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10.22 am
Mr. Tom Cox (Tooting): Hon. Members who have spoken in the debate have wished Madam Speaker a pleasant Christmas and a happy new year, so I think that it is appropriate to extend the same sentiments to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to the many people who serve Members of Parliament in the House. I refer especially to those in the Refreshment Department and in the tearooms, who provide a valuable service and who are never fully appreciated for the work they do.
St. George's hospital, Tooting--one of the major hospitals in south London--is located in my parliamentary constituency. It serves Wandsworth, Merton and Sutton, and no doubt people from other areas attend the hospital for health care and other services. I do not question that it is an excellent hospital which offers good health services and employs a very dedicated team of doctors, nurses and other health service workers.
However, like so many other hospitals in London and in other parts of the country, St. George's faces more and more difficulties in its service provision. I am sure that all hon. Members have read in today's press, and have heard on this morning's radio broadcasts, reports about the problems that many hospitals in the United Kingdom have providing accident and emergency care. That is certainly the case at St. George's hospital.
I visited the St. George's accident and emergency department some months ago at the request of senior doctors, and both doctors and nurses told me about the problems they face. The hospital does not have the provision to meet patients' needs. While St. George's has difficulty finding beds for patients, whole hospital wards are closed. The difficulty of providing home care services in adjoining boroughs for patients who are about to be discharged adds to those problems. Unfortunately, the situation has not improved since my visit--and, in the case of elderly people and those who are most at risk, it has worsened.
John Millard, the consultant physician at St. George's hospital, sent me a letter shortly after my visit to the hospital. In the letter, dated 21 September, he says:
Week after week, the Prime Minister and other Ministers cite figures to justify what they believe is happening in the national health service. I do not doubt that money is being spent, but doctors, nurses, local people and Members of Parliament with hospitals in their constituencies know that many Government changes have created a two-tier health service. I put it to the House that London has suffered far more than other parts of the country. Year after year, successive Secretaries of State have told us that there are too many hospital beds in London. In recent years, 2,500 beds have been closed in the Greater London area.
Hospital admissions in the Wandsworth area are much higher than the national average. The number of admissions for elderly people in Wandsworth is in the highest 10 per cent. of the national figures. Against the background that I have outlined, we have seen funding taken from St. George's and allocated to areas far away from London, which is having a disastrous effect on our health services. That is not only my view, but is the view of senior doctors and administrators at the hospital. The Wandsworth health authority loses money every year. Since 1993, our budget has been cut by some 24 per cent. The continuing reduction in expenditure cannot continue without the serious effects that we are now experiencing. I have discussed the matter with the chief executive, senior administrative officers, doctors and nurses at the hospital. They all accept that this is happening, and it will continue, as will their complaints to me and to the Secretary of State for Health.
Regrettably, a major hospital in south London that provides hospital care for in-patients and out-patients has closed wards, and nurses are about to be made redundant. We all know that it will lead to the cancellation of operations and cuts in services for out-patients. Senior doctors rightly complain to me, and we should give them credit for voicing their complaints about those matters, which ultimately will affect patients.
I sought this morning's short debate because the hospital is still set to have its funding cut in the coming years. Where is the sense in following such a policy, when it is roundly and repeatedly condemned by the very people who are seeking to run the services in that hospital?
My speech is not about the national health service in the United Kingdom; it relates solely to one hospital-- a very important hospital that meets the needs not only of my constituents but of hon. Members on both sides of the House.
Local people share the deep concern of the hospital administrators, the chief executive and senior doctors at the hospital that there is no sense whatsoever in closing hospital wards that are needed and making loyal members of staff redundant because, sadly, insufficient funding is available to that hospital.
Mr. Jacques Arnold (Gravesham):
I welcome these Adjournment debates, as they give us the opportunity to raise matters of specific concern to our constituents. I should be grateful if my right hon. Friend the Lord President would address two points when he replies to the debate, as my constituents are interested in them.
The first concerns the incident involving the chief inspector of prisons at HM prison Holloway. There has been much talk about the conditions in that prison, and I would be interested to know what my right hon. Friend has to say on the subject. I hope that he will bear it in mind that my constituents have scant sympathy for those serving prison sentences, as they have clearly offended against society. While we should ensure that our prisons are sanitary, they should be spartan, and not have conditions which are not available in our youth clubs and elsewhere.
Secondly, I should like to raise the vexed subject of Mr. Peter Davis, the national lottery regulator. As I understand it, he used free flights in the United States which otherwise would have been paid for by the taxpayer. He has a reputation as a dry accountant but a person of the utmost probity. Having been in business, I know that there is always pressure to save on one's expenses. If that is the context, it is to be commended, but I should like some assurance from my right hon. Friend on those points.
The debate was opened by my right hon. Friend the Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery), who was concerned about the pernicious campaign against parents when they are asked to decide whether they wish to back the decision of the board of governors for a school to become grant-maintained. It struck a strong chord with me, as I represent a Kent constituency.
Only yesterday, Gravesend received a magnificent Christmas present. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment announced her approval of the application for grant-maintained status from the Gravesend grammar school for girls. We have been dismayed at the delay in that approval, as the parents voted for that change by an overwhelming majority last July.
Eight out of nine secondary schools, and three of the primary schools, in Gravesham are now grant-maintained. The process has been a remarkable success. St. George's Church of England comprehensive school, the first school in the borough to become grant-maintained, has achieved wonderful results by redeploying 100 per cent. of the resources, balancing the staff against other spending, and getting value for money.
I commend to the House the comments of the chairman of the governors, the Rev. Joe King, who is a well-known Labour party supporter. He makes it clear that he values the school's new freedom and has considerable scorn for so-
called specialist support supply by Kent county council.
Meopham school in my constituency, a rural secondary school that was under threat of closure from the county council, is now absolutely thriving. Those involved have used great imagination to make the school the core of the community campus in the village.
Only a few years ago, Southfields school in my constituency had the unenviable status of being bottom of the league of schools in Kent. It is now moving steadily away from the bottom as the school rallies round, using all the discretions available to grant-maintained schools.
It is all most encouraging. The grant-maintained schools system is so successful that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett), the Opposition spokesman on education, is already well on the way to implying that it was all their own idea in the first place. We know that the Leader of the Opposition scorns his council schools in Islington, and has taken his young son right across London to a leading grant-maintained school. It is all positive. We want parental choice, and other schools to follow the great achievements of schools in Gravesham and in so many boroughs throughout the country.
We should consider the action taken by the Labour party in respect of grant-maintained schools. There have been 12 ballots in Gravesham, and in every one the parents voted by an overwhelming majority in favour. However, they have done so against a background of rumours, falsehoods and the spending of £100,000 of council tax payers' money by Labour-Liberal-controlled Kent county council. It is really dreadful.
There has been a great deal of messing about by the county council. There have been land grabs and disputes over land on campuses and equipment. There have even been problems over the delivery of pay slips and P45s to the teachers in the schools concerned.
The Labour party fought and won the county council elections two years ago on the basis that the borough of Gravesham needed more nursery schools. To date, not a single new one has been provided. When there was one such proposal from a grant-maintained school--the Holy Trinity Church of England school--the Labour-controlled county council opposed it. Having said that Gravesham needed more nursery units, it voted down one such proposal because it came from a grant-maintained school. Thanks only to the action of my hon. Friend the Minister, we now have a new unit serving youngsters in Gravesend.
Gravesend grammar school for girls is now going ahead with grant-maintained status. The delays have been caused by the bogus objections of Kent county council, under the inspiration of the Labour party. One of the objections was that the governors arrived at their decision in only 15 minutes. On investigation, we found that they had held two lengthy meetings to discuss the whole matter, and had deferred the second meeting only so as to allow the KCC area education officer time to confirm the exact details of his offer of an admissions policy for the north-west Kent area.
Another bogus objection which was particularly patronising and insulting to my Sikh constituents was the allegation contained in the following KCC letter:
Most of the Sikh community are now second or third generation. The school itself already offers parents a translation service for general education matters, and not one parent has ever felt the need to take it up. Furthermore, not a single student in the school, of Sikh or any other origin, needs English language support on the ground that English is their second language. So this was yet another pernicious example of playing the race card.
Another bogus objection came in the form of the suggestion that the public meeting for parents was not balanced. That cannot be true; the co-chairman of the education committee, a Labour county councillor, attended and spoke at the meeting. Is it thought that parents are so stupid that they cannot hear out a Labour councillor and then make their own minds up?
This was all, of course, a fatuous waste of time, but it delayed the process for five months and endangered the 1996 intake of girls to the school, at a time when parents were facing anxious decisions about the future of their daughters' education. The fact is that the Labour party issues soundbites of approval for GM status, but the reality is quite different.
Our schools in Gravesham have to cope not just with this sort of trench warfare but with other ridiculous nonsense to do with school funding. Last year, Kent county council was given another 2.1 per cent. funding in terms of actual cash, but passed on only a 1 per cent. increase to the budgets of schools--after considerable pressure had been exerted. That resulted in a shortfall of
£3.4 million across the county. Weeks later, it was found that--possibly owing to mismanagement--the council had underspent for the previous year by £19 million.
The solution that was obvious to parents and anyone else of sound mind was to put £3.4 million from the £19 million into topping up schools' budgets to the amount that they should have had in the first place. Such a proposal was made by Conservative county councillors, but it was voted down by the Lib-Lab pact, whose members wanted to keep up the party political pressure on parents. Speaking as the parent of three youngsters in state schools in Kent, I do not believe that our youngsters' education should be played around with for party political purposes.
This year, the Government increased the funding for Kent county council by 4.38 per cent.--significantly more than inflation. As education is the top Government priority, the percentage applicable to education is even higher. But what is the prospect of that money getting through to the schools?
A meeting has just been held by Kent county council with the chairmen of governors of schools. At the end of the meeting, just as the Conservative leader of the county council opposition left the hall, up jumped the co-chairman of education--this time a Liberal Democrat--to tell the assembled chairmen of governors that there had been no increase whatever in Government funding. That is game playing of the most inaccurate and damaging kind. What on earth will these councillors do with the budget if their starting point is so inaccurate?
I should like to have spoken on Second Reading of the Asylum and Immigration Bill, but blocking tactics were used to stop me being the last speaker in the debate, organised by the Labour Whip, the hon. Member for Carlisle (Mr. Martlew). Hence my sympathy in respect of certain recent comments is somewhat thin. Nevertheless, I want to put on record two points that I was unable to make at the time.
I have some personal experience of immigration racketeers. They charge large fees for smuggling immigrants into this country. In Kent, we see immigrants who cannot speak English wandering around the lay-bys of our motorways, where they have been dumped by these miserable intermediaries. Some immigrants have even been suffocated while hidden in the backs of lorries. It is vital that the problem be dealt with soon.
There are also unscrupulous immigration brokers. Time and again, immigrants have been to my surgery to tell me that they have been led on by so-called advisers who charge huge fees. They take their clients through the mass of regulations, and then try to exploit our generous asylum system.
Worst of all are the immigration marriage brokers. They ruin the lives of young constituents of mine. I give the House the example of a 20-year-old British-born Sikh girl who used to work in a large office. One afternoon, she went to her boss and asked for half an hour off. He asked her why she wanted to go out. She replied that she wished to get married, but would be back in half an hour. The boss wondered what was going on. She said that there was a register office just across the road. So she went off and got married, but she did not much like the look of the man who was to be her husband--and then realised that he was an illegal immigrant.
The girl came to see me: could I do something to prevent her having to go through the religious ceremony?
It seems that a marriage broker had arranged the marriage with her father and brother; she alleged that money had changed hands for that purpose. She had only one way out--to flee her home and the borough in which she had been brought up. She had to pack her personal belongings in her suitcase, which she had brought from the office, and flee to London that very weekend--a disgraceful episode.
The marriage broker concerned also happened to be the chief executive of the Gravesend Commission for Racial Equality, formerly the Gravesham community relations council, which had a valuable and long-standing record of service to the borough. The Gravesend CRE branch suddenly closed down. The secretary came to me at my surgery to tell me that she had been dumped with no redundancy money and to ask me whether I could help. I approached the chairman of the defunct CRE, a Labour councillor, who told me that there was nothing he could say. I then approached the one-time honorary president of the CRE, another Labour councillor, who was equally unable to help.
"Many thanks for your letter of 15th September. I am so glad that you were able to come to St. George's and see both junior and senior staff who have to work in the system. I will certainly pass your message on to them."
My message was to express my appreciation to the staff for the services they provide in the community. Mr. Millard continued:
"I hope your discussions with both Lambeth and Merton are fruitful. Getting elderly patients home, when they no longer need high-tech medical care is a major problem".
I think that that comment clearly outlines the problems at the hospital. However, it is only one aspect of the difficulties that it faces.
"The ballot documentation supplied by the Electoral Reform Society was made available in the English language only. In an area with a substantial Asian languages speaking population, this will have had the effect of disenfranchising a proportion of the electorate on racial lines."
There is only one large minority in Gravesham--Sikhs from the Punjab, who speak the Punjabi language.
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