| Previous Section | Home Page |
Mr. Hughes : I hope that our application will be favourably considered and that our request will be granted. It has not escaped my notice that the Home Secretary has to make the official recommendation to Her Majesty the Queen and that he is a true son of Newport.
I trust that the House will soon authorise the construction of the second Severn crossing at Caldicot, in my constituency. The whole area is to undergo vast development to coincide with the major changes in 1992 in the trading arrangements of the European Community. In that year, Her Majesty the Queen will celebrate the 40th anniversary of her accession to the throne, and on such occasions honours of the kind sought by Newport tend to be conferred.
Column 331
Wales has three cities : Cardiff, Swansea and the tiny cathedral city of St. David's. The granting of city status to Newport would give a new dignity and status to Newport and to the whole county of Gwent and it would help to ensure future prosperity. I trust that my request and that of Newport borough council, backed by my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn), will be favourably considered and that the Leader of the House will bring the matter to the attention of the Home Secretary and of the Secretary of State for Wales.6.24 pm
Sir David Price (Eastleigh) : Before the end of the debate on the Adjournment, I should like to share with the House some of my anxieties. Having listened to the speech by the hon. Member for Newport, East (Mr. Hughes) I have no anxieties about the future of Newport because it is clearly in extremely good hands. My anxieties relate directly to the hospital service, which appears to be in the process of significant reduction, not only over the immediate Christmas period but well into the new year.
I know that many hon. Members have received representations from doctors and nurses in their constituencies, and I should like to share with the House some of the representations that I have had from my part of the world, south Hampshire. I shall start with representations from Southampton and South West Hampshire health authority which is, of course, a teaching authority. The consultant in charge of the intensive care unit at Southampton general hospital states :
"I am writing to express deep concern about the effects that current Government policies are having on health care provision in Southampton. My particular worry is the inadequate provision of intensive care facilities. This has been a longstanding problem locally, but has reached crisis proportions with managers having to balance their books by the 1st April deadline."
A leading geriatric hospital in my constituency has a team of some of the best psycho-geriatricians in the country. In a letter to me it said :
"The staffing levels on our long stay wards cannot now function safely, let alone achieve quality standards, above 75 per cent. occupancy This places more strain on the community end of the service in which the only elasticity is by consultants and community psychiatric nurses working even longer hours."
Some major work of national and international importance is taking place in our admirable paediatrics department. The director of that service states :
"For the first time in the Children's Service in Southampton's history, waiting lists will rapidly generate, particularly for Paediatric surgery. Disillusionment and anger, at all the levels of staff, are already running at a high level and these manoeuvres will accentuate that."
Representations that I have had from Winchester at the other end of my constituency tell a similar story. Any hon. Member who thinks that we in south Hampshire are particularly unlucky or that the two districts from which I quoted are ill-managed should look at the latest report from the National Association of Health Authorities and Trusts which expresses great anxiety. In its report earlier this year the association warned :
"At a probable 8 to 9 this year inflation will wipe out the cash increase received by the hospital and community services." It is not easy for Back- Benchers to assess fully and fairly the various pressures bearing upon the standard of service in different parts of the national health service. A Select Committee can bring some attention to the problem
Column 332
and hon. Members will agree that the old Select Committee on Social Services did that. We monitored the whole question of the financing of the national health service reasonably well and, I hope, to the satisfaction of the House.A new Committee is to be set up and as a member of that Committee I must express my deep sense of frustration that the new Select Committee has been prevented from functioning by the blocking actions of some Scottish Liberals whose names are on the Order Paper. I understand that they feel strongly about the lack of a Select Committee on Scottish Affairs and that that has been a continuing quarrel between them and the Government. I do not have the temerity to attempt to interfere with a Scotsman, let alone a Scotswoman, who is enjoying a good quarrel, especially with the Government. However, I object strongly when that quarrel leads to the frustration of two other Select Committees, both of which are charged to oversee the weakest and most vulnerable members of our society. I am astonished that Scottish Liberals are being so mean, instead of exhibiting some Christmas spirit.
Rev. Martin Smyth : Is there not a double irony in that the old Select Committee did good work in scrutinising health and social provision in Scotland?
Sir David Price : The hon. Gentleman was a loyal and faithful member of the old Committee and I hope to work with him on the new one. He is right. The conduct of the Scottish Liberals puts me in mind of the words of Rabbie Burns :
"Naebody cares for meI care for naebody".
They are showing that they do not care for anybody. I do care, and that is why I insist that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House tells us what he intends to do to ovecome the obstruction of the Scottish Liberals. If they persist, they will be renamed the Scottish meanies. When will our two Select Committees be allowed to do their duty to the House?
As for the problems in our hospitals which give rise to my anxiety, I hope that they will be discussed during the first of our debates on the Consolidated Fund Bill, which is being initiated by the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody). Therefore, I absolve my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House from replying to my points as I would otherwise invite him to do, because I am sure that a Minister from the Department of Health will reply to the hon. Lady. Furthermore, I trust that whoever has the honour to reply to the debate will be able to resolve our anxieties. We need a fairy godmother, not a demon king.
6.31 pm
Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark and Bermondsey) : As a Liberal, I can partly answer for my hon. Friends, but as only partly a Scot, I probably cannot give an adequate response. In any event, the debate is about other things. The hon. Member for Eastleigh (Sir D. Price) knows that the remedy lies not with us but with the Government. They could set up a Scottish Select Committee but have not done so and they could secure a debate on the subject any time by the arrangement of business.
The motion that we are debating will allow the House to rise from tomorrow until 14 January. If we required ourselves to stay here until the homeless were housed and
Column 333
the badly housed were properly housed, we might be here for quite some time. I do not think that we would be here indefinitely, because we would have solved the problem, in that a major factor is that the Government walk away from the problem of the homeless and the badly housed too often. They allow people to go on suffering.On Saturday this week in my constituency, yet again, for the fourth time in recent years, the charity that used to be called Crisis at Christmas and is now called Crisis will open Christmas shelters and about 1,000 people will come off the streets for several days of warmth, food, general rehabilitation and reclothing. In the past few days, I have invited the Prime Minister and the newly appointed Minister for Housing and Planning to come to meet the homeless at Crisis. The Minister has accepted and will come on Monday. I welcome that. I understand that the Prime Minister would like to come, but so far has been unable to arrange a time to do so. I hope that he can, even if it is on one of the few days after Christmas rather than the few days before Christmas.
If Ministers come, they will realise anew what they know in their minds and in logic, which is that we in Britain have failed thousands of people in respect of housing for far too long. This is the leading sentence in the editorial in The Times today :
"The plight of the homeless is a clear test of John Major's social conscience."
It also quotes Mother Teresa, who
"spoke for many when she said that the sight of people sleeping rough in Europe was, to her, worse than its counterpart in the Third World."
The Government keep on saying that they have a commitment to give everybody a decent home. The former Secretary of State for the Environment, now the chairman of the Tory party, said so only a year ago, but the figures get worse. There are certainly 5,000 people--there may be more--who sleep rough all the time, about half in London and half elsewhere. That is a 50 per cent. increase in two years. There are certainly 43,000 people in bed-and- breakfast accommodation, put there by the 100 local authorities which have accepted liability for housing them.
Acceptances of people as homeless have doubled in the past 10 years. There are 200,000 people homeless and alone, and 300,000 people homeless and in temporary accommodation--possibly as many as 1 million. The figures rise inexorably. By that I imply that a short-term alleviation by providing hostel space for up to 1,000 people will make hardly any significant dent in that trend. The reasons for homelessness do not change. The Library has provided me with a collection of information which confirms that, since 1979, the reasons why people become homeless have remained much the same. Some 40 per cent. do so because relatives or friends can no longer accommodate them, and 15 per cent. because of a breakdown in relationship with a partner. A growing number do so because of mortgage arrears--this doubled between 1979-89. Some 80 per cent. are accepted because there are dependent children or a pregnant woman in the household.
Over the past 10 years, we have gone on doing things that make the problem worse. We have reduced the number of new homes that we build, we have built for demand and not for need and we have not changed the planning laws as we might have done. The right-to-buy
Column 334
policy, which was recently criticised again by the bishops, has taken housing away from the rented sector. We have forced local authorities to hold on to capital receipts that they are willing to spend.In the Housing Act 1988, we deregulated what were market rents and as Opposition Members, including myself, predicted, we forced rents up and thereby forced many people out of being able to afford them. Now, we do not allow social security to pay for people in expensive rented property or let them have the money that they need to pay a deposit for rented accommodation. Homelessness is rising, and the prediction made by the permanent secretary at the Department of the Environment to the Public Accounts Committee only a few days ago confirmed that it will increase by another 15 per cent. this year. More homes are being repossessed. More were repossessed in the past six months than in the whole of the previous year. Rent increases are rising and for many people that is added to the poll tax bill. At the same time, 100,000 council properties and 600,000 private properties are empty. The Government recently said that they would prevent private leasing--a remedy that we know is cheaper than
bed-and-breakfast accommodation.
I do not doubt that every single one of the 650 Members of Parliament could regale others with tales of people who come to us saying that they are without housing or badly housed. I shall cite only one example. A couple with six children--five boys aged between 5 and 14 and a baby girl--live, as they have done for 11 years, in a council flat in Walworth, a mile and a half from here. They have been trying to get out from that small substandard and damp flat. It may be that, with the last baby, they are statutorily overcrowded. They were recently offered a desquatted property, but that was subsequently resquatted and is therefore no longer available. Tens of thousands of people are not homeless or on the streets, but are housed in conditions that a civilised society should not permit. There are remedies. It is possible to find solutions and implement them. We could repeal our vagrancy legislation. We could alter the rules that bear on the rented sector. We could prevent the poverty trap from affecting those who find themselves just above housing benefit and benefit levels generally. We could alter planning rules so that local authorities are able to insist that a certain proportion of any housing development is used to provide homes for rents at affordable levels. We could remove mortgage tax relief from those who are higher rate taxpayers and use the money for other purposes.
We could ensure that those who are without homes are able to receive social security payments in advance so that they do not have to survive for weeks without money. We could make it a requirement that empty property is let without affecting its ownership. Notice of intention to let could be served on private and local authority owners alike. We could retain private sector leasing but try to ensure that no abuses took place. We could extend our obligations to ensure that the young are housed by law rather than leaving discretion with the local authority.
Mr. Hugh Dykes (Harrow, East) : Having recently returned from Germany, I ask the hon. Gentleman to agree that we need not always do what foreigners do. In every locality that I visited, however, Christian Democrat representatives--Conservatives--told me that they still
Column 335
insist on having a minimum number of council dwellings constructed every year to contain the various problems with which they are confronted. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that every Member of this place, no matter which constituency he represents, could do with that sort of council house construction, regardless of politics, to contain the problem? If we do not return to council house building on a modest scale, as in Germany, which is the premier capitalist colony of Europe, we are doomed never to be able to solve the problem of homelessness.Mr. Hughes : I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I am glad that I gave way to him. He says, in effect, that none of us could dissent from the view that there is a desperate shortage of rented accommodation at affordable prices, whether that is provided directly by local authorities or indirectly through housing associations. The political argument is far less important than the housing shortage. There is a desperate shortage of rented accommodation at affordable prices throughout the country. It is not sufficient to say that the market should be left to meet the need, because it has failed to do so.
There are many European or international problems that cannot be resolved by one Government alone. The problem of housing the homeless in Britain is not one of those, however, and the Government of the United Kingdom have no excuse if they do not solve the problem, however complex the solution may be.
The Leader of the House will have read, I am sure, that young members of the Churches are beginning a vigil today on the streets of London to mark their opposition to the prospect of war in the Gulf and to show that they are in favour of peace. It is linked with the Churches' calls for prayers for peace over Christmas. People in Britain, and the Government especially, have taken a strong view about the attack that has been carried out by the Iraqi Government on the Government and people of Kuwait. It is only right that a strong view should be taken. If we as a people and a Government had at least as strong a view on the attack on the freedoms of people in this country, who we are condemning to poverty, homelessness or bad housing, we would solve the problems to which I have referred. The young people who are participating in the vigil will voluntarily be joining on the streets many who are not there by choice. Historically, Christmas may be best celebrated by being without a home, but in a civilised and modern society the reality is that we should be able to provide everyone with one. It is about time that Parliament made sure that its Members did not go on holiday to comfortable homes until everyone else in the country had been provided with the opportunity of going safely home as well. 6.45 pm
Mr. James Kilfedder (North Down) : The plight and the condition of elderly people will worsen as the cold weather becomes colder and prices continue to rise in the shops. I pay tribute to those in my constituency who are collecting items of food, especially at the doors of supermarkets, to use to make Christmas parcels for the elderly. Many young people are involved in that charitable work and their dedication deserves special recognition.
With all the activity of the Christmas season, people are inclined to forget that our senior citizens may be having a difficult time. Some face spending Christmas day alone at
Column 336
home. The shops may be piled high with all sorts of delectable food but the pensioner who has only the old age pension on which to live will face the recurring problem of deciding what he or she can afford to spend on meals and other necessities. The shops may be ablaze with electric lighting, with a seemingly wanton disregard for the cost, but in the homes of the elderly there will be a cautious use of an electric fire, for example, which can quickly demand all the money which the pensioner has allocated for heating. Rarely do we hear senior citizens complaining bitterly, but their needs require more consideration than we currently give them.Television is the only form of entertainment for many people. It provides a window through which they can observe the world at large. It provides companionship for the lonely as well as entertainment. In other words, it is good for the morale of the elderly and the lonely, and what is good for their morale must be good for their state of health. That is why I repeat once again, and without apology, a passionate plea to the Government to provide free television licenses for pensioners.
It is imperative that pensioners should be encouraged to remain, if at all possible, in their own homes rather than removing themselves to residential homes. So long as they can fend for themselves, with adequate assistance from carers and visiting doctors and nurses, home is the best place for them. Pensioners are less likely to become disorientated if they remain in the house they know, with all their possessions, in an area they know and where they are known. This means providing more carers to look after the elderly, and that provision is vital.
It must be emphasised, however, that numerous pensioners can manage well on their own, without assistance from outside, providing that they receive sufficient money to pay for proper heating and sufficient food, but there must be something extra. They need and deserve to be treated with sympathy and understanding.
I shall refer to one example to highlight the callous way in which the elderly are sometimes treated. Last weekend, a pensioner of 69 years of age appealed to me for help. The lady, who lives alone, was feeling desperate. In my opinion, she had every right to be distraught. She lives in an old cottage where she was born. Her 69 years have been spent in that cottage, her only home. Until her father's death, he had worked on the estate of which the cottage is part. The cottage was provided for him, his wife and his daughter. When he died, about 20 years ago, the agent for the trustees of the estate made an offer to his daughter that she could dispense with paying rent if she accepted responsibility for all repairs to the cottage.
I think that that was a deliberately astute move on the part of the landlord. It was made to avoid the landlord accepting rent and to burden my constituent with the cost of repairs which she could never hope to meet. When the move was made, the cottage was already very old and sub-standard. It was in acute need of extensive renovation work. The lady was unable to pay for major repairs. If the agents had accepted rent, it would have been extremely low in view of the condition of the cottage. If they had accepted rent, the lady should have gone to the trustees to force them to make the cottage satisfy minimum standards.
I shall describe the cottage. It has no kitchen. There is a cooker sitting in the living room. There is no supply of water in the cottage. There is no tap, either inside or outside. There is no bathroom and no lavatory, either
Column 337
inside or outside the cottage, other than an old earth closet. No work has been carried out on the cottage since it was built in the last century. Presumably her father would have lost his job on the estate if he had had the temerity to complain about the conditions in the cottage. The only modern convenience is electricity, which the lady's mother had installed at her own expense.Those matters should have been dealt with by the trustees of the estate many, many years ago. Windows and doors have rotted and need replacing ; wooden floors need to be replaced ; the plaster both inside and outside the cottage is cracking ; and there is rising damp in all the rooms. The agents for the trustees of the estate knew about those conditions, but did nothing. They are now using them as an excuse for turning an elderly woman out of her home. Once she is out, no doubt they will sell the half acre of land in which the cottage sits, and at the cost of her misery they will make a substantial sum of money, because it is in such a beautiful setting. To her credit, the elderly lady has maintained the place to the best of her ability.
The trustees of that large estate are not interested--and, in my opinion, never were interested--in renovating the cottage. They want to get that poor lady out of the home in which she was born and in which she has lived all her life. The cottage could be renovated at a cost of about £9,000. Most of that would be funded by a grant from the Housing Executive. Instead of that, the agents for the trustees of that large estate--which is not short of a pound or two--asked the public health officer for a demolition order on the cottage. Anyone acquainted with the case will know that the agents wanted an order so that the cottage could be demolished, and the woman would have to go somewhere else to live. They would then be free to make full use of the land. The lady has been offered a tenancy by the Housing Executive, but it is an hour's walk from the church with which she has been associated throughout her life. She has made that church the centre of her life and she is involved in all the church activities. She is an active member of the local women's institute. If she cannot attend those activities, she will feel isolated. That is disgraceful.
Where is there any sign of compassion in these sordid events? The lady has pleaded with the agents for the trustees not to take away her home. I join her in that plea in this House. I urge the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to intervene and rescind the demolition order. The trustees should be persuaded to apply for public money--they do not need to use their own money, even though they have sufficient funds--to put the cottage in order. That will allow that 69-year-old lady to spend the twilight of her years in the cottage in which she was born. Of course, in due course the trustees will be able to sell the property, so they will benefit substantially in the long term.
6.54 pm
Mr. David Winnick (Walsall, North) : I think that the House listened with a great deal of sympathy to the constituency case outlined by the hon. Member for North Down (Mr. Kilfedder). We hope that there will be a happy outcome and that the Leader of the House will urgently refer the matter to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
Column 338
The hon. Member for North Down was correct to raise issues concerning the welfare of the elderly. He may know that earlier today my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) introduced a Bill--Mr. Winnick : The hon. Gentleman will have heard the arguments. He mentioned the need for free or concessionary television licences for the elderly. When I came first in the ballot, I introduced a Bill to that effect on 16 January 1987. I was willing to reach a compromise with the Government. If they had said that they would settle on half the licence fee, I would have accepted that as a first step. My Bill was voted down by 21 votes. We all saw on television Cabinet Ministers in their chauffeur- driven cars coming from only a few yards away to vote to deny the elderly free or concessionary television licences. It is argued that two thirds of pensioners--the statistics bear out the argument--live either in poverty or near it, yet the Government were not willing to give me any support. Far from it, they voted down my Bill.
Much needs to be done, including -- [Interruption.] --I hope that the Leader of the House will give me his attention for a moment--urgent action on cold weather payments. As I said earlier this week, the arrangements are far too inflexible. Hon. Members should note how warm it is in the Chamber and how we all try to keep our homes warm. It may not be freezing, but it is cold enough to need to keep homes warm. People on low incomes are in an impossible position. I atteneded a meeting here today called by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North. One pensioner told us that her total income was £45 a week. That is the income of many of my pensioner constituents. Of course, out of that they have to pay about £10 a week in rent. There is urgent need for a more generous cold weather payment. Even when the payment is triggered, and there are all sorts of conditions associated with that, it is only £5 a week. That is hardly generous. We must bear in mind what the hon. Member for North Down and my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North said about the immense suffering of elderly people on limited incomes when the weather turns really cold.
This debate was initiated by the right hon. Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen), a former Leader of the House. He referred to the recession. That recession is hitting the west midlands and the black country very hard. There have been announcements in my constituency of imminent factory closures, and those will involve a great number of redundancies. We suffered a great deal 10 years ago. Many factories in the west midlands were closed, never to be reopened. Indeed, in many cases housing estates and shopping centres have been built on former industrial sites.
A number of people who were made redundant at the time have never been able to work again because of their age. As the right hon. Gentleman said, there is a justified fear that manufacturing industry will be particularly hard hit again. There is little sign that there will be any let-up in 1991. All the signs are that the recession will deepen and we may be in the same position, or close to the position that we were in 10 years ago because of Government policies. The first and most obvious need is for interest rates to be lowered.
Column 339
I wish to refer to two other matters. Amnesty International published a report today on the events in Kuwait since the occupation of that country on 2 August. I do not think that anyone would be so silly as to believe that Amnesty International has some sort of bias, other than against those who are indicted in its reports. It comes as no surprise to me to learn that the Iraqi embassy in London has described the report as a fabrication. The report deals with the atrocities of the occupying forces in Kuwait, including gouging out eyes and cutting off ears.The report says that there is evidence that 300 premature babies were left to die after Iraqi troops looted incubators in hospitals. It also goes into considerable details of other atrocities that have been carried out in the past four months. No one can be surprised about that. They have been carried out by a criminal and terrorist regime which has maintained a state of terror inside Iraq itself for the past 10 to 15 years. No one will be surprised that such atrocities followed the criminal invasion and occupation of Kuwait. I loathe war as much as anyone else. My hatred of war is second to none. But I am not a pacifist, and the way in which war can be avoided is simple and clear--for Saddam Hussein to withdraw his troops from Kuwait by the deadline set by the United Nations Security Council.
When the House was recalled in September I said that sanctions should be given time to work. I also made the point that any partial withdrawal would be completely unacceptable. It must be unacceptable to the United Nations and the international community for Saddam Hussein to withdraw from one part of Kuwait but to remain in the rest. There can be no question of trying to save his face. There was no justification for the invasion in the first place. Only a total withdrawal from Kuwait could satisfy the international community. The dictator and mass murderer who rules Iraq is making a grave mistake if he believes that the debate occurring in the democracies, including Britain, means that the allies are not firmly resolved. He says that he is frightened of an attack on Iraq. Again, the remedy lies in his own hands. If he withdraws by the deadline set by the United Nations, there can be no attack and no justification for any armed attack. But the withdrawal from Kuwait must take place. The right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) has aired his views, as he has every right to do, and as I am doing now, in the House of Commons and elsewhere. But when I listen to him arguing about whether the borders were correct in the first place and so on, I am rather sickened. The right hon. Gentleman is to give evidence to a Senate sub-committee in the United States. As I say, he is perfectly entitled to his views. They are shared by some people in Britain. But they are not shared by the large majority of the British people who know that what took place on 2 August was unjustified outright criminal aggression.
Mr. Harry Cohen (Leyton) : Much of what my hon. Friend has said would be very much at home on the lips of Conservative Back Benchers. Does he agree that there has been no testing of public opinion on the simple question of whether people want war in the present circumstances? If there was such a test, there is no guarantee that, as he says, a majority would say yes.
Column 340
Mr. Winnick : All the evidence confirms my point of view. I hope that my hon. Friend will reflect carefully on what he has said. Opposition to fascism and criminal agression is longstanding in the Labour movement, and one of the accusations that we have made against the Tories on numerous occasions is that when they were not instigating criminal aggression, as in Suez in 1956 in collusion with France and Israel, they were appeasing it. Therefore, I do not require any lectures from my hon. Friend.
My second point is one which must concern the House. That is the plight of the homeless and those who are not necessarily homeless but who are in great need of secure accommodation. The hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes) intervened during the speech of the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) to say that the crisis will never be dealt with until the Government allow local authorities to start building again ; that is correct. The present housing crisis is precisely due to the fact that since 1979 local authorities have not been able to fulfil their basic housing responsibilities.
Yesterday, the Minister for Housing and Planning said that the Government remain of the view that councils should not build family housing--so much for the useful intervention of the hon. Member for Harrow, East. The Government's housing policy remains what it was under the former Prime Minister. The Minister went on to say that housing associations can do the job. I do not believe that housing associations can carry out the same full responsibilities as local authorities. In 1978, there were 20,500 housing association starts. In 1989, there were just 13,700. That shows that there has been a marked decline even in housing association starts. In 1978, there were 76,700 local authority starts and this year, up to October, there were 7,800.
There are people sleeping on our streets and it is scandalous that so many families are forced to live in squalid bed-and-breakfast hostels. There is no justification for that. But there are many other people not in that dire situation, who visit or write to their Members of Parliament--couples who live with their parents or in-laws or people living in multi-storey flats who, even with two children, still have to wait far too long.
The remedy is clear. Local authorities should be able to do the job that they did until the Government took office. I beg the Government to recognise that the problem simply cannot be resolved until local authorities are once again allowed to do what they cannot do now. In my borough, because of Government restrictions, there have been no new local authority housing starts since 1979. If we are really worried about housing, we know where the remedy lies.
7.6 pm
Mr. David Porter (Waveney) : I hope that the House will agree that it would be wrong to adjourn for the Christmas recess without a further mention of sea defence and coastal protection, particularly in the light of the terrifying floods, the tides, the chilling flood warnings, the damage and the road closures that the Suffolk and Norfolk coasts suffered last week. We expect winter to give us a battering, but this winter it came early and with a vengeance that we have not felt for some time.
When Towyn was engulfed by the sea, it was only the direction of the wind that spared east Anglia. Last
Column 341
Wednesday's high tides were marked by those who remember the 1953 floods as very nearly as bad. It will be remembered that in England and Holland in 1953 some 2,000 people died.I pay tribute to the people in Southwold, Easton Bavents, Oulton Broad, Lowestoft, Beccles and elsewhere in my constituency and in other parts of Suffolk and Norfolk who were evacuated, flooded, suffered damage and inconvenience and generally suffered loss of all kinds, save only death on this occasion. I also pay tribute to the officials of Waveney district council, the National Rivers Authority and the emergency services.
If I could give my remarks a title of my own choosing for tomorrow's Hansard, it would be "This Vulnerable Coast"--like the White Paper "This Common Inheritance", but without the glossy paper. Those of us who live on the coast of east Anglia have always lived with the threat of the sea. Over the years the battle has generally been lost and substantial parts have gone for ever. Dunwich, that infamous rotten borough, sent two Members to the House until 1932, even though most of it had even then been washed into the North sea. What is most feared is the storm surge. A surge in the North sea is caused when the weather upsets the normal pattern of tides. A northerly gale blowing across the surface of the sea tries to take the water with it, or lower atmospheric pressure in a severe depression draws up the water, and a wind-driven current piles up a massive sea. The curved rotation of the earth curves the current. It is funnelled by the shape and depth of the North sea, and when that continuous wall of angry water hits the coast square on we are in trouble. Most sea defences are built for the higher spring tides and do not usually cater for freak conditions--and the surge is a freak. Some experts have argued that we can expect devastating surges once every 25 years, but the scientific evidence for that is flimsy. Reports published only last weekend suggest that the North sea is getting rougher, which may be due to global warming. Wave increases of more than 20 per cent. in the past 30 years have been measured in the Atlantic, and the North sea is now being studied. Computers and experts should be able to give us better predictions soon of storm surge dangers.
What do those predictions count for? We still have, in the main, defences that are coming to the end of their useful lives. In fairness, most have held up fairly well so far. My observations have been made many times previously in the House, by other right hon. and hon. Members--and twice this year alone. I have spoken about that worrying matter.
On both occasions, I raised the specific case of the hamlet of Easton Bavents, which is north of Southwold. Waveney district council this year refused planning permission for a scheme that would have secured the cliff, putting forward cost and environmental objections. Neither the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food nor the Department of the Environment could, or would, step in.
The cost argument remained on the table, but the environmental argument was wider. Do we as a nation want part of our coasts to erode naturally? If so, which parts--and how do we draw a line and defend other parts of our coasts? I am sorry to report that, following last
Column 342
week's weather, last Friday morning I stood and watched as an end cottage was demolished before it toppled on to the beach below. It was a holiday home, but the next property under sentence of death from the district council, before it meets the cliff edge, is the home of Mr. and Mrs. Liddell, who retired there two years ago. They had been evacuated to a council house in Reydon and are shattered. They had invested all their life savings in their property, having also been told that the house would, with a scheme below it, be good for 40 years. They have agreed to the property being demolished, and I understand that the council began that work this afternoon. More houses will share the same fate, and if enough of that sand cliff goes, the sea will break right through to lower land behind, outflanking the Southwold sea wall. Southwold would then become an island, Reydon would be exposed to danger, and marshes would be lost under salt water. Will the National Rivers Authority have stepped in by then to lengthen its Southwold sea wall into an area that is the responsibility of Waveney district council--or will I have to report further losses in future debates, at Kessingland, Pakefield and Corton, along my coastline? There are too many questions, and too many maybes.I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is to respond to the debate, because he once had ministerial responsibility for such matters and, as a neighbouring parliamentary colleague, he is also familiar with the area in question. He will appreciate that the issue is complicated if one adds rivers and land drainage to the picture that I have painted. My right hon. Friend will know also that time is not on our side. I have pressed him before, and will do so again, for an updating of the Coast Protection Act 1949, to introduce four new provisions.
First, let us provide compensation to be built into the structure of sea defence management--as it is in planning, development and industry--so that people living in vulnerable areas and who cannot insure themselves will not lose everything. Secondly, let us provide for a national sea defence strategy for the United Kingdom that draws on local knowledge, history, expertise and authorities in devising a plan of what is economically, socially and environmentally saveable by environmentally efficient means-- giving overall responsibility for that to the NRA instead of to the umpteen different bodies that currently each do a bit, or do not. Local authorities in the eastern areas are working towards that end themselves. Let us go one stage further and make such a strategy compulsory.
Thirdly, let us provide for better controls on local authorities, to prevent further developments of any kind within areas that are deemed to be vulnerable, environmentally desirable to erode, or to be defended to a smaller extent--all within the terms of the national strategy that I just mentioned. Fourthly, let us provide for a proper channel of action and response--from people on the ground to police, local authorities, and the NRA--to keep to a minimum any delays in closing roads and evacuating homes when water floods through, as it surely will, even with a national strategy.
Finally, let us examine the question of funding all that sea defence. I will quote in support of my arguments two editorials from the Eastern Daily Press. The first was published last Thursday, the morning after the storm, under the headline
"Put Whitehall on flood alert."
It stated :
Column 343
"With East Anglian coastal and riverside communities last night under siege, the issue of the financing and organisation of sea defences assumes a chilling immediacy. A £40 million programme for this part of the coast faces a cutback unless Norfolk and Suffolk county councils commit more than the inflation-linked increase they are thus far prepared to contribute.The recently-announced doubling in annual support is a further encouraging sign that politicians are at last recognising the enormous, urgent dimensions of the flood threat around our coast. Even so, funding is below the level many experts regard as the minimum to keep existing defences in good repair, let alone develop the extensions necessary to meet new climatic threats."
The second editorial appeared on Monday, after my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food toured stricken areas in my constituency and in his own neighbouring constituency, and defended the 70 per cent. national, 30 per cent. local split of sea defence funding. That editorial reported that my right hon. Friend
"cautioned critics of Britain's sea defence programmes that a balance must be struck between national and local funding. It is not clear why a small island like Britain should regard the protection of its coastline in these them-and-us terms."
My right hon. Friend commented that maritime local authorities gain from sea defence and so have an interest in them. Is the Royal Navy's defence of Britain a 30 per cent. charge on maritime local authorities? Of course not. The article concluded :
"It is unreasonable to equate interest with ability to contribute almost a third to the vast capital costs. Our own preference is for the national comprehensive strategy which Mr. Gummer finds unnecessary. But even if we are to accept the system now in place, more urgency, imagination and, not least, more money are needed if Britain is to hold back the sea."
I wrote to my right hon. Friend the new Secretary of State for the Environment asking him to examine the 70 per cent. to 30 per cent. split when he reviews local government finance.
No one seriously expects the dream of permanent, unbreachable sea and flood protection ever to come true, but our coastal defences can be organised in such a way as to give us more confidence that warnings can save life and keep damage to a minimum--but only if we get on with that task now.
7.16 pm
Mr. Harry Cohen (Leyton) : The House will appreciate why the hon. Member for Waveney (Mr. Porter) raised a matter of constituency interest, but he supports a Government who were one of the slowest in the world to react to the problems of global warming, which have hastened coastal erosion. There is a rumour that the Government will disappoint many children this Christmas by imprisoning Father Christmas for non-payment of his North pole tax. Whatever the truth of that rumour, the House should not adjourn until the Government have made a commitment completely to abolish the poll tax. I want to raise an even more serious issue--that of murder-- but because it is occurring in another part of the world, it is hardly ever discussed in the House. I refer to murder in Sri Lanka, which is a deeply troubled country. In fact, it is the murder capital of the world. Atrocities occur there daily, and bodies are flowing in the rivers. I welcome Amnesty International's campaign to draw attention to the situation in that sad country, which has not been properly debated in this place for a very long time--despite the detentions, disappearances, executions and indiscriminate aerial bombing of villages that have
Column 344
occurred there. There have also been human rights violations on a huge scale, and civil liberties have been described as a sick joke. All sides in the troubles have been party to that, including the Tamil Tigers, JVP, the Indian peacekeeping force and the Sri Lankan Government themselves. Regulation 55FF gave the security forces power to dispose of bodies without notifying the victims' relatives or arranging inquests. That measure has been repealed, but the practices continue.There have been 30,000 deaths in Sri Lanka over the past seven years and a new wave of violence since the Indian peacekeeping force left at the end of March. In the north-east, about 30,000 people were forced to abandon their homes in June alone, and in August, 140 Muslims were massacred at two mosques in Batticaloa. Now the Muslims are thinking of establishing a paramilitary force in addition to all the others that exist. One Tamil Member of Parliament reports 4,000 deaths since June. We have not found time to discuss that in the House. The truth is that the Sri Lankan Government are involved in a policy of genocide, ostensibly to annihilate the Tamil Tigers. The Government's motivation is the fear that if they do not do so, there will be an army coup and they will be removed from power. In reality, they are killing millions of Tamils--a whole population is under threat.
The Sri Lankan Government were faced with a choice between genocide or a bloody military stalemate, and they have chosen genocide--both are totally unacceptable. The situation is intractable, but efforts must be madeto try to get a settlement. Amnesty International is right to demand action from the United Kingdom Government, the Common Market, the United Nations and the inter-national community. Human rights must be a basic condition of any aid given by this country, or the Common Market, and aid should be monitored by the donor Governments to ensure that that is the case. The Sri Lankan Government should be required to work with the United Nations. The UN Commissioner for Human Rights has demanded that Sri Lanka end its sponsored terror. The army must be brought under control and told that the people responsible for the killings, to which I referred, will be made accountable. There should be fresh elections, internationally guaranteed by the UN, for the purpose of negotiating a settlement, and thereby people elected to represent the Tamils will be viewed as partners, not as enemies. A solution should be along the lines of a federal, decentralised state, but that is for negotiations to decide.
If that happened we could consider aid for development and the rehabilitation of displaced people. We should make it quite clear that there would be lots of aid for a peaceful democracy in Sri Lanka but very little--perhaps none--if the military took over.
The Home Office must also get the message. It is unacceptable for it to send refugees back to their deaths, and it is also unacceptable that it has not provided a single penny to local authorities which take in refugees and try to help them. That costs a lot of money, and it brings me back to the subject of the poll tax. That extra money is added on to the poll tax, and the Government should provide some money.
| Next Section
| Home Page |