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10.51 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Angela Eagle): I congratulate the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Mr. Spring) on his success in securing this debate, but he and some of his colleagues have missed the opportunity to deal with some of the real issues facing people who live in rural areas.
It is interesting to find that, in the general election, the hon. Member for West Suffolk suffered a 13 per cent. swing to Labour in his rural area. His majority is now only 1,800. When people had the chance to express their views about the previous Government's 18 years in office, there was a huge swing against the hon. Gentleman and the Conservatives--that is the real view of the people of rural Britain, not that expressed by the people in Hyde park last week.
Mr. Clifton-Brown:
Will the hon. Lady give way?
Angela Eagle:
No, I have fewer than 10 minutes. Plenty of Conservative Members--well, all 11 who managed to stay for the entire debate, which is not a startling turnout--have had the opportunity to speak.
The hon. Member for South Dorset (Mr. Bruce), who accused me of not being briefed, left the Chamber for some of the debate and then returned, misquoted the levels of the minimum wage recently agreed by the agricultural wages board. For his information, they now stand at £4.20 an hour for ordinary labourers and £3.06 an hour for casual workers.
Angela Eagle:
No, I am not giving way.
Mr. Bruce:
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Is it really a point of order?
Mr. Bruce:
It is indeed, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I want to ask your advice on how I should proceed. I left the
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
That is not a point of order.
Angela Eagle:
Out of interest, the hon. Gentleman's majority is now 77. There was a 15 per cent. swing against him, which again shows the views of rural voters on the previous Government's 18 years in office.
Conservative Members have presented a caricature of the urban-rural debate. I understand that people have very powerful feelings about fox hunting and some issues which may be coming before the House in private Members' Bills, but this debate should rightly have been about the issues raised by, for example, my hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson) in his excellent contribution, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mrs. Organ) and, indeed, the hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. George).
They spoke about the problems that rural people face every day--the problems of transport, access to schools, hospitals and housing, especially for young people who face having to leave the places in which they were born because they cannot afford to live there. They are the issues that affect the everyday lives of people in our rural communities. It is a great pity that Conservative Members could not spend very much time even thinking about them because they were so obsessed with issues such as hunting, which the House will be debating.
Conservative Members made great play of last week's Hyde park rally. We were all privileged to hear the speech of the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine), who told the rally that what he sees as the threat to hunting is a
In the time left to me, I should like to ask Conservative Members to take this opportunity to condemn--[Interruption.]
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. There is a great deal of noise from Opposition Members, which is unfair when a Minister is replying to the debate.
Angela Eagle:
Will Conservative Members take this opportunity to condemn the threats received by my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr. Foster)? A snare was recently sent to him in the post. He received a letter saying that the writer
Will Conservative Members also condemn some speakers at the Hyde park rally who threatened to burn forests and poison water supplies and who stated that that rally would be the last peaceful one? These are not the activities of people to whom we should listen seriously. Conservatives Members need to realise that the majority of people in the countryside are anti-hunting. We must also remember that hunting is not a town-country issue--it is a moral issue, which is why there will be a free vote for Labour Members, should the Bill be debated.
In the very limited time I have left, I shall point out that the Government believe in opportunity, fairness and prosperity for all. That applies equally to urban and rural areas.
Mr. Owen Paterson (North Shropshire):
Will the hon. Lady give way?
Angela Eagle:
No. I have only two minutes left--be real.
In our manifesto, we gave a number of pledges on rural matters. We pledged to recognise the special needs of rural areas and communities, not to allow public and transport services in rural areas to deteriorate, to give greater protection to wildlife, and to give greater freedom to people to explore the open countryside. It has already been said from the Dispatch Box that the principle of access is not negotiable, but we are aiming for an extremely wide-ranging consultation with all the parties involved on the question of access to the countryside. The consultation paper will be issued before the end of the year. We want to hear everybody's views so that we can come up with workable legislation that will be supported as widely as possible.
The Conservatives brought us BSE, transport deregulation and the poll tax, which decimated the incomes of many rural people. They have no representation in Scotland and Wales. Their concern about fox hunting and many issues that people in rural Britain feel are irrelevant sits pretty ill. If they want to get back on to the Government Benches within a reasonable time, they must modernise. They need to realise that they have to represent the real interests, views and life styles of all people in Britain if they are to have a chance of regaining the trust of the electorate.
Mr. Ian Bruce:
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I appreciate that the Minister had a limited amount of time, but two pieces of information were given to the House during the exchanges. The first is about the minimum wage. The Library has just given me the figure, which is £1.84 for 16-year-olds. The hon. Lady--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. The hon. Gentleman has already commented about that. It is not a matter for the Chair. Any facts and figures given by hon. Members are given in good faith. It is not a matter for the Chair, and the hon. Gentleman cannot put the record straight on a point of order.
Mr. Joe Ashton (Bassetlaw):
I thank Madam Speaker for making time available for a debate on this important national problem.
After the miners' strike of 1984-85, the previous Government instructed British Coal to sell its stock of houses. At that time, it owned 165,000 or 170,000 houses of different types that had been built at various times in colliery areas. In 1984, parts of some of the older villages were put up for auction to any speculator who would buy them.
The houses were first offered to the miners. Many of them purchased their homes, even though the pit was closing. However, many elderly miners did not want to buy their houses, because they were 50 or 60 and not in the best of health, so they carried on renting. The houses were sold en bloc in many areas throughout the country--south Wales, Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Durham and Scotland. The speculators moved in and snapped up the houses, often for as little as £3,000 or even £1,500 each.
I am particularly concerned about the village of Warsop Vale, on the boundary of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, abutting on to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner). A landlord called Dennis Rye bought many houses in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. The area has had nothing but problems since.
The houses in Warsop Vale were built around the turn of the century--probably at about the time ofD. H. Lawrence. A D. H. Lawrence film could be made there, with the back ginnels and the back yards. They were decent terraced houses. With improvement grants from the council, bathrooms had been added to the backs of the houses. It was a happy village. There are people of 75 who were born in the village, worked all their life at the pit, married someone from the village and still live there. It was a good community with thriving pubs and shops.
The past 12 or 13 years have been disastrous. The private tenants moved in by the landlords as the pensioners died were often transient residents. Many had been evicted or had left their wives and run off with someone else. The private landlords advertised in the papers for them. The tenants had no feeling for the community, often staying for just a few weeks. Their weekly rent for a small terraced house was sometimes up to £55 or £60, paid by housing benefit. We protested strongly about that, but the Government of the time were in favour of a free market for rented houses and were happy to pay £50 or £60 housing benefit for each house. The area became like a transit camp, and the problem grew and grew.
When the previous Government restricted the rents to more or less what the council would have charged--about £20 or £25 per property--the private landlords decided that the houses were not worth letting. It was easier to let them stand empty and try to make the council take the blame or get a lump sum from the council for the empty houses.
The houses were soon vandalised. Kids threw bricks through the windows and organised gangs moved in to strip them of anything with a second-hand value--radiators,
taps or doors. Anything that could be unscrewed was taken. Kids in the neighbourhood, who had no jobs and no future at the pit, as their fathers had had, set fire to parts of the houses. Some houses became infested with vermin. Warsop Vale and many other villages now look like a war zone. Places have been shelled and set on fire and look like houses after the blitz. I lived through the blitz as a little boy and remember seeing some houses inhabited and others left derelict for a long time.
The miners who bought their houses cannot sell them. They have modernised the houses and made them into what we in our neck of the woods call little palaces. Many have double glazing, new doors and central heating. They are unsaleable because of the empty houses next door that have been set on fire, have rats or are vandalised. The whole place is in a terrible state. European grants have been given to some villages to renew the pavements and the lighting, but there has been nothing for the housing.
It is impossible to attract new industry. Anybody thinking of setting up a new factory looks at the housing and the wreckage and moves elsewhere. There are so many empty sites available in pit areas that people can take their pick. There may be subsidence problems in the area because of the old pits. People whose families have lived next to a colliery for 100 years, with heavy lorries going back and forth, klaxons sounding at night, night shifts and dust from the spoil heaps now have to put up with the houses turning into slums.
"vicious onslaught on a treasured tradition of rural life."
Where were Conservative Members--in fact, where were the members of the public who were in Hyde park last week?--when the right hon. Gentleman decimated the coal industry and destroyed 55,000 jobs in rural areas? The Conservative Members were in the Lobbies voting for it, so we shall take no lectures on hypocrisy from them.
"would like to throw your entrails to the dogs."
Another said:
"You will not live to see the end of your Bill".
A third said:
"You and your family ought to find bolt holes"--
[Laughter.] Death threats may be funny to Conservative Members, but they do not reflect well on the people who send them. I would expect the party of law and order--it still prides itself on that title despite its record in office--to condemn such assaults on free speech.
11 am
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