Gipsy Sites

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 8:43 pm on 10 July 1990.

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Photo of Mr Robin Maxwell-Hyslop Mr Robin Maxwell-Hyslop , Tiverton 8:43, 10 July 1990

The quality of tonight's debate has been high. Let me stir a few memories. The House is often reminded of the appalling massacre of Jews in what they termed the holocaust in Germany. The House is less often reminded that Nazi Germany also took into the concentration camps and murdered the gipsies.

I was elected to the House in 1960, but only once have I heard a Member stand up in the House and speak with pride of his gipsy ancestry. That was Sir John Arbuthnot who, in a debate in this House in the 1960s, speaking from the Conservative Benches, said: "I am a diddikoi." I respected him for that.

The legislation is inadequate for those in need and for those who are suddenly afflicted by the arrival of people whom the public term gipsies but who are not Romanies. The Romany race—its people call themselves a race—is deeply resentful of the fact that many people who do not have the disciplines that they seek to impose on their community, their children, their dogs and their way of life, are termed gipsies. I make those remarks in passing.

I think that it is a representative truth to say that it is Conservative Governments who have tried to deal with the problem by legislation—legislation which the Select Committee's report has rightly revealed to be inadequate.

But the truth of the matter has been revealed in many excellent speeches tonight. If families are continually moved on, the children will have no proper, consistent education. I have knowledge of that in my constituency. I am proud that schools in my constituency take pains to give special attention to the needs and problems of the children of travellers. But a particular problem arises on the capitation fees of those schools, because the numbers are taken at certain times of the year which do not correspond with the times when the travellers are there. Therefore, there is gross under-funding. Primary schools may have a 30 per cent. increase in their numbers as a result of an influx of travellers' children for which there is no financial provision, because the children are not there on the day of the count.

Those are factors for which any competent Government must make provision. I do not say "take into account" because two of the most debased phrases in politics are "taking into account" and "make allowances for"—"paying the full cost of" is the currency that I am in business to deal with.