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4.15 pm

Bob Spink (Castle Point): I first tell the Minister that Essex people do not want to be regionalised. They are a proud people who identify closely and warmly with their local communities. They are proud to live in Essex, which is a wonderful, diverse and beautiful county with an excellent cricket team. There is no better place in Essex than Castle Point, which has the historic Hadleigh castle overlooking the magnificent Thames estuary; the Benfleet conservation area, with its 9th-century St. Mary's church; excellent ancient pubs, including the Anchor, the Half Crown and the Hoy and Helmet; Canvey island, with its wonderful, friendly people, its Dutch cottage, its heritage centre, its sea-front of such wonderful potential, its village community, and, of course, Canvey Island football team, which has had another excellent year; and Thundersley, with its woods and magnificent and valuable wildlife.

Yet those are all put at risk by this Labour Government and their policies, under which things have gone very wrong. Those policies will force the building of thousands of extra houses on our green and pleasant land, with no promise of infrastructure to support them and take the burden off our roads, schools and sewage treatment plants, and no investment in public transport or youth facilities to help to get our young people off the streets and into alternative suitable activities. Labour policies will destroy our green belt and threaten our wildlife and environment.

Labour policies threaten us with unwanted and unnecessary airport capacity in the south-east—an expansion of airport capacity that will destroy local communities. The Cliffe option now seems to be more unlikely after our Conservative-led battle against it, but it remains on the books. I ask the Minister to say a word about that to relieve local people of the burden of that threat.

Labour policies lead to the unfair distribution of lottery community funding. For instance, the eastern area of England has more than 1 million people living in poverty, many more than in the north-west, yet the north-west receives massively more financial support—it gets £8.11 per head compared with only £4.70 per head in the eastern region. The Community Fund must address that inequity.

Labour policies threaten our chemists. The Government have failed to reject the Office of Fair Trading's recommendation on removing entry controls. Labour does not seem to understand the importance of chemists in our local communities. Pharmacies are part of the very fabric of those communities—none more so than Bharat Patel's new chemist's and doctor's surgery in Benfleet, which I shall help to open on Friday. Community-based chemists can do even more to

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relieve the burden of general practitioners, and the Government should regulate to enable them to do that and take on a greater share of providing local primary health-care services. Chemists are not simply retailers and it is time that the Government accepted that.

Labour policies have forced council tax rises of 44 per cent. over the past four years on people in my constituency and leave us unable to fund our local schools' staffing budgets, putting education in crisis. Castle Point has excellent schools, which deserve much better than they get from the Government. Education has gone terribly wrong in the past two years.

The Government amendment states that the House

"welcomes this year's increased funding for education of over £2.6 billion, 11.6 per cent. extra, and more than £250 million greater than pressures".

That reveals what has happened. The amendment openly states that the increase above pressures is only £250 million for the total education budget. That represents a mere 1 per cent., not the 11.6 per cent. that the Government claim to schools that they have put into education this year. Yet again, the Government have failed to deliver on a most important issue. They have failed our children, the governors, the teachers, the parents and our communities on education, as on so many other matters.

Labour policies that force council tax rises in Castle Point mean that the people have to pay some £400 a year more than they should. The council tax in Castle Point is £400 a year higher per average house than in neighbouring Southend. Yet Southend managed to provide much better services than Castle Point, where the local council cannot even keep the streets clean and safe. People experience genuine difficulties in finding the extra money that they need to pay their council tax bills. I shall encourage them to vote out the Labour administration and vote in a sound Conservative administration on Thursday.

Castle Point's Labour-controlled council has been found to be failing, not by me but by the Government, who nominated it as a failing council, especially on the key provision of social housing. My right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) made an excellent speech that covered housing and I shall therefore not repeat the points on that subject.Labour councillors in Castle Point refuse even to meet my residents who need their help on housing. They refuse to answer their phone calls or letters. Those letters are from vulnerable constituents who need help and advice.

Geraint Davies (Croydon, Central): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Bob Spink: No, I shall not give way to Labour Members because they have been filibustering all afternoon.

Labour councillors in Castle Point may well reflect on their cruel attitude to vulnerable people at the election on Thursday. Conservatives would improve the organisation of social housing in Castle Point and provide more units to help the people who so much need it.

We have already heard that Labour policies will lead to the closure of 3,000 post offices and will not allow vulnerable people to make use of the universal bank account that would enable them to pay their bills

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through direct debit. Such denial stops vulnerable people from being able to take advantage of the discounts that they could get on their utility bills through using direct debit. That is another cruel attitude of a cruel and failing Government.

The Government do not care for the environment, our wildlife or our communities. They certainly do not care for vulnerable people. They have presided over the breakdown of local communities, where people must pay more but get less. The Government, like Labour councillors, should be shown the door as soon as possible.

4.24 pm

Jim Knight (South Dorset): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink), even though I disagreed with virtually every word that he had to say. It is an even greater pleasure to speak against the main motion and for the amendment tabled in the name of the Prime Minister. I welcome this debate on the impact of Government policies on community services, because it gives me a fine opportunity to inform the House of their impact on my constituency. I remind the House that it is the most marginal Labour constituency and that it decides the fate of the Tory leadership. I have a poster in my office from the Dorset Evening Echo from the day of the last general election, which reads:

"Labour gains South Dorset—Hague quits".

I would assume that, were we to hang on to South Dorset next time, the current leader—if he is still in his post at the time—would have to do the same.

South Dorset is a seat with an urban and rural mix, with about 75 per cent. of its population in the borough of Weymouth and Portland and about 25 per cent. in the remaining rural area. As I mentioned in an intervention, the Conservatives see fit to contest only five out of 12 seats in the borough. Indeed, they do not care enough about the island of Portland to contest any of the wards there.

To illustrate the impact of Government policies on community services, I would like to start my brief tour of my constituency in Swanage. It is a town of about 10,000 people on the coast of the Isle of Purbeck. Many people will have visited it on geography field trips in their youth. It has gained from a new day surgery unit at the cottage hospital and a new science block at Swanage middle school, and, despite Dorset constabulary having more police officers than ever before, it has also gained from having neighbourhood wardens. I went out on patrol with the wardens last month and saw for myself the effect that they are having on providing reassurance against what the Opposition spokesman described as the crippling effect of the fear of crime. The level of crime in Swanage is not very high at all—in fact, Dorset is the fourth safest place to live in the country—but the fear of crime is real, and the neighbourhood wardens in Swanage are doing a fantastic job in reassuring the public.

I move from Swanage to Weymouth via the village of Church Knowle. I visited it just the other day and met the chairman and the clerk of the parish council there. They told me that, out of the 150 homes in the parish, only three remain as social housing. They decried the

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effect of the right to buy introduced by the Tories, and I have no doubt that they would be equally opposed to the effect of the Tory policy—about which we have heard nothing today—of extending the right to buy to housing association tenants. Those three homes that remain in Church Knowle are all housing association homes, and, under that Conservative policy, they would go the same way, contributing to the 13 per cent. second home ownership in that ward that represents a stark contrast to the level of social housing there. We need to see those figures turned around.

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