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11.54 am
Mr. Paul Stinchcombe (Wellingborough): I thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for calling me to make the first maiden speech by a Member of Parliament for Wellingborough for 28 years and the first by a Labour Member since 24 November 1964, when I was just two years old.
In view of the time that has passed since hon. Members were treated to a tour of Wellingborough, and in conformity with convention, I will describe it to the House. The constituency of Wellingborough lies in the county of Northamptonshire and is a constituency of many parts. It is part urban and part rural. It is also proudly multicultural. It is proud of its strong Asian and Afro-Caribbean communities. The principal towns are Wellingborough, Rushden and the historic Higham Ferrers, which featured in the Domesday book. Smaller surrounding villages include Earls Barton, with a church tower more than 1,000 years old, and Wollaston which has more than 80 small businesses within its village confines, including a thriving example of a caring business--Scott Bader--employing 300 people, but run as a commonwealth. They also include the village of Irchester, with its Roman origins.
The local economy is diverse, based on farming and industry, the major industry being boots and shoes. The constituency still boasts 60 businesses involved in footwear manufacturing and employing more than 3,000 workers, which is more than 8 per cent. of the working population in the constituency. I can tell this honourable House that it was in great comfort that I walked the many miles of my campaign.
Although the seat of Wellingborough had been Conservative since the by-election which followed Harry Howarth's sad death in 1969, it was historically what it is today--a Labour constituency. We first won the seat through W. R. Smith in 1918--barely a decade after the party was founded. We won again in 1924, with Mr. Cove. In 1929, we won with George Dallas. In 1945, 1950, 1951 and 1955, we won with George Lindgren, who was privileged to make his maiden speech from the Front Bench, winding up the very first parliamentary debate in which he had engaged. In 1964 and 1966, we won with Harry Howarth, a man still fondly remembered both by many of my constituents and by hon. Members whose political longevity stretches that far.
The by-election that followed Harry's early death in 1969 was won by my immediate predecessor, Sir Peter Fry, who went on to hold the seat for 28 years.
Throughout his time in the House, Sir Peter served the constituency of Wellingborough as a hard-working and courageous Back Bencher, earning a reputation as a good constituency Member of Parliament, a reputation that I encountered during the campaign, and again last week, when I was invited to visit a wonderful woman in my constituency who was 106 years old and had particularly asked to meet her Member of Parliament. When I arrived, the look of disappointment was manifest and she said, "You are not that nice Sir Peter Fry; I always voted for him." I wish Sir Peter well in his retirement. I hope that he now has time to enjoy his family and his many outside interests.
Having been in Tory hands for 28 years, on May day 1997 the Labour party reclaimed the seat of Wellingborough in a political tidal wave of support which swept away five out of six Tory Members in Northamptonshire alone. We did not win on 1 May because the electorate wanted change; we won not because of scepticism or despair but because of hope and vision. People were inspired by the values that the Labour party put before them--that although as individuals we are different, we are in a deep sense equal. We have equal rights to both justice and social justice--to security, a home, health care, education and opportunity. Those are the rights which make us free. But they are matched by responsibilities to others so that they, too, may be free--because we are indeed our brother's keeper, because we shall not pass by on the other side and because working together, rather than as individuals alone, we can all achieve more.
Those are the values that have always inspired the Labour party, even if today they find their modern expression in policies fit to meet the problems of the new age in which we live. They are values that burn in my soul as fiercely as they burned in the souls of those previous Labour Members for Wellingborough--men whose minds were not fixed on self and place, men who did not cringe before the rich man's frown, men who fought in this House and the constituency for human rights and human gain, men who joined the Labour party, as did I, not to put a ceiling on the aspirations of those without hope but to remove it.
Our values recognise that both liberty and equality are essential preconditions to civilised society. Although those preconditions are sometimes in tension, both must inform the policies of a Government who govern for the many and not for the few, and who recognise that enterprise, talent and efficiency are not the enemies of compassion but its friends. In that way, everyone has an opportunity to succeed and this nation can call on the talent and enterprise of all our people, not just the privileged few. Using the talents and enterprise of all our people, we can build an economy based on sustainable growth and not on unsustainable greed. Through that sustainable growth, our compassion may be more bountifully delivered to those in need. We can then apply the efficiency of business to the delivery of that compassion.
These are Labour's historic values. We must bring them to bear on the Child Support Agency now that we are in government, because in many important ways and for very many people the way in which the CSA operates is inseparable from the objectives that we pursue, as enshrined in the values that I have described. Our values must find a practical expression in measures which make
a difference. We cannot govern by values alone. While the Government have a large scope for making this country more like it should be, that scope is limited in many important respects.
Ultimately, strong nations, economies and communities are not built by new legislation or Parliaments alone; they are built by the people, even if Parliament sets the framework to achieve those ends. If we are to rebuild this nation, we must do so not just in Parliament but in our homes and families, which is where prime responsibility for our national destiny lies. Our children are our future: they depend on their families and homes first and the Government second. How our children are brought up, supported, encouraged and inculcated with values so that they care for their fellow men and women rather than just for themselves is crucial to our shared future and prosperity.
The Government must recognise that we have less power to strengthen families than to mandate change in other areas. However, we must also recognise the power that we have--first, because by virtue of its limited nature it is important to identify what we can do, and secondly because the field of human endeavour in which that power can be brought to bear is so sensitive and important that we must exercise our power wisely.
We can and must act to take some of the stresses out of modern family life. We can play a small part in keeping families together by tackling unemployment, poverty pay, excessive working hours and bad housing. We can and must act fairly and responsibly--never judgmentally--if and when families break up or do not come together in the traditional model. After all, single-parent families are families none the less and they need special support and care if children and parents are to be given the equal opportunity to succeed that they deserve.
That is why the Labour Government now seek to address the dependency culture and the poverty traps inherent in the existing tax and benefits system, giving single mothers a better chance to return to work. It is also why we must reform the operation of the CSA so that it performs as it should and not as it has. Few, if any, hon. Members would question the essential premise on which the CSA was founded--that a parent is for life, even if the family breaks up. With rights come responsibilities, and the greatest of those are the responsibilities of parents to their children.
Given that the founding principle behind the CSA commands wide support--while acknowledging the bitterness and sensitivities that family break-ups can cause--something must be going badly wrong if the CSA none the less generates such hostility. To be honest, I had not expected to make my maiden speech in this debate; the fact that I am doing so is due to my constituency. The overwhelming bulk of complaints in my postbag and surgeries have concerned the CSA, and it is clear from what my constituents have told me that the CSA has failed comprehensively to command public confidence.
I would speculate that there are two reasons for that which stand above all others. First, the CSA has taken the path of expediency in pursuing soft targets first, rather than focusing its attention on cases of real need. That means that many who are already making payments according to agreements are being pursued for larger payments while others in my constituency and elsewhere have yet to receive a penny and do not believe that the
CSA is working for them. Those people are often in cash-flow crises. We cannot get young mums back to work if they are not receiving the maintenance money to which they are entitled and which would enable them to pay for child care.
Secondly, the CSA has turned into a bureaucratic nightmare from which it has not escaped. It is the fault not of the workers, but of the system. Delays are legion and mistakes common. One example from very many that I could give from my constituency concerns a happily married couple with a daughter. They awoke one day to find a letter from the CSA asserting that the husband had fathered a child by another woman some years ago. The husband denied it, but the wife was understandably traumatised--after all, such letters bear the imprint of authority--and left the marital home with her daughter.
Two weeks later, a further letter arrived from the CSA, saying that it had made a mistake. The man was not the father. The real father had a different name, address and date of birth. The rigorous system designed to prevent such errors had not been followed. The letter went on to make apologies and to moot the prospect of compensation, but incalculable damage, great unhappiness, hurt and trauma had already been caused. Trust had broken down in that marriage and in what had been a happy family, and it will take a long time to recover that trust--if, indeed, it is ever recovered.
The process of healing was not helped by a third letter from the CSA enclosing an insulting cheque for £100 in the hope that that would help with the hurt. It was not even sufficient to pay for a decent break so that the couple could try to talk through their problems. The letter went on in the same sentence to deny any liability on the part of the CSA.
That is just one sad tale. Taken alone, it would be cause for concern. Taken together with the many other examples of which I have heard in my surgeries and in the Chamber today, we can rightly see that there are profound problems which need to be addressed.
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