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3.23 pm
Mr. Tom Watson (West Bromwich, East): As the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) has returned from his cold soup, may I thank him for his kind invitation to his constituency during the Whitsun break? If hon. Members feel that they cannot make it to Cornwall, they are welcome to join me for a special arts weekend in West Bromwich, organised by the highly regarded Jubilee Arts project, which will include a number of action-packed events and performances during the weekend of 31 May and 1 June.
Hon. Members may know that the arts run deep in West Bromwich. Unfortunately, I am afraid that Mr. Andrew Pierce of The Times did not know that when he wrote last month that
- "West Bromwich has never been regarded as at the cutting-edge of artistic expression",
We in West Bromwich and across the whole black country are trying to transform the perceptions of our area through regeneration. In the next five years, West Bromwich will have a new bus station, a major retail development, a high-tech police headquarters and a new one-stop health centre, and we are undergoing something of a renaissance. I am delighted to say that the centrepiece of that regeneration project will be a new arts and technology centre—the c/Plex centre—which has been organised under the leadership of Sylvia King through Jubilee Arts.
C/Plex is due to open in the summer of 2005 and will house business units, learning facilities, a gallery, an education centre, a conference base and cafes and restaurants. I hope that it will have a premiership football team as well, but it will certainly not be Norwich City. I say that to my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami), who is big fan of the Canaries. As well as being a key part of Sandwell's regeneration, the c/Plex project will form a major national centre that will partner the new art gallery in Walsall—again, another great midland arts centre—but hon. Members will not be surprised to hear that there are some problems with funding.
The European Commission has helped to fund the c/Plex project, as part of its energy efficiency budget for buildings and museums. I understand that there are some problems with the funding, and I thank the region's MEPs, who are trying to intervene in Brussels on our behalf, but I hope that the Commission can be persuaded, perhaps by our Government, to continue its financial involvement in that landmark project.
Sandwell will also be the home of the first urban regeneration company in the west midlands, following the Deputy Prime Minister's announcement last month.
The new URC will be a reality, and the current redevelopment of West Bromwich town centre could be just the tip of the iceberg for the six towns in Sandwell. Hundreds of millions of pounds of investment will come into the borough, thousands of well-paid jobs will be created and the borough's appearance and economy will be dramatically changed. The URC will breathe new life into a corridor of land shadowing the Midland Metro from Hill Top in Wednesbury, through West Bromwich to Smethwick, and helping to build a successful future for the area—a future in which we can attract more inward investment and become a magnet for jobs and businesses.All those who have been pushing the project are grateful to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister for its support and commitment. We now hope to drive the project forward and learn the lessons from the URCs that have been created in other parts of the country, but we are not just using the big multi-million pound projects to improve the local environment and people's quality of life. The Government's drive to tackle antisocial and yobbish behaviour is also about making our communities better and safer to live in, and in that crusade the Government have the support of the people of West Bromwich, East.
Local people always tell me on the doorstep, at my surgeries, when they stop me in the streets and in their letters and e-mails that they are sick and tired of graffiti, fly tipping, noise, vandalism, the misuse of fireworks and air guns, drunken and loutish behaviour, rubbish and litter on the streets, abandoned cars and neighbours from hell. The problem of noisy fireworks going off, all year round, at all times of the day and night, and the misuse of fireworks by those who are not even old enough to buy them legally seems to have got worse each autumn and winter.
This year things will be different in one important respect. The industry has come together to produce a voluntary code to ban the noisiest fireworks—air bombs—that drive all our constituents to despair. However, in future years, my constituents hope to have far fewer rude awakenings and sleepless nights, thanks to new legislation introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton, South (Mr. Tynan); the Fireworks Bill is long overdue. I hope that the powers it gives the Government to regulate the noisiest fireworks and to ban their use late at night will be introduced as quickly as possible when those measures reach their completion.
The range of measures contained in the Anti-Social Behaviour Bill will also help to tackle the kind of behaviour that we should not have to tolerate—for example, the misuse of air guns. A seven-year-old boy from the Hamstead area of my constituency—Hamstead, not Hampstead—was nearly blinded by teenagers misusing air weapons. A pellet lodged in Aaron Clarke's eyebrow, just a quarter of an inch from his eye, after he was fired on while playing near his home. Air rifles can seriously injure people, and are a great danger to animals. In fact, the number of attacks on children and animals rose from more than 7,500 in 1997 to more than 10,000 last year. Sandwell Swan Watch, run by Ian Carroll in my constituency, reports a growing number of wild animals and birds being killed by air guns in our area. We must stop that.
In West Bromwich, East, we also welcome the Government's success in increasing police numbers. We want to see more bobbies on the beat, to act as a deterrent against crime and to reduce the fear of crime, especially for the most vulnerable and insecure in our communities. Recruiting more officers is one way of getting more police on the streets, but employing community support officers is another, and we hope for the first tranche of those in the west midlands as soon as possible. The rolling out of fixed penalty notices, as announced by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary last week, will help to cut bureaucracy and the amount of time officers spend doing paperwork in the police station, when they could be out in the community and on the streets.
I also want to take this opportunity to make a plea for closed circuit television. The tenants association of Hamstead house and Scott house, led by Mr. Reg Hackett, has for many years been pressing for a grant from the local council to improve the security of its homes. I hope that the Government will be able to maintain their support for local CCTV initiatives.
Another initiative is working well in our community: a technological advance in policing, the automatic number plate recognition system. It works—in one afternoon, I saw seven arrests made using the new digital system, including some seriously hard-core criminals such as crack cocaine dealers and people with dangerous and offensive weapons. I hope that the Government continue to support community police initiatives.
I reiterate the offer to all Members to visit West Bromwich; perhaps after a few days in Cornwall, they could drive up the M5 to see us, and they would be very welcome. If they want tickets for the scavenger hunt, I have some leaflets, and they can catch me at the end of this debate.
3.33 pm
Tony Baldry (Banbury): Ministers should be concerned at the growing disillusionment about their ability to deliver public services. It is not just a question of people being cynically concerned about spin over substance; a growing concern exists about betrayed expectations, and there is a loss of confidence in the machinery of government. I want to give two examples from my constituency relating to health and education: Bicester community hospital and funding for schools in Oxfordshire this year. I do not seek to make a partisan political point, as, sadly, my observations could be made in practically any constituency in the country at present.
Almost immediately after coming to power, the Government published a White Paper, "The New NHS", which emphasised the value of community hospitals. Page 41 stated that
- "too often in the past community hospitals have been sidelined. Their potential contribution to managing the pressures of rising emergency admissions has often been ignored. Patients will be able to use local community hospitals to the full rather than having to travel to more distant acute hospitals."
In 1998, shortly after the Government took office, Oxfordshire health authority undertook a local consultation on the future of community hospitals in Oxfordshire. The health authority claimed that it was anxious to reduce community bed numbers in parts of Oxfordshire, where there was supposedly relatively generous provision, and to increase bed numbers where there was a greater need, such as in Bicester. In short, it wanted to ensure fairness of access to community health services.
In a debate in the House on 3 June 1998, the then Minister of State, now the Secretary of State for Health, said:
- "Two options are being considered by the health authority and the NHS trust. Both options would mean that the 12-bed hospital in Bicester would be replaced by a new 30-bed hospital".—[Official Report, 3 June 1998; Vol. 313, c. 346.]
The community health council opposed the proposals, so the final decision had to be taken by the Secretary of State. On 24 November 1999, the then Minister of State, now the Secretary of State, wrote to the then chairman of Oxfordshire health authority, Dr. Peter Iredale, confirming the decisions made about the proposed changes to community hospitals in Oxfordshire. What he said in his letter could not have been clearer, more unambiguous or starker:
- "I am delighted to support the development of a new hospital with additional beds at Bicester. However, I have decided to endorse the closure of Burford and Watlington and 18 beds at Abingdon community hospital . . . I expect the Health Authority, Trusts and Primary Care Groups to work closely to manage the change."
Matters progressed. A planning application was submitted for a new community hospital on the outskirts of Bicester. It is a matter of record that Chesterton parish council objected to that site, as a consequence of which the planning application was called in by the Government to be determined by a planning inspector. There was a public inquiry, as a result of which a different site was identified. Although the delay was extremely frustrating, I, like everyone else in Bicester, assumed that work would go ahead and that in due course, in the not-too-distant-future, Bicester would have a new community hospital. That was the expectation.
The reality is that the Department of Health and NHS officials appear to be reneging on building a new community hospital at Bicester. Matters have come to a head. North East Oxfordshire primary care trust, which is responsible for taking forward the project, has applied to Thames Valley strategic health authority for funds to work up the detailed project costs of building the new hospital. It has been told that there are no funds for that simple, straightforward project work. The response of
the Thames Valley strategic health authority is deeply disturbing and seems to indicate that it is clearly reneging on commitments made by Ministers.We in Bicester, and everyone else in Oxfordshire, thought that the money saved from the sale of Burford and Watlington community hospitals would be recycled into a new community hospital in Bicester—not so, it now seems. Thames Valley strategic health authority says:
- "the fact that those hospitals are closed is now the status quo. Those savings will have been re-invested in the system"—
- "and will not be affected even if the Bicester development does not go ahead."
As for the running costs, I understand that the health authority has told North East Oxfordshire primary care trust that the NHS will support a community hospital for Bicester only if every other PCT in Oxfordshire makes a commitment to help to meet the cost of running any future community hospital in Bicester. As the health authority put it:
- "Financial contribution from other PCTs depends on them agreeing to changes in patient flows and agreeing with the Acute Trusts that they will switch investment into the expanded primary care facilities at Bicester."
- "I am delighted to support the development of a new hospital with additional beds at Bicester"?
- "the College is £180,000 short of what it needs this year to run everything smoothly at last year's levels. Even after making certain cuts from staffing levels which were set out in the first draft of the budget to account for the rising roll, we are forecasting a deficit for the coming year in the region of £120,000."
- "We are not sure that the government understands that we are already in the current financial year, and even the staff cuts we might be able to make from September will affect only 7/12ths of the year's budget."
- "We have a commitment to raise standards, and yet, despite a rising roll, will need to cut staff. The government expects schools to implement its workforce reform agenda—and we had some
- creative plans for doing so in September. Now we have no money to do this, and instead of taking on additional support staff, will need to reduce, hopefully by natural wastage, the number of staff in the school . . . This is a disappointing picture. It has lowered morale and made sensible planning impossible."
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