A few months ago I was told by someone in the know that you ‘couldn’t get a fag paper’ between the likely policies of the various parties when it came to dealing with Travellers.

I was sceptical at the time and the recent Conservative Party planning green paper came as no surprise.

It’s election time and Travellers make easy headlines. But easy vote-grabbing headlines do not equate to easy solutions.

If a law of intentional trespass had a chance of getting through parliament it would have done so by now. I’m old enough to remember when Mrs Thatcher tried. It’s hard to imagine David Cameron succeeding where the iron lady failed.

Shoddy as our democratic system might be, any bill of rights enacted in the UK will be knocked into shape by various minorities and interest groups. Unless it says ‘does not apply to Gypsies and Irish Travellers’ on the front cover, they will rightly be protected by the same rights as everyone else.

The Tory proposal to remove retrospective planning applications is another empty suggestion.

The idea that it is only Travellers who are driving their vans through legal loopholes is utter rubbish. There are are thousands of other people doing the exact same thing, for similar or sometimes very different reasons.

Personally, I’m not especially concerned by the headlines generated by the Conservative’s green paper.

Gypsies and Travellers have been here for hundreds of years and they will still be here once all the electioneering fuss has died down. Every new government finds its knee jerk reaction to Travellers doesn’t solve anything and when they do, we’ll be here willing to talk as usual.

Helen Jones, director of Leeds Gypsy and Traveller Exchange

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