Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Communities: Inequalities

Question for Short Debate

Asked by

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to implement the recommendations of the report by the House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee, Tackling inequalities faced by Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, published on 5 April 2019.

My Lords, I am gratified by the unusually large number of distinguished speakers and look forward very much to their contributions. I declare several unremunerated interests as set out in the register, including that I am co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Gypsies, Travellers and Roma.

This excellent report sets out devastatingly poor outcomes for Gypsy, Traveller and Roma communities, as well as the widespread discrimination, hate crime and prejudice they face. It shows that, contrary to stereotype, 74% live in bricks and mortar. I will single out only a few markers: educational attainment is the lowest of any group; life expectancy is 10 to 12 years less than for the rest of the population; one in five mothers can expect a child to die, as opposed to one in 100 for the rest of us; and 14% report bad health. One survey shows that 91% of those surveyed had experienced discrimination and 77% actual hate crime or hate speech. A whole chapter is devoted to problems experienced by more recent Roma immigrants.

Perhaps surprisingly, I do not castigate the Government —I know I am supposed to—for these disturbing outcomes. They are the fault and responsibility of society in general, and previous individual Ministers—such as the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, whose absence from the Front Bench is much missed—have made it clear that they do not connive at what many have admitted is a national scandal. The previous Government, in their response, fully accepted the significantly poorer outcomes for Gypsy, Traveller and Roma people than for other minorities, let alone the rest of the population.

This scandal is the fault of those teachers who do not try to understand diversity, much less welcome it, or to foster the well-being of all the children in their care; the schools that exclude children for responding to bullying with their fists or by dropping out; the doctors who do not allow Gypsies, Travellers and Roma on their lists, especially if they have a caravan site address; and many parts of the criminal justice system, which do not keep statistical records of the number and identity of Gypsy, Traveller and Roma people. It is particularly the fault of local authorities, elected members and officials, who put obstacles in the way of planning applications and instigate eviction from unauthorised sites when there is no alternative accommodation; the voters who press for this discrimination; parliamentarians whose discriminatory language has been the subject of formal complaints; and all of us who walk by on the other side of the road and do not repudiate prejudice and bigotry when we hear it.

The safeguarding of minorities is surely an essential component of democracy, and the capacity to exercise the right to keep to an ethnic culture that does no harm should be one of the jewels of our diverse society. Of course, the Government have a crucial leadership role. The previous Government’s undertaking to set up a cross-government strategy to, in their words, address disparities and “improve outcomes”, is a good beginning. I add that some time ago the Government set up the Department for Education stakeholders’ group, which I have the privilege of chairing, with devoted officials but without much resource to deal with the diversity of educational need and commission research—for instance, into the reasons for so much drop-out at secondary school and bullying. Ofsted’s contribution to the group is particularly welcome. I commend the participation of its Gypsy, Traveller and Roma specialist, Mr Mark Sims, on the stakeholder group. Perhaps it is time for a new Ofsted report.

My Lords, Gypsy, Roma and Travelling communities face a great deal of marginalisation, which is why I am so grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker—a redoubtable and feisty campaigner in this area—who keeps bringing this before us. I thank her for that. I am glad that we are raising this issue yet again in your Lordships’ House. She has quoted some of the many stats; I can add a few more and I guess that we will all add a few as we go along.

We know that 90% of Traveller children face racial abuse. The Government’s race audit showed that GRT pupils

“had the lowest attainment of all ethnic groups”.

The 2011 census showed that bad health among Gypsy and Traveller communities is twice as high as in other communities in our country. GRT people also have the lowest rate of economic activity of any ethnic group.

It would be simplistic to suggest that there are just one or two causes of this. It is complex—there will be a number of reasons for some of those facts—but what is absolutely clear is that it cannot be right if any of it is based on any sort of discrimination based on ethnicity. As a Christian country rooted in the Judeo-Christian doctrine of humanity—that we are all made in the image and likeness of God—this must surely be at the forefront of our thinking.

The reality is that many parts of our society are tainted with varying degrees of prejudice. Last year, we had a debate in the General Synod of the Church of England. It was sad to hear examples of where, even within the Church, there had been discrimination. It certainly raised with clarity an issue that, for many of us, needs to be faced. That debate urged the Church to fight against racism and hate crime directed at GRT communities, and to urge the media to stop denigrating and victimising these communities.

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, for bringing forward this debate. I am so glad we have the chance to discuss this once again. I want to speak briefly about the problems facing the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities in respect of accommodation. In many parts of the country, as we know, they are still having to resort to unauthorised encampments or developments, with no security of tenancy. Caravans are not recognised as a legitimate home, which leads to difficulty for Travellers in getting the required planning permission.

There is a requirement for local authorities to identify suitable and permanent sites, both public and private. In reality, this is taking place in only a small number of areas and, as there is no penalty given to those local authorities that do not comply, there is no incentive for them to find sites. When permission is granted for a site, it is often only for one year, so at the end of a year the whole application has to start again. This leads to insecurity and uncertainty about what the future holds. It makes it difficult to become part of the wider community, along with the difficulty of accessing suitable healthcare, educational requirements and employment opportunities, leading to many of the problems faced by this group of often vulnerable women and children. This in turn leads to poor health, poor maternity care, poor education and poor job opportunities, as well as discrimination and bullying. Why are local authorities not making more of an effort during that first year to find permanent sites? Perhaps if a penalty was imposed, more effort would be made.

We must recognise that it is important for Gypsies, Roma people and Travellers to live in caravan and site dwellings; it is at the heart of their history and what they believe to be their way of life. In 2019, a new national strategy was set up to tackle inequalities for Roma and Travellers. Will my noble friend the Minister tell me how this is progressing? I believe that 22 projects were going to be set up across the country. Has this happened and is the strategy going ahead as planned?

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Whitaker most warmly for giving us the opportunity to look at this issue again. She consistently does a great deal of work in this area. I must also say how good it is to see the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, in our midst. There was great respect for him across the Floor in his ministerial days, as well as a feeling that he really was engaging with the issues that so often came before us. To see him continuing that interest in this debate is significantly encouraging.

I declare an interest: I am president of the Labour Campaign for Human Rights, and I see this as fundamentally a human rights issue. I will repeat part of what my noble friend Lady Whitaker said, because none of us can escape these basic statistics. As the Commons committee pointed out, contrary to general opinion, 74% of the GRT communities live in bricks and mortar. Educational attainment is the lowest of any group. Life expectancy is 10 to 12 years lower than for the rest of the population. One in five mothers can expect a child to die, as opposed to one in 100 for the rest of us. Some 14% report bad health. One survey showed that 91% of those surveyed had experienced discrimination, and 77% had experienced actual hate crime or hate speech.

We cannot sweep this under the carpet. As my noble friend said, we cannot drive by on the other side; we all have responsibilities. She pointed out some of the areas where there are specific responsibilities, such as in schools. I am sure that she would agree that we have to be careful in not seeming to indicate that it is the teachers’ fault. It is not: very often, teachers in the most deprived parts of the country are hard pressed beyond imagination and desperately trying to cope with educating with limited means and resources. It is a matter of making sure that the resources are there to give teachers space to take their responsibilities seriously and do adventurous things in response.

The same point could be made with doctors: so often—I would not say always—the doctors who seem to be unresponsive are again working under incredible pressure in deprived areas. It is very difficult to find the space. Again, there is an issue of resources. If we will the ends, we must argue for the resources to be allocated as they should be.

What has happened about a work stream within the Race Disparity Unit to eliminate inequalities faced by Gypsies and Travellers? What has happened about an analysis of the scale of issues faced by Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, including those of school age who may be missing from local authority registers or facing challenges in accessing the right educational provision? What has happened about providing and ensuring proper support for children educated at home? The challenges are great. We must respond.

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness on bringing this important report to the attention of our House. It is perhaps not insignificant that my family name is as it is, and I should declare my own membership of the all-party group. Given my family background in horticulture in the Vale of Evesham—although we moved from there—I have some experience in those activities of employing Gypsies and Travellers, though they no longer form part of my farming activities or my declared interests.

In a debate such as this, one has to be extremely selective. I do not intend to talk today about hate crime. Although it is an important topic, it sometimes functions as a kind of displacement activity for what should be our concern about continuing systemic exclusion and low standards. A second area on which we should not perhaps spend time is sites, except to say that the committee makes a telling point about the health implications of low-standard sites.

One issue that particularly concerns me is the need to maintain a proper balance between the needs of Gypsy and Traveller families, individuals and children and their adjustment to an official world that is increasingly dependent on postcodes—places you live—and digital access. Although the committee rightly points out that some three-quarters of such families are no longer nomadic, and there are legacy issues about standards of education and suspicion of officialdom, in no sense should we allow these to trick us into trying to commit social engineering by default or by administrative incompetence.

As a former Education Minister, I sometimes raised a few eyebrows—alongside my late wife, who shared these passions—by emphasising the importance of further education, continuing education and, above all, adult literacy. Alongside the business of securing reliable attendance at school, these must be the building blocks in countering disadvantage—though I would now add a digital element to that, too. They are the magic keys for future empowerment of Gypsy and Traveller families.

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Boswell’s compelling and personal speech. I declare my interest as president of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Gypsies, Travellers and Roma—an interest that I am very proud of. I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, on tabling the debate and thank her for being a continuing inspiration who has respect across the whole House for the way that she has kept at this issue over many years. We are at a pivotal moment.

The Women and Equalities Committee, chaired very ably by Maria Miller, castigated this and indeed successive Governments quite correctly for inertia—my noble friend Lord Boswell used exactly the right word, because that is what it is. There is no lack of intention: there is in fact a unity of purpose. The committee rightly honed in on some of the problems that we had and made strong recommendations. The Government accepted them. In the dying days of when I was still a Minister, I remember a cross-departmental meeting to take forward this strategy. I came out of that meeting and what amazed me was the unity of purpose. People across different wings of the party, with different backgrounds, all said that something had to be done. There was a unity of purpose in different departments. Justice was represented there, as were health, education, the Home Office and HCLG, and I came out of that meeting thinking that we had a real opportunity to do something, and we must.

We have all referred to some of the incredibly worrying statistics on health, education and abuse and the need to involve more people from the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities in public life. To have examples with whom people can identify is of crucial importance in moving this forward. I was particularly pleased to see a young member of the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, Samson Rattigan, receive an honour in the last honours list. That was great news. These are our communities. One of my proudest moments as a Minister was laying a wreath on the grave of a Gypsy VC in Scunthorpe, Jack Cunningham. Nothing could illustrate better that this is all of us, and for too long we have acted against and not helped the other.

I join all noble Lords in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, for securing this debate and for her excellent introduction to it. I am also pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, in focusing on some positives, because it is important. Sometimes in these kinds of debates we focus on all the problems and difficulties. One of the things I want to do in my brief contribution is to focus on some positives.

However, to begin: the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, was right to focus on scapegoating. That is a real issue, and we as British society need to acknowledge collectively that we have a problem with racism. Some of the most extreme racism is directed at the Roma, Gypsy and Traveller communities. That is a fact, and it is here in this report. We are, however, grouping together three large and very diverse groups here, and as a resident of Sheffield I will focus on one particular community: the largely very recently-arrived Slovak Roma community in Sheffield.

I direct the Minister’s attention to a couple of reports that she may not be aware of, because they are important, positive and constructive contributions to this debate. One is titled Roma in Sheffield: Mapping services and local priorities. We are debating in this House of Lords at the centre of privilege, but we have to start by saying—as this report does: “listen to Roma priorities” to engage and hear what this community in Sheffield, and other communities that we are discussing, have to say. The report finds that there are significant gaps in the knowledge of many staff working with the Roma in Sheffield. The Government can and should be doing more on that, as indeed this report highlights.

We need to stress, and it is worth saying, that we are debating a report that was ordered to be printed on 29 March 2019. The third thing that the report says is that services need to react quickly to changes. In the world we are in now with Brexit, and with many people having come to Britain very recently, there are some real issues here; we have to be more nimble.

I thank noble Lords for finding time for me to contribute to this debate. I, too, thank my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, for bringing us together to have this important debate. I declare an interest as chair of the advisory group for the Race Disparity Unit and as a board member of the Open Society’s Roma Initiatives Office.

I begin by congratulating the newest heavyweight boxing champion of the world: Tyson Fury. Let us not forget that he is to global Gypsies, Roma and Travellers what Muhammad Ali has been to the African diaspora: a role model. He is a role model who wears his culture —his identity—on his sleeve: a supreme role model.

As one of the individuals who have helped inspire the Race Disparity Audit, I am proud of what the Government have achieved with it. As the chair of the Race Disparity Audit, I can say that we have been driving this agenda. We clearly recognise that there are monstrous gaps in the data, and it should be the Government’s priority to fill those gaps. Along with that, as the advisory group we need to be empowered to challenge all the government departments with the mantra, “Explain these disparities, or change”. If we do so—when we do so—we will close these persistent inequality gaps.