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6.32 pm
Mr. Bruce Grocott (The Wrekin): One of the unusual characteristics of the debate has been the number of hon. Members who have announced that this is to be their last Parliament, and that only a few weeks remain until they leave the House. The four who come into that category are in the happy position of having been able to announce a decision that they have made for themselves. I look forward to a day, some time between now and next May, when a large number of others will join them in retirement, most of them involuntarily and most, of course, on the Conservative Benches. Indeed, I expect that to happen.
Perhaps hon. Members mellow as the years go by, but one of the pleasures of listening to some of the speeches was the fact that I could agree with a fair deal of what was said, particularly the comments of the hon. Member for New Forest (Sir P. McNair-Wilson) about the middle east and the need for us to recognise that the Palestinians must see concrete results from the peace process. I can only say amen to that.
Those of us who are present this evening are probably quite an unusual group, in that we are discussing the Queen's Speech. I do not expect the traffic to be stopped anywhere in the United Kingdom by throngs of people wanting to examine its finer points, and I sense no frisson of excitement across the nation among those who have heard what the Government have in store for us. There are several reasons why that would never have been the case.
For one thing, this is not really a proper Queen's Speech at all. It contains a programme not for a Government who seriously contemplate being in office not just for a full year--that is certainly not possible--but for a moment longer than a point that they vainly hope will arrive: the point at which they can call a general election that they have a chance of winning. We all know perfectly well that what happens to the Queen's Speech will be determined by the opinion polls, and by when the Prime Minister judges that he can call an election that he stands a chance of winning.
One of the many odd characteristics of the Prime Minister's position is that we have been told by all the briefing that we had from the Tory party conference, and by all the spin doctors of whom we keep being reminded, how anxious the Prime Minister is to get to the hustings, get back on to the soap box and go and meet the people. We have been told how he loves elections, campaigning and electioneering. Strangely, although the Prime Minister allegedly loves all those things, he seems desperately anxious to avoid actually pressing the button--for he, of course, is the only person who can ensure that an election will take place.
I appeal to the Prime Minister: if his enthusiasm for elections matches his enthusiasm for Chelsea football club, why does he not announce the election that the country needs so badly? Until he at least has the nerve to face the public, we shall all be in limbo for what could be a prolonged period.
This is an unusual Queen's Speech debate in another respect--and I have attended a number of such debates over the years. The only concrete guarantees of legislation that have resulted from today's debate have been the consequence of an initiative from my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition. The only certainty about the Queen's Speech--the only thing that we know will happen--is that two Bills will become law, both pressed
by private Members and repeatedly asked for by the Labour party. One will establish a register of paedophiles; the other will deal with the menace of stalking.
Those proposals were not to be contained in the Queen's Speech. They were to be left to the accidents of private Members' legislation. Thanks to my right hon. Friend's initiative, however, they are to go on to the statute book. This must be the first occasion on which a Leader of the Opposition has announced legislation, or guaranteed its passage, during a debate on a Queen's Speech promoted by the other party.
Let me now spend some moments doing what has been done by one or two Members who are retiring--although it is emphatically not my intention to retire, provided that the people of The Wrekin do the same by me as they have at the two most recent general elections--and take a little trip down memory lane. If the current Parliament endures until the last reasonable date--local election day, 1 May next year--it will be exactly 18 years since the Government came to power, which, as many of us will remember, they did on local election day in 1979. I vividly remember, perhaps as well as anyone else here, the day after that election, or around that time, when the then Prime Minister, now Lady Thatcher, stood on the steps of 10 Downing street and quoted St Francis of Assisi.
I was feeling particularly depressed at the time, because I felt--I believe that my feeling has been vindicated--that our country and our people were in for a pretty bad time. I had an additional personal reason for feeling unhappy about life, because I had lost my seat. But I thought how inappropriate it was for the most combative Prime Minister in the most aggressive Administration--followed by one of the most divisive series of Governments under two Prime Ministers--to quote St Francis of Assisi to begin with. Is it not a complete political irony that at the end, when the Government totter towards their conclusion, all the debates in society should be about a fractured society, a society more divided than it has ever been? That is the legacy of 18 years of Tory government which started with a quote from St Francis of Assisi.
In this trip down memory lane, can any Conservative Member seriously believe--I appeal particularly to those who are retiring and view these matters with more detachment nowadays--that, in the 1960s and 1970s Britain, our country, was anything other than a more peaceful and less divided country? It was certainly a country with much less crime--let us agree on that. It was a much safer country in which to live. There was much less violent crime. It was a time when young people could leave school knowing that they had jobs. That, more than anything else, is the contract that the Conservative Government will be held responsible for having shattered.
In the 1960s and 1970s--as the Prime Minister should know well, as we are nearly contemporaries and he was trying to make his way in the 1960s, just as I was--a young person who worked at school did so on the basis of a contract: knowing that, if he or she worked hard and did well, there would be a job at the end of it when they left school. Likewise, when they left school, they also knew that, if they got a job and worked hard, if they
completed an apprenticeship, training or whatever, they had a guarantee on which it was possible to build a family and a life. They knew that they had the kind of security that would enable them to get a mortgage or pay a rent, to make provision for a family, to bring up children. That was the contract that existed, which this Government have destroyed, and that, as well as many other reasons, is why the Government should go.
Mr. David Nicholson (Taunton):
I wanted to say, before the hon. Gentleman moved on to the employment aspect, that most modern countries have experienced the same increase in crime over the past two or three decades as this country--regrettably--but he has now gone on to criticise the Government for their employment policy. What would he say to the Governments of France and Spain, for example, which until recently were socialist Governments, whose unemployment problem, particularly their youth employment problem, is far larger than ours?
Mr. Grocott:
Why does the hon. Gentleman need to go through the complexities of making comparisons between Britain and other countries, when all he needs to do is make the comparison between Britain under a Labour Government and Britain under a Tory Government? He has only to look at the record, particularly on jobs, under Labour Governments of the 1960s and 1970s. People had jobs and security. There was a predictability to people's lives. Any honest trip down memory lane will show what I am saying to be true, so I shall not labour it any further.
I now refer to two areas that particularly affect my constituency but which were omitted from the Queen's Speech. The first is the health service.
We in the Labour party have often been accused of scaremongering about the health service. We have often used the phrase "privatisation of the health service" and we have been told repeatedly by Ministers--from the party which, let us remember, opposed the very creation of the national health service--that we are scaremongering when we talk about privatisation. But there is one area of the health service that is in practice being privatised--the vital service of dentistry. I will explain to the House what is happening in my constituency, although it is true of many other constituencies. I have heard the matter raised many times, and my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley(Mr. Pike), who is present in the Chamber, has raised it before at Question Time.
A report from Shropshire health authority about the availability of national health service dental services states:
According to a Wrekin council report dated 30 September this year, there are now 45 dentists operating in The Wrekin, in 19 practices. Only three of those practices are accepting national health service patients at present. Over the years, as hon. Members will know if they are honest, practices have been actively trying to de-register patients who are currently in receipt of national health service treatment. If that is not creeping privatisation, I do not know what is.
I have made endless attempts to try to get Ministers to try to take action, and I get all sorts of reassuring noises from them. In a letter dated 17 September 1996, the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam), Under-Secretary of State for Health, said:
The second issue, which I shall deal with briefly--again, it is a constituency issue--relates to law and order. The Government's record on this, for all sorts of reasons, is in tatters. There were other omissions from the Queen's Speech, but I am delighted that there will be a Government Bill for a register of paedophiles. I am also delighted that the proposed legislation on stalking will be a Government Bill. I am, however, very sorry that the Government will not allow a free vote on the crucial issue of hand guns.
One policy for which the Home Secretary has consistently argued--it is a classic case of his making a statement at a Tory party conference and then not following through the consequences--is to increase the number of people whom he thinks it right to imprison. Whatever the merits or otherwise of that argument, if one is in favour of it, one should at least provide the accommodation.
Like most of my constituents, I was stunned to discover within the past two or three days that the Home Office plans to build a new prison at Donnington Wood in my constituency, close to housing and very close to a primary school. It is a totally unacceptable location. It obviously has not been thought through properly. The only consolation--at this stage it is important--is that the Director General of the Prison Service, Mr. Richard Tilt, has stated that there will be no question of any decision being made until there has been the fullest consultation with elected representatives and local residents.
I can tell him in advance that the consultation will reveal overwhelming opposition to his proposal. Once again, it is an example of a Home Secretary making a broad policy decision and leaving it to others to implement, without any clear strategy as to where all the new prisons that he is planning will be located.
"Increasing numbers of enquiries were received by the Health Authority from patients seeking dental care. The help desk is currently dealing with up to 150 enquiries per week. Patients with acute pain are directed to those few dentists willing to see them or to Community Dental Service clinics, patients who do not have urgent need of treatment are advised of dentists who have indicated that they are still able to accept new patients in varying categories. In many instances patients are having to travel considerable distances to obtain care."
The health authority knows that. The community health council knows that, and I know that, as do the parish councils and the district councils, but there has been no response whatever from the Government. The figures are appalling.
"I would like to reassure you . . . that the Government is committed to an accessible and effective NHS dental service for all who wish to make use of it."
They might be committed to it, but they are the Government and it is not happening. That key issue was missed out of the Queen's Speech, despite all the references to the health service.
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