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11.41 am
Dr. Brian Iddon (Bolton, South-East): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Mr. Marsden) on his maiden speech and on being the first Labour Member for that constituency. I want to begin
with a denial--I am not 27. It came as a great shock to me to see in The Observer after my election that I was down as one of the new young intake. It has never been more true that one should not believe all one reads in the newspapers, even the quality ones.
It is a great privilege to be elected to represent the constituency of Bolton, South-East, which comprises parts of the old Bolton borough along with villages such as Little Lever and Kearsley and the former mining community of Farnworth. It is a mixed rural and urban community with a large Muslim population.
We made history on 1 May by returning for the first time three Labour Members representing the great town of Bolton. We have a Labour Member of the European Parliament and we have a substantial Labour council. Together, we shall put great pressure on the shakers and movers in this place to bring benefits to the people of my constituency and the rest of Bolton.
Burnden park, the former home of Bolton Wanderers football club, is in my constituency. I say "former" because that great football team is on the move--it is going up to the premier division following an extremely successful season and is moving to a new stadium at Horwich, which is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Ms Kelly). Before that great football team leaves my constituency, I want to place on record my congratulations on its past success and my best wishes for its future success.
The former member for my constituency was David Young, a Scotsman born in Greenock. He became a teacher in the midlands before entering Parliament in 1974 as the Member for the Bolton, East constituency. I helped David fight that 1974 election, so I have known him for a long time, and I was his constituency chairman twice. From 1977 to 1979, David served as the parliamentary private secretary to the then Secretary of State for Defence, Fred Mulley. As hon. Members will know, David had a keen interest in foreign affairs and was well travelled. He was an excellent constituency member and was in touch with all the electorate of Bolton, South-East, including the large Muslim community.
Bolton has suffered badly over the past two decades. Its textile and engineering industries have been decimated, with the loss of thousands of jobs. The miners have all lost their jobs and there is no longer a single pit left in the north-west following the recent closure of Parkside colliery. However, because of the robust nature of Boltonians and a keen interest by the local authority in creating new jobs, Bolton has picked itself up and adopted new skills.
I encourage anyone who has not visited this great town to do so. Outside Manchester it has one of the finest shopping centres in the north-west and our markets are a tourist attraction. It has a strong cultural tradition, with several fine museums, including the Hall-ith-Wood museum where Samuel Crompton invented the spinning mule. Arkwright also worked in the town. They were the pioneers of the industrial revolution. More recently, Sir Harry Kroto, educated at Bolton school, won the Nobel prize for chemistry. As a fellow chemist, I should like to add my congratulations to him. I should also mention Susan Isaacs, who was one of the pioneers of nursery education. I am pleased to learn that the Government have a keen interest in promoting such education. It has been revealed in the past few days in the
Bolton Evening News that even my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has a family tree that goes back to relatives in our town.
Two things propelled me to seek election to this place. First, as a chemist, about once a month for the past 29 years I have travelled Europe and visited nearly every university and polytechnic in the land presenting a show called "The Magic of Chemistry". It is an attempt to communicate science to the general public. One of my interests at Westminster will be to promote a public understanding of science. I am still a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry and will remain so. I take a keen interest in the teaching of chemistry and in the chemical industry.
I have been a member of Bolton council for almost 20 years and served for 10 years as its chairman of housing. That is my greatest interest, and I shall be following up housing issues in the House. The housing committee in Bolton has been extremely innovative and there are some examples that we should promote for the rest of the country.
We began a dispute service between neighbours, called the Bolton neighbourhood dispute service. It is run by a superb organiser, Sue Parry, and employs 42 volunteers to mediate between neighbours who often have not spoken to each other for several years. I am pleased to say that the success rate for cases referred to it is over 80 per cent. We were the first local authority in the land to start such a mediation service and it is now being modelled by authorities throughout the north and, I hope, soon, throughout the country. I shall be promoting such services for other local authorities.
That service recently expanded into something else, which is extremely novel. I am sure that all hon. Members are aware of the problem of bullying in schools. In Bolton, we are now training young people to mediate to solve the problem of bullying, and I commend such a service to other hon. Members for their areas.
When I was chairman of housing, I hit several problems, one of which was a rapidly escalating housing waiting list. It had been about 5,000, but suddenly it started to escalate and reached a peak at 8,000. I felt that I had to do something about it, so one day I walked into the office of the director of housing and said to Mr. George Caswell, "I want a partnership between this council, the Housing Corporation and some of the leading housing associations in the town." I have to pay tribute to Mr. Caswell, because within six months he had created an organisation called Bolton Community Homes Ltd., which has been one of the finest examples of partnership in housing across the land.
In approximately three years, we delivered 1,700 homes to cure the problem of the escalating waiting list. We did not build just ordinary homes for ordinary people. We built specialised homes for the disabled and other people with special problems. Indeed, the architects went to the very people who were to live in those homes--especially disabled people--and asked them what facilities they would like, and where they should be situated in the house. In other words, the people themselves helped the architects to design homes for them to live in. I recommend that approach to other people.
The old cotton towns of the north have a serious problem. They have row upon row of old, terraced houses well over 120 years old, the fabric of which is crumbling. That is the towns' biggest problem. I shall be pressing the Minister of State, Departments of the Environment, Transport and the Regions--my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Durham (Ms Armstrong), who has responsibility for housing--very hard on the matter. We have 23,000 unfit homes in Bolton. The environmental health officers consider that about 5,000 to 6,000 of them are irredeemably unfit and should be knocked down--and this is 1997.
Since 1979, we have lost more than 70 per cent. of our housing funding and we have not been able to tackle the substantial problems as we wanted. The Conservative Government reduced the grant for private sector improvements from a high level of 95 per cent. in 1979 to a low level of 60 per cent., where it remains today. That means that local councils have to borrow 40 per cent. of the money needed to improve private sector homes, and that is while their total expenditure is capped. It has been absolutely impossible for any local authority in the country, especially Bolton, to tackle that serious problem.
The Conservative Government bragged about spending the same on housing as the Labour Government spent when they left office in 1979. That is true, but the difference is that in 1979, the Labour Government were spending most of their housing money on bricks and mortar, whereas the outgoing Conservative Government spent most of their money on housing benefit, in pursuance of a dogmatic belief in market rents. Incidentally, they were never able to define market rents.
It is a scandal that so much money is spent on housing benefit. We must direct housing money away from benefits and into renovation and new homes for the homeless across Britain. Under the Conservatives, the housing benefit bill rose from about £3 billion when the Labour Government left office in 1979 to a rapidly escalating £13 billion today. The new Labour Government face an enormous problem even in halting the growth in housing benefit, never mind reversing the trend.
Ms Kali Mountford (Colne Valley):
I am glad to have the opportunity to speak this morning on my first occasion in the House, in what has been a veritable confetti of maiden speeches. I stand in the shadow of some great speeches. I first refer to my right hon. Friend--I am sorry, I am elevating my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) far too soon. First, he is too young and now he has been here a long time. I was struck by the similarities between his constituency and mine as he talked about the weaving industry and his experience in housing.
Likewise, I am delighted to hear that the son of my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Mr. Marsden) came to the House at the age of 18 months, beating my own record of early interest in politics. I became interested at 14. I hope that my hon. Friend's son follows in his great footsteps. My hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Mr. Hepburn) made a
moving speech about his constituency, with its great and sound history. I know that his constituency will have a great fighter in him.
My hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Lorna Fitzsimons) has now left the Chamber. Her name rang around the debating halls of this country long before she became a Member of Parliament. I know that her great voice, embodied in a small body, will add a great deal to the House. It will be difficult for me, standing in the shadow of those wonderful speeches, to deliver my own maiden speech.
It is normal in the House to follow certain traditions. Those traditions were taught to me at the age of 14 by my teachers of history, government and citizenship. They are two great sisters who, I am glad to say, wrote to me yesterday. I was touched to receive their letter. I have remembered them all these years as an inspiration and I am delighted that they have noticed that I have arrived here at last after 30 years. They would be embarrassed if I named them, but I have to say that good teachers who inspire a person and whose teaching takes people through life are worth more than gold. Those two teachers were worth more than gold to me.
What my teachers taught me about the traditions of this House was the importance of democracy. We had some talk of democracy earlier today and I was delighted that there were parties of schoolchildren in the Gallery at the time. I hope that although the House is fairly quiet this morning, they will have been inspired by this great place. Democracy is nothing if we do not take part in it.
The thing that I learned when I was taught government and citizenship by those two great teachers was that we as a people have to take part in our own state--the state of the nation and the state of our democracy. I hope that the new Secretary of State for Education and Employment will take that on board as we examine the standards of education for the future. It is all very well to have basic standards of education, but I have met people in my constituency who do not know the difference between local government and Parliament, and who do not know how or where to vote, and people who do not know that they can vote or how to put their name on the electoral register. It is a sad indictment of a democracy if its people are not actively involved in the process.
I shall return to the traditions of the House, because I do not want to let my teachers down. I want to talk about my constituency of Colne Valley. It is often confused with other constituencies because it is named after the River Colne. Make no mistake, there are two valleys in the constituency--the Colne valley and the Holme valley. It is in the Colne valley that one finds great traditional industrial heritage. It has those oft-sung-about satanic mills nestled in its great splendour and rugged hillsides.
To the south is the Holme valley, with its beautiful picture-postcard elegance--those green and pleasant pastures. The contrast of the two valleys has attracted the television and film industry to my constituency. I am pleased about that because the television and film industry has an income equal to that of the oil industry. It is an importer of great wealth into our country.
The three programmes that I want to talk about should be well known to hon. Members. The first is "Last of the Summer Wine", with Compo, Clegg and Foggy, those three great characters. The programme may mislead hon.
Members into thinking that the people of Colne Valley are quite elderly. In fact, they are younger than the national average for any constituency. So please do not be misled by that great programme.
Two new television programmes have appeared on our screens, "Where the Heart is"--my heart is certainly in the Colne valley--and "Wokenwell", which those of us who live nearby know is actually filmed at Marsden. "Where the Heart is" is filmed outside my house in Slaithwaite, so I am extremely proud.
I particularly want to talk about the film and television industry, because it embodies technical skills and the great talents of producers, film technicians and the actors we all know. That industry is dependent on high-quality products, high-quality skills and well-paid jobs. That is the foundation for a proper strong, key economic base, the sort of economic base that I support.
In his maiden speech, my predecessor, Graham Riddick, referred to "Last of the Summer Wine", and also eulogised about our beautiful constituency. I agree with him on both those counts. Alas, I do not agree with very much else that he said in that speech, nor with very much else that he said after that. Hon. Members on both sides of the House would agree, however, that he was a man who argued valiantly for the things in which he believed, often in the face of great opposition--indeed, some hon. Members on his own Benches did not always agree with him. He always stood up for what he believed in and the people of Colne Valley recognised that.
In his maiden speech, my predecessor spoke up for the demolition of one of our local mills, which he described as an eyesore and which he said should be razed to the ground. I am pleased to inform the House that that mill has now been restored to its former magnificent splendour. Kirklees council, a good Labour council which I am happy to support, formed a joint venture company to achieve that transformation. That venture brought together the skills of the local construction industry, which was so short of jobs, and the need of the community for good housing. It has been a magnificent success. The former mill now provides 122 new homes for the people of Colne Valley. It also provided high-quality, good, well-paid jobs for architects, joiners, builders, plumbers and many, many more.
I approve of that type of marriage between industry, its needs and the needs of the community. I am delighted that the Labour manifesto, which has now been translated into a wonderful Gracious Speech, includes such partnerships.
If we were able to release the £30 million of housing capital receipts now held by Kirklees council, imagine how we could spend that money to invigorate our local economy. Despite the imagination of Kirklees council, which established the joint venture company to redevelop Crowther mill, there is still much to do.
Colne Valley does not suffer from the same type of housing shortage as elsewhere, but some of our housing stock is dilapidated, particularly that in the private rented sector. I am extremely worried about one family in my community whose house is so wet and damp that both their children suffer greatly from asthma. One child, born just in January this year, is already taking eight steroids a day. Her doctor has told her mother that that is because of the damp condition of her home. How wonderful it will be to renovate social housing and build it anew so that
such families have the opportunity of a decent home. That development will also benefit the construction industry, which we need in Colne Valley.
Let us also consider the implications of the windfall levy and our plans for how we might use it in Kirklees. We aim once again to bring together the skills of our community and the needs of the population. If we develop the construction industry, and we shall, it will provide a great opportunity to train more people to have the very skills that will be needed in that expanding industry. In my area we are already looking at ways in which we could use the windfall levy to create the opportunities to learn those new skills. That would also enable people to gain the new jobs that will be created as a result.
The former Labour Member for Colne Valley, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark), will be pleased to discover that part of our plans for the windfall levy includes the introduction of a new environmental task force. We have a great need for that force in Colne Valley because of its canals, rivers and dry stone walls, which need to be renovated. Those environmental needs are also social needs when we consider the need for environmental improvements to homes on our estates. Again, overcoming those problems will involve a partnership between the needs of our community and the skills of our population.
When my right hon. Friend made his maiden speech, he made great reference to the environment. On a visit to Scapegoat Hill school in my constituency, I saw some trees that my right hon. Friend had planted 25 years ago. They are now growing vigorously despite harsh conditions, which may offer a parallel to the Labour party and its development in recent years.
I am sure that when my right hon. Friend referred to the importance of the environment, he envisaged that the environment of Colne Valley would be improved by measures such as those contained in the Gracious Speech, which we supported so strongly yesterday.
I am also pleased to recognise the contribution made to my constituency by Richard Wainwright, who was the Member until 1987. In his maiden speech, he referred to the traditional industrial heritage of Colne Valley and spoke about the local mills. We now need to diversify our economy, because too much dependence on the traditional industries of the mills will mean that our local economy will die on the vine. We cannot allow that to happen. The use of the windfall levy, capital receipts and the great progress made in welfare-to-work programmes will give us the opportunity to make our local economy as diverse as the many villages and people who reside in Colne Valley. That is the right way forward. We cannot once again depend on one industry, because that would lead to the death of our local economy. I want Colne Valley to have a strong and vigorous economic future.
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