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Matthew Green: The hon. Gentleman has been speaking for 15 minutes. He has produced a catalogue of Government failings, and I agree with much of what he has said. But can he reassure us that at some point he may offer a solution rather than just listing problems?
Mr. Hammond: I shall deal with our policy agenda shortly. The point I am making now is that this Government, who are long on rhetoric, have taken large amounts of money from the pockets of ordinary hardworking families to invest in public services that have spectacularly failed to improve those people's quality of life. The Minister devoted a large part of her rather longer speech to worthy and worthwhile local initiatives, without addressing much bigger issues of Government policy that crucially undermine the quality of life of individuals throughout the country.
Ian Lucas: Will the hon. Gentleman take it from me that the issues raised by the Minister are the issues raised in my surgeries every week, and that they directly affect my constituents' quality of life? I should be delighted to hear the Opposition's proposals in that regard.
Mr. Hammond: Even the Minister recognised in the closing moments of her speech that the bigger issues such as health, taxation, education and social services affect the quality of life crucially—that they provide the backdrop. Perhaps as crucial as anything in all local communities is the provision of housing. The number of homeless families in bed-and-breakfast accommodation has increased threefold since 1997, and priority homelessness has increased by 26 per cent. That failure in particular underlines the Government's failure to live up to their rhetoric about caring for the most vulnerable in society, and improving quality of life for those most in need.
Dr. Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test): I hear what the hon. Gentleman says about the importance of a roof over one's head and of housebuilding programmes. Can he explain why members of his party throughout the country have opposed plans for the building of new and, in particular, affordable housing in areas where the issues that he raises could be dealt with?
Mr. Hammond: The hon. Gentleman is not being terribly specific. I do not doubt for a moment that
various members of my party in various places may have opposed specific proposals. In a moment I shall say something about the Government's communities plan, which is the main way in which they hope to address these issues.The number of social housing completions has fallen by a third since 1997. If we had maintained the 1997 rate, we would now have 35,000 more social homes—enough to house the families who are in bed-and-breakfast accommodation three times over. What I consider even more pernicious, however, is that across large areas even people in full-time work find it impossible to gain access to home ownership. What we used to call social housing, which most of us used to regard as a way to provide housing for those who were unable to participate fully in the economy, now needs to be provided for people who have full-time jobs, often in the public sector. I find that intolerable; it does not serve our communities or those who work in our public services.
The Government's answer is the communities plan, consisting of four growth areas in the south-east and a proposal to demolish many homes in the north. The communities plan will do nothing for the quality of life of the hundreds of thousands of workers across the south-east in the public and private sectors who aspire to owning their own homes in the communities that they serve. Instead, they will be condemned either to key worker, rented housing, or to long-distance commuting to the area in which they work from a home in a growth area selected by the Government. If they do choose to commute, they will get a chance to assess the success of the Government's 10-year plan for transport, which has been rubbished by virtually everyone—from the Commission for Integrated Transport to the Select Committee and the social exclusion unit.
If those people go by train, they will have plenty of time to ponder on the longer journey times and decreased reliability of a railway that is soaking up ever-larger volumes of taxpayer's money. And they will perhaps have a chance to consider the Government's extraordinary feat in turning a poorly performing element of our infrastructure—our national railway—into a worse performing one, which now seems to need to double as a bottomless pit for public finance, if we are to avoid its imploding completely. If they go by car, they will be able to contemplate the £45 billion in taxes that Government impose on motorists, while considering that Britain's spends the lowest proportion of motoring taxes on transport of any country in the western world.
Either way, as those people commute they will get a chance to see something of the countryside that the Government talk about protecting, but for which they display nothing but contempt. The failure to support rural communities as agriculture has lurched from crisis to crisis has eroded the quality of life of those who live in, and depend on, the countryside. The countryside is not a mausoleum, so that failure will erode its ability to benefit those who live in our towns and cities.
In an earlier intervention, the right hon. Member for Birkenhead pointed out that the key issue that emerges on the doorstep when one asks people about quality of life is having a sense of security. In part, that means future financial security, such as pensions; critically, it also means basic physical security, which we might hope
to be able to take for granted today, but cannot. Crime and the fear of crime blight lives in our communities as much as, if not more than, material poverty. Britain under Labour has become the crime capital of the western world. Violent crime recorded by the police has increased by 70 per cent. since 1999, while clear-up is down by one quarter. Gun crime has doubled under Labour. People in England and Wales are now more likely to be victims of crime than those in Europe or north America.I agree with the right hon. Member for Birkenhead, however, that almost as worrying is the growth in low-level crime and antisocial behaviour. A senior police officer described it to me the other day as a social malaise that has soared under Labour. It makes life a misery for people in our local communities. It makes them feel vulnerable and disempowered, and I suggest to the Government that it is a symptom of a lack of balance between rights and responsibilities in our communities.
The solution to detrimental low-level crime and disorder is neighbourhood policing that is accountable to the community, so that the community's priorities are reflected in the police's responses. Too often in too many areas, what the police consider low-level crime does not get the response that the community believes it deserves. The next Conservative Government have pledged to increase the number of police officers on the streets through the savings that we will make by sorting out the shambolic asylum system; and to reduce police bureaucracy, so that those additional officers deliver real reassurance on the streets of our towns and cities, throughout the country.
I want to touch on another issue relating to physical security that is germane to the debate on local communities. It is not only our police forces that protect us from the threats around us; so do our fire and rescue services. During the long fire dispute, the Government pledged that the modernisation of fire services would result in a reduction in fire deaths. So how many people will sleep safer in their beds and see their quality of life improved, thanks to Government's recent reduction of their target in respect of deliberate fires? Their target figure of a 30 per cent. reduction by 2009 has been amended to a mere 10 per cent. reduction by 2010. And how will people's sense of security be enhanced by the Government's reducing their target of a 20 per cent. reduction in the number of accidental fire deaths from 2004—a date that is a bit close to judgment day? Suddenly, that date has been pushed out to 2010.
Such examples underline the nature of this Government's use of targets. Targets grab headlines when they are announced, but when they become difficult to meet they get pushed back. Indeed, during a Standing Committee debate the other day, the hon. Member for Corby (Phil Hope) was very honest about the accidental deaths target. He said:
- "We have extended that to March 2010 because . . . the previous target was not attainable."—[Official Report, First Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation, 21 October 2003; c. 4.]
As the Minister knows, there are many areas that I have not even touched on that contribute considerably to the sense of an undermining of the quality of life in our local communities. Indeed, I hope to mention some points that relate specifically to my local community, and to discover some things ahead of the expected announcement from the Chancellor. We confidently predict that we will hear of yet higher taxes, yet more burdens on hard-working families and yet higher council tax levels. On the local government settlement, we expect to hear more from the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford) about the Government's redistribution of resources around the country, which will undermine the quality of life of people in communities not favoured with this Government's largesse.
The Government can best contribute to the quality of life in our local communities by giving them back their freedom: the freedom for local authorities to address the needs of the community, not the targets of government; the freedom for accountable police authorities to address community priorities, thus enhancing the population's sense of safety and security; the freedom for our doctors, nurses and teachers to treat and to teach; and the freedom for patients and parents to exercise the choice that empowers individuals. We need a Government who live within their means; taxation that does not squeeze the lifeblood out of our economy; public services that are reformed to deliver efficiently, without waste and bureaucracy, through the exercise of citizen choice; funding distribution based on the need to protect the vulnerable everywhere—not just in areas favoured by government—while still promoting economic growth and allowing the economy to grow by attracting investment to the areas in which inward investment wants to locate.
In short, we need a fair deal for everyone—the south as well as the north, the countryside as well as our cities. That is the way for the Government to contribute to a rise in the quality of life for all our local communities.
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