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Dr. Nick Palmer (Broxtowe): Will my right hon. Friend take on board the widespread interest in the Government's new policy planning guidance note 6, which will help protect the green belt? However, does she recognise the concern that we are still hamstrung by the structure and other plans that, in some cases, were made many years ago? Will she try to schedule a debate on those issues in the reasonably near future, perhaps combining consideration of the Government's forthcoming White Papers on urban and rural planning, and response to the Rogers report?
Mrs. Beckett: My hon. Friend makes an interesting point, especially as he ties in other documents with his proposal for an examination of such issues. I fear that I cannot undertake to find time in the near future for such a debate on the Floor. He might find a debate in Westminster Hall a more fruitful opportunity. However, I certainly take on board his point about several issues coming together.
Rev. Martin Smyth (Belfast, South): I appreciate the pressure on the House's business, but join those who are calling for a major debate on foreign affairs. Although I
also appreciate concerns about Zimbabwe, there is an even greater tragedy in Ethiopia. May we have an opportunity to see how we as a people are pressing the world to help that situation?I also join those who are expressing season's greetings. I hope that we might all enter into the wonder and mystery of Good Friday and the thrilling joy of Easter day.
Mrs. Beckett: I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman, as I know is the whole House. I certainly take on board his point about the number of foreign affairs issues that are arising. I shall endeavour to raise that matter with the Foreign Secretary.
Mr. Alan Hurst (Braintree): I am sure that my right hon. Friend will be aware of the ease of travelling on our roads during the Easter school holidays. In the light of such ease when parents are not driving their children to school, will she find time for a debate on home-to-school transport provision?
Mrs. Beckett: Again, I recommend Westminster Hall. I entirely take my hon. Friend's point about the contrast. I saw an interesting description the other day of something that is called a walking bus, which gathers school children to take them to school. That is thought to be conducive to safety and to easing parents' fears. I know that some experiments are being undertaken, but I fear that it is unlikely that I shall find time in the near future for such a debate on the Floor of the House.
Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham): I, too, wish the right hon. Lady and her husband a happy Easter, although I feel sure that they will both sorely miss the company of right hon. and hon. Members.
When will we have the delayed but important annual debate on small businesses--a matter of great concern to them, as they constitute 99.6 per cent. of all British enterprises, employ approximately half of the private sector work force and contribute two fifths of our national output?
May we have as early as possible a further statement on progress in the proposed appointment of the chairman of the Appointments Commission, on which the Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office had a few words to say on Tuesday afternoon? I hope that nominations have not yet closed, though the appointment is to be made very soon. Does the Leader of the House agree that, in view of the importance of that person being characterised by experience, impartiality and a spirit of public service, one outstanding candidate for the post would be my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth)? I hope that she will undertake vigorously to lobby on his behalf.
Mrs. Beckett: I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his kind remarks. I am sorry and surprised that, uncharacteristically, the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) is not present.
Mr. Skinner: It is his day off.
Mrs. Beckett: Perhaps he is having a day off, which makes a change.
There is a slight inconsistency in the comments of the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) about the Appointments Commission. On one hand, he hopes that nominations are not closed, but on the other, that there is an early announcement. Those statements seem not to be mutually compatible. However, I anticipate that an announcement will be made very soon.
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me for entering the caveat that a debate on small businesses is not an assured annual event, although the Government endeavour to find a regular, suitable opportunity for one. I say that only because, as he will know, one does not have to be in this Chamber for very long, listening to Members calling for annual debates on a variety of burning issues, to realise that we would never do anything if we agreed to all such requests.
It is difficult to tear oneself away from this place. We shall definitely miss right hon. and hon. Members, but we shall just have to steel ourselves.
Adjournment (Easter)
Question again proposed, That this House do now adjourn.
11.17 am
Mr. Swayne: I shall attempt to draw my remarks to a close as I see that other hon. Members wish to speak.
The view of the secular state of the New Testament is very much one of grudging tolerance--render to Caesar that which is Caesar's. The view that we have expressed in our coronation service is much more intimate: of priest and king intimately connected by the anointing of oil and the consecration of the monarch. The monarch reigns not only by the grace of God, but with the blessing of God and is defender of the faith. I suggest that such an image is not open to amendment as Professor Weller would have us believe.
I say in passing that the communion service has been an integral part of the coronation service from the outset. The only monarch who avoided it was James II, and we all know what became of him. I argue that any attempt to include, as Professor Weller appears to require, the active participation in the act of acclamation by other faiths would undermine the fundamental of the principal faith--the first commandment.
There is an entirely proper argument to be had about an entirely secular state that is devoid of religious trappings, but we should not go down the road of unravelling our religious settlement by accident or by trying to change its nature, thereby ending up with a coronation service not dissimilar to the political correctness that characterised the opening of the millennium dome.
11.19 am
Mr. Alan Hurst (Braintree): It is with some pleasure that I follow the hon. Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne). At first I thought that he was wise to move from debating the internet to constitutional history, but his circumlocution began to make that subject an even bigger risk than the first. I intend to be very much safer and, as would be expected of most hon. Members, say a few unkind words about Barclays bank. The matter has been well covered by my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough, South and Cleveland, East (Dr. Kumar)--I do not propose to go over the same ground again--and parallel points were made by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath).
There is a natural interrelationship between banks and post offices in rural areas. Barclays is currently running an advertising campaign using fairly expensive actors, and I understand that its slogan is, "A big bank for a big world". One fears that that may become, "Only one bank for the whole world". Barclays has been singled out as the major culprit, but it is only third in the league table of infamy, as the NatWest bank and Lloyds TSB have closed more branches.
Barclays has suffered from a lack of good public relations, but, most of all, the banks have all suffered from a lack of any form of community spirit. That problem is endemic to modern society and businesses have changed character rapidly. Many, however large, were family run, or run by an employer who lived in the community, close to or alongside his work force. He was bonded to that
community through direct terms of employment, knowing his work force socially and performing acts of benevolence for that community. All that has been swept away over a short period.The connection between the business community and the local community has gone. We see that on a vast scale with Rover, whose owners are dismissing a country just as Barclays is dismissing villages. Governments of a democratic persuasion throughout the world sometimes need to put their nationalist tendencies aside, and we may have a lot more in common with the Governments of France, Germany and Italy than with large corporations that flit from one country to another, to the disadvantage of the inhabitants of all of them.
I want to raise another subject that has been visited often and would do so with an even greater tremor were my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) still present. I must declare an interest as a solicitor before I discuss magistrates courts. Like all hon. Members, I fear that there will be further waves of closures. The county of Essex suffered that fate in early 1998 and, as each month goes by, other counties end up in the same position.
The appeal ratio is interesting, and the fees of a lawyer appealing on behalf of magistrates courts would not be large, as the success rate is remarkably small. There were only two successful appeals under the Conservative Administration, and I suppose that the Government would say that they are twice as good because over the past three years there have been four successes in 48 cases.
Again, the problem is the divorce between democracy and the functions of government. Formerly, the magistrates courts were administered by a committee of the county council, whose members are subject to the wonderful invention--if one might put it that way--of having to be elected. That stimulates the mind, as one has to listen to what the people in one's community have to say. That, of course, does not apply to chief executives of health authorities or to members of health trusts or magistrates courts committees. They do not have to be elected and can act as they will until discharged, when they receive a large settlement.
We are missing the whole point about magistrates courts and their place in the community. I have in my hand a document, issued by the Central Council of Magistrates Courts Committees, that is tragically early 21st century. The words "central council" have an almost Stalinist ring about them and represent the incredible mixture of communism and capitalism that we have these days, which is called corporate finance. The document is entitled "Good Practice Guide on Courthouse Closure", but the very idea of using a good practice guide to close something down is beyond me.
Decisions are made according to "criteria", which is one of the words that I never want to hear again. Criteria are a straitjacket--a device for coming to the conclusion that the decider had reached in the first instance. The arguments for closing magistrates courts, which have been well rehearsed by hon. Members, are that there is concern about facilities and that the disabled sometimes cannot climb the steps to the courthouse. Magistrates courts solve that problem by making the disabled travel 20 miles to court rather than using the nearest courthouse. Another argument is that witnesses and defendants need to be separated, but the point was well made in a recent debate that they would travel home on the same bus to that far-distant village after the case.
When one judges whether institutions should remain open, one must try to sense the spirit of what one is trying to do. Magistrates courts administer justice with the benefit of local knowledge, in the spirit of the communities in which they are set. That is best achieved when magistrates come from a defined and relatively small area, sit in a courthouse in that area and judge people and situations of which they have long and extensive knowledge. None the less, the pace of contraction in the county of Essex, as elsewhere, has been rapid.
I used to appear regularly in a small two-room courthouse in Southminster on the Dengie marshes, where the interviews took place in the car park. The spirit there was as it should be. The magistrates knew everything about the locality, and probably everything about the defendants as well, especially when they faced the antique Essex charge of going in search of coneys--I suppose that we would call it rabbit poaching--for which people were prosecuted on the Dengie marshes until the early 1980s. That courthouse has closed. Local people who have to attend court now get a train from Southminster to Wickford and change for Shenfield, where they change again and catch a train to Witham in my constituency. I suspect that that court, too, may be scheduled for closure.
When King Solomon made his judgment he did not pick up a book entitled, "The Best Practice Guide to Dividing Babies"; nor did he make his decision according to the appropriate criteria. He had a sense of justice and what was right. The sooner we move away from good practice, supposed quality assurance, transparencies and all the other gobbledegook of managerial tyranny, the better. We may then be able to retrieve the sense of justice in our local communities.
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