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9.52 am
Mr. Lindsay Hoyle (Chorley): I congratulate both you, Madam Speaker, and the President of the Council. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley, North (Mr. Cranston) and the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) on their maiden speeches. I hope that I can follow in the same, successful vein.
I pay tribute to Den Dover, the former hon. Member for Chorley, who represented the constituency for the past 18 years. He worked hard in the general election campaign, and one must always remember that he was a dedicated Member of Parliament. Before him, George Rodgers--a Labour Member--served Chorley well. From 1945 to 1969, Clifford Kenyon--a renowned name in the Chamber--served Chorley as one of the greatest ever Members of Parliament. His knowledge of farming was unquestionably renowned.
I should also like to thank my father, Doug Hoyle. He was a Member from 1974 to 1979, representing the old Nelson and Colne constituency. He then went on to serve, from 1981 to 1987, as the hon. Member for Warrington, North, where my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mr. Hall) represented the adjoining constituency.
My father has since been elevated to the House of Lords. I wish him well, and I thank him for all the support that he has given me.
It is a privilege to represent Chorley, the town of my birth. Perhaps uniquely among hon. Members, I was born in my constituency, and I have always lived and worked in it. I am therefore very proud to have been elected to the House to represent my home town.
Chorley is an historical market town. It comprises more than 50,000 acres--from lowland, near Southport, to the west Pennine moors--and 23 parishes, and it has a population, which is rising, of 96,000. We had much manufacturing, from textiles to such famous companies as Leyland, Royal Ordnance and Horwich Locomotive Works. Although the latter was in Bolton, West, it still employed thousands of people from all over the area, including Chorley. Almost all those companies have now gone.
Royal Ordnance was most recently in the news as a dumping site for bovine spongiform encephalopathy- infected animal offal, thereby serving as a double symbol of Tory failure. The borough unemployment rate now averages 4 per cent.--which is very low--but it is low only because more than 50 per cent. of the working population travels outside Chorley to work, as most of our manufacturing has been destroyed.
Other areas have severe unemployment, which is sometimes 12 per cent. or higher. Recent job losses have included those at NORWEB, GPT, Perrite and John Willman. Well-known companies across the country are still shedding jobs, and that is the danger. I am confident that the Government will deal with the danger.
A recent survey in Chorley showed that more than half the job offers in our jobcentre were for part-time employment. The average weekly wage for those jobs was £103, and one job was advertised at £1 per hour. Such a situation is disgusting and unacceptable in a modern society. We will be a modern society, and we will redress that imbalance. A minimum wage is crucial to achieving our goals.
How personal and national economic security can be obtained under current economic circumstances is inconceivable, and I await the Government's establishment of a commission to examine a minimum wage. Some private utilities earn in a few seconds as much as some people earn in a lifetime, yet they refuse to contribute--as detailed in the Government's finance plans--to the effort to put young people back in work. Our Government have a mandate to achieve that goal.
I was chairman of Chorley borough council's economic development and tourism committee, and I helped to bring investment to Chorley, by working with businesses and showing them the attractions and benefits of what we have to offer.
The Royal Ordnance site, which is now essentially derelict, once employed 30,000 people. Now it offers a few dozen jobs. By maximising the site's potential, we are finally returning investment to our area. We are delighted that the Computer Science Corporation has chosen a redundant building on the site as its base, thereby creating 400--mainly highly skilled--jobs. Over the next four years, Latham, Crossley and Davies, a major Chorley accounting firm, plans to expand, thereby creating 200 new jobs. An extension is also planned to Ackhurst business park, which should create another 130 new jobs.
Those developments were aided by the economic development unit, which plays an active, interventionist role in Chorley business. It does not tell business how to run itself--it works with business to create the economic conditions that business requires. Every week, we visited firms to talk and listen to them and to provide them with contacts with councillors and officers, with whom they could deal directly in the council. As the hon. Member for Chorley, I shall maintain those links and work hard for business and for the local authority. For many years, it has been a revelation in Chorley to have a public-private partnership--which is one basis of the Government's industrial strategy--instead of pitting one sector against another.
I also helped to found the Chorley partnership, to join businesses and community leaders in working together for the town's social and economic development.
Chorley has lacked support from central Government. To have a progressive Government who share our aims will give a major boost to my area. The creation of regional development agencies will be a massive improvement. Chorley's economic development unit dealt with 442 inquiries last year. Most people were seeking advice on sites, on property available in the locality and on potential sources of financial assistance. Little assistance has been available, however, because the previous Government did not believe in it. It is a crying shame that the previous Member of Parliament thought that assisted area status would do nothing for Chorley. I hope that we can redress the balance and put Chorley on a level playing field with neighbouring areas so that we can improve it for the benefit of the people who live there. My experience of Chorley's economic development unit has shown me that development support is exactly what business wants and needs. The creation of a regional development agency will meet that objective.
It is appropriate that Europe should be dealt with at the same time as the economy; they are inextricably linked--one cannot have one without the other. The previous Government did not believe in Europe, so we profited little from the support available while every other country in the European Union did. KONVER is available to areas such as Chorley, which has seen a rundown in its defence industry, yet because of the previous Government's lack of belief and interest, we received hardly any aid to which we were entitled.
What was more shocking was the fact that the rules that applied to parts of the midlands and the south-east were different from those applied to the north-west. There could be 50 per cent. funding in the south-east, but only 35 per cent. in the north-west. There is something tragically wrong about being able to divide the country so easily. If one was cynical, one would assume that it was a political decision.
KONVER money has always been important to us. In 1996, we put in for a £3 million grant from KONVER II--which was a continuation of the old peripheral areas programme--under the auspices of the Chorley business technology centre, to assist with an £8 million development scheme for part of a 1,000 acre site in Chorley which is contaminated, but which can be used for business. We received little support from the Government. The bid was scaled down to £1 million and then to
£500,000, concentrating exclusively on managed workshop facilities at the Chorley business technology centre. It will do little to regenerate the massive Royal Ordnance site, but if we get the money, we shall at least have some start-up units for new businesses.
It is pointless to be a member of the EU when so much of what is available from membership is going begging because the previous Government's ideology was opposed to its positive aspects. By maximising our return from the EU in terms of grants such as KONVER, we can invest in sites, such as the Royal Ordnance site, which have massive potential. Those sites are existing industrial areas that can be developed without damaging the environment or contributing to urban sprawl. That must be of benefit to everyone.
I am delighted that we now have a Government who are committed to getting the most out of the EU by working with their partners and taking all to which we are entitled. I shall lobby Ministers hard to ensure that Chorley's case is heard and to support the early creation of regional development agencies, which will do so much to improve the economic success of regions such as the north-west.
Mr. David Amess (Southend, West):
It is a great honour to follow three splendid maiden speeches. Together with my hon. Friends the Members for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames) and for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth), I find myself having to respond to all the maiden speeches although I am not able to speak twice on this occasion. I will, however, deal with the three maiden speeches that we have heard so far.
These occasions should be special for hon. Members who are speaking for the first time. As the House knows, maiden speeches are the only occasions on which Members are listened to without any interruptions. It is a great occasion when people who have worked hard to be returned to the House speak for the first time.
I greatly enjoyed the speech by the hon. Member for Dudley, North (Mr. Cranston). It is clear that he feels passionately about issues in his constituency and I am sure that his constituents will not be disappointed by his plans to raise matters on their behalf in the years ahead. I am sure that he and his supporters are proud of his efforts today.
We then heard the maiden speech of the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris). It was a most fluent speech and it is clear that the hon. Gentleman has great knowledge of many issues. I know that the whole House will look forward to hearing from him in the future.
I, too, pay tribute to the former Member of Parliament for Oxford, West and Abingdon--John Patten--and my hon. Friends and I greatly appreciated the tribute paid to him by the new hon. Member for that constituency.
The hon. Gentleman referred to John Patten as "controversial" although I am not sure what that means these days. I believe that John Patten came to the House because he believed in things: he was a conviction politician. Every Member of Parliament is entitled to express his or her views. John Patten is a great loss to this House. He added something to all our debates--[Interruption.] Some hon. Members may disagree, but I believe that he is a great loss to this House and I am delighted that he will still serve in the Palace, albeit in the other Chamber.
With regard to the splendid speech by the hon. Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle), the hon. Gentleman's father had not alerted me to the fact that his son would be following him to the House. I knew the hon. Gentleman's late mother, who would have been proud of him, and I am sure that his father is proud of his speech today. It is clear that the hon. Gentleman cares passionately about the area that he now represents. My hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey and I also greatly appreciated his tribute to our defeated colleague, Den Dover. Den was a friend of mine and in the 14 years during which we were together in the House I saw that he worked very hard on behalf of his constituents. He raised constituency issues on every possible occasion and I believe that he is a great loss to this House.
I praise the three splendid maiden speeches this morning. The Leader of the House may smile, but the tradition is that maiden speeches should be uncontroversial. I normally do not have a good word to say about either the Labour party or the Liberal Democrats, but on this occasion I will honour the tradition and will not comment in any shape or form on the points made in those maiden speeches. I wish the three hon. Members well and I wish every success to those who have still to make their maiden speeches.
I wish to raise a number of points. The first concerns all the nonsense about Myra Hindley. I hope that the media will not waste days on end arguing the merits of whether she should eventually be released into society. There are many more important issues about which our constituents are concerned. I hope that this issue will pass in a day because I would regret our spending a great deal of time on it.
Secondly, there was an impression that the Labour party campaign was to a certain extent financed by the trade unions. In the course of this Parliament we shall find out the truth of the matter. I am, however, very concerned about a newspaper that is being distributed. I shall not name the source of my information or the name of the company concerned, but within two weeks of the election a newspaper has been distributed among workers in a company which is a very large employer. The newspaper talks about "the workers' fight" and says that big business is backing Downing street. It refers to Labour's drive against the poor and goes on and on about how the Labour party has already sold the workers out. We can argue about the merits of that later, but it would be a great mistake for individuals in the work forces of some of our large employers to stir up trouble within two weeks of the election--they should compare the state of the British economy in 1997 with how it was in 1979--so I hope that we shall hear no more of that nonsense.
My third point concerns my constituency. I pay a warm tribute to the former Member of Parliament, now Lord Channon, who represented the constituency for nearly
four decades. I know him very well. Whatever anyone says about him, I discovered during the election campaign that even if he did not court great publicity he was highly regarded by his constituents. Like people in every other constituency, the people of Southend, West have every right to be represented by the Member of Parliament whom they choose. He was a splendid Member of Parliament and I am delighted that he will still be serving the country in the other House.
I want to raise some brief issues concerning the constituency. The first relates to houses in multiple occupation. In parts of Southend, West, particularly Westborough and Chalkwell, many large properties have been turned into houses in multiple occupation. Last year I served on the Standing Committee considering the Housing Bill, which gave local authorities the power to set up proper registers and to deal with matters relating to houses in multiple occupation sensibly so that licences are no longer handed out in the cavalier fashion in which they had been given in the past. During the election campaign, I found that some properties were not fit to be determined houses in multiple occupation. The situation has caused great upset to many neighbours.
Southend council has 18 Conservatives, 14 Liberal Democrats and seven Labour members. At least in the local elections there was a swing to the Conservative party. At first we were told that the Labour and Liberal Democrat members would work together, but the latest news is that the Labour party has apparently decided to pull out of the arrangement and will determine its stance on each matter as it comes up. Whoever is prepared to run Southend council, I hope that the Housing Act 1996 will be honoured and that there will be careful determination on houses in multiple occupation.
The next issue that I wish to raise relates to the cockle industry. I am honoured to represent Leigh-on-Sea and the cockle industry is important to my constituency. The fishermen played their part in the second world war, using their vessels to defend their country, and they are an important influence in the local community. The Leader of the House will not have time to deal with the matter in this debate, but I hope that she will ask her officials to find out what is going on.
Before the general election I met the then Minister with responsibility for fisheries, and we are particularly concerned about the Thames Estuary Cockle Fishery Order 1994. I am told that the Kent and Essex Sea Fisheries Committee is implementing the order, but honouring that legislation is causing great distress. The Leigh-on-Sea Shellfish Merchants Association has always recognised that the local fleet is more than capable of outfishing cockle stocks and it has always tried to co-operate with the KESFC on sensible measures to preserve the fishery. Since the order came into effect, however, the KESFC has increased the number of licence holders by granting licences to applicants with dubious track records--or even no track record at all--and the business of law-abiding cockle fishermen is being damaged. I hope that the Leader of the House will find time to get her officials to investigate that.
The penultimate issue that I wish to raise concerns schools. I do not want to start a row in the Chamber about education--I shall save that for another occasion--but in my area we have many grant-maintained schools and selective schools. As I understand it, the Labour party fought the election campaign on the express promise that
if local residents wished to continue to have selective schools, their wish would be honoured. I also understood that the new Government would do nothing to damage grant-maintained schools or, more importantly, the education of children. I have already had one or two letters from head teachers. They do not wish to argue, but simply ask for clarification--I do not believe that we have yet had a debate on education--about what will happen to grant-maintained and selective schools in Essex.
My final point concerns private care homes. You are a fellow Essex Member of Parliament, Mr. Deputy Speaker. My constituency has nearly 100 private care homes. We can argue with the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats about the whys and wherefores of private care homes, but we have a crisis at the moment in Essex. I hope that the Leader of the House, through her officials, will be able to tell us what is happening about that issue.
We have a crisis of bed blocking and rapidly increasing numbers of elderly people. There are many people in local hospitals who should not be blocking beds there, and there are many empty beds in private care homes which would cost less than caring for those people in the public sector. More than 80 beds are blocked in Southend hospital. Essex county council is controlled not by the Conservative party, but by a Labour and Liberal Democrat coalition. We have a Labour Government as well, so for goodness' sake let us sort the matter out. Some 90 per cent. of those people in hospital are awaiting social services funding for long-term care or community care packages. Half of the surgical wards are blocked with medically fit people awaiting discharge.
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