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8.11 pm
Mr. Mark Todd (South Derbyshire): I must first thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak. I should also like to acknowledge the wide-ranging speech made by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, which offered several measures that the electors of South Derbyshire will welcome.
Even if we set to one side the specific points of her dispute with the former Home Secretary, the speech by the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) raised some interesting questions about the accountability of Ministers and the role of truth in the House, which I shall certainly note for myself.
I have one slightly unusual personal acknowledgment to make, as I am not the first member of my family to sit in the House. Many years ago--between 1929 and 1935--my grandfather was a Conservative Member, mostly. I have to say "mostly" because, at that time, politics was even more fluid than it is now and changes of party allegiance were not particularly uncommon. He sat for the constituency of Berwick-upon-Tweed, whose current Member of Parliament spoke earlier.
My grandfather did not speak often in the House, but concentrated mostly on local issues such as farming and fishing and matters relating to ex-service men, of whom he was one. At the end of his time here, he had renounced the Tory Whip having had a dispute with his party. He just about made it as the official Conservative candidate at the 1935 election, but he lost the seat in an unusual example of tactical voting in which the Labour candidate stood aside to ensure that the Liberal candidate would be returned. That gives an insight into my family's political history. It also shows that my grandfather was no party zealot, and I suppose that the Whips will have to take that on board to some extent. He listened carefully to what others had to say. I greatly admired him as an old man, long after he had given up politics, and I missed him greatly when he passed away.
That experience brought one other point home to me. My own son, who is four and a half, is almost exactly the same age as my father was when his father--my grandfather--was elected as a Member of Parliament. I asked my father about his experience of that time. He regarded it as an unpleasant period of his life. He did not see much of his dad and did not enjoy the experience greatly. It has certainly made me strongly committed to making the House a more family-friendly place. I greatly appreciate and support the huge increase in the number of women in Parliament, but have never regarded changing the House's workings as being solely their concern. It is a matter for fathers, too. I want to ensure that I see my son as much as possible and take as much of a part in his upbringing as I can.
I turn now to the more conventional aspects of a maiden speech. The previous Member of Parliament for South Derbyshire was Edwina Currie. I say quite freely that I had a very friendly relationship with her, and anyone who stayed up until 5 am to watch the results of the election on television saw me kiss her on the cheek. We got on
well--rather better, I suspect, than she did with her parliamentary colleagues. Anyone reading her novels will find that the antipathy between her and some fellow Tories comes across more strongly than any antipathy between her and Labour Members. In any event, she predicted extremely accurately the result in her constituency and in the country at large, although I do not think that her contributions were welcomed by her colleagues.
Edwina Currie was, and probably will continue to be, a fighter for causes which were not fashionable in her party. For that, I admire her considerably. It is not conventional to defend gay rights in the Conservative party, but she took that stance. It is not conventional to be as strongly pro-European as she was, but that was her position. She was brave. I by no means agreed with everything she stood for, but there were some other worthwhile nuggets--opposition to the reintroduction of grammar schools and, latterly, opposition to the existence of the hereditary peerage. I have yet to issue her with a membership form for my party, but there were encouraging signs of a shift in our direction towards the end of her time as the Member for South Derbyshire. She pursued individual constituents' cases with vigour and added a good deal of colour to local life. I shall not seek to imitate her, but she certainly offered something that will be missed in some contexts.
Another previous Member of Parliament I must mention is George Brown who represented the seat, also with colour, for a considerable time. He is well remembered by many residents and, when confronted with an unpopular policy, is quoted--in a number of studies of the 1960s and 1970s--as saying, "They'll never stand for it in Swadlincote." He saw that as the benchmark of opinion in his constituency, and I shall do the same. It is the key town in the area where many people have straightforward opinions, freely expressed.
South Derbyshire covers a large area to the south and west of the city of Derby. It also includes 18,000 electors within the boundaries of the city itself, which makes up about a quarter of the electorate. About another quarter is concentrated in the urban area of Swadlincote, which was the heart of the south Derbyshire coalfield and the home of British Coal's largest research centre. The last pit closed in 1988; virtually all the mining jobs have gone, but there is still a little opencast activity. My hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (Mr. Taylor) referred to the industrial heritage of his area. My constituency, which borders his, shares that heritage.
The remaining half of the electorate live in the many villages and hamlets across the area, ranging from villages linked to the mining industry, such as Linton, to those such as Melbourne, which is linked to agriculture and has a stately home nearby. There are several notable country houses in the constituency, including Calke abbey and Melbourne hall, as well as one major public school, Repton, and one prison at Foston Hall. The last two can, possibly, be confused.
Many might consider South Derbyshire to be the centre of the universe. It has one claim in addition to that--it is the precise centre of the United Kingdom population. A hamlet in South Derbyshire marks the point exactly in the middle of the population. That is a small claim to fame,
but it shows that the constituency is a typical, precisely middle England seat in which people want their opinions listened to.
We are also the home of the runaway champions of the Doc Martens league--Gresley Rovers. The team would have been promoted to the Vauxhall Conference had it had adequate ground facilities. I shall give the club my full support in any steps that it takes to gain that.
Agriculture remains a key industry. I well remember attending a packed meeting of Derbyshire farmers with the hon. Member for West Derbyshire (Mr. McLoughlin) at the time of the bovine spongiform encephalopathy crisis. That remains a key issue. We look forward to a clear, progressive policy from the Government that will allow us to market our produce with confidence.
The constituency is the home of Toyota. Its car plant at Burnaston offers more than 2,000 local jobs--a figure due to rise soon to 3,000 with the expansion of the plant. Inward investment on that scale can be maintained only with stable economic policies in a single European market.
Two major power stations still offer jobs in the area, although they have declined with the coal industry and offer far fewer jobs than they did in 1992, when I first stood for the constituency. Much of the area's employment relies on hundreds of small local firms, which offer jobs in a variety of trades and industries. People also commute out of the area for employment in brewing in Burton and engineering in Derby.
Official unemployment is extremely low, but that figure conceals a huge amount of under-employment of people who have given up their jobs with no hope of future employment. That is particularly true of people made redundant from the mining industry. They are still looking for opportunities, but they no longer appear on our registers. We also have one of the highest concentrations of part-time employment in the country. That is a key issue for the Government. We have the opportunity to introduce a minimum wage, which will be of tremendous benefit to such people. I strongly endorse that policy.
Our schools have long laboured under the weight of cuts in Government expenditure. As recently as 1989, we had one of the best pupil-teacher ratios in the country; we now have one of the worst, after seven years of cuts. Three quarters of the primary schools in South Derbyshire will benefit from the introduction of a maximum class size of 30 for five, six and seven-year-olds. That is a critical part of the Government's programme.
Nobody would claim that South Derbyshire suffers disproportionately from crime. The people of the area are some of the friendliest I know. Community really means something in South Derbyshire. Back doors are often left open and people talk freely in the streets. It is not a place of great fear and apprehension. I have listened with interest to hon. Members representing constituents for whom that is not the case. South Derbyshire is not like those areas, but crime has increased steadily there, as everywhere else, more than doubling in the past 20 years.
Our police service is stretched to the limit. Derbyshire constabulary has to protect about 20 per cent. more citizens per officer than the average English county. That imbalance stretches the force terribly. The area below the Trent valley--the major police division for my constituency--normally has four or five officers and one sergeant available to cover a huge area of urban
Swadlincote and many small villages. It is not surprising that the people there seldom see a police officer and are becoming ever more concerned about the safety of their community. The method of calculating police resources used by the previous Government entrenched that difference and disadvantage for my constituency. I have already raised the issue with the Home Secretary and shall urge a review of those methods of calculation.
I unreservedly welcome the proposals to reform the youth justice system and measures against anti-social behaviour. Before he took up his office, the Home Secretary visited an estate in South Derbyshire that, by our peaceful standards, has had problems. His proposals, together with the plans to provide jobs for jobless youngsters, will be strongly welcomed in South Derbyshire.
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