Gypsies and Travellers and Local Communities
Debate between Robert Jenrick and Tony Lloyd
Tony Lloyd
I am with the hon. Gentleman on that. Let me remind him, if I may, of Jim Davies, about whom I spoke a few moments ago—a Romany who spent 30 years serving the public in our police force. People like that are already the role model we want in that community.
Tony Lloyd
I will not give way, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me. I need to make a little progress; otherwise I fear I will be taking time off those who want to disagree with me later.
When a seven-year-old child says plaintively, “People don’t like us”, surely that should prick the conscience a little of those who want to stigmatise the whole of the travelling community. When we know that 77% of the travelling community have been victims of hate crime or hate speech, when we know that less than 20% would report hate crime or hate speech to the police because they fear no action would be taken, when we know that half of the Traveller community when seeking employment —the sort of thing we want them to do—have faced discrimination, and when we know from a recent survey that four in 10 of our fellow countrymen and women would not want their child to play in a Gypsy home, we know we have a problem.
The 2015 report of the Equality and Human Rights Commission made it clear that the position of Travellers is getting worse. As the Minister conceded, we still have massive challenges to face in many different areas. The hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) made a point about education. Some 57% of young people now get GCSEs with five grades from A to C, but among the Irish Travellers the figure is as low as 18% and among the Gypsies it is as low as 9%, so we know we have a problem. Another problem is when a teacher says to people in her class, “There’s no point in teaching you as you’ll end up tarmacking drives.” We have a problem in our educational system.
We know that people are denied access to our health services. One of the paradoxes is that not only does that lead to a 10% lower life expectancy among Travellers, which is outrageous in modern Britain, but it means it is less likely that Traveller children will be vaccinated, which matters to everybody. We know about herd immunity, and if we allow that to continue and do not ensure access to our health services, we will actually harm the health of the population more generally.
We know that there are more Traveller children in care. The Travellers account for 0.1% of the population, but only 0.03% of apprenticeships go to people from the Traveller community. Some 5% of our prison population is made up of people from the travelling community, and 8% of women in New Hall Prison are from a Traveller background. I say to the Minister that we must now have some proper accounting. The NHS does not count Travellers as a community of note, and that has to change.