Gypsies and Travellers (Local Communities)

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Hollobone]

The name of my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) is well known in my constituency, because he is a hero to the horse-owning community as a result of his pioneering legislation to combat fly-grazing. That legislation has been widely welcomed in Kettering and throughout the land. Am I surprised by what he tells us from his own constituency? I am not surprised. Am I disappointed? Yes, I am, because the law is working against the settled community and in favour of Gypsies and Travellers.

Many of my hon. Friend’s constituents and many of mine who do not come from a Gypsy or Traveller background actually do far more travelling than the supposed Travellers themselves. Many of my constituents travel down to London and back every day for work. They do far more travelling than the supposed Travellers in the illegal encampments, but the law is biased in this respect, and this is something that the Minister could deal with as his second initiative in the Department. The guidance that his Department gives local authorities means that they need to make provision for a 3% annual increase in Gypsy and Traveller household numbers. That growth rate is far too big, yet by law local authorities are required to draw up assessments to provide pitches for that rate of growth. So not only is the number of Gypsies and Travellers as a baseline too high; the annual growth rate that the Department requires local authorities to respond to is also too great.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I was going to let this go, but I just cannot; I refer to the hon. Gentleman’s earlier point about whether Travellers travel as much as people from his constituency. He surely realises that Gypsies and Travellers are a known ethnic group and whether or not they travel does not take away from the fact that they are an ethnic group. Whether or not they are actually travelling does not matter in order for them to be recognised as a Gypsy or a Traveller.

[Mr Hollobone]

The romantic notion of Gypsies wandering through the countryside, entertaining people as they go, is a myth from long ago, because many of these supposed Travellers are self-declared Travellers; they are not from any kind of Gypsy heritage at all. However, they are using, on a self-declared basis, their nomenclature as Travellers to get special privileges in the planning system. When they then use those privileges not to travel but to get planning permissions for permanent sites so that they can settle down, it is an absolute abuse. Now that we have got the first Conservative Government elected for 23 years, it is time that Her Majesty’s Government acted to stamp out that abuse in the countryside. The current system is also forcing local authorities such as mine to identify sites where pitches can be provided for that supposed growth rate in Travellers.

For example, Kettering Borough Council has to find 25 pitches by 2022. It has identified 17 so far and has another eight to find. Local constituents have been brought to tears because sites near their own homes have been identified as potential pitches. Only when there are determined local councillors, acting on behalf of their local constituents in their wards, who stand up and say, “No, we don’t want Traveller sites in our communities,” can these things be stopped. In Kettering, there was a proposal for a Traveller site near the Scott Road garages in the town itself, and it caused uproar among the local community, who knew that if permission were granted for Traveller pitches on that site, local crime levels would go through the roof. The idea that these provisions in the planning system are helping community cohesion is completely wrong; they are stirring up resentment and hatred between one community and another, and it is time that the new Government did something about it.

Let me give the House further evidence. This is a typical response I have had from a settled dweller in the countryside:

“Since moving to our current address in Braybrooke we have endured fly tipping, theft, many instances of intimidation, and fly grazing.

Since having”—

Travellers’—

“horses removed from our land we have encountered almost daily instances of defecating in our gateway, known to be carried out by this family”.

I am talking about human defecation. That is as disgusting as it gets. The response continues:

“I caught one of them in the act one day. We dare not do anything about it for fear of reprisals.

We cannot leave anything lying around outside as approximately once a week a van with travellers in drives into our yard and out again without stopping, presumably to intimidate or for opportunist theft…My wife and her family can relate…many, many more instances over the last 30 years including hare coursing, theft of equipment, intimidation, fly grazing, dumping of caravans etc. They have given up reporting instances long ago as nothing has ever been done about it and it just seems futile.”

I hope you can see, Mr Davies, the despair and frustration of my constituents, who are really beginning to resent the Gypsy and Traveller community in Northamptonshire, because they are bending the rules of the planning system, which are skewed in their favour, to allow them to get permissions to set up encampments in the countryside. When the local authority refuses those applications, they go to appeal, and all too often the pathetic planning inspectorate allows permission—sometimes temporary permission. When the temporary permission expires after two years, five years or whatever, the local authority is unable to enforce the removal of those encampments, because they cite the Human Rights Act and the provisions therein to protect so-called family life. Also, the Department for Communities and Local Government has issued guidelines to local authorities that they cannot pursue such enforcement if the cost is excessive or disproportionate. It ends up with my village of Braybrooke, in a beautiful part of Northamptonshire and with 145 dwellings, surrounded by 67 inappropriate pitches and a further 27 legal pitches within a further three miles. The whole thing has got completely out of control. In Braybrooke, the primary school has closed, but when it existed, it was made up 100% of children from the Traveller community, because the Traveller children moved into the area and moved into the school, and parents from the settled community moved their children out of the school to go to other schools. Now, the school has closed down, yet in the Department’s own guidelines it says that the scale of such Gypsy and Traveller sites should not dominate the nearest settled community. That might be the wording in the guidance, but it is not having the appropriate impact to save villages such as Braybrooke.

It is only thanks to the good work of residents such as Karen Stanley and the North Northamptonshire Residents Against Inappropriate Development group, who are fearlessly championing the cause of the settled community against threats of intimidation from Gypsies and Travellers, that local residents feel they have any say in this matter at all. Yet it lies in the gift of the Minister to listen to those concerns from the heart of middle England, because he has the power to do something about them. I suggest that section 225 of the Housing Act 2004 should be at the top of his priority list. If he can abolish it, there is every chance that relative peace could return to the countryside, and we could start to rebuild relationships between the settled community and Gypsies and Travellers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

When I first heard the original motion—I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) on this—I was absolutely astonished. The motion made me wonder what other ethnic groups and races could be grouped together and framed in a debate about their effect on local communities. I would like to think that such language was a thing of the distant past, so I was surprised, to say the least, that the House had allowed the original motion. I am pleased that the wording of the motion has been changed, albeit to wording that is only slightly better.

I hope we can use this debate to put to bed some of the myths or stereotypes about these communities and promote greater cohesion between the many ethnic communities in our country. I understand and appreciate some of the concerns that have been raised in this debate, but I counsel caution to Members present about grouping together different ethnic groups as a homogeneous whole.

In this country, Romany Gypsies and Irish Travellers are both legally recognised ethnic minority groups with rich cultures and traditions that go back centuries. They are groups with people as varied as in any other country, and it is entirely wrong, not to mention counterproductive to the desired outcomes of many Members here—especially the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), who secured the debate—to stigmatise such groups and to seek to create further barriers between them and other parts of society.

Many of the problems that have arisen and that have been highlighted in this debate are structural issues that need our attention. There is a serious shortage of legal Traveller sites in England, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith said, and on current trends it will take decades for that deficiency to be rectified. This situation has forced thousands of Gypsies and Travellers on to illegal pitches, which not only annoys some local communities and further stigmatises Gypsies and Travellers in the eyes of many people, but harms the Travellers and Gypsies themselves, particularly their children.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Mrs Hodgson]

I will just finish this point. The children of Travellers and Gypsies suffer detrimental effects to their health, education and life choices.

[Tim Loughton]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way, and I am sure that she is about to come on to the important issue of the welfare of children, on which we both agree. However, does she agree that, although she is absolutely right that members of the Traveller and Gypsy community have an expectation of, and a right to, equal treatment, there is also an expectation on them that they will bear equal responsibilities? When illegal Traveller encampments are created, as frequently happens in many of our constituencies, when properties are trashed for people to gain access to them, and when sites are left in an absolute eyesore of a state, with human waste being left and fly-tipping taking place, as happened in Southwick Green in my constituency just last week, and nobody is prosecuted, that is not equality of responsibility. It leads to the sorts of problems between communities that she is describing.

[Mrs Hodgson]

Again, the hon. Gentleman is making some valid points. This issue is about rights and responsibilities, and as a community and a country we have a responsibility to Gypsies and Travellers to ensure that there are legal places where they can live. They have rights and the responsibility, as all residents and UK citizens do, to treat those places—their homes—with the respect they deserve. However, we have come to a downward spiral, which is not helping anyone; it is not helping the local residents and it is certainly not helping the Gypsies and Travellers.

As I was saying, children in the Traveller communities already suffer high levels of racial abuse, with nine out of 10 of them experiencing such abuse, according to 2014 figures. We need to do all we can to help these people, and putting additional pressure on them will only make matters worse, deepening the divisions when we need to be building bridges. All people in this country should obey the rule of law, but equally all people in this country should be respected, and respect is what the Gypsy and Traveller communities require more than most. Only by giving them such respect can we bring about the positive changes that we all want.

The Government and civil society need to work towards boosting community cohesion, and towards promoting a greater dialogue and further understanding between Gypsies and Travellers and the rest of society. The Government must also recognise that dealing with these communities is a two-way street, and that it is only when we all work together in a joint atmosphere of respect and tolerance that we can hope to come together and put an end to many of the problems that appear to divide so many of us.

All local communities should be able to live in peace, and that goes for Travellers and Gypsies as well, so I hope that all Members here today will bear that in mind and will work with these communities rather than against them, putting aside divisive rhetoric and entering into discussions with open minds—

[Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Mrs Hodgson]

I was just about to finish, but I will.

[Graham Evans]

I am most grateful. In Cheshire West, Cheshire East and Warrington, there are 16 unauthorised Gypsy camp sites. Those sites are owned by the Gypsy community. They are not illegal sites; the Gypsies are the landowners. What those sites do not have is planning permission, and there are 53 such slivers of green-belt land with temporary planning permission.

The point that my constituents and others in the area make is that this issue is not about inequality; it is about fairness. If anybody wants to put in a planning application for those sites, it will be refused. The fact is that the Gypsies move on and set up caravan sites with no planning permission whatsoever, leading to communities being divided on fairness when it comes to planning law, and not on any of the other matters that the hon. Lady mentioned. The issue is planning law—the fairness between the Gypsy and Traveller community, and our own constituents.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I literally have only 20 seconds left, but I knew the hon. Gentleman had not spoken before, so I was happy to allow him to make his point. However, I probably do not have time to give him a long answer, other than to say that what he said brings us back to the point I made earlier about structural issues, which we need to deal with. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith said that all we need is an acre of land across the country to solve a lot of these problems. Following your advice, Mr Davies, I will end there.