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1.30 pm
Mr. Adrian Sanders (Torbay): I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Torbay (Mr. Thomas), who eloquently provided the House and me with an insight into his constituency. He also paid an eloquent tribute to his predecessors, not that I--being a new hon. Member--have met either one of them. This is my maiden speech, and it is a great honour to be making it.
I am the new Member of Parliament for the constituency of Torbay--the English Riviera. After the general election, I was described in my local newspaper as "Sanders of the Riviera"--a description which we did not dare put on our election posters before the general election, although we may do so at the next one.
It is customary to pay tribute to one's predecessor. Mr. Rupert Allason--who is also known as Nigel West, the writer of spy novels--was a colourful character, and one thing that the Conservative Benches are perhaps missing is some of the colourful characters who lost in the general election. He was certainly one of them.
Rupert Allason was an hon. Member about whom people held strong opinions, one way or the other. Many people thought that he was an excellent Member of Parliament, whereas others held a contrary opinion, which is their right. His constituency will miss him. He had 10 years as an hon. Member, which is a good innings for anyone. With a majority of 12, I would be glad to serve as an hon. Member for 10 years; 10 years in the House--if not longer--would suit me fine.
My constituency is part of the west country, but it is a little different from the rest of the west country. It is an urban and not a rural constituency. I think that I have three farms in my constituency, and I suspect that one of them is a fish farm. As a west country constituency, therefore, it is a little different.
We look out to sea on one side, and we have hills behind us. Beyond them, in the hinterlands, are the moors. Our climate is different from that in the rest of the west country. We are on the Gulf stream and are famed for our palm trees, which are able to survive the winters. The temperatures on our coastline are always one or two degrees higher than they are only a few miles inland, and it is a very pleasant climate for those who have chosen to move to the area to retire. It is a very nice place for retirement, but it is also a very nice place to visit--which is why tourism has been, and remains, our primary industry, although it is not our only one.
Yesterday, I heard the maiden speech of the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Mr. Turner), and I almost thought that he was describing my constituency. He talked about the facades of Regency houses in Brighton, and the social problems and deprivation that lies behind them. In my constituency, the palm trees and gardens provide the facade, but behind those we have the same problems.
We also have a problem of low incomes. A characteristic that we share with the rest of the west country is that we have some of the lowest incomes in the United Kingdom. That has been a major problem for many years, but I hope that the Government will be able to do something to lift people out of poverty and give them more opportunity to find work and create wealth themselves. Small businesses are vital to our local economy. Anything that we can do to help small businesses will be good for my constituents.
My constituency also has a major problem with development. Being an urban area, its growth is restricted. There are hills behind it--it was built on seven hills--so it cannot expand any further. Over the years, houses have been converted into flats, which have been converted into even smaller flats, so there is a great deal of overcrowding.
Developers have a beady eye on the green fields which the Government also expect local authorities to use for housing. That must be resisted because the great attraction of our area is its environment. If we build on it, we shall lose our greatest asset. The major challenge facing us is to balance the demand for extra housing and economic activity with the need to protect our environment.
The environment was high on the list of issues that electors mentioned during the campaign. I hope that the Government will strengthen the Environment Agency and that it will enforce higher standards of water quality so that our sewerage and water treatment scheme, undertaken by the infamous South West Water, includes secondary as well as primary treatment. Stronger European directives are on their way. The treatment scheme currently envisaged for my constituency offers only primary treatment whereas we need secondary treatment to raise it to the standards to be applied in future. We cannot fall behind other tourist resorts in the south-west which already have what is known as the clean sweep programme.
Many issues were raised during the general election, but I shall pick up only on those that are peculiar to my constituency. That brings me back to the issue of water. We have to pay the highest water and sewerage charges in the country, which means that 3 per cent. of the population are expected to meet the cost of cleaning up 30 per cent. of the nation's coastline. That has to be rectified, given that the area has such low incomes.
I urge all hon. Members, especially those who have never visited my constituency, to come to the south-west for a break and sample what we have to offer. Torbay has a future as a tourist resort. The quality of its accommodation has improved dramatically and we have improved the shoulders of the season for the short-term break. However, we need more help from the Government to promote tourism as the south-west does not get as much help as other regions. We need a fair deal in that respect, as in others.
The debate is about the constitution, and I shall deal with one narrow aspect--electoral regulations. All of us are aware of the byzantine rules on election expenses and the various forms that we had to fill in before and after the election. How many of us wondered why there is a space on the nomination paper asking for a "description" of the candidate? I am sure that we all know of candidates who wrote, for example, "farmer" or "banker" when they should have said whether they were a Labour or Liberal Democrat candidate. A couple of years ago, a council candidate in my constituency, who we hoped would sit for us, wrote "bored housewife with masochistic tendencies". It was acceptable under the six-word rule, but it did not really describe her politics.
Those descriptions are there to help voters in their choice and to guide them as to the politics of the candidates. I am afraid that the rules have been abused in the past few years by people who have taken advantage of English law, which does not recognise political parties. They have tried to spoil elections by using a description that confuses voters about which party they represent.
I speak with considerable personal experience because I was the Liberal Democrat candidate for Devon and East Plymouth at the 1994 European election, when a Literal Democrat candidate, whose surname came above mine on the ballot paper, because it began with an H, polled 12,000 votes without having put out any literature or posters or being interviewed. People told us afterwards and signed affidavits saying that they did not know the name of the candidate.
It is difficult for candidates to get their name known across seven parliamentary constituencies at a European election. Perhaps it is a little easier in one parliamentary constituency, but there are problems even then--we have only to look at what happened in Winchester, where somebody stood as a Liberal Democrat and polled 650 votes. The eventual winner was elected with a majority of just two. That is nice for me, because I have a majority of just 12 and at least I can say that I have a majority six times the size of somebody else's. I do not know how many other hon. Members can say that.
My point is a serious one. We do not need a big change to rectify the situation. An animal welfare activist group threatened to put up a number of Conversative candidates at the last election. I do not believe that it carried out that
threat, but the threat is always there that people might seek to undermine our democratic process. I spoke to people after the European election about how their vote did not go the way that they intended. They had a real sense of having had their democratic rights stolen.
We have to accept that people vote for parties. Some people still vote for the person, but most decide to go with a party. If they do not know the name of the candidate, they will look down the list for the first description that closely matches the party for which they have decided to vote. Therein lies the problem for those of us with a surname beginning with a letter towards the end of the alphabet. I hope that during this Parliament--the sooner, the better--something can be done to correct the problem and get rid of the fear of people's votes being stolen and the wrong people being elected.
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