Kate Green
Main Page: Kate Green (Labour - Stretford and Urmston)(6 years, 6 months ago)
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Wendy Morton
I absolutely agree, which is why the focus of today is that impact on local communities, local residents, and sometimes local businesses. It is often local community groups that normally use green spaces on a Saturday morning.
I was talking about the process and pattern that often seems to occur. Before it is evicted by a court order, we see the encampment simply move to another site. The Travellers set up camp while the council works on the eviction process, and just before the council serves the necessary order, the encampment packs up and moves on—often down the road to another site in the same borough—only for the same process to repeat itself. That cat-and-mouse merry-go-round comes at great cost to the taxpayer. Enough is enough. It must be brought to an end. It is time to seek some solutions.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
I apologise, Mr Davies, but I will need to leave the debate early; a school from my constituency is visiting. I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. I am interested in what she says about this being a pattern that is repeated each year; I know that other colleagues will make the same point. Does she agree that it is helpful if local authorities actually undertake what they should, which is to secure a five-year supply of deliverable sites—and does she know whether her authority has done that?
Wendy Morton
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her contribution. I think transit sites and allocations are part of what is actually a much bigger issue. I will come on to some of those points later.
Mess is so often left at these sites. The state that some of the sites are left in following an eviction is quite simply a disgrace. There are masses of litter and household waste, while industrial waste is commonplace—be that bricks or leftovers from building work. I have seen huge piles of garden waste, which often appears to be from work carried out by members of these sites then brought back to the encampment and dumped.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
Since Monday’s debate, we have had the shocking revelation of the race disparity audit figures. The absence rate for white British pupils is 4.6% and for Chinese pupils 2.4%, yet for Irish Traveller children, it is 18%. Some 97% of Chinese and Indian children stay on in education after age 16; 91% of mixed white and black Caribbean children do; yet 58% of Irish Traveller children do. This House and this Government face a big issue. Do we prioritise the cultural practice of being able to travel—in itself, there is nothing wrong with that—over children’s right to an education?
Kate Green
I share the hon. Gentleman’s concern about the number of children from that community in school, but it is not necessarily travelling children who are absent; it may be children who are settled but who find the school environment unfavourable and unwelcoming.
Andrew Selous
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. Of course there are children in settled communities who do not stay on, but she will understand that a large preponderance of Traveller children are regularly on the road. It is difficult for them to be in school regularly, and the quality of home education, if it exists at all—