Unregulated Accommodation: 16 to 17-year-olds

Debate between Andrew Selous and Tim Loughton

Tuesday 15th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right; like him, I am a huge admirer of Dr Krish Kandiah, and I will say a little bit about that charity and what it can do later in my remarks.

In three of the unregulated homes that I visited in September with the police, only three out of the 17 children there came from Bedfordshire. All the other children were from other local authorities. They had all gone missing on multiple occasions; one child, indeed, had gone missing 41 times. Local authorities sending 16 and 17-year-olds to Bedfordshire include Stockton-on-Tees, Peterborough, Sandwell, Cambridgeshire, Oxfordshire, Swindon, Windsor and Maidenhead, Manchester, Birmingham, Essex, Nottinghamshire, Devon, Enfield, Barnet, Hillingdon, Redbridge, Waltham Forest, Haringey, Ealing, Merton and Croydon. Some of those have lamentable due diligence in their placing decisions.

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

I declare my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I congratulate my hon. Friend, who is generous in taking interventions. It is not just a case of the quality of the accommodation that many of these vulnerable young people are put into, or indeed the services available to them, but the locations they are placed in. Is he aware that some years ago in the Department for Education we produced “heat maps”, which showed areas where children should just not be placed? Children were being placed in homes on the same street as sex offender hostels, for example. There is a duty on directors of children’s services to ensure that the areas in which these children are being placed are appropriate and safe.

[Andrew Selous]

I completely agree; that is another reason for more regulatory oversight, which I will call for. Perhaps this issue needs to come up in planning policy as well.

Central Bedfordshire sends very few of its own children out of the area. As a Bedfordshire Member of Parliament, I am simply not prepared to accept this wholly unacceptable diversion of police resources caused by other local authorities acting irresponsibly and using provision that no local authority in Bedfordshire would put its own children in.

It is not as if this provision is cheap, either. A typical cost per child in these unregulated homes is around £800 per week, which is £42,000 per child per year. Some unregulated provision will cost considerably more than that, and it is completely unacceptable that taxpayers are paying such enormous amounts of money to private businesses, some of which do an appalling job and are more interested in making money than in looking after vulnerable children.

Given that several members of staff that I spoke to when I visited some of these homes told me that they needed no training whatsoever to undertake this work, I suspect that rates of pay are low and significant profits are being generated for the directors of these companies. Who is overseeing value for money for taxpayers, who are having to fork out these enormous amounts per child for such poor-quality provision, which in turn is placing a huge burden on other parts of the public sector such as the police?

Gypsies and Travellers

Debate between Andrew Selous and Tim Loughton

Monday 10th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous]

As always, the hon. Gentleman makes an important point. We should always deal with such issues with humanity, decency and respect, but we also need to see equality under the law. As I am sure he would agree, the two are not mutually exclusive, but he makes a welcome point.

My main concern is with current planning policy, which allows many Traveller pitches in some areas when others have none at all. Multiple Traveller sites lead to many unauthorised encampments. In 2017, there were 116 unauthorised encampments in Central Bedfordshire, and clear-up costs in the area were around £350,000. Over £200,000 of that was spent by Highways England, with one encampment requiring over 100 grab lorries to clear up to 250 tonnes of litter. My constituents are understandably outraged to be told that there is no money for more of the public services that they want when they see huge sums being spent with no ability to recoup the money from those responsible.

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

This debate is on an important subject that has come up every few months over my 21 years in this place. Apart from the extreme cases that my hon. Friend mentions, the real problem is that Travellers will break in and cause damage to gain access to illegal encampments. When they depart, they invariably leave behind a trail of devastation and rubbish, which costs the local taxpayer an enormous amount to clear up. Is not the change in the law that we need that, rather than having to point to a single person who caused the access damage, any group of Travellers illegally encamped should be collectively liable for fines and compensation, which could involve the confiscation of often quite valuable vehicles? They might then get the message that they cannot continue trampling over the rights of local people with impunity.

[Andrew Selous]

My hon. Friend makes several good points, including on the Irish option, and I will touch on both that and the vehicles issue. I am grateful to him for telling it as it is in his constituency.

Is the current Government policy working well for the Travellers themselves? Thanks to the Prime Minister’s race disparity audit, we now know that pupils from a Gypsy, Roma, Traveller or Irish heritage background have the lowest attainment of all ethnic groups throughout their school years. Around a quarter of Gypsy and Roma pupils achieve a good level of development at the age of five, making them around three times less likely to do so than the average.

The disparity is worse at key stage 4. In 2015, the attainment 8 score for Gypsy and Roma pupils was 20 points, compared with the English average of 50 points, and 62 points for Chinese pupils. I asked the Children’s Commissioner for England to visit a school in my constituency with a lot of Traveller children, and she wrote to me that

“some had taken the children out of school for the summer travelling season”—

during term time—

“and most talked about the children leaving school when they are 14 to 16.”

She is right, as the race disparity audit shows that Gypsies and Irish Travellers are far less likely than any other ethnic group to stay in education after the age of 16. Only 58% of Irish Traveller pupils stayed on in 2014-15, compared with 90% of white British pupils and 97% of Chinese pupils.

Travellers and the families to which they illegally let their caravans on Traveller sites often have no proper sewerage, water or heating, and there is no proper mechanism in place to ensure decent standards of housing. This whole situation is a complete disgrace in the United Kingdom in 2018. Ministers and the officials responsible for this policy area should be hanging their heads in shame.