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Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is straying from the Bill.
Mr. Blunkett: I accept your ruling, Mr. Deputy Speaker. We should heed the words that are so important to lifting standards, at which at least part of the Bill is aimed, to ensure that there is hope that young people will have a job, training and a future to look forward to.
That is why we have suggested that we reach a consensus on the parts of the Bill on which the majority of hon. Members entirely agree--the provisions aimed at lifting standards, improving discipline and encouraging common sense--and set aside the provisions that divide the education service, return us to the past and are designed to look backwards rather than to a new century.
Let us ensure that the right hon. and hon. Members who served on the Committee have not wasted their time, and that the Bill can be passed by both Houses by consensus, instead of the continuing divisions in the run-up to a general election which represent the fag-end of a Government who have failed to deliver and failed in their ideas, and who are offering no new pledges of any worth to the British people.
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The Government have no new ideas. Education authorities will not be abolished. The Secretary of State said that this evening, and spelled out the role of local education authorities at Harrogate on 17 January. There will not be a common funding formula, because it would immediately result in a cut of £600 million in the resources available to schools. That is the sum allocated over and above the Government's standard spending assessment. We know that there will not be the wholesale imposition of grant-maintained status because, to her credit, the Secretary of State has resisted it. We know that there cannot be 100 per cent. delegation, because that would wipe out key elements which ensure that support is available to children with special needs and which provide the services that all schools require, whatever their status.
Mr. Don Foster:
It is a great pity that a lengthy and unnecessary debate on corporal punishment meant that many important amendments were not discussed today.
We are debating a Bill of two halves--the first half good, the second half bad. The first half deals with baseline assessment and inspection of LEAs and contains measures to improve discipline in schools and to improve careers and education guidance. I and my party entirely support and welcome those measures.
The second half, however, is thoroughly bad and will cause considerable damage to the education service. It is based on the fundamental philosophy that has underpinned so much of Conservative education thinking in recent years--that the marketplace will improve the quality of education. I do not agree. I believe that the introduction of the marketplace has damaged education and that we should be seeking to develop co-operation and partnership within the education service.
The Bill makes a sixth attempt to refloat the failed flagship policy of grant-maintained status, which British people simply do not want. That policy is not levering up standards, but creating a two-tier divisive system of education.
The Bill also attempts to introduce further competition through selection, which denies the parental choice that the Government are so proud to promote. Let us never forget that when schools select pupils, parents no longer have the choice. As so many Conservative Members have made absolutely clear, selection provides escape routes for the few, but it provides very little support and help for the many.
We desperately need an education system that is based on partnership and co-operation and provides high-quality education for all young people. That means increased investment in our education service. We need to introduce high-quality early-years education for three and four-year-olds. Those measures should have been included in the Bill, but were missed out.
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Above all, if we are to lever up standards, we must recognise the vital importance of teachers and others who work in education. The Bill fails to give them the encouragement that they need to understand how valuable they are to the education service.
It is a Bill of two halves: half is thoroughly bad, but because half is good and we want that half to progress, we shall not oppose its Third Reading tonight.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill read the Third time, and passed.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris):
With permission, I shall put together the motions relating to delegated legislation.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 101(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Carrington.]
Sir Jerry Wiggin (Weston-super-Mare):
First, I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for Construction, Planning and Energy Efficiency for taking the trouble to reply to the debate this evening. I am conscious that the hinge on which I have to hang ministerial responsibility is not the direct planning issue that I am about to raise. I hope that my hon. Friend will be tolerant when I describe the events that have persuaded me to draw ministerial attention to the history of the Willowmead temporary gipsy caravan site.
In March 1992, some hard-core arrived on the site. By the time of the general election, the gipsies had arrived on the site; they are still there in 1997. In the 1970s and 1980s, planning permission was given for about 17 caravans on that small piece of land, originally two acres with a two-acre paddock next door. Then the land was acquired for the new primary distributor road linking Weston-super-Mare and the M5.
In 1991, the then Woodspring district council revoked the previous planning permission and declared that the land should be returned to agricultural status.
It being Ten o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Carrington.]
Sir Jerry Wiggin:
Avon county council, which has emerged from this matter with no credit, was a Labour-controlled council, supported and kept in power by a substantial number of Liberal Democrats. The council claimed that the Willowmead site had planning permission for holiday caravans. The truth is that most of the site had been used for the construction of the new highway. The amount that remained allowed space for only three static vans, and in any event the planning permission had been withdrawn.
That, in itself, was a scandalous misinterpretation of the planning laws. I am afraid that the theme of my debate must be that there has been so much precedent in planning law over such a long period--nearly 50 years--that it is now essential that someone, sometime, examine the general principles behind the planning laws. For some time, I have advocated that a royal commission on planning be set up.
If there is a Gilbert and Sullivan situation like that, where a local authority grants planning permission for gipsy caravans based on the fact that, once upon a time, holiday caravans were allowed to be on the site, it is pretty obvious that the local authority is contravening the spirit, if not the letter, of the law.
Avon county council got caught out. It had allowed gipsies on to a site that it had used for roadworks. It had leased the quarry from an astute landowner who well knew the terms of his lease and who took Avon county council to court. The council was forced to eject the travellers from Racecourse quarry, and it had to find somewhere else to put them. In a desperate move, it put them on that tiny bit of land.
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The county council made a planning application for emergency temporary use of the site. There were objections from Woodspring district council, Locking parish council, 50 local residents and me, and a petition with more than 10,000 signatures. Nevertheless, Avon granted itself permission to use the site for three years, expiring at the end of 1995.
Part of Avon's plan was to use Willowmead until the permanent travellers' site at Hewish was available. That was a privately owned site. An application had been submitted by a private owner and, although I received a petition of about 700 signatures, I am happy to say that I believe that site has settled down and is causing no difficulty. It appears to be well run.
One would have thought that, during the three years, Avon county council, knowing that the site had only temporary planning permission, might make some provision to resite the travellers from the Willowmead site. To the best of my knowledge, Avon county council made no effort to relocate the travellers from Willowmead to Hewish and, despite the fact that there was only temporary planning permission, it made no effort to find an alternative.
Avon council's structure plan contains policy H12, which identifies the need for about 100 pitches on either permanent or transfer sites throughout the whole of the former county of Avon. Without Willowmead, there are already 26 permanent pitches. There is no provision for a travellers' site within the Locking castle area local action plan.
It may be asked, "Why is all this so awful?" I have it on record that there are endless complaints about the site. Principally, they are about dogs trespassing on the neighbouring caravan site--the legitimate one that is used by one of my constituents as a commercial enterprise--chickens digging up flowers, bonfires, all-night parties, verbal abuse, blocking the entrance of neighbours and trespass. That has led to a reduction in business, and, sadly, even a drop in the grade of Airport View caravan and camping park, which has been in place for many years and was a great asset to the town. Rubbish is deposited everywhere and fencing is torn up. There is even a record of a goat making a nuisance of itself. I do not suppose that information will come as any surprise to the House, because so often sites of the sort that I am describing produce such complaints.
The local government ombudsman was brought in in April 1995. He ruled against the local authority on several counts. Some modest compensation was paid to some of my constituents. Further applications have been made to him, because much of the nuisance has persisted.
In November 1995, bearing it in mind that the planning permission was about to expire, Avon county--it knew that it was going into oblivion in April 1996--had the gall to apply for a new extension running until 30 September 1996. Again, I complained to my hon. Friend the Minister, saying, "This is really not good enough. You must intervene and call a public inquiry."
The saga has moved on a little and may well still be playing out in the next 24 hours. In January, North Somerset council, the successor to Woodspring, controlled by Liberal Democrats, applied for a six months' extension to 31 March. It did so two or three days either side of the previous permission running out. No one takes any notice of how long a permission runs: councils go flat-footed into it, ignore the dates, give themselves retrospective permission and away they go for another few months.
Whether North Somerset council will decide tomorrow to give or to extend permission--it is clear that that is what its officers want--is not a matter for us tonight. The problem is that, five years after the saga started, there is no change and no solution.
Various criteria are being used to find a new site. Those criteria are based partly on Avon's requirement that if the site be shut alternative accommodation be found. The traveller who clearly is not prepared to confine himself to the social customs of the rest of the population now seems to be treated infinitely better than the ordinary citizen. The council is considering spending between £350,000 and £400,000 to provide pitches on these 13 sites. It has selected two sites: one in Sandford and one in Hutton Moor road, both of which are entirely unsuitable. The latter is next to a large residential park of elderly people, who have suffered for many years because of trouble with itinerant gipsies; and the former is in a quiet backwater between two nice villages where gipsies have never been and have no business to be.
I question the parameters that have been set. Why must the new site be within five miles of a former school, and why should there be facilities for this, that and the other? The truth of the matter is that the gipsy problem is about integration. It has plagued me all my life--from the time I was a farmer, and throughout my political life. There has been bodging, hedging and dipping rather than facing up to the proper solution.
The Liberal Democrat council in North Somerset is finding practical difficulties. It was responsible for the 13 sites being placed in my constituency. The gipsies did not want to come there: they lived and worked near Bristol, and were imported by Avon county council, which was dominated by the city of Bristol, which did not want anything to do with the gipsies. It pushed them out to the
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I appreciate that there is no easy solution to this problem. The Government have changed the parameters: councils are no longer required to find gipsy sites. Strangely enough, my morning paper contains a letter from Councillor Laband, who represents one of those areas. He says:
That the draft Plant Protection Products (Basic Conditions) Regulations 1997, which were laid before this House on 10th December, be approved.
Question agreed to.
That the draft Control of Pesticides (Amendment) Regulations 1997, which were laid before this House on 12th December, be approved.--[Mr. Peter Ainsworth.]
9.58 pm
and would generally intervene only where issues of regional or national significance are raised. Although of local importance, I do not consider that this latest application raises issues which are significant enough to justify the Secretary of State calling it in for own determination. Indeed, even were this not so, it is unlikely, given the time it takes to determine called in applications, that a decision would be reached much before March 1997."
That paragraph is a pretty permanent feature of the word processor that is driven by the Department of the Environment office for the south-west. It is by no means the first time that that answer--not in this case but in equally important planning matters which I have tried to raise--has been churned out. I urge my hon. Friend and others who are in charge of these matters in future to recognise, especially if they have some experience of these issues, that hon. Members do not seek to press Ministers for public inquiries, which are expensive and lengthy, unless they believe that a principle is involved. I believe that the principle involved in this instance is one of serious and long-standing injustice.
"Nothing is more likely to cause heartfelt anxiety to local residents."
He then says that he wants the true gipsy culture to survive, which I have always thought was rubbish. He finishes by saying that we must have true integration.
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