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Mr. Fabian Hamilton (Leeds, North-East): I congratulate my hon. Friend on initiating the debate. As he says, many parts of Leeds are extremely prosperous and unemployment is very low; indeed, my constituency was recently voted, on a league of altered data, one of the wealthiest in the entire country. But there are pockets of unemployment and deprivation that would match those anywhere in Great Britain or the rest of Europe. I am talking mainly about the Chapeltown area, and antisocial behaviour and crime blight the lives of people there, so I congratulate the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister on today's initiative. The problem involves crime related to crack cocaine, heroin and street gangs that use firearms and the most appalling violence against one another, but innocent victims get in the way. Does my hon. Friend agree that one way in which we can most improve the lives of the very poorest—apart from all the issues such as housing, job opportunities and training that he mentions—would be to ensure that the crackdown on crime really works and that the kind of antisocial behaviour that blights people's lives is removed?
Mr. Mudie: I will certainly spell out later the effect of crime on ordinary people in my constituency, but the problem goes deeper than crime. I remember the Prime Minister once saying, "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime," but I wonder whether we are getting the balance wrong. We have enough sticks and we are adding more sticks to the armoury, but I wish there were some carrots. I look at some of the kids on the estates and I cannot defend their behaviour. I attack their behaviour and I want them to be dealt with, but I look at the houses they come from, the peer pressure and the parents' behaviour, and I worry for the kids. I was proud to be a member of a Labour Opposition who made such statements, believed them and wanted to operate those policies. All the rhetoric about sticks and prisons came from the other side. That is part of the solution, but locking up a youngster should be the last recourse. I wish we had a more balanced policy of working with youngsters and offering them alternatives to running with their peers, misbehaving and being put under pressure to do drugs. I would like some balance to be put back in our criminal justice policy.
After six years, with a lack of major physical and financial improvements in the lives of my constituents, we should have the humility to accept that a reappraisal of the strategy is required. If that does not happen, when we eventually leave office, we will leave the inner city much as we found it, and, by our policies, we will have failed to empower the bulk of our poorer constituents. We will therefore have failed to let them share in the general prosperity.
I want to propose two things to the Minister. First, I invite her to visit my constituency, walk the streets, talk to the people and see whether I am exaggerating. Throughout the recess, I have been on the streets knocking on doors—not canvassing but speaking to people to find out whether they have anything to say, what their problems are and whether I can be of any help. Last Sunday morning, I met a lady who was washing her car in her drive. I asked her whether she had any problems. I quote her response:
- "Look at the tyre marks on the road. That's where the lads joyride in stolen cars each night. Over there is the barrier to divide the street. That is where they run the cars onto and then burn them out"—
- "Let me show you the back kitchen window where at 6.30 in the morning when I was getting breakfast before leaving for work a brick came through"—
- "This is my car that gets damaged regularly. This is my house I hesitate to leave because I fear coming back to a burgled property."
What did I say in response? I know the policies and the script, but we live in a verbal world of promises and policies, whereas that lady lives 24 hours a day in reality, and reality is nasty.
In that one street, I met two pensioners who had lived there all their lives. It was a bit cold, but it was a sunny day, and, looking past them, I saw a beautiful back garden alive with flowers. Looking around, however, I saw shattered windows, damage, graffiti, and rubbish thrown in gardens. What did they say to me? They were bewildered at the violence, the neglect and the number of asylum seekers. In that one street, I have more asylum seekers than my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet has in his whole constituency. What does that do to relationships in that street and in that area? Above all, that lovely pair of pensioners, who have lived in Gipton all their lives, feel the indifference of anybody to their concerns. That is what they are faced with in their advanced years.
With another pensioner and his wife—the Minister will be proud of me—I talked about pension credit and heating under the warm front arrangements. Wonderful stuff, to the script—the Prime Minister would be proud of me. As I went to their door, however, the fellow said casually to me that the doctors had sent him to St. James's to see a consultant about tumours on his bladder. He was sent within two weeks—good for the doctor—but the consultant bizarrely sent him back to the doctor. Does anyone on these Benches see any sense in that? The worrying thing was that he sat with me for 20 minutes having a conversation about pension credit and central heating and did not raise it. He only raised it casually, in conversation, as he was showing me out. That was the level of his expectations—he had not come to complain about it; he accepted it as one of those things. That is the stoicism of pensioners and ordinary, decent people who are being put through such things every day, week and month. That is all in one street.
To take a different case, I met a young lad in his 30s whose wife had left him and who was raising three boys. He had been burgled twice—not only burgled; his house had been trashed. He was not in work and was very poor. He wants work, and the issue that I would raise is this: why on earth would he work when somebody in the street will burgle him if he spends his hard earned wages
on anything? What does he make of it? He is broken-hearted. He does not know what he will do. He has to deal with poverty, bad housing, insecurity and raising three kids with decency.Again, that was in just one street. The sad thing is that on each of the Sundays on which I was out, although I was in different parts of the constituency, I heard the same tale. After all this time, that should not be happening. My colleagues and I, after all our years in local government, came here to put an end to that. Six years on, under a Labour Government, people are still living like that.
What can we do? Let us understand that we may be spending enough. On that, I have no quarrel with the Chancellor or the Prime Minister. The Chancellor has put record sums into the spending Departments. What I want to know is whether we are spending it efficiently. Is the money coming through to the areas in need and being spent in the relevant way? I am suspicious of the Government's preoccupation with innovation. Anybody with feet in the community and any history of involvement in politics knows that the previous Government deliberately ran down the public services for 18 years. When we came to office, we did not need innovation. We needed more teachers, more doctors, and more police. Those are mainstream things—they are not glamorous or new, but they are what our constituents want. Youngsters would be taught better if we had more teachers, we would sleep safe in our bed if we had more police, people would be better looked after in hospitals if we had more nurses, and we would be seen more quickly by doctors if we had more of them. Those are all great things, but we are told, "No, it must be new; we must have innovation."
Services and morale have suffered over the past few years. Instead of offering money to anyone and any organisation with a new idea, why was it not just piled into mainstream services? Why do we have to dream up a third way—a different way—of delivering public services? In my view, a lot of people are making a good living out of funds designed to get people out of poverty. We saw it over the years with the Tories, but it has been exacerbated. This week, I received a letter from a black and ethnic education group that has been set up, with a manager, project manager and assistant manager listed on the letterhead, all of them receiving good salaries. I would have preferred three black teachers in schools being good role models and providing an additional pair of hands, but somebody in some Department will have said, "No, this is new, it presses all the buttons, why don't we do it?" That has not helped and will not help any black kids—well, it has helped three, because they have got jobs. My people are still poor, but they are better advised on their poverty than they have ever been.
The Government have lost interest in joined-up government. The rhetoric of our first few years has disappeared, as has the thinking behind it. My hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) knows that each organisation defends its budget and tends to put its own interests in survival before the customer. Our rhetoric was about coming together, pooling funds and deciding how to deal with a common problem—it was good rhetoric in which we believed. However, joined-up government has not happened. Each organisation comes to the table to get its nose in the trough and to ensure that it gets money so that it is secure, while the customer comes way down the list.
The Government should focus more fiercely. If their objective is to get rid of the inner city and the problems that characterise it, each locality should have a co-ordinated approach. All spending should be examined and it should be determined whether it helps to achieve success. In Leeds, different departments and agencies do things that cut across objectives and, occasionally, damage achievements. My colleagues will understand why I mention the magic words Education Leeds. We were unable to handle our education service, and following some colonial behaviour by the now Home Secretary, our education system was handed over to a private firm that sees politics and politicians as dirty words. It will not speak or listen to politicians and if it does listen, a behaviour pattern is triggered meaning that it does the exact opposite of what has been asked.
My next point is something I do not joke about. The Government will deny it yet it has hampered their chances of achieving proper co-ordination, effective focusing and accountable joined-up thinking. The Government have a dislike and disdain for local government. Right from the start, they have been determined to avoid using it as a key player. Powers have been given to quangos and organisations that were dreamt up to circumvent local government. I talk from personal experience because although you would not believe this, Madam Deputy Speaker, I spent a brief period as a Minister—it was far too long in No. 10's eyes.
I remember my first conversation with the permanent secretary at a dinner. I was responsible for training and enterprise councils, which were considered obnoxious organisations that spent funds along the lines that I suggested. I said that TECs should get in partnership with local government because, given that local government was responsible for the economic area and that skills training was important, the two should work together. I do not know whether I was more surprised by the permanent secretary's attack on local government when he took me outside and said, "You can't do that. You mustn't do that. That is not on the agenda", or by the fact that he dared to speak to me in such a fashion. I thought it strange that a permanent secretary should lecture a Minister that No. 10 did not like local government and say that I should not dare suggest that local government should take an interest in, and be worked with on, the local economy, because I thought that that was central to getting everything right in a vibrant local authority.
Local government has been treated badly right from the start. All one gets from senior figures in the Government is derision of the ability of local councillors in general and local government as a whole. Perhaps someone should whisper in their ears the general view of the competence of Cabinet Ministers and national Government as a whole. That view might be slightly similar to the general view of local government. We need a bit of humility. The fact that local government has not been used as the co-ordinating force to bring everyone together to achieve joined-up thinking has damaged our move toward dealing with inner-city poverty.
Where does this leave us? I do not expect, or want, even such a sensitive Minister as my hon. Friend to spend any time refuting my suggestions. I recognise that it is immodest impertinence for me to make suggestions
even to a newly declared "listening Government". I would be delighted if the Minister left those parts of my speech alone, because it is not becoming for a Back Bencher of my standing even to put forward those suggestions. However, I want her to think about the reality of the impact that we have made in six years, because it is a serious matter.When I was leader of the council, I had a good nursery chairman and we had one of the best nursery building and child care programmes in the country—we were years ahead of even Newcastle, although we have always been ahead of Newcastle. I remember saying to my delightfully hard working colleague, "It's not working." She asked me what I meant. I said, "Well, after two or three years of spending a lot of money"—the objective was to get all youngsters into proper child care or nurseries, if their parents wished—"if we want to make it available to everyone, at the present rate we will not do that in our lifetime." She said, "I can't work any harder." I told her that I was not suggesting that she worked harder but that she stepped back. If that is our objective and the mountain that we are climbing—to use the words of the Prime Minister—yet after six years we are still in the foothills, it would be fine to get the oxygen masks off and take a bit of time to think that in the lifetime of even our optimistic Government, we will not get to the top. That might sound flippant, but there are 200,000 people in the inner city in Leeds—they are pensioners, the lad trying to find work and the lass living in fear in a low-paid job.
I did not come into Parliament or politics to attack poverty on the margins. Neither my colleagues nor I came into politics to make poverty more comfortable. I wanted to eliminate poverty, which is do-able, and certainly do-able in a city such as Leeds, given the jobs that we have. I say to everybody concerned that if after six years we are nowhere near that aim and people are still living in such conditions, we must start to look at ourselves. We must have the humility to say that we owe it to the people out there to reappraise what we are doing, how we do it and how fast we do it. It is no joke to live in poverty, it is no joke to live in fear and it is no joke to raise kids yet realise that they will not get the same chances and standard of living as a kid living in a more prosperous part of Leeds—that is what all the figures add up to.
In this new listening Government, I hope that there will be some humility and that we will reappraise what we are doing. If we fail, the people whom we represent and those who look to us as the last hope will never forgive us. When Cabinet Ministers and the Prime Minister look back on our unprecedented majority and power, they must consider the timidity with which we have approached the problem. The Minister might say that we have a lot of policies and that we are not timid, but we are not successful. Too many people are hurting. It would be the greatest crime to have such a majority, such power and such time only to leave office and hand over power at some time in the middle of the century to what will presumably be a right-wing Conservative Government who will have no interest in ordinary people. If that happens, we will have failed not only this generation of ordinary people but also future generations.
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