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8.54 pm
Mr. David Nicholson (Taunton): As a one-nation Conservative, I listened with interest to what the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) said about housing. I also listened carefully to the remarks by the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike) and my hon. Friend the Member for South Worcestershire (Mr. Spicer). I do not intend to develop my thoughts on housing now, but I register my political interest in legislation on it, in particular the regulation of homes in multiple occupation, to which the hon. Member for Burnley referred.
I must apologise to the House because I was carried away during my intervention on the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown) by a sense of excessive chivalry and generosity. I said that, 18 months ago, he worked with Conservative Members in Somerset to save Somerset county council. In fact, that is not true, and I want to correct the record. He initially favoured the abolition of the county council, but then went strangely silent when he discovered that a number of his own supporters did not agree with him. That is why, in reply, the right hon. Gentleman reiterated his party's support for regional assemblies.
As the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) will know, England will be lumbered with regional assemblies, according to proposals from both Opposition parties, in order to address the West Lothian question. The hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), who happens to be my parliamentary pair, will be proud to know that there is now a research paper in the Library entitled, "The West Lothian Question".
I commend to my right hon. and hon. Friends, particularly those on the Front Bench, an amendment to a famous statement by Dr. Johnson. According to this version, he might have said, "Depend upon it, Sir, when a Government knows that in 18 months' or so time a determined attempt will be made to hang it, it should concentrate its mind wonderfully."
I shall set out certain longer-term objectives which the Queen's Speech has given us the opportunity to pursue, but I also emphasise to my right hon. Friends that we need to win the tactical skirmishing, week by week. I simply note that we did not win the skirmish last week.
Among the longer-term objectives, I include advancing on the Home Office front; advancing, most importantly, on the small business and deregulation front, where there is much more to be done; and holding ground on the health front. In recent years there have been good increases in spending on health, but we need to address the considerable problems currently facing national health service dentistry and the financial plight facing those elderly people in residential homes, to whom my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Sir D. Madel) referred. We must regain ground on education; that also I shall discuss later.
Regarding the Home Office, the Opposition parties claim that there has been a lurch to the right in the Conservative party. I am not exactly a fully paid-up member of the right of my party, but I entirely commend a discriminatory, careful lurch to the right on various issues.
The difference between the right of the Conservative party and the left of the Labour party is that I cannot think of a single issue about which the left of the Labour party has ever come up with any proposals or policies that are popular--which commend themselves to the public outside the narrow enclaves of the left of the Labour party. That is why the Labour party has remained in opposition for so long, whereas the right of the Conservative party frequently has proposals or policies that are widely popular. The proposals in the Queen's Speech to tackle asylum seekers and adopt a tougher approach on law and order are both very popular.
Regarding asylum seekers, I shall briefly present an argument of much wider significance on the migration issue. We are constantly told that the United Kingdom and Europe must be able to compete with the United States of America and the far east, but the two latter have an advantage that we in Europe do not have. They have enormous reserves of what I would call cheap--perhaps
"coolie"--labour.
In the far east, those reserves arise from the underdevelopment of the region. In the USA, they arise from the massive social inequalities that the tradition and the geography of that vast country permit--there is not much "one nation" politics in the United States--and from the illegal immigration that, in spite of their efforts, they are unable to control and which, I am told, may make Spanish the first language of the United States some time in the next century.
Europe is different because the various peoples of Europe will not tolerate their Governments allowing much migration into western Europe, whether legal or illegal. I draw far-reaching conclusions from that phenomenon, but I must pursue that subject another time.
I simply say, on law and order, that we must tackle the nonsense whereby debatable decisions or sentences or courses of action are reported in the courts almost daily. I am grateful that my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary is tackling that matter. Judges and magistrates are not elected, unlike local councillors or Members of Parliament. They can be influenced only by legislation or public opinion, both of which have a role to play.
We need to make more progress in deregulation, especially in food hygiene. If we do not make that progress by administration, I am afraid that some of us will have to advocate the repeal, or at least the drastic amendment, of the Food Safety Act 1990, which I believe led to several of those difficulties. We must tackle that issue in the remaining months of the present Parliament.
On Europe, I should say, having heard the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for South Worcestershire, that I have become a consolidationist. There is so much wrong with the European Community that we must tackle those problems and put them right before we start any of the fanciful developments that some of our partners would like to develop. Those problems include fraud, which we read about in the papers this morning; the massive problems of the common agricultural policy; the common fisheries policy, if that is subject to reform; and harmonisation, which has led to many of the problems that I have mentioned.
There must be a significant increase in education spending this year. When I met my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury a couple of weeks ago, I told him that he should give the Secretary of State for Education and Employment whatever she asked for and round it up by another £50 million. The fact, which I support and welcome, that the Government propose to invest more money in the assisted places scheme means that they should also apply extra money to the rest of the public sector.
I have had reservations about the assisted places scheme, which was intended to replace direct grant schools. I recall my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Hurd) referring earlier today to the abolition of direct grant schools. It was perhaps the biggest act of vandalism that has been carried out in recent politics in the United Kingdom. Unlike my right hon. Friend, I have an interest to declare because I was educated at a direct grant school.
I am sorry that it was not possible to re-establish direct grant schools instead of creating the assisted places scheme, because that means that in the public sector of education, as my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Evennett) said earlier, we do not have nationally the variety of provision that existed, at least at the time that I was educated, when there were direct grant schools and grammar schools.
That is a weakness of the public sector of education. The development of grant-maintained schools, which I emphasise should continue to be subject to parental approval, may be an indirect way of restoring that variety, but it is an indirect, not a direct, way.
I listened to the remarks by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) about budgetary policy. He, having been recently in the Government, is in a position to know whether spending may be cut by
£5 billion and whether taxation may be reduced by a similar amount.
I have already described what needs to be done in the education sector. We probably need greater expenditure at the Home Office if we are to continue to beat back crime. We cannot cut the health or defence budgets. I am glad to see that the Minister of State for the Armed Forces, my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Mr. Soames), and the parliamentary private secretary to the Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon (Mr. Amess), are present. We cannot cut the defence budget any further. A proposal was announced yesterday to close the Culmhead GCHQ station in my constituency in 1999. I shall go into the details at the appropriate time and I have tabled a written question, but I hope that that closure will not weaken our surveillance facilities which, given the huge uncertainty that continues to exist in eastern Europe, central Asia and the middle east, remain important.
Given those pressures, there is a case for a more cautious approach to budgetary policy than has been suggested by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham or my hon. Friend the Member for Bridlington (Mr. Townend), who is chairman of the Back-Bench Conservative finance committee and who has talked of, I think, £7 billion-worth of cuts.
The bulk of Conservative supporters in my constituency to whom I have spoken in recent weeks are reluctant to espouse the case for reductions in taxation. I have to persuade them that after three years of economic success and growth, the British taxpayer deserves a dividend. A reduction in taxes will reinforce the recovery which, until now, has been substantially based on exports and investment. We seek a reduction in taxation to stimulate the domestic market, which needs it. I differ from my hon. Friend the Member for South Worcestershire; the housing market needs stimulation. A Budget without those measures would have a considerable hole at its centre.
When I am asked, "Where would you make the reductions?" I have one suggestion arising from recent correspondence. I do not think that the issue will make a substantial contribution to the search for reductions in public spending, but it is a social matter that angers a number of people. I am referring to the ability, under present legislation, for young people to live a vagrant and sometimes vulnerable life style--even when they have a parental home prepared to take them and when they enjoy good relations with their parents--at the public's expense. No one suggests that those young people should not live independently, but we should question whether they should live at public expense.
A constituent told me that her adopted son had been in trouble with the police, was regularly attending the doctor for drug and alcohol abuse, and had lost three stone in weight. She wrote that he was living in a bedsit in Taunton, paying rent to a landlord who was no doubt also being supported by the Government. Her letter stated:
"we adopted our son at three years old after he had been removed from circumstances similar to the ones he is presently living in. It seems ironic that the social and medical services who were eager to place this child at two and a half years, are no longer able to help either him or us, saying that after 16 years old, parents have no rights."
Other constituents have written to me about the sad case of their daughter. I shall not give the House all the details, but the letter said:
"Our daughter has been given the opportunity to live independently but in extremely vulnerable circumstances."
15 Nov 1995 : Column 102My constituents spelt out the difficulties that their daughter had encountered, involving rogue landlords and others. They continued:
Ministers who have discussed such matters in recent years have failed to address them directly. I hope that in the Budget, and possibly through housing legislation, such issues will be tackled. In all other respects, I commend the Queen's Speech to the House.
"We are caring parents who have in no way expressed a wish that she should leave home. Indeed, our daughter has every convenience at home and can make use of them at her leisure. Social Services have given her money to allow her to live independently. There has been no discussion with us of any kind."
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