| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
10.56 am
Miss Julie Kirkbride (Bromsgrove): Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for giving me the chance to make my maiden speech during the Budget debate. I am struck, as a new Member, by the camaraderie that exists on both sides of the House. I was given a variety of help and advice when it came to making my speech this morning. I have been told that it is likely to be the most memorable speech of my life. I must say to those of my hon. Friends who sit around me that it is unlikely to have that level of resonance, but I shall carry on anyway.
It is a great privilege to be a Member of Parliament. We sit in the Mother of Parliaments, the cradle of democracy, and it is the bulwark of our freedom. I am proud that I have been elected to this place. I hope that this morning, while making my maiden speech, I shall be allowed to wander a little more widely from the mark of the Budget plans and say a few things on a more personal level, which I should like to have on record in Hansard.
I wish to say a few thank yous, and the first are to my teachers. I was brought up in Halifax and went to the Highland school there, which is now called the North Halifax high school. It is a grammar school, and a first-class school. It does absolute wonders for the children who go there, many of whom are from very ordinary backgrounds, and some of whom come from what might be described as underprivileged backgrounds. As I say, the school does wonders with these children. It teaches them to believe in themselves and to improve themselves academically and socially.
I was lucky enough to go to the school, as were a variety of other children. To be slightly party political, the fact that not everyone can go to the school is not a good reason for getting rid of it. There were a couple of teachers at the school whom I should like to put on record as having been important influences on my life. The deputy headmaster, Mr. Stephen O'Brien, very much helped me in getting my place at Cambridge university, which I believe made a difference to my life and perhaps allowed me to be here today. My history teacher was Mrs. Alice Chapman, who gave me extra tuition so that I could pass my common entrance. I suspect that she would
not necessarily approve of my being a Conservative Member. I hope, however, that she will be proud that one of her pupils has arrived in the House. She took great pleasure in teaching me the traditions of this place.
I should also like to thank my family and friends for their love and support. Two years ago, when I told my family that I wanted to be a Member of Parliament, they said that I must be mad. I do not think that they have changed their opinion, but I dare say that they are getting used to it.
The third group of people whom I should like to thank are my constituents, who placed great trust in me on 1 May and sent me to the House as their Conservative Member of Parliament, for which I am grateful. I hope that their trust and faith in me will not be diminished by my performance in the House, and I am pleased that they elected me. I should like to thank in particular my Conservative constituency association, which worked hard to achieve a good result in Bromsgrove. I am particularly grateful to the members of my association for choosing me to be their candidate six months ago, and I do not intend to let them down.
I have some first-class predecessors, to whom I have to live up. Mr. Roy Thomason was my immediate predecessor and a very fine constituency Member of Parliament. When I banged on a variety of doors during the election campaign, I was struck by the spontaneous tributes paid to Mr. Thomason's hard work and effort on his constituents' behalf. I hope that one day--although perhaps not in five years, which is how long he served in the House--I will receive similar, unsolicited plaudits on doorsteps. It was a fine reflection on him, and I am sure that my constituents and hon. Members would like to send him their good wishes for his future career.
Mr. Thomason's predecessor was Sir Hal Miller, who is remembered by many hon. Members. He was a fine constituency Member of Parliament, and I shall have to live up to him also. Nothing was ever too much trouble for Sir Hal, and he has been kind and supportive to me in my efforts to get to know the constituency. He will be remembered by some hon. Members as a vice-chairman of the Conservative party, and as someone who spoke up for the midlands and for midlands manufacturing. He is sorely missed, and I am sure that my constituents and hon. Members would also like to wish him well in his retirement, which he is enjoying.
Since I was elected, some hon. Members have had the temerity to ask me where Bromsgrove is. I am tempted to reply that, if they were to look at a centuries-old map of the Worcestershire area, they would see Bromsgrove emblazoned across it, whereas there would be no mention of our near neighbour Birmingham, which is a more recent invention. But I can tell those hon. Members who still need to know a little more about exactly where Bromsgrove is that it straddles north and south of the M42: it starts in the east where the M40 meets the M42, and finishes in the west where it touches the M5.
Bromsgrove is an old market town, and has some fine traditions. We have an active court-leet, which I do not think other hon. Members can boast of having. Just a few weeks ago, I had the honour of parading through the town centre with the court-leet in all its finery and robes. Despite the pouring rain, it was an enjoyable occasion:
it was enjoyed by the people who, like me, were in the procession, and by the people of the town who came out to watch the spectacle. It is a centuries-old tradition, and is great fun.
Bromsgrove is a mixed area. Half the population lives in the town of Bromsgrove and the rest are scattered among beautiful villages where it is lovely to live. There is some farming, but many people work in the service industry or in light industries. Many people show great judgment by choosing to live in Bromsgrove while having their businesses in the black country or working as professional people in the city of Birmingham and elsewhere.
We are something of a mixed bunch, but we share a common agenda: we are proud of our beautiful constituency, we want it to stay beautiful and we want to hang on to our extremely important green belt. We have a wonderful inheritance in the English countryside in our part of the world. We inherited it from our forebears, and we have a duty to pass it on to our children and to our children's children. If we are to do that, we must think carefully about how we proceed into the next century.
There are plans to build 41,300 houses in Worcestershire alone. That is too many: it is almost double the size of the centre of Bromsgrove. Bromsgrove alone must take 7,500 houses, and that is also too many if we are to carry on living in a lovely part of the world. We must challenge the idea that, just because many people want to come and live in the countryside, we should build houses for them in the countryside. The time has come to stop doing that.
At this point, my remarks become more germane to the Budget, which included proposals on the environment. As a Conservative Member, I do not agree that new houses should be built with public money: they should be built privately. I feel very strongly that they should be built in inner-city and urban areas, which would do much to rejuvenate those areas. We should bear in mind the people for whom we are building those houses. They are not only for people like me--I am 37--who have been single all their lives, and elderly people, who are now living longer, but for people who have something to gain from living in communities where they have access to shops and other facilities and can be less reliant on their cars.
The Chancellor referred to green taxes, which potentially have some merit. If we levy green taxes, that money must be put back into the environment and become hypothecated taxes. Brown land in our inner cities should be redeveloped, so that housing can be built to the greater and wider benefit of all of us who want to enjoy both living in cities and having access to our countryside.
If the House would be indulgent a little longer, I should like to raise a green-belt issue that is specific to my constituency. A recreation ground in the centre of Bromsgrove has a charter that was placed on it by King John 800 years ago. It is used by visiting cricket and football teams, who play local people in Bromsgrove. Sadly, my local Labour council want to build an arts and leisure centre on that site. I am opposed to that, as I believe are the people of Bromsgrove. I appeal to the council to stop this act of vandalism, because it is wholly wrong. I am happy for the council to build an arts and leisure centre somewhere else, but not on the recreation ground.
If the local council will not listen to me, perhaps it will listen to the Government. Only this week, I received a letter from the Minister for Sport saying that he was opposed to building on the recreation ground. I hope that the council pays more attention to the Minister than it does to the local Member of Parliament.
I also appeal to my local council to stop the declassification of the village of Alvechurch from the green belt. A district inspector has been considering where the 7,500 houses that are due to be built in my constituency should be built. The inspector has suggested that they might be put in the villages of Hagley--I disapprove of that suggestion--and Wythall. Those are sensitive and pretty, villagey areas, which should be freed of the blight of further housing.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |