asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a statement about the level of provision of camp sites for gipsies.

The latest available list which I shall publish with this reply shows that provision had been made for 2,254 families, and means that some 5,000 to 6,000 families are still without accommodation.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the 1968 Act, the Cripps Report and his own visits around the country recently have all highlighted the acute problems being faced by gipsies and being posed by gipsies? Does he further agree that it is now high time that, instead of cajoling, begging and pleading with local authorities to get on with the problem, the Government should take some direct action to provide gipsy sites in the many areas, such as Stockport, which need them?

My hon. Friend has rightly drawn attention to the fact that two groups suffer as a result of the failure to provide sites under the 1968 Act, even if that Act itself was adequate—the gipsies themselves, who suffer considerable harassment, particularly in certain areas, and householders who live near the bad, unofficial, illegal and inadequate sites, often without any water supply, without drainage and without refuse collection. The answer, as I recognise from the Cripps Report and my own visits to a number of areas, lies in more good sites. As part of the Government's examination of the Cripps Report, we shall be considering its recommendation that in certain circumstances the Secretary of State should use his powers to direct a local authority to provide sites.

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that his answer about the great anxiety which is caused to the neighbours of these people will give them some comfort that at least a Minister knows that they are suffering. But knowing that people are suffering is completely inadequate. In Kent we have a massive pseudo-gipsy population. The fact that the Question calls them gipsies and the Minister has referred to them as gipsies is so much rubbish. Very few of these people are gipsies. A real grasp must be taken of this nettle, which is causing great anxiety in all the fruit-growing counties, where their traditional occupations are no longer available. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will look at this matter continuingly and sympathetically.

I am grateful for what the hon. Gentleman said in the early part of his question. We have to realise that if we think only in terms of Romanies and the romantic view of gipsies we shall not solve the problem. The House and the Government will have to deal with the problem, which concerns not only romanies but all the other varieties of travellers—whether they are Irish tinkers, Scottish tinkers, didicois or anything else. This is a serious problem. Some counties have provided no sites whatever under the 1968 Act and I shall bring what pressure I can to bear on them to do so.

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is no wish to persecute gipsies but that, as has been said, many families are badly affected by unauthorised encampments, not least in the county of Gwent? Therefore, along with the Secretary of State for Wales, will he expedite the provision of suitable camps throughout the country?

The Secretary of State for Wales and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment are meeting all the various gipsy groups as well as the local authorities. I am meeting the London Boroughs Association on 13th July and hope to meet the other associations connected with local government before the end of July. What I am hoping to get, and what is now being achieved in many areas, is a regional assessment by the people themselves in the region—local authorities and, I hope, the gipsies—of what the needs are, so that they can come to a decision about what a voluntary allocation should be without waiting for legislation.

What consideration has been given, and with what result, if any, to the Cripps recommendation that Exchequer grants for capital expenditure on the provision of gipsy sites—100 per cent. for five years—should be made?

That is an important point and one which we are considering. I think that local authority associations on the whole do not like the idea of specific grants, but the larger number of councillors to whom I have spoken in various parts of the country would welcome it. But the problem is not entirely financial. This Act has now been in operation since 1970. Some authorities have not acted at all since them. The problem concerns not only finance but public opinion, which exerts considerable and understandable pressure on councillors. Those of us who have been members of local authorities know what this can mean. Public opinion is causing a slowing up in the provision of the necessary sites.