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7.46 pm
Mr. James Pawsey (Rugby and Kenilworth): The speech of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) struck me as one of the poorest Opposition speeches that we have heard. It was short on content, and dealt with none of the policy matters that we sought to raise with the hon. Gentleman. In fact, all that it majored on was fairly cheap abuse. I do not think that it did the hon. Gentleman's case any good at all.
It is significant that the name of the shadow Chancellor is missing from the list of names attached to amendments on the Order Paper. I am not surprised. When I asked the hon. Member for Brightside how he intended to raise his funds, there was no answer. The shadow Chancellor clearly seeks to disassociate himself from the amendment that was moved today.
I have more reason than most to welcome the Queen's Speech, which refers to two Bills dealing with subjects that are of particular interest to me. I chair the Select Committee on the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration--
Mr. Pawsey:
I am obliged to my hon. Friend for his support.
I also chair the Conservative Back-Bench education committee. The Queen's Speech referred to both subjects.
I applaud the fact that the Government have accepted the challenge of pre-school education. I also welcome the introduction of a voucher scheme, which will provide parents with additional choice. The scheme is imaginative, and will cost some £730 million. Parents will be given vouchers worth £1,100, entitling four-year-olds to three terms of good-quality pre-school education. There will be
£180 million of new money; the balance of £550 million will come from the funds currently spent by local authorities on pre-schooling. That money will become immediately available to parents in the form of vouchers.
The new measures build on previous education reforms introduced by the Conservative party--reforms that have deliberately sought to provide parents with additional choice. In this instance, parents will be able to decide whether to use state, private or voluntary providers. The principle of the voucher is being introduced for the first time in Britain; if it is successful, it will doubtless be extended. I welcome the introduction of a pilot scheme that will commence in April 1996, with the main scheme coming on stream in April 1997. The voucher can be exchanged for a pre-school place for all children, beginning with the term after their fourth birthdays.
I hope that the Government will disregard the usual ill-informed and ritualistic Opposition attacks to which we have grown accustomed. We should remember that they opposed all the education reforms introduced by the current Administration. They opposed the national curriculum and testing, grant-maintained schools, Ofsted, improved teacher training and league tables. All those reforms had one thing in common--they were introduced in the teeth of opposition from the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties.
The Gracious Speech refers to raising education and skill levels, and to do so it is necessary to have a well-motivated and--dare I say it?--a well-paid teacher force. That is why I am particularly anxious that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment should ensure adequate funding for the forthcoming teachers' pay award. Hon. Members will recall that last year the award was 2.7 per cent., and that it had to be funded by efficiency savings within LEAs. I say without equivocation that there can be no second bite at that cherry. Funding must be found: otherwise, there will be teacher redundancies, and as a result class sizes will increase.
I now turn to legislation designed to extend the health service commissioner's jurisdiction. It would enable him to consider complaints from the public about two major areas of his activities that are currently excluded from his jurisdiction. The Bill proposes to enable him to examine complaints about family health service practitioners such as GPs, dentists, pharmacists and those who provide NHS optical services. Under the terms of the new legislation, he would also be able to consider complaints about matters relating to the clinical judgment of doctors, nurses and other clinical professionals.
The Select Committee of which I am Chairman welcomes the new measures and believes that they will materially help patients. I am delighted to see in his place a distinguished member of the Committee, the hon. Member for Falkirk, East (Mr. Connarty), who plays a valuable part in our deliberations. In the past, GPs and dentists have been outside the jurisdiction of the commissioner. All that will change, ensuring, I trust, that patients receive an even better service from the NHS.
I sound a warning note. If the commissioner's work load increases by the amount that I foresee, it will be necessary to ensure that adequate funds are made available. If the commissioner is to discharge his responsibilities properly he cannot operate on the cheap, and it would be a great mistake if the Treasury did not make the necessary funds available.
I said earlier that I welcomed the contents of the Gracious Speech, but I was disappointed to note that it did not refer to aircraft noise legislation. Coventry airport is in my constituency, and it is an increasing source of night flights, which are a growing nuisance. I welcome the presence in the Chamber of the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Cunningham).
Mr. Jim Cunningham (Coventry, South-East):
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Pawsey:
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not. I am pressed for time.
Noise pollution is substantial and growing, and I should have thought that time could be found to introduce a relatively small Bill based on the Department of Transport document, the main part of which proposes to encourage the preparation of noise amelioration schemes and to review the existing ones. The Department would also have an enabling power over airfields to establish and enforce noise control arrangements, including ground noise. Those and other measures would do a great deal to reduce the inconvenience and nuisance of aircraft noise. I receive an increasing number of complaints from my constituents about aircraft noise. It seems that airports operate outside the normal constraints which affect--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. I hesitate to intervene on a short speech, but I do so to remind the hon. Gentleman that we are debating the Queen's Speech and that it does not refer to Coventry airport or airport noise.
Mr. Pawsey:
I am confining my speech to environmental considerations. The environment of my constituents will deteriorate substantially, as will that of the constituents of the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East, unless we are able to persuade the Government to provide time for a debate on this important subject. I am disappointed that it is not mentioned in the Gracious Speech.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. As the hon. Gentleman says, it is not in the Gracious Speech, which is what we are debating.
Mr. Pawsey:
I shall conclude by saying that my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir D. Smith), the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East and I met the Minister for Aviation and Shipping but, sadly, we were not able to persuade him that aircraft are noisy. I am anxious to see some form of proper control exercised in this area.
Ms Margaret Hodge (Barking):
The Government's programme for the coming year completely fails to address the momentous challenges that face our country. Unlike the hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Mr. Pawsey), I believe that the failure is greatest in the sphere of education. The proposals in the Gracious Speech
It is a sobering fact that we devote a mere 2 per cent. of education spending to children in their early years. In Germany the figure is 7 per cent., France spends 12 per cent. and Sweden devotes 17 per cent. to such children. We have our priorities wrong. Let us remind ourselves why early learning is important. Investing public money in the early years not only enhances educational and life opportunities for children but saves public spending later. There is plenty of evidence to support that. Perhaps the most convincing is the American research on the High Scope programme for disadvantaged children, which found that for every dollar invested in children in their early years $7 is returned to the taxpayer in savings on the cost of such matters as remedial education, juvenile delinquency, income support and unemployment.
A year ago my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) asked me to chair a Labour party inquiry team into early years education. I visited dozens of nurseries, playgroups and other centres around the country, in rural and urban areas, in areas of great poverty and in areas of relative prosperity, in the public, private and voluntary sectors. I met all the different experts from nursery nurses to teachers to academics and campaigners and from employers to the most important stakeholders--the parents. What struck me above all was the remarkable consensus about the way forward for early years services in this country.
The Britain of today needs high-quality early years experience for young children. If the quality is not good the investment is wasted. Of course we should be expanding nursery education for four-year-olds and, indeed, for three-year-olds, but even that is no longer enough. We have to recognise that people's lives have changed. More than half the women with children under the age of five now work, and it is the duty of good government to facilitate and support the family as it changes. It is also the duty of good government to ensure the best possible start for our young children.
We should start to integrate care and education to provide a comprehensive, high-quality seamless service that meets the needs of children and their parents. That makes sense to the 3.8 million children who are under five. The children of today will become the community of tomorrow, and on them our future depends. The consensus for such a service is matched by an equally firm consensus that the proposal for a voucher scheme is at best a distracting diversion and at worst damaging dogma. It is no secret that the proposals were forced on an unconvinced Secretary of State for Education and Employment by the Prime Minister as part of his lurch to the right.
The proposal owes less to investing in the long-term hopes of a generation of four-year-olds than to investing in the very short-term hopes of a desperate and divided Tory party. Dogma has been allowed to triumph over common sense and it is our nation's young children and their futures who will suffer as a result.
When vouchers were floated a year ago, I thought that they were essentially an irrelevance. Now that the details are emerging, I realise that they will be deeply damaging.
Most of the resources to fund the voucher scheme will be taken out of existing grant moneys that go to local education authorities to spend on under-fives. The way in which the funds will be withdrawn from local authorities is not widely understood, but it is utterly outrageous in its effect.
Each local authority receives an allocation for spending on the under-fives, but it is free to decide locally whether to spend it on the under-fives. Good authorities do so. The best spend more than the Government's allocation, but others use the money for other purposes: to subsidise other services or to cut council tax.
What on earth are the Government proposing? Authorities will lose £1,100 for each four-year-old in a maintained school, so the more places currently provided, the more money will be taken away from the council. What nonsense: punish the good performers and reward those who have failed. Ministers tell me that it is cash neutral. Financial fiddle would be more accurate--a fiddle to benefit the rump of Tory councils that have failed to provide good nursery education for young children. The Government will penalise Labour Tower Hamlets, which has places for 84 per cent. of its three and four-year-olds, to benefit Tory Bromley, which provides for only 33 per cent.
The biggest losers of the scheme will be thousands of three-year-old children and their parents. Local authorities whose resources are slashed will have no option but to give preference to four-year-olds who attract a voucher, over three-year-olds who do not. Public funds that currently secure places for three-year-olds will be diverted to pay for years of neglect by Tory councils that have not invested in early years education.
To make matters even worse, whatever the Secretary of State says, there could be a decline in the quality of education offered to young children. The sum of £1,100 barely buys two and a half hours a day of an appropriate quality service, but most parents want their four-year-olds in full-time nursery education. The only way in which schools can deliver that is to change the ratio of children to adults. Instead of one adult to 13 four-year-olds, there will be one teacher to 30 children. That is not quality nursery education, but cheap child care.
What about raising standards? The Government propose the daft new concept of the "light touch inspection". That raises serious concerns about how rigorously standards will be upheld. I have seen some marvellous quality in all sectors. I have also witnessed poor standards of teaching and care, but parents have a right to expect decent services and a thorough system of inspection is a crucial means of delivering such services.
What about children with special needs? Last week, I visited Bective lower school, a primary school in Northampton, which had a nursery class and special unit providing full-time education for autistic three and four-year-olds. Its work with those autistic children was extremely impressive. Their opportunities were enormously enhanced by working with them early, but the cost of a place in that unit is £8,000 per child. What on earth are the parents going to do with a voucher worth a mere £1,100?
The only positive feature of the Government's proposals is that an extra £185 million will be injected into the system. What a shame that such a precious resource will go to fund such an ill-conceived scheme. We need more places for young children. That means
training more nursery teachers, providing good premises in which children can learn, play and develop, and working to break down the divide between care and education.
Mr. David Faber (Westbury):
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Mr. Pawsey), I am somewhat spoilt for choice this evening, having served under his excellent chairmanship of our Back-Bench education Committee and having spoken, I think, in most of the education debates in the House since I came here. I should, however, like to dwell on one aspect of the Gracious Speech as it refers to nursery vouchers.
I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Squire), the Under-Secretary of State responsible for schools, has temporarily left the Chamber. A few months ago, I took a deputation from a small primary school in the village of Edington in my constituency to see him. Those people were fighting to overturn the local education authority's decision to close their school. Sadly, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment confirned the closure, ironically on the same day that the Government White Paper came out extolling the benefits of small, local and village schools.
I should like to mention one point that my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Staffordshire (Mr. Fabricant) made earlier in an intervention. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will consider how nursery vouchers can help some of the smaller village primary schools. Those of us who represent rural constituencies are keen that they should be safeguarded and helped. There must be ways in which vouchers can be targeted to help children in villages to start a little earlier at school, and to ensure continuity in their primary education.
I want to speak principally on the Government's further welcome measures to fight crime as contained in the Gracious Speech. I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary on his success to date and, in particular, on the fall of recorded crime in the past two years. I recently carried out a poll in my constituency through a newsletter, to which more than 500 people, I am happy to say, replied, and it showed overwhelming support for the majority of his policies.
Chronologically, the first duty of Government is, of course, to try to do all that they can to install crime prevention measures in villages and towns. I welcome the continuing commitment to crime prevention as contained in the partners against crime initiative. Some measures are obvious. The neighbourhood watch scheme is now part of the national psyche. Some 6 million homes play a role in that scheme. Representing a rural constituency, I welcome the proposed introduction of neighbourhood constables. This country's specials have a long and proud tradition and they will no doubt welcome the extra £4 million that
is being made available to them. why then not have them serve locally, in their communities and villages and on the streets that they know. I am delighted that, as an example of the benefit of neighbourhood constables, the rural White Paper mentioned a village in Wiltshire, where a neighbourhood constable is already in place.
I also warmly welcome the Government's policy on closed circuit television and, in particular, the £5 million that has been made available this year through the closed circuit television challenge scheme. I am happy that West Wiltshire council was successful in its bid and I pay tribute to all those who were involved.
Of the 1,000 new cameras that will be installed around the country this year, six will be in West Wiltshire. They will be mobile cameras that can be moved around the region. Dummy cameras will be left in sites where real cameras are not installed and that should be a real deterrent to crime. I ask my hon. Friends to remember, however, that CCTV can be every bit as valuable in rural areas as in towns. I hope that they will consider that.
In the recent survey that I conducted, a staggering 94 per cent. of people who replied supported the Government's policy on installing closed circuit television. I hope that my hon. Friends, including my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Mr. Tredinnick), who spoke earlier, will benefit from the 10,000 new cameras to be introduced over the next three years, as has been announced by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister.
I am pleased that the Government's policy for tackling drugs and drug abuse is again in the Queen's Speech. As many hon. Members know I am closely involved in the war against drugs. I am proud to serve as a trustee of several drug charities and I warmly welcome the high profile that has been given to the fight against drugs in the White Paper, "Tackling Drugs Together". I have no doubt that the policy contained in the Gracious Speech of enabling the security service to assist the police in fighting organised crime will help greatly to tackle the drug pushers.
I see my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Home Office on the Front Bench. She is responsible for prisons. My hon. Friend may know that I am a trustee of a charity, the Addictive Diseases Trust, which is involved in the treatment of drug abuse in prisons. Her predecessor was kind enough to visit Downview prison where ADT has a pilot project up and running. I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to visit in the near future to see the excellent work that is being done.
However good crime prevention is, there will always be some who slip through the net and commit crimes. The public have a right to expect that they will be caught, convicted and subsequently punished. The Government have a proud record of support for the police and I am especially pleased that, over the years, Wiltshire has seen the benefit of increased police funding and officers on the beat. Since 1979 Wiltshire has seen a staggering real terms spending increase of 154 per cent., the highest of any force in the country, which was translated into an increase in police numbers of 26 per cent.
As my hon. Friends on the Front Bench know, this year the new funding formula was not kind to us in Wiltshire, producing a budget increase of just 2.5 per cent. I have already expressed my concerns about that matter in an Adjournment debate, but I remind my hon. Friends that this year, once again, the funding formula does not take
into account any rural sparsity factor and I urge them to look at that once again to see whether there is any way in which that can be included in future years.
Like many parts of the country the total of reported crime in Wiltshire fell last year by 5 per cent. Crimes of violence against people fell by 16 per cent. and burglary, vehicle crime and theft fell by 5 per cent. I should like to take this opportunity of paying a warm tribute to the chief constable and to all the officers in Wiltshire who serve the people of the county so courageously and effectively.
The public have a right to know that, once caught, the criminal will be convicted if guilty. Nothing demoralises the police more than seeing the guilty walk free. The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 has already reformed the right to silence rule and the criminal procedures and investigations Bill will play a vital role in helping to ensure that criminals are convicted when that is the right thing to do.
The public will want to know that they will be protected from a criminal once he is caught and sentenced. Clearly, different offences merit different degrees of punishment. Prison provides that punishment and, undoubtedly, serves to cut crime. The chief constable of Wiltshire said:
That is the chief constable acknowledging that prison does work.
Being locked up is punishment in itself. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary has pointed out, prison must be decent but austere. There is no place nowadays for slopping out, but nor is there any place for in-cell television.
Last year a local prison, Erlestoke, just outside my constituency achieved some notoriety. A convicted rapist was allowed out on day release to cycle unattended to attend a course at Trowbridge college in my constituency. He cycled through some of the most rural areas of the constituency. The tabloids nicknamed him the bicycling rapist. I was grateful for the speed with which my right hon. and learned Friend and the Prison Service acted to have the visits stopped and, subsequently, to announce a new system of temporary release on licence.
Since the introduction of that new system in March this year the number of grants for temporary release has fallen by 50 per cent. and, more importantly, the number of temporary release failures has fallen by an overwhelming 80 per cent. I know that my constituents are extremely grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for that.
Parliament, at the instigation of the Government, have traditionally over the years significantly increased the sentences available to the courts. A life sentence is now available for rape, drug trafficking or for going to a crime with a firearm. However, those sentences are pointless if the judges do not make any use of them. Did you know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that the maximum sentence available for burglary is 14 years, yet the average sentence handed down by a crown court to a burglar with 10 convictions is 18 months? That is a staggering statistic which causes great concern to my constituents and throughout the country. There must be greater certainty in sentencing.
7.55 pm
"The majority of crime is committed by a known small percentage of offenders, and custodial sentences take them out of the game and are a significant factor in the decrease [in the crime figures]."
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