Unauthorised Encampments

Debate between Deidre Brock and Wendy Morton

Thursday 12th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

As the hon. Member for North West Durham (Laura Pidcock) noted, the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) spoke of “gold-plating” human rights and equalities legislation. I took the time to read the article written by the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills on the subject of this debate, and I have to say to her that one’s ethnicity, social group or how one identifies oneself does not make one a better person. Human rights are not held because someone lives in a house; they are held because someone is a human being. And someone’s human rights are not lessened because their lifestyle is different from the lifestyles of other people.

The hon. Member’s article argues that

“the pendulum has swung too far away from local residents who have faced these repeated traveller incursions”

and that:

“Residents are tired of the anti-social behaviour, noise, rubbish and mess—which can be household, domestic and even human—that so often accompanies these incursions. The Council is left to clear up the mess—and the taxpayer to pick up the bill. Enough is enough.”

Those passages in the article on her website advertising this debate represent the kind of prejudice and intolerance that strain—[Interruption.] No, I am going to continue. They strain relationships between people. Coming from a parliamentarian, they represent the kind of rhetoric that, in my experience, has left small children at risk of violence. I spoke with a Traveller mother recently who told me that her children have grown up thinking that stones and bottles being thrown at their caravan windows by members of the settled community—the community that has so often been referred to today—is normal. That is unacceptable.

I understand that—

[Wendy Morton]

On a point of order, Mr Davies.