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Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Time is up.
8.15 pm
Mr. Michael Connarty (Falkirk, East): I should like to mention a couple of things which are not in the Queen's Speech, but I shall not mention them at length. There is no Bill to give sub-contractors rights in the event of the bankruptcy of the major contractor. That has been subject to debate over many years. There is no specific proposal to pay interest on business debt although there is some comment about the need to introduce regulations.
I join my colleague, the hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Mr. Pawsey), the Chairman of the Select Committee on the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration, and say that it is about time that the role of the health service ombudsman, who reports to the PCA Committee, was extended to look at clinical matters and actions in primary care. I wish to compliment the present PCA, William Reid, and his staff, who work very hard, probably with fewer resources than they deserve. As the Chairman of the PCA Committee said, they need to be well resourced if they are to take on the new role.
It is an important role because we have seen that in the United States of America litigation is the way to deal with questions of clinical failure. It would be a great pity if we went the way of the United States and people were waiting outside hospitals with their lawyers ready to take on cases for profit. Hopefully, this will help to stem what could be an explosion of clinical litigation in this country.
What is also missing--it is something that we have been looking at--is a freedom of information Bill and a privacy Bill. We have not just a tired old Government, but we live in a tired old state. It is flawed and out of date, it is secretive and is held in deep suspicion, not in high regard, by most of its citizens. Perhaps in the future another Government will introduce the freedom of information Bill that we require.
There is also a proposal to give housing association tenants the right to buy. It is worth underlining that it is only proposed to give the right to buy to tenants in new stock. That is the proposal in the press briefing that I received following the Queen's Speech. I wonder why not all housing association tenants are included.
My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mrs. Fyfe), who is sitting beside me, will confirm that the principle of a voluntary purchase grant plus full market value paid back to the housing association which
must be spent on new housing is the proposal in the housing policy document that she and I drew up for public housing for the Labour party in Scotland in the 1980's. If those principles are good enough for housing associations, are they not good enough for all public housing? Obviously, it is not in the Government's interest. It is their prejudice against public housing that will not allow them to give the same amount of capital back to the local authority with the clear instruction that it must be spent on building houses to prevent the depletion of housing stock.
The proposals are half baked. The market demand for such use may deplete the stock available to rent in any Specific area. As we know from contact with housing associations, certainly in my 13 years in local government, the type of houses they build is often driven by what is trendy at the time and by special needs of one kind or another. They may not be willing to use the money to rebuild houses in the same area. There could be shifting populations because of housing association trends and because the forward plans of the associations do not respond to filling the gaps where houses have been taken into the private sector.
There is no assurance in the Queen's Speech that special needs housing for people with disabilities will be ring-fenced. Will it be sold off, only to be replaced by local associations providing houses for single people or people emerging from mental hospitals or prisons, as seems to be the trend? The Queen's Speech is silent on that point.
The Queen's Speech mentions protection for small communities with fewer than 3,000 homes. It is ironic that the Government should propose such a measure, having presided over the decimation of rural communities in Scotland, England and Wales, where public housing has been sold off and then second-time buyers--possibly not indigenous, possibly big-city commuters or people looking for a holiday home--buy them up. That is the result of the Conservative's sale of council housing, so promising to ring-fence a few housing association houses is just bolting the stable door once the horse is off and running.
The problem is how to revitalise rural areas and small communities. I suggest giving housing associations money and instructions to build homes for rent, and then purchase, or using staircasing arrangements for part-purchase, part-rent. That would be an improvement on proposals to ring-fence communities of 3,000 homes.
At the weekend I addressed what was supposed to be a youth forum but what turned out to be a front for the Scottish National party, whose policy is now to abolish council house sales altogether. That is rather hypocritical, given that thousands of SNP voters and hundreds of their representatives on councils have used the legislation to buy houses at a discount. Thank goodness I do not have to oppose them in government. It is a case of, "Do as I say, not as I do." The message from the SNP seems to be: "If you want the same rights as SNP representatives of the past, don't vote SNP in future."
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. I can find nothing in the Queen's Speech about the SNP.
Mr. Connarty:
There will not even necessarily be a Queen if the SNP gets its Parliament. I am just issuing a warning about a party that sits here under another guise.
The proposal to deal with anti-social neighbours is for a probationary tenancy period. Based on my experience I would say that we must act throughout the United Kingdom before vigilante law erupts in our communities. A village in my constituency, which I shall call only the village of fear, was once a most desirable place for council tenants to live, with beautiful views and a rural aspect. Now four houses have been demolished leaving a gap site, five have been boarded up and two blocks of flats are empty. The eight flats have also been vandalised and everything worth selling has been ripped out.
Five families who went to live in the village and tried to make something of it found that they could not and were driven out--they have all been to see me. Twelve complaints have been made to me in secret, all from villagers who did not want their names given to the police or the local authority, or to the families responsible for problem. One older lady told me that two or three families who arrived in the village more than a decade ago are responsible. They were in the street at 2 o'clock in the morning shouting and fighting among themselves. When someone looked out of a window and they saw the chink in the curtain they shouted, "We'll be the last family in this village; we'll drive you all out."
I have written to the police; I have a complaints file more than an inch thick; I have written to the local authority. I am told that if no one is willing to come forward, to stand up and endure the vandalism, personal attacks and damage to property that go with standing up to these people, they cannot be taken to court. Clearly we need something more than a probationary tenancy period. The problem has existed for a decade and a half already.
Everyone in the village knows who the three or four families and their offspring are. The police tell me that these people know how to use the law. If anyone tries to take them on they first cause a confrontation and then one of them slips away to the house and phones the police. When the police arrive, they have to charge the people confronting these families. The poor proposal in the Queen's Speech clearly does not go far enough.
Again and again the Government have parroted their claim that class sizes do not matter. For many years I taught in a school for children with special educational needs. Our classes were of 12 children, a number that was then reduced to 10. It is strange that high fee-paying schools have small classes as well. Are the Government telling us that only people with special educational needs and the rich need small classes? On a level playing field, if there is one left after all schools' assets have been sold off, people should realise that smaller classes make a difference to every child. There is an Achilles' heel in the Government's argument. Professor Achilles, who conducted the Tennessee study, has clearly shown, based on a survey of England and Wales with particular reference to Castlechurch school, that class sizes make a big difference and are the right way forward.
How a nation performs clearly depends on how much it puts into education. That is what is needed--not just economic development but better education and skills.
Mr. David Atkinson (Bournemouth, East):
Most of my remarks will refer to the proposals in the Queen's Speech concerning home affairs; but first I give a warm welcome to the contents of the forthcoming education Bill, particularly the further encouragement for schools to become grant-maintained. I have visited all the GM schools in my constituency; the universal message is that freedom from local authority control, greater flexibility and more funding have resulted in better schools and better results for pupils. That is acknowledged by all concerned: governors, parents and teachers alike.
It is a tragedy that so few schools have taken advantage of such an opportunity--especially primary schools-- often because of the campaigns of misinformation and scare tactics used by local authorities to preserve their own bureaucracy. Only one primary school has gone GM in my constituency--a voluntary-aided school whose headmaster told me that it was the best thing he had ever done.
Hence I welcome the prospect of a fast track to GM status for voluntary-aided schools. Church schools already enjoy a degree of independence. That is why they are in such great demand from parents. I hope that more Churches will allow them the full benefit of freedom in their own affairs, without the need for parental ballots. I hope that more primary schools will want to follow their success.
I also welcome the voucher scheme for nursery education. It is a shame that my Liberal Democrat-controlled LEA refused to take part in a pilot scheme that would have enabled our four-year-olds to enjoy the benefits of an extra year of education. The introduction of vouchers will enhance parental choice, and the resulting competition will raise teaching standards. I hope that vouchers will in due course be extended to higher education and eventually to all education, state and private.
I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend on being the first Home Secretary in living memory to preside over two successive years of falling crime, against a background of a seemingly relentless and irreversible rise in crime. I am sure that the measures in the Queen's Speech will further encourage that downward trend. I welcome the legislation to enable the security services to support the police in combating organised crime, which is becoming ever more international. The trade in drugs is well known; less well known is the growing threat from crime organised by the Russian mafiosi.
To reverse these new and dangerous trends requires the utmost co-operation between the police and security services, nationally and internationally. Should Russia accede to the Council of Europe next year, as I expect it will, we must insist on its early ratification of the 1990 convention which outlaws money laundering and allows its proceeds to be seized.
Although I welcome the Asylum and Immigration Bill, to stem the flow of asylum seekers from countries where there is no serious risk of persecution, I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend will consult widely on the designated list of countries--the so-called white list. Christian human rights organisations are concerned at reports that Pakistan will be on the list--yet there is much evidence that Christians in Pakistan are at risk of persecution by Islamic fundamentalists, the most public
example of that being their use of the blasphemy laws. Christians are falsely accused of blasphemy and the resulting trial is used by extremists as a focal point for whipping up religious fervour and hatred.
The recent cases of Gul and Rehmat Masih and Salamat Masih--a 12-year-old boy--all of whom have now found asylum in Germany, and the murders of Naimat Ahmer and Manzoor Masih, all of whom are Christians, testify to that. I met the families of those people last year when I visited Pakistan. Many of them are in hiding in fear for their lives. I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend will agree to meet the representatives of the human rights organisations that I have mentioned before laying his designated list before the House.
I shall confine the rest of my remarks to the concerns of my constituents and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, West (Mr. Butterfill) who attended the public meeting on crime in our borough last Friday. The simple justification for that meeting was that, whereas crime is falling nationally, it continues to rise locally--by 6 per cent. the previous year and by 4 per cent. to June this year. Against this background, there was understandable anger that police manpower in Dorset has been reduced by 34 officers because of this year's settlement, which was £2.8 million less than last year's.
Of course, there was a welcome for the Prime Minister's recent announcement of 5,000 more policemen, 10,000 more closed circuit television cameras over the next three years and the current review of the area cost adjustment. I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary will ensure that Dorset receives its fair share of the extra police and cameras, and reverse the decline in our funding.
Incidentally, my right hon. and learned Friend will be pleased to know that the CCT cameras that he switched on last month in the Boscombe shopping precinct have already proved a success by leading to six arrests, rendering that precinct safer for shoppers, shop workers and residents alike. We thank him for his personal interest.
Concern was expressed at the meeting about the continuing inability of the courts to pass sentences that match the crime, especially when dealing with persistent 14-year-old offenders, and about the premature release of prisoners long before they have served their sentence. My constituents will thus welcome the Criminal Procedures and Investigations Bill, which will provide for prosecution and defence disclosure and other measures to encourage justice, and the introduction of the secure training order for 12 to 14-year-olds who repeatedly offend. They will also welcome my right hon. and learned Friend's determination to ensure sensible parole for prisoners.
Finally, we in Bournemouth are looking to the Minister of State, Home Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean), to respond more positively to our continued appeals for help in funding the cost of conference security, which represents 5 per cent. of our police budget, especially now that the Conservative party comes to Bournemouth every two years rather than every four years for its annual conference.
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