it not true that many of his constituents and mine feel that there are double standards in the system and that it is far easier for people to claim, rightly or wrongly, that they are a part of this community and to get a different application of the process?
Andrew Selous
My hon. Friend is right. What we want is equality under the law.
Our previous experience is of caravans crashing through hedges on a Friday night and farmland being turned into a residential neighbourhood, with street lighting, pavements and utilities going in, in total contravention of planning law. On 4 February 2014, in my last debate on this issue, the then Minister said that
“we need to ensure that everybody is treated equally.”—[Official Report, 4 February 2014; Vol. 575, c. 19WH.]
Allowing that type of behaviour, which settled residents would not be allowed to engage in, shows that the law is not operating equally in this area. My request to the Minister is for his Department to undertake an immediate full-scale review of Gypsy and Traveller policy to ensure better outcomes for Traveller children, as well as greater protection from some of the criminality I have outlined, which affects both settled residents and Travellers themselves.