Robert Jenrick
Main Page: Robert Jenrick (Conservative - Newark)(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
I represent a constituency that has welcomed Gypsies and Travellers for hundreds of years. Between 800 and 900 of my constituents are Gypsies, Roma and Travellers. I have always considered them my constituents, just as my predecessor and—I suspect—his predecessors did. I have held surgeries in the main areas of Newark, including Tolney Lane, where Gypsies and Travellers live in permanent and transient residences. I have tried my best to get to know them. They are good people, and I want this debate to send the message that our motivation—certainly mine—is not to diminish or disrespect them, but to ensure good community relations.
There have not always been good relations between Newark’s Gypsy and Traveller communities and its wider community. In the ’80s and ’90s there was occasional violence, a great deal of disrespect and some prejudice. We now have much better relations, which I hope to see continue. The purpose of the review and of the work being done by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) and others is not only to protect our other constituents from criminal damage, disturbance and so on, but to build a united and cohesive community in which everybody feels that the law applies equally. That should be our guiding principle, but it has not always been followed in my community.
A very small minority—in many cases they are not from Newark, or even from the United Kingdom; sometimes they come from other parts of Europe—have caused a real flare-up, particularly this summer. Villages have been despoiled, gravestones have been destroyed, businesses have been invaded and the Newark Showground has been broken into, causing real damage to its reputation. Something really must be done to protect these communities and businesses and to achieve what I see as one of the most important parts of my role as a Member of Parliament: building a cohesive and united community.
In the short time remaining, I will leave the Minister with a couple of considerations that I would like to see included in the review. One of the concerns about the five-year pitch supply is that a place that has an established Gypsy and Traveller community, as Newark does, is expected to have more than the average number of pitches. The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) made the good point that if pitches were spread equally across the United Kingdom, there might be only an acre in every constituency, but they are not spread equally. Newark and Sherwood District Council, for example, has more Gypsy and Traveller pitches today than all the other districts in Nottinghamshire. Addressing that alone would make a good deal of difference to my community.