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Dr. Robert Spink (Castle Point): The hon. Gentleman is no doubt aware that guns have been available in this country for many years, yet only recently have there been the terrible tragedies of Hungerford and Dunblane. Will he speculate on what might have changed to cause guns to be used so violently? Could it possibly be the continual diet of violence that we and our children are getting?
Mr. Alton: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman raised that question. That has been one of the significant changes in this country, and I shall return to that subject. I agree with him.
Before to my election to the House 17 years ago, I worked with children with special needs, many of whom were excluded from school because of disturbance or maladjustment. Those children were not exposed to the high level of gratuitous violence that seems to pour into our homes now, particularly through the video, but also through computer games, in which they are given choices that involve garrotting or raping their victims. Clearly, the scale and nature of what our youngsters are exposed to today is very different from that of two decades ago, and we must take that issue seriously.
The context of my amendment two years ago was the killing of a young boy, James Bulger, in the city of Liverpool, by two nine-year-olds. In the aftermath of the verdicts, the trial judge remarked on "the striking similarities" between scenes in the video "Child's Play 3" and the attack on James Bulger. Whether people accept the definite link, it has to be said that that film and 440 other videos had been hired during the previous few years by the father of one of the boys. The videos included soft pornography, violent horror and necrophilia. In Manchester at almost the same time, a chant from the same film was used by the torturers of the teenager Susan Capper. She was taunted with that chant while she was subjected to the most brutal and horrifying assault. Eventually, she died.
Meanwhile, in Norway, the film "Power Rangers", which was shown in the United Kingdom on Saturday mornings, was withdrawn and a link was suggested between the killing of a five-year-old girl by her six-year-old friends and an episode of the programme. During the very same week, the Lincoln coroner, Roger Atkinson, said that an episode in the ITV series "Cracker", in which two characters were stabbed to death, could have led to the murder of a midwife 12 hours later. Granada Television dismissed the coroner's remarks as only his "opinion".
It is a fact that about 400 killings, 119 woundings and 27 sex attacks on women are screened every week in this country. We are told that that is only a reflection of real life, but that is an absurdity because there are only 14 killings in an average week in real-life Britain, not 400.
Violence in Britain and America--where it is considerably worse--has become gratuitous and random. Gruesome, violent death, mutilation and serial killing have all become an art form that can be turned on or off with the flick of a switch. The climate of violence--real and imagined--has led to ordinary citizens living in fear. People no longer feel safe in their homes, let alone in the parks or streets, or at night time on public transport. Security companies and the alarm systems that they sell for personal use, for cars, homes, offices and workplaces, are a booming industry.
Meanwhile, the entertainment industry seems to be in the throes of a passionate love affair with violence, embracing it at every opportunity. We are becoming emotionally deadened by the horrors that we witness and have come to accept violence as normal.
When Lord Rees-Mogg was chairman of the Broadcasting Standards Council, he said:
British academics continue to agonise about the links between behaviour and what people see. The American Psychiatric Association linked television to 50 per cent.
of crime in the United States. By adolescence, a young American will have seen 100,000 acts of violence and 8,000 murders on television.
As the hon. Member for Castle Point (Dr. Spink) implied in his intervention, real crime has risen inexorably in this country. One in three of those of us who were born here in the 1950s now has a criminal conviction, and in a third of cases it involves violence. Professor Elizabeth Newsome and nearly 30 child psychologists, child psychiatrists and paediatricians published a paper, which I asked them to write, courageously stating that they had previously been "naive" in underestimating the links between how people behave and what they see.
Our own Royal College of Psychiatrists has also pointed to media violence as one area in which tighter controls could help protect vulnerable children. The Professional Association of Teachers spoke to 1,000 teachers in different parts of the United Kingdom, and more than 90 per cent. of respondents believed that children's emotional, social and moral development was being damaged, sometimes irrevocably, by what they saw.
For years, national paranoia has led us to tilt at imaginary Spanish windmills and French farmers, while we remain indifferent to the Americanisation of British values and our way of life. British culture has been increasingly dictated to by American tastes in everything, from what we eat to what we watch. Some of the least attractive aspects of life in modern Britain, such as drug dependency, street crime and mugging, screen violence and the disintegration of family and community life, were all manifesting themselves in the States many years before they were washed up on our shores. It is a fact that, when America sneezes, we tend to catch cold.
If we are not convinced by what the psychologists, psychiatrists, teachers and parents say, let us put on record what David Puttnam--probably one of the most admired people in the field of creating good film and video material--has to say on the subject:
He added:
If the advertisers in this country thought that there was no link between what people watch and how they behave, they would not have spent some £4,000 million over the past 12 months advertising their wares on television and trying to sell them. The chairman of Unilever once said that he knows that half of what is broadcast on television has no impact on those who see it, but the only problem is that he does not know which half. Clearly, there are more than just casual links in this regard. There is now increasing empirical evidence--worldwide--of the links between how people behave and what they see. Time and again, the evidence points to a correlation.
When we debate the Broadcasting Bill immediately after the House returns, we shall have a chance to put real power into the hands of television viewers, by giving them the V-chip. We shall also have a chance to amend
the legislation to allow for a national audit to be conducted each year, so that the programme makers have to report to Parliament on the level of violence that they transmit. We shall also have the chance to bring to task bodies such as the British Board of Film Classification and Warner Brothers UK, which creates films such as "Natural Born Killers".
Mr. Jon Trickett (Hemsworth):
Madam Deputy Speaker, I thank you for giving me the opportunity to make my maiden speech this early in the debate. When hon. Members make a maiden speech, they suffer from nerves, and it is helpful to make it early in the debate. I am conscious of the traditions of the House, and that when one makes a maiden speech, one refers to one's predecessor. On this occasion, it is easy and a pleasure to refer to Derek Enright--and it is something that I would have wanted to do.
Derek Enright was an extremely hard-working and diligent Member of the House. I know that to be the case, because of comments that hon. Members from both sides of the House have made to me since my arrival. He was well loved, as Madam Speaker commented when I first entered the House. In a short space of time, he established a presence in the Chamber and throughout the Palace. It is a tragedy that he was perhaps unable to fulfil all his ambitions.
Hon. Members may not know that Derek Enright made a major impact in the constituency. During the by-election, I met hundreds of local constituents, residents and voters, almost all of whom told me--unprompted--of their deep affection for their Member of Parliament. He was loved in the constituency. The degree of unanimity in what I heard about my predecessor wherever I went during the by-election was remarkable.
Obviously, it is difficult to single out any one or two aspects of work that a Member of Parliament will have undertaken. My predecessor did a great deal of work in many areas. I know that he worked closely with his neighbouring Members of Parliament, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract and Castleford (Sir G. Lofthouse), on health-related issues. In particular, they were working on issues related to emphysema and other health problems suffered by coal miners in the area.
I know that my predecessor would be horrified, as I am, at the proposals to change the character of the health service in the locality. There appear to have been secret discussions at a higher level--in the Wakefield area, in Pontefract, in Quarry house in Leeds, and in London--about plans to change the character of the health service
and eventually to remove some services from local hospitals. Those matters are extremely worrying to me--and I am sure that they would have been worrying to my predecessor. Later today, if I get the opportunity, I shall speak in the debate about the health services in the Wakefield metropolitan district. I shall make some firm points and express my views, in particular, about the poor quality of paediatric services in the area.
I shall do my best to emulate my predecessor's achievements, hard work and diligence--in every respect, bar one. That one thing relates to something that hon. Members will understand--that is, his ability to convert modern-day, idiomatic English in pop songs into the classical language of Latin. I am afraid that I could never aspire to--and I am not sure that I would want to--such an amazing and precocious talent. With those few reflections, I am sure that all hon. Members will remember very warmly my predecessor's contribution to this place.
Hon. Members will know that I was elected in a by-election, but they may not know that there have been 12 Members of Parliament for Hemsworth this century--which is a remarkably high number. It is tragic to note that seven of those hon. Members died while holding office. There have been six by-elections--so the people in the area have become rather familiar with them. In fact, after I had been selected as a Labour candidate, one of the old stagers came up to me and said, "Normally in the Labour party, we tend to look at a person's politics and what his ideological position is on various issues. However, because there have been so many tragic deaths of sitting Members in Hemsworth, we are concerned about whether you have a health certificate. We want you to represent us for a long time."
Traditionally, Hemsworth has been associated with the Labour party--indeed, since the foundation of the Labour party, it has represented Hemsworth. Hemsworth has been so safe that I am told that The Guardian Weekly in Manchester coined the phrase, "They don't count the votes out there, they weigh them," for the constituency. That has been said about many other constituencies, but we believe that it was coined in relation to Hemsworth.
I have looked back at the maiden speeches and the records of my 11 predecessors this century. I discovered that the seat has been so safe for the Labour party that on two occasions the Labour nominee arrived with his nomination papers--I am referring to George Griffiths and Horace Holmes--for the returning officer, only to be told that he had been elected because no other candidate was prepared to stand for the seat. That illustrates the fortress nature of the support that the Labour party has had in Hemsworth this century.
Bearing that history in mind, I happily went with my agent to the returning officer at Wakefield town hall, imagining that that exceptionally sensible precedent would be followed in my case--I imagined that the returning officer might be able to declare me elected as there were no other candidates and because of the nature of the opinion polls and the state of the Hemsworth constituency. One could imagine my chagrin to discover that there was not one but 10 candidates fighting for the seat. It was a daunting prospect for me to face.
However, apparently, it was not as daunting as the prospect facing the Conservative party candidate. After the count had finished, I noted that he had retained his
deposit and that he was going around in a very gleeful manner. When I asked him why he was so happy, he said that he was delighted because it was the first time in a parliamentary election that he had managed to get into second place. That was interesting; obviously he was more daunted than I had been.
Hemsworth has always been associated with the coal mining industry, which, as we know, has created wonderful communities throughout this country and elsewhere, with a powerful community spirit--the sense of caring and sharing and all the similar values that we associate with such communities.
From Featherstone in the north--my hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract and Castleford was born there, represented it for a time and played for the famous rugby league team--through Hemsworth down to South Kirkby and South Elmsall in the south, and from Upton across to Ackworth, Crofton and all the other communities, including Rye Hill and Fitzwilliam, which make up Hemsworth, the spirit of community and the strong community values that the miners contributed wherever they built up communities are evident.
The miners were interested in many things other than mining; sport was one of the great talents that emerged from those villages and small towns. Rugby league was played throughout the area. Frickley Athletic, in the south of the constituency, was supported by the miners with a subscription from Frickley pit for many years, and it is sad that that has now finished because of the closure of the mining industry in the area.
Mr. Geoffrey Boycott came from the constituency. We cannot help his politics--although we shall do our best, even now, to work on his repentance in relation to those matters--but he was a sturdy player for Yorkshire county cricket. I sometimes think that, if representatives of Yorkshire came down to Hemsworth and looked at the youngsters there, we might be able to rebuild our team for the future.
The mining industry was profoundly important in the formation of the communities that I now have the privilege to represent. The maiden speeches of my 11 predecessors read like a social and economic history of the area. Together, they form a remarkable document.
The first Member of Parliament for Hemsworth at the turn of the century was elected as a Liberal and came across to the Labour party as soon as it was founded, so we can claim that we had one of the first Labour Members of Parliament. He was a miner and described in his maiden speech the 400-odd pits that existed in the Yorkshire area--he had visited the coalfaces of almost all of them. Another Member of Parliament for the area described 12 separate working pits within walking distance of his house.
The experience of the constituency reflects the tragic history of the decline of an industry. My predecessor, Derek Enright, mentioned the last working pit. I now have to report in my maiden speech that no working pits are left in the Hemsworth area. That is a tragedy for the community. Although to an extent we understand that the industry has been in long-term secular decline, it is hard to forgive the motives of some people in high office who adopted a particular political position regarding the mining industry.
In the area profoundly strong communities remain, which were originally concentrated around the coal mines. Now that the coal mines no longer exist, their reason for coming into being has disappeared and there is a gradual process of economic and social decline.
I have with me a list of every benefits office in the country, showing the amount of family credit allocated to families in each office area and the number of families in each area who receive family credit. It is a very interesting document. We know that family credit is the Government's way of subsidising poor employers. When a household earns income below the mean poverty thresholds, the Government allocate family credit to the household.
In the two years for which those figures have been published--from 1993 to 1995--we have witnessed, throughout the country, a remarkably even increase of about 35 per cent. in the number of families receiving family credit in each benefit office. The figures for the Hemsworth benefit office, however, reveal a tragic position. We have there not a 35 per cent. increase, not even a 70 per cent. increase, but almost double that--in two years, there has been a 117 per cent. increase in the number of families receiving family credit.
"Television is an extremely important reinforcement agency in most of the areas in which it operates."
"What proof are we looking for, I wonder? Are we going to wait a decade or two to see if there is a fresh outbreak of gruesome murders before deciding perhaps 'Driller Killer' wasn't the thing to show the kids after all? Does the railway company wait for someone to be killed by a train before fencing off the railway line?"
"Does common sense not tell us that it is foolish to debate whether watching sadistic pornographic films makes children into dangerous psychopaths? Leaving aside the impact this influence may or may not have in future for the rest of us, what is abundantly clear is that, for them, as immature human beings, watching sadistic pornographic films has to be a very bad idea".
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