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8.9 pm
Mr. David Prior (North Norfolk): Thank you very much, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for calling me to make my maiden speech this evening. There is an old adage that the opposite of talking is not listening, but waiting. I hope that the hon. Member for Ochil (Mr. O'Neill) will excuse me, on this occasion, for not having listened to his speech as carefully as I might otherwise have done. This Chamber has a great reputation for honesty, but I hope that no one will object when I go home to my constituents and say that I addressed a packed and noisy Chamber this evening.
I have the great privilege to represent North Norfolk. I am grateful for the fact that the ex-chairman of the North Norfolk Conservative Association, my hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown), is here tonight at my side. For the past 27 years, my constituency has been represented by Sir Ralph Howell, who was well known for the care that he lavished on his constituents. Ministers knew that he was the sort of man who, when he wrote letters to them, would never give up. He was the scourge of Ministers, local government officials and bureaucrats at all levels.
Sir Ralph had two great passions. First, he was a passionate believer in the European Union. When he was a young man, the first time that he saw continental Europe
was when he looked down on Germany through the bomb sight of a Wellington bomber. That experience made him believe that a strong European Union was vital for peace in Europe.
Sir Ralph's second abiding passion was his belief and faith in workfare. He would have been pleased to have heard some of the welfare-to-work proposals in the Budget statement. I was very much struck when the hon. Member for Ochil spoke about long-term unemployment. It was the waste and misery surrounding that which drove Sir Ralph towards workfare. I share his views about the awful waste of long-term unemployment, having seen it in much of England, Scotland and Wales when I worked for British Steel. I do not believe that welfare to work, based on Government subsidy, is the right way to cure the problem, but I share the deep concern of the hon. Member for Ochil about the tragedy of unemployment for so many people. Sir Ralph was a man of great conviction and principle and I am proud to follow in his footsteps.
When making one's maiden speech, it is tradition to refer to one's constituency. I am afraid that I shall disappoint the House and continue with that tradition, so I ask hon. Members to bear with me for a while. Agriculture remains one of the most important industries in North Norfolk. The Cokes and the Townshends, whose families were the foundation of the agricultural revolution in the 18th century, still hold land and farm in North Norfolk. A strong, profitable and competitive agriculture industry is vital to the interests of North Norfolk.
My county is still very rural. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Woodward) about field sports. They are a vital freedom, a tradition and a way of life in North Norfolk and our countryside would be much the poorer without them.
North Norfolk still has a local shellfish industry. The Cromer crab has a reputation that extends way beyond Norfolk. Our history of shellfish fishing shows that the best regulators are the generations of fishing families who have caught shellfish off the coast, not distant bureaucrats in Whitehall or Brussels.
Probably the most difficult issue in North Norfolk--and, indeed, in most rural areas--is the balance between keeping Norfolk special and the requirements of development. Because of the development of out-of-town supermarkets, the hearts of towns such as Fakenham and Cromer have disappeared. There has been a demise in village shops and local amenities. There is constant conflict between the need for a strong tourist industry and the pressure on the Norfolk broads and the coast. I believe strongly in the need to provide decent, affordable housing and public transport for local people, but I realise the real pressures of housing on the countryside.
Small businesses are the mainstay of employment in North Norfolk. I was disappointed to hear no reference in the Budget statement to improving the uniform business rate as it applies to small businesses. There is no doubt that it is skewed too much against small, usually retail, businesses. Some of it should be switched back to larger businesses.
North Norfolk has an elderly population. Many people have worked hard all their lives and, although they do not have great savings, they have enough to prevent them from getting any help from the state. Those people are
especially vulnerable and they will not welcome the news today that their pensions will be adversely affected by the abolition of the tax credit on dividends paid to pension funds. Neither will many of them be pleased to hear that they will no longer get tax relief on the premiums paid for private health insurance.
We have a very special hospital at Kelling. It is a community hospital, not a big hospital, and many of its patients are old people. I serve notice on the Secretary of State for Health that Kelling is special and that everyone in North Norfolk will fight to keep it alive.
I have spent the past 20 years working in manufacturing, mainly for British Steel. I have seen a fantastic impact on competitiveness and efficiency over the past 20 years. It has come about through deregulation, tax reduction, vastly improved industrial relations, privatisation and much less government.
My father, Jim Prior, made his maiden speech in this House in 1959, when the Japanese were about to open their first transistor radio factory in Ireland. He said then that, as a farmer, he would never again buy any Irish bullocks if the Japanese were allowed to open a factory in Ireland. Things have changed a great deal since 1959. We now live in a global economy with unrestricted capital movements and widely dispersed technology and skills. The general agreement on tariffs and trade has reduced many of our trade barriers.
My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition earlier quoted from a report by the World Economic Forum. He must have had pre-knowledge of my speech. The report said:
The Budget contains three illusions. The first is that the windfall tax and the abolition of the advance corporation tax credit have no victims. Both have victims. The windfall tax will erode the investment potential of those on whom it is levied. The abolition of the ACT credit will hit pensioners.
The second illusion is that Government can create jobs. In fact, only competitive and strong companies and businesses can create jobs. Jobs built on short-term subsidies will have no security.
The third and last illusion is that the Government believe in the long term. They cannot and will not stop meddling in the short term. Surely one of the lessons of the past 20 years is that it is best for Governments to keep out of business as much as possible.
Mr. Barry Jones (Alyn and Deeside):
I congratulate the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Mr. Prior) on his maiden speech, which was made in the relaxed, generous and genial style of his father, Lord Prior, whom
I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mrs. Keen) on her maiden speech, which went very well. She was once my constituent and her mother still is. Her late father, who was my friend, would have been proud of her. She will be a fine Member of Parliament for her constituency.
With the Budget in mind, I should point out that between 1979 and 1981 about 2.5 million manufacturing jobs disappeared from the British economy. During that time we had a terrible trio of principals: Mrs. Thatcher was the Prime Minister, Geoffrey Howe was the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry was Sir Keith Joseph. In so short a time, that trio destroyed more jobs than Adolf Hitler could have dreamt of destroying, and it led to huge and enduring unemployment queues. Thereafter, we became a divided society.
In less than one hour, the new Labour Chancellor delivered an historic reforming Budget. He was convinced of the need to relate his statistical detail to the flesh and blood of ordinary and underprivileged people. I thought that it was an innovative and compassionate Budget. The Chancellor has kept our party's promises, honoured our manifesto and not abused the mandate that the Labour party received from the electorate at the general election on 1 May. I also noted the cool authority with which he delivered that reformist Budget.
The Chancellor wants to equip the nation for the future and to rebuild the welfare state. It is the first Budget in 18 long years that seeks both economic efficiency and social justice. It will end abuses and loopholes. It is good that the Chancellor is taking a strategic view of our manufacturing capacity. He proposes to end the spending of huge sums of money on the few, and offers skill-less and workless under 24-year-olds a new deal. He has a highly planned scheme to tackle long-term unemployment, and lone parents and the disabled are not forgotten. My constituents will benefit from those measures.
From what I have seen and heard today, I can sum the Budget up as moral, practical and honourable. I judge that it will improve the fabric of our communities. I hope that it begins soon to help to heal the divisions and wounds that are so self-evident in British society. The Chancellor is to be commended on a Budget that will prepare our nation for tough, international competition in the next century.
There are more than 1 million fewer jobs in Britain than there were in 1990, one in five families have no one working, and 1 million single mothers are trapped on benefits. The gap between rich and poor is wider now than it has been for generations. Those facts--those human details that to me are grim realities--set this remarkable Budget in a serious context.
The Budget seeks social justice and maps out a strategic high road for our national recovery. I judge it to be a Budget which takes a sophisticated look at the means of achieving the much needed recovery of our former national industrial greatness. That is what I hope will be the consequence of today's Budget.
I am glad that the Government will get a quarter of a million under 25-year-olds off benefit and into work by using money from a windfall levy on the privatised utilities. It is clear to me that this Chancellor and this Government are determined not to continue down the road of a permanent have-not class of unemployed and disaffected people. My constituency can only benefit from the proposals that have been outlined today.
I admire the Chancellor's long-term objective of high and stable levels of employment: it has shades of Mr. Attlee's programme in 1945-50. The best way to tackle poverty is to help people into jobs. Unemployed citizens have a responsibility to take up training places or work, but they must be real job opportunities. In past years, we have had some disgraceful schemes that have led to cynicism among the young and their parents.
The Chancellor's welfare-to-work programme will attack unemployment and break the spiral of escalating spending on social security. The scheme cannot work without partnership between government and business. Partnership will best tackle the shame of long-term unemployment.
I like the positive approach to proper qualifications by 2000 for every 17 and 18-year-old. Many people in that age group have missed out. It is a forgotten army, a mighty army, a youthful army, and an army without any purpose as of now. Perhaps our colleges of further education could be centres for the operation of this programme: they could share in the challenge. Deeside college of further education is a good college and it seeks to play a role in making welfare to work a success.
I shall briefly describe the problem that we are tackling. My constituency contains large social housing estates which are the seat of intractable problems of unemployment and decay. I do not believe that my constituency is unique, because every city has a near permanent have-not class of unemployed. It cannot be right for young people under 24 years of age to remain unemployed. At last, the Government are initiating measures to tackle the problem.
If we hate and fear the growth of violence and other criminal activity in our constituencies, we should welcome the welfare-to-work Budget. Given the drug abuse, graffiti, constant harassment of families, vandalism, car crime, squalor, ugliness, disrepair and dereliction, the welfare-to-work Budget is a big step in the right direction. It just has to be. So far, nothing has been done and if we leave the problems alone, British society will face even graver problems in the near future. In the same way, the plan to release in Wales the sales receipts of municipal housing has to be good in so far as it will improve housing and generate wealth.
If a British Government do not tackle the problems, if we fail, if the have-nots remain rooted in their evident despair and continued separateness, the future for British society will be bleak. A divided, ill-educated Britain will not be able to renew her industries and cope with the growing cut-throat international competition. Without social justice and a successful welfare-to-work programme, without a clear national strategic industrial policy, our society will be ripped apart by division, resentment and envy. That might be our fate.
"what we see in the United Kingdom is an economy reborn and the sweeping privatisation, deregulation and other structural reforms have made us well poised to compete in a global economy."
That success has been recognised by companies around the world. There has been more foreign direct investment in Britain since 1979 than Germany received in Marshall aid after the war, in real terms. It is against that background that we must look at today's Budget.
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