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ROYAL ASSENT
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that the Queen has signified her Royal Assent to the following Acts:
Armed Forces Discipline Act 2000.
Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000.
Electronic Communications Act 2000.
Adjournment (Whitsun)
Question again proposed, That this House do now adjourn.
2.33 pm
Mr. John Cryer (Hornchurch): Like other hon. Members, I wish to raise a particular constituency issue, which was also raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Thomas)--the erection of telecommunications masts for the burgeoning mobile phone industry. This issue has received a great deal of attention in the House. There have been three Adjournment debates, and, more recently, the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis) tabled two early-day motions on the issue. In March, the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) proposed a ten-minute rule Bill on the matter, and raised many of the issues that I want to raise today.
We now have the Stewart report, produced by the Stewart group, which deals with the problem of mobile phone masts. On the issue of the medical risks that might or might not be entailed by the erection of masts, the Stewart report equivocates to some extent. However, there are some interesting passages in it.
In the foreword, Sir William Stewart states:
- the balance of evidence does not suggest that mobile phone technologies put the health of the general population of the UK at risk. There is some preliminary evidence that outputs from mobile phone technologies may cause, in some cases, subtle biological effects although, importantly, these do not necessarily mean that health is affected.
- Exposure to radiofrequency radiation below guideline levels does not cause adverse health effects to the general population.
- there may be biological effects occurring at exposures below these guidelines. This does not necessarily mean that these effects lead to disease or injury but this is important information.
In most cases there tends to be a presumption that we will allow things to develop to some extent until there is some evidence to show that there is a medical risk. In Australia and the United States, however, there tends to be the reverse presumption: that such developments will
not be allowed--at least, not where people are living, going to school or in hospital--until there is evidence to conclude that there is no risk attached to the erection of this kind of technology.I have many constituency cases concerning the erection of mobile phone masts. One example involves Towers junior school in Hornchurch. Orange--a big corporation, as these corporations tend to be--plans to erect a mobile phone mast a few yards from the school. Understandably, that is causing some alarm. I do not wish to be alarmist, because there is no substantial evidence of a risk, but there are fears and suggestions that there may be risks.
There are also fears that there may be particular risks to the young. It is ironic that Orange wishes to put the mast near a junior school. The brains of young children under 12 are still developing and their skulls are less resistant to radiation. The Stewart report mentioned that, saying:
- If there are currently unrecognised adverse health effects from the use of mobile phones, children may be more vulnerable because of their developing nervous system, the greater absorption of energy in the tissues of the head and a longer lifetime of exposure.
The Government's response to the report contained some welcome elements. For one thing, they plan extensive research into the medical risks. I would like to ask them to consider sending the relevant Minister to the House to make a statement explaining what kind of research will be done, how long it will take and what its nature will be. The statement could suggest what the Government's intentions for the research were.
More immediately, there are planning issues in connection with the erection of mobile phone masts. At present, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West pointed out, masts lower than 15 m do not require planning permission. In their response to the Stewart report, the Government said that they were minded to change that, so that masts under 15 m would need full planning permission. That is extremely welcome, but PPG8 gives a presumption in favour of giving the go-ahead. I should like PPG8 to be made more neutral so that communities' concerns could be taken into account.
Mr. Oaten: The Government, in their response to the report, felt that they should err on the side of caution and advised that youngsters should not use mobile phones, even though there is no evidence that they are harmful. Would the hon. Gentleman recommend the same cautious approach to positioning masts near schools, even though there is no evidence that they are harmful?
Mr. Cryer: The hon. Gentleman is right about the advice on the use of mobile phones. I have said that there should be exclusion zones around hospitals, schools and residential areas and that mobile phone masts should be placed in more isolated positions.
There are problems with planning permission for mobile phone masts because the companies behind the telecommunications industry tend to be extremely large, often multinational, corporations. Although councillors on a planning committee may feel inclined to reject a planning proposal, they will not do so because that would go against council officers' advice that there are no legal grounds for rejection, and the corporation could take its
case to a higher court, which might lead to the council being surcharged. It is unlikely that such action would be taken, but that fear has led councillors to give masts the go-ahead when they would rather reject the application until there is more evidence about the precise effects of the mobile phone industry.I turn now to the recent announcement by the Ford motor company that it is to end car assembly at Dagenham, where there has been a Ford plant since 1931. Henry Ford had the marshes drained and created that plant, which covers a large area. Ford's land is mainly in the Dagenham constituency, but some of it is in my constituency.
Ford has announced that car assembly will end, but the diesel engine plant will remain. I have talked at length to trade union officials, many of whom were instrumental in negotiating the deal that seems to have saved Longbridge. Their fear, and that of the work force, is that in the modern car industry it is highly unlikely that a stand-alone engine plant will survive for long. They fear that if car assembly disappears from Dagenham, the engine plant will eventually go, and everything else with it. Those fears may turn out to be unfounded, but I think that they are probably right.
I have talked about this many times to my hon. Friends, including Ministers, and expressed my fears. Pressure must be put on the Ford motor company to introduce new car assembly to Dagenham, perhaps through Mazda, which Ford now effectively owns, or Volvo, which has recently closed a plant. There may be other avenues, which the unions are exploring. It does not bode well for the plant that Ford has recently taken over Land Rover, which gives the company access to another diesel engine plant in Solihull. One has to ask why a big company, which previously had only one such plant, now needs two.
The matter involves global issues and more fundamental questions about how the economic system works. The car industry may start to move eastwards over 10 or 20 years, to central and eastern Europe, and, perhaps, the Pacific rim. That is a separate matter that can be dealt with only by Governments and international bodies, but it is the underlying fear of the trade unions and work force at Dagenham and elsewhere.
I also want to respond to the comments of the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) about how the House conducts itself. I have some sympathy with the idea of programming legislation, particularly at 3 o'clock in the morning when we are hanging around waiting for the next vote. However, Members' views tend to change when they move from opposition into government and vice versa.
There is a very good quote from the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth), when he was in government, in which he says that programming is a marvellous idea. He thought that all legislation should be timetabled because that would stop all the whingers and time-wasters on the Opposition Benches. That is ironic when one considers how he behaves these days--although he used to be a supporter of the Common Market and a member of the Communist party, so he has not been averse to changing his mind on several issues over time.
When we are in government, we think that the Opposition should not delay and that legislation should be passed--and on the whole, that is the right attitude.
I remember that our first all-night sitting was on the National Minimum Wage Bill. The Tories had stayed up all night to do their best to delay that Bill, but at 6 o'clock in the morning, when the final vote happened, we were able to rub their noses in it, which was brilliant because that legislation is one of the best things that we have done since we came into government.On the other hand, in the early 1990s, the Tories were passing the poll tax legislation. Obviously, I was not in the House at the time, but I have many friends who were. Labour Members were up night after night trying to delay that Bill, and we were right to do so because it was one of the most iniquitous pieces of legislation that any British Government have passed, certainly since 1945. Programming therefore involves the consideration of many issues.
I shall always be opposed to electronic voting because it would encourage hon. Members to feel that they could stay away from the House, and there would be less participation in its business. We are here to scrutinise the Executive, and I certainly hope that the hon. Member for Winchester, as a member of the Opposition, would say that that is why he is here.
Turnout at elections has very little to do with the behaviour in this place. We could introduce electronic voting, change the procedures of the House and programme every piece of legislation, but I bet that there would not be a significant increase in turnout in any of the elections that followed. The real reason for the fall in the number of people voting during the 1980s was the enormous increase in deprivation and unemployment caused by the previous Administration, which led people to feel alienated from the electoral process.
I remember reading in a national newspaper, about two years before the last general election, about a man in Wales who was prosecuted for pinching four lumps of coal to keep his family warm. It is difficult to imagine that one could convince people living in such poverty that they have a direct connection with the democratic and political process.
I think that such deprivation and unemployment were deliberately created by the previous Administration, because they tended to affect Labour areas. The closure of the pits and the steelworks and the complete decimation of the shipbuilding industry were politically motivated because they helped to undermine the base of the trade unions and the Labour party, and removed the traditional avenues into political activism. At one time, Hornchurch, and parts of the east end such as Beckton and Canning Town, had many dockers. When the docks went, the basis of political activism disappeared, and the same is true in mining and steel areas. A conscious effort was made to remove that basis.
Those are the issues that we must address. What can be done by people in Beckton, Barnsley, Glasgow or Liverpool, who might be the third unemployed generation in their family? The Government have started to tackle those issues, and there have been moves in the right direction, particularly in the redistribution of wealth. However, we still have a long way to go before we bring the people who suffered enormously during the 1980s and 1990s back into political participation.
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