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7.47 pm
Mr. David Kidney (Stafford): Mr. Deputy Speaker, as I rise to speak for the very first time, may I, as one of the newcomers, wish you well in your new post?
I represent the constituency of Stafford--as a result of boundary changes, not the same constituency that it was in 1992. However, the man who represented Stafford in the previous Parliament is still in the House--the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash), who, I am pleased to see, has just rejoined us in the Chamber. He now represents the adjoining constituency. I congratulate him on his good judgment in standing for that seat, not Stafford.
Earlier today, I heard my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister speak of the hon. Member for Stone and other Conservative Members who are of the same view on matters European. In the constituency of Stafford, many people deeply respect the arguments that the hon. Member for Stone consistently advances, although I hasten to say that I do not agree with those arguments.
The constituency of Stafford is centred on the county town of the same name, a place which is rich in history, in the talent of its people and in the green and pleasant grounds that surround it. It is also an area of great communications, with the M6 hard by the town of Stafford, and it is a major stop on the west coast main line. When, eventually, later this year, the Eurostar trains venture beyond London, Stafford will be the only stop in Staffordshire for those services.
Unfortunately, some members of the public confuse Stafford with a great town called Stratford-on-Avon, and it is not unusual for tourists in Stafford to be disappointed to be unable to find there the birthplace of Shakespeare--although, happily, every summer at Stafford castle there is an open-air Shakespeare festival.
Stafford's literary connection with the House is best shown in the person of the great playwright, Richard Sheridan, who represented the town for 20 years or so in the 18th century. He spent his maiden speech defending himself against a complaint of bribing his electors--an experience which I am pleased not to be following. Unfortunately, Mr. Sheridan died in debt--another experience in which I hope not to follow him.
I have but one predecessor who was a Labour representative for Stafford--Mr. Stephen Swingler, who took part in the great landslide victory of 1945 and represented Stafford only until the following election in 1950. That is another example which I hope not to follow. Mr. Swingler bounced back in 1951, winning a by-election at Newcastle-under-Lyme, which he represented faithfully and loyally until his death in 1969, serving in Labour Governments in the 1960s, with responsibilities for transport, health and social security. To this day, his life and his service for the town are commemorated in Newcastle-under-Lyme in an annual Stephen Swingler memorial lecture.
I have sat through the whole of today's proceedings in the Chamber. I have thoroughly enjoyed the contributions of right hon. and hon. Members, but I invite them to look at the text of the Gracious Speech with different eyes. I ask them to consider the comment of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister about some of the reasons for the declining state of our society. Among those reasons, he mentioned the loosening of family ties. I invite hon. Members to measure the proposals in the Gracious Speech by their effects on families, and particularly on children. We representatives have a special responsibility to speak up for children. Understandably, we are in thrall to electors, but we also have a duty to represent those too young to vote.
Education is clearly the Government's priority for the coming term. We have a chance to improve the lives of all children. Their schooldays will be the best days of their lives if they receive a quality education. Surely ensuring smaller class sizes in the earliest years at school and improving school standards are the best ways to raise the quality of that education. Through education, we can break down the barriers to ensure opportunity for all--in work, in parenting or in citizenship.
The measures on law and order will also benefit children. They, too, are victims of crime--often silent victims. They will benefit from a greater feeling of security in their formative years by being brought up in safer communities. Those few who are young offenders will rightly be punished faster and earlier to ensure that not all children are labelled as troublemakers, harming their relationships with older members of the community.
The measures in the Gracious Speech on housing will also benefit all children, ensuring that they will have a place of shelter and refuge. I hope that we shall also have regard to ensuring freedom of choice in the kind of homes that children live in with their parents or guardians--whether those homes are owner-occupied, rented in the private sector, rented from what are now, in shorthand, called social landlords, or involve one of the many innovative types of tenure that have been developed somewhere between those categories. I hope that, as many hon. Members have suggested, the release of capital receipts held by local authorities will assist in ensuring that children are brought up in safe and secure homes, both through the building of new homes to rent by social landlords and through the renovation of homes that are presently too cold or damp.
Mr. John Wilkinson (Ruislip-Northwood):
I add my congratulations to those of other right hon. and hon. Members on your elevation to your new post, Mr. Deputy Speaker, along with my hon. Friends the Members for Central Suffolk and Ipswich, North (Mr. Lord) and for Saffron Walden (Sir A. Haselhurst), who is the Chairman of Ways and Means.
I was, perhaps somewhat condescendingly, going to observe that we have been privileged to hear outstanding speeches from the mover and seconder of the Loyal
Address--the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) and the hon. Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin). They made speeches of originality, verbal distinction and wit from which hon. Members old and new could benefit. Clearly, the new Members needed no such example or instruction. The two new Members who have contributed this afternoon--the hon. Members for Lewes (Mr. Baker) and for Stafford (Mr. Kidney)--demonstrated rare talent. Both made succinct speeches, paying warm tributes to their predecessors, as is appropriate. I am sure that we shall hear many speeches of similar distinction from new Members in the days and weeks ahead.
While we are paying tributes, I must, as others have, pay particular tribute to the late Nicholas Baker, who was a brave and good servant of his constituents and of the House. I must also pay a special tribute to my great parliamentary friend and colleague, Sir Michael Shersby, the former Member for Uxbridge, who died but a few days ago. I could not have had a better parliamentary neighbour or a more loyal friend. I believe that only Michael could have held Uxbridge against the tidal wave of the swing to Labour in London north of the Thames.
He was, for me, the model parliamentarian--infinitely courteous, diligent to the extreme and capable of taking endless pains on behalf of his constituents. Together with that remarkable attention to detail, he displayed a rare diversity of interests in this place. He was the president of the London Green Belt Council and championed the preservation of the environment of outer London. He was a member of the Public Accounts Committee and the Chairman of many Standing Committees. He was a spokesman for the Police Federation and chairman of the Falkland Islands group.
While we are paying tribute to those who have died, we should not forget the many who have lost their seats. I should like to single out one, who was also a parliamentary neighbour--Dr. Rhodes Boyson, former Member for Brent, North. He was an incomparably distinguished parliamentarian, inimitable in every way.
The best part of the Queen's Speech was the start--the royal beginning, if I may put it that way--in which Her Majesty gave a summary of her gracious programme of hospitality to foreign heads of state. The President of Brazil is to come in the latter part of this year and the Emperor and Empress of Japan are coming next year. Her Majesty also referred to her forthcoming visit to India and Pakistan, presumably to commemorate the 50th anniversary of their independence in August. We are, indeed, fortunate to have as head of state a monarch who is so assiduous and who fulfils, on behalf of the nation, important responsibilities in foreign affairs which are crucial to the dignity of our country and encourage trade and good relations between nations--not least in the subcontinent where there is a dispute about the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir which has, unfortunately, yet to be resolved.
Moving on to the governmental part of the Queen's Speech, I am afraid to say that the quality begins quickly to deteriorate. There is a brief sentence and then one moves on to a thoroughly bad paragraph in which we find a proposal of supreme socialist vindictiveness aimed against children who cannot help the twin accidents of their birth--that they are clever, but that their families are poor.
Private schools benefit from having pupils from a variety of backgrounds, and poorer pupils benefit from the environment of private schools which enables them to make new friends outside their normal social circle. It is therefore a thoroughly retrograde step to do away with the assisted places scheme, as the Government propose.
If the Government want to do something useful in education and at relatively little cost, they should review the Greenwich judgment to prevent children from flooding across borough boundaries in London to the detriment of the ability of parents in my constituency and other constituencies affected to send their children to the local school of their choice.
Like the hon. Member for Lewes (Mr. Baker), who has now left the Chamber, I bitterly regret the fact that there was no mention of environmental protection in the Queen's Speech. It is an issue of enormous importance, especially to outer London and the suburbs of our big cities.
Allowing local authorities to keep the capital receipts from the sale of council houses, as is proposed in the Queen's Speech, sounds good. The proposal is to be welcomed inasmuch as it will enable the renovation of dilapidated properties, but if, as has happened in my borough of Hillingdon, it encourages the development by a socialist local authority of large-scale social housing on recreation grounds, on any open space that can be found, on playing fields, on green chain designated areas and even in green-belt areas, it could be thoroughly retrograde and deeply damaging to the quality of life on the periphery of our big cities. I regret that the Government did not mention in the Queen's Speech the importance of stimulating the private rented sector to meet our undoubted housing needs.
In the general election campaign, one theme recurred time and again, on the doorstep and in public meetings, in a way that no other issue in my recollection of eight general election campaigns has recurred--except perhaps the issue of immigration in the 1970 election. The issue was, of course, our relationship with Europe. It is an issue which cannot be shirked and which we must confront. We must recognise that there is, in principle, a big divide between the instinctive attitudes of the Labour party and those of the Conservative party.
The Prime Minister took pride in the fact that the Government would continue to arrogate to themselves sole responsibility for justice and home affairs, for foreign affairs and for defence. Vetoes in those areas of policy would be retained by our country. That is well and good, and appropriate, but the steady accretion of powers by Europe in other areas will go on and has already been accelerated by the advent to power of this Labour Administration. The instincts and inspiration behind the social chapter may sound fine, but social policy is properly an area in which, according to our traditions and our ways of doing things, we should be able to decide, as we should in industrial and employment policy.
Although there is a mention of the common fisheries policy and of the common agricultural policy, there is no commitment to what will be essential--the return of powers in those areas to this nation. The resources of our seas are properly ours, and we must understand that the common agricultural policy is not sustainable and not compatible with the objective in the Queen's Speech of enlargement of the European Union. We can have the one,
but not the other--not easily, not effectively and not smoothly. We need to bring the countries of central and eastern Europe into a relationship of community with us in the west at the earliest possible date. We entered--did we not?--a European community. It is to a community of nations that we should return and we should set aside the goal of ever-closer union because that goal will never be achievable and will bring with it fundamental stresses and strains. A fundamental issue in that context will shortly be the single currency.
I have a brief observation on referendums and the constitutional development of our country which the Government propose in the Queen's Speech. We are to have referendums for Scotland, for Wales and for the governance of London--I refer to the proposed Greater London authority and the directly elected mayor for the capital. There is a big omission, is there not? Why are we to have no referendum on our relationship with the European Union, which is the most important constitutional development in this country and which is changing apace in a way that many British people find wholly undesirable and over which they have no say? We had the extraordinary spectacle of a political party standing in the general election on that one issue and securing a significant share of votes, especially in seats that proved marginal and where a change of party representation occurred.
We should have the proposed referendums; I am a democrat and I welcome them. If it is the wish of the electorate of London to have a Greater London assembly and a directly elected mayor, well and good. I look forward to getting Conservative majority representation in the Greater London assembly and to having a Tory mayor for the whole of London.
Furthermore, I urge the Government, before it is too late and before tension has built up too much in our body politic, to think again about a referendum on our relationship with the European Union. It should not be just on the narrow matter of the single currency; it should not be just an endorsement of a decision already taken by the Government and by Parliament. It should be on the fundamentals of our relationship. Do we wish to be in, do we wish to be out, or do we wish to have a relationship of free trade only?
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