Localism Bill

My Lords, I know that the Minister does not want to discuss the Dale Farm evictions, which are to take place in the week beginning 19 September. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, said, we are talking about a general instance of homelessness. She pointed out that every single Gypsy or Traveller who is encamped on an unauthorised site is ipso facto statutorily homeless and therefore the local authority has a duty to provide that person with alternative accommodation. However, in no case of which I am aware has any offer of alternative accommodation been made to a person living on an unauthorised site that would enable that person to bring themselves within the law concerning their accommodation. As regards the definition of suitability which my noble friend has suggested in Amendment 20, people in this position are often deprived of the rights which he proposes to confer on the homeless. For example, there is a reference to, "““disruption to the education of children or young persons in the household””," and more than 100 young children on the Dale Farm site attend the local primary school and will be dispersed across the countryside with no provision made for their education to continue. Bearing in mind that Gypsies and Travellers are the most deprived of all ethnic minorities, in terms of achievement and attendance in education, it is something of a triumph that so many of the children on this site have been persuaded to attend primary school. That is all going to be scrapped because, when they are on the roadside, it will be physically impossible and impractical for them to attend local schools—assuming that there would be a place for them to be admitted. As regards the level of support available to the applicant in the district in which the accommodation is situated, we do not know where this accommodation will be, except in the two cases I mentioned earlier. One of them is in Suffolk, which is miles and miles away from where the applicants are at present living, and the other is in Lancashire, which is even more distant. There will be no level of support whatever; yet, in Dale Farm, they have access to services from not only the local authority but the Catholic church, which has made tremendous efforts on behalf of these people. Other local volunteers have given them social support of various kinds. To generalise, therefore: whenever families are evicted from unauthorised sites the same thing happens. They are deprived of any support whatever—support that they are receiving from the local community. Any caring responsibilities of the applicant in relation to another person are also scrapped, because if a person is in need of care—such as the woman who is on dialysis on the Dale Farm site or a pregnant woman who has been notified today by the PCT that she will no longer be eligible for prenatal care—all that goes out of the window when you disperse people miles away across the landscape. I am not talking solely about the evictions from Basildon; I am trying to impress on the Minister that this is a general phenomenon of homelessness that applies to Gypsies and Travellers across the country. I therefore warmly support my noble friend’s proposal to insert in the Bill the new clause in Amendment 20. I only suggest to him that if we have to come back to this at Third Reading it should be added that the accommodation be culturally appropriate, because even the Government accept that Gypsies and Travellers are entitled to live in caravans or mobile homes; they have been used to doing that for generations, and before that in wagons. Many such people are therefore culturally averse to living in bricks-and-mortar accommodation, yet when the evictions take place in the week following 19 September most of them will be offered bricks-and-mortar housing that they will not be at all happy to accept. I must stress that everywhere that this occurs—not only in Basildon but across the country—the lives of families are disrupted, their children are seriously affected and the effects on the community will continue down the generations, unless appropriate action is taken now.