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8.26 pm
Dr. Peter Brand (Isle of Wight): I am proud to stand here as the newly elected Member for the Isle of Wight. I shall not go through a long historical or geographical description of the island, other than to say that it is the only English constituency that cannot be reached except by ferry. I shall come back to that later.
I gladly follow convention by praising my predecessor, Barry Field, who was assiduous in the House in extolling the virtues of the Isle of Wight, especially as a tourist attraction, destination and investment opportunity for the new industries that we are trying to attract. He was also an assiduous constituency Member of Parliament, dealing with the casework generated by the largest constituency in the country. I am beginning to learn about that to my cost. While praising Barry Field, I should like to put a rumour to rest: I was not the doctor who advised him to give up his constituency duties on medical grounds.
I am proud to extol the virtues of the island to the House, but I also have a duty to point out at every opportunity the social and economic disadvantages suffered by the island's economy. It is an irony that a sunny place with a wonderful population of very nice people suffers from having the lowest gross domestic product of any county in the country. It has an unbalanced population, with the highest number of elderly people in any county, the highest number of unemployed people in the south and the greatest dependency on low-paid, insecure and part-time jobs. We cannot survive on a good climate alone. I shall point out as often as I can to the new Government that we are looking for a fairer economic deal.
The Isle of Wight is the only significantly settled island in Great Britain--or, indeed, in the European Community--not in receipt of any kind of government
assistance for being an island. There is no island factor in the distribution of funds for health, local authority services or our ferries. If Governments can fund 100 per cent. of motorways and trunk roads and pour millions of pounds of subsidy into the privatised railways, why can they not find money for one of the earlier privatisations--our ferries?
Returning to the subject of today's debate, the Isle of Wight probably has the highest concentration of prisons in the country. The prisons and the prison officers make a valuable contribution to our community and to our economic life. Much has been said, especially by theright hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald(Miss Widdecombe), about Parkhurst and the escape, which was entirely predictable. Essential security work asked for by the then governor was not carried out, because funds were not forthcoming from the Home Office. We were not surprised that an escape took place, although we were relieved that the prisoners were recaptured, thanks to the vigilance of an off-duty prison officer and the efforts of the police.
The local community was annoyed at the way in which the governor was scapegoated to hide the Government's inaction in making the prison safe. The Prison Service's loss has been the island's mental health service's gain and John Marriott now makes a big contribution to the island's community by looking after mental health services. However, he is owed an apology by the Home Office for his shameful treatment.
Hon. Members may be surprised to hear that, following the escape, millions of pounds were invested in upgrading security at Parkhurst. The previous Home Secretary, on completion of that work, immediately downgraded the security status of the prison, resulting in the loss of hundreds of prison officer jobs. That was crazy. We have one of the best penal institutions in the country, but we are not using it.
I make another plea to the Government--they must think about what penal institutions are for. The extraordinary speech by the hon. Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne) illustrated the anguish of prison officers. Obviously, prisons have to be there to contain people who are irredeemably criminal--there may be some of those--but prisons should also ensure that people leaving prison have a better chance of making a positive contribution to society than when they went in. I hope that the educational work and the mental health services that have been dismantled in our prisons over the past 10 years will be restored. We must get people out of prison and allow them to make a positive contribution to society.
Mr. Michael Connarty (Falkirk, East):
May I welcome you to your new position, Mr. Deputy Speaker? I am very happy to follow the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Dr. Brand), who talked about co-operation. In Scotland, we tend not to see the Liberal Democrats as the
I very much welcome the speech by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. It is a joy to be on this side of the Chamber and looking across at the much-depleted--in fact, totally denuded--Conservative Benches.
Mr. Michael:
The Conservative Benches are empty.
Mr. Connarty:
Empty is the word, as someone might take the word "denuded" the wrong way. The Opposition are certainly lacking in strength tonight.
Everyone welcomes the commitment of the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary to allow a free vote on a total ban on handguns. That is particularly true of Scots. Everyone recalls that it was not individual Members who failed to deliver a total ban; the three-line Whip by the then Conservative Government produced the majority of 25 that night. That was wrong and, on a free vote, I have no doubt that the total ban will be carried.
I have previously referred in the House to what I call "my village from hell", which encapsulates the problems that we are trying to tackle with our crime and disorder proposals. I wish to refer to community safety. I would like to update the House on the village, which is as bad as ever--if not worse. More than 20 houses are now boarded up. There have been attempts to bring together the community, the police and the local authority to do something, but their efforts break down every time because individual citizens in the village are afraid of the families who are causing the trouble. For example, on one occasion, there were 30 witnesses to an offence, but, by the time the case came to court three or four months later, no one was willing to testify. The system has broken down because something is lacking in the present law. I hope that the Government will look seriously at ways of strengthening the hand of citizens and authorities in dealing with this matter.
There is no law to make a local authority enforce its tenancy agreements. If tenants are consistently causing complaints, there is a remedy available to the local authority, which can remove these people from their tenancy. That reinforces the fact that they are known to be the cause of the problem. Local authorities say that cases must go through the police and the courts, and that individuals must put their safety on the line before they will enforce tenancy agreements. We must strengthen the hand of local authorities to allow them to take swift action against threatening citizens.
A second issue of concern among my constituents is crime relating to paedophilia. There seem to be two trains of thought running through Scotland. We have a notorious character in Scotland--who has been lauded and given great publicity--called Mags Haney from Stirling. She goes around with a gang, and they stood outside the court during a recent case involving the molestation of a young person shouting, "Kill the beast." Obviously, they were trying to whip up public anger.
The other approach comes from a village in my constituency where there was a recent act of molestation against a young person. One of the mothers in the village said that local people were not vigilantes interested in breaking the legs of the person who was found guilty, but added that sentences such as he received had left them with no faith in the system. The man involved had a long history of offences against young people, but was charged in such a way that the maximum sentence was three months. The sheriff almost apologised to the people in the court for the length of the sentence. There must be some way in which a sheriff or a judge can question whether the disposal of the case by the procurator fiscal in Scotland or the prosecuting authority elsewhere is appropriate and can call for a retrial on a much stronger charge. Clearly, the charge in this case was not adequate for the crime committed.
Incarceration, and longer incarceration, for those found guilty is what the public want, and we should provide that to protect children. I have spoken previously with the Minister of State, Home Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael), and have said that we have to consider treating people who commit such crimes as ill--not insane, but mentally ill. Therefore, they should be compelled to get treatment to get to the bottom of their behaviour, which results in them abusing the most innocent. People might scream that this a breach of civil liberties, but I would argue that civil liberties for one's self derive from respect for the civil liberties of everyone else--especially the young and the vulnerable who are abused by paedophiles.
I welcome the mention in the Queen's Speech of the appointment of a drugs supremo--although I always worry when someone is appointed as a tsar or an emperor. We are about to abolish the rights of one unelected organisation, and I do not like the idea of another being appointed. When I worked on a crime and drugs campaign in Scotland, I met every chief constable in Scotland. I was told that, in some areas, between 50 and 70 per cent. of all crimes are drug-related offences. People are either trying to get money for drugs, or older criminals are selling drugs to people who then commit crimes to provide money for drugs.
May I give a word of warning? In some parts of Scotland, they have been using methadone replacement treatment for heroin users, and we have had several deaths in my constituency among people taking methadone as a substitute for heroin. There is also a strong rumour that methadone is being sold--it used to be methadone jellies, but is now methadone spittle. People have to drink it in the chemists, but they then go outside, spit it into a canister and sell it on. I see the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean) grueing, as we say in Scotland--screwing up his face--at that idea. We have to be worried about the use of methadone, because it is clear that people want to get money for other drugs and do not therefore use the methadone as given.
I know from consideration in the last Parliament of what became the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 that it is intended to put people in prison for longer. It seems to me that we have to think seriously about the role of prisons. I do not know whether it will be in the remit that the Government give themselves--I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister of State will tell us--but we should look at what prisons do. Prisons must protect people, but
we must also think about the second role, referred to by the hon. Member for Isle of Wight, which is rehabilitation of prisoners so that they do not reoffend.
I want to put two points on the agenda. First, the Government should consider banning alcopops--not only banning advertising of alcopops, but banning them from sale. We banned the Skoal Bandits nicotine chews, even though that had jobs implications in Scotland. It was even supported by the hon. Member who represented the area concerned. We should similarly consider banning alcopops, despite the fact that the industry is clearly doing a roaring trade. Alcopops do lead young people to drink.
Secondly, I should like to see laws for the banning of drinking in the streets which do not leave the matter to local authorities and licensing boards. We have laws that talk about taking drink away from under-age drinkers, but I plead with the Government to think seriously about banning entirely drinking in the streets anywhere apart from designated licensed areas. That would go a long way towards dealing with some of the problems in our society.
My final plea is to do something about white collar crime, which is not mentioned in the Queen's Speech. I made a plea several years ago when a building company went down, taking with it £200,000-worth of supplies that had been supplied by a company in my local area, and we could do nothing about it. I have recently had reported to me a case in my constituency of a building company that has three businesses: one buys the supplies, another owns the lands and the third sells the houses. I have had it reported to me by one of the companies that supplied it, Carron Building Supplies, that it suspects that the first company--the one that buys the supplies--will go into receivership in the next week or so. Everyone who has supplied that company with the materials to build the houses that are there will be left with no redress, because the company has no assets. That is not a business failure: it is fraud.
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