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Bob Spink (Castle Point) (Con): May I start this debate where I left off in the Easter Adjournment debate on 1 April—on the subject of hospice funding? It is a most important issue, which the Government have yet to grasp.

On average, adult hospices in this country receive about 20 per cent. of their funding from the Government—the figure might be a little less—and children's hospices receive a miserly 5 per cent., which is simply too low. The Conservative party has a policy of funding both adult and children's hospices at 40 per cent.

I congratulate my Front Benchers on their foresight, and hope that they will stick with that policy when we win the next election—and the policy is yet another reason why we should and will win it.

Even the figure of 5 per cent. is generous compared with the 1.5 per cent. that Little Haven children's hospice in my constituency receives from the Government. That is far too little, and I implore the Minister to convey the message to the Department of Health that it should lobby heavily the strategic health authority and the primary care trust that provide the hospice with its funds, to ensure that it receives at least the average received by other children's hospices.

Chris Bryant rose—

Bob Spink: Before I give way to the hon. Gentleman, I should point out that in his speech he forgot to mention the great contribution to Welsh culture made by Max Boyce through Treorchy working men's club at the top of his valley. I hope that he will redress that oversight.
 
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I congratulate all who work in the hospice movement, particularly the volunteers who do so much to raise funds across the country. Those in Castle Point have to work harder than volunteers in any other constituency, because they have to raise 98.5 per cent. of the funds for their hospice.

Chris Bryant: I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman about the hospice movement, but he seemed rather nervous about the possibility that, come the general election, his Front Benchers would change their policy. Is that because he is not sure whether the spending cuts might fall on hospices?

Bob Spink: I am not at all nervous about the level of spending that we shall see in the NHS. I think that after the Conservatives have won the next election we shall see a more focused and efficient approach to health provision, particularly in the hospice movement.

Mrs. Angela Browning (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con): I agree with my hon. Friend about children's hospices. He will recall that in the last Conservative manifesto we pledged to increase funds for them, and we will do so again.

Bob Spink: That is one of my reasons for being a Conservative.

The issue of post offices has been covered extensively today, and I shall not repeat the arguments. I presented two petitions last night opposing the closure of two post offices in my constituency, and—with your permission, Mr. Deputy Speaker—I shall present another opposing the closure of a third. I congratulate Castle Point councillors on doing such good community work in fighting for their post offices.

This morning I received a letter dated 25 May from Rev. Michael Galloway, vicar of St. Mary's church. He begins:

"Not an Epistle from one of your usual nutters".

I part company with him there, because I do not have any nutters in Castle Point. I have only courteous, kind people who, admittedly, write to me in great volume. That, however, is the only aspect of his letter on which I part company with him. Let me proceed to the serious point that he makes:

"I am most concerned over the proposed closure of our local Post Office situated at 18A High Road, South Benfleet. To give an example of just one hardship among very many, one of my elderly parishioners with a limited income, and one who has recently had both hips replaced, collects her pension from the above branch. If she were forced to go to Hope's Green, this would entail a bus journey with all its attendant difficulties, or the expense of a taxi. Will you please make every effort to help the community to keep these operating?"

That puts it more eloquently than I could, so I will leave it at that.

I am sure that the Government are getting the message. The closure of 3,000 post offices is the result of Government policies on the payment of benefits and pensions and their decision to prevent the Post Office from running full bank accounts. They are financially supporting the closure of post offices, but not the post offices remaining open. Those policies are not being well received in our communities, and post offices are very much part of the fabric of our communities.
 
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It is important to fight the modernisation philistines who threaten to make changes in the Palace without proper consultation, particularly in Westminster Hall, where the proposal is to introduce a glass compartment and to change lighting levels. Those changes will affect our heritage negatively. The modernisation philistines say that the proposals may cost £5 million or a bit more. I do not know of any other organisation that would be allowed to go ahead with multi-million pound proposals without properly and rigorously costing them.

There are many reasons why I resist those proposals—in particular, the fact that they have not been subject to proper consultation, not least through the House, although I have spoken twice in the House on the issue, as the Minister knows.

I represent a wonderful area in south Essex. Castle Point has some remarkable heritage. We have Hadleigh castle, the St. Mary's conservation area, the Canvey Island Dutch cottages and the beautiful ancient church of St. James in Hadleigh. One of the buildings in Castle Point that is well worth preserving is the much loved Canvey Island heritage centre, a key landmark building in my constituency. Sadly, its outside structure needs significant work to ensure its preservation.

I shamelessly congratulate the excellent Heritage Lottery Fund on its work. Its employees are all dedicated and I hope that they will continue to receive good support from the Government, which they are receiving now—I congratulate the Government on that—so that they can continue their excellent work, not least by supporting the Canvey Island heritage centre, which is well worth preserving. I will meet representatives of the Heritage Lottery Fund there in a few days. I hope that it will help to preserve that important building.

I congratulate the Heritage Lottery Fund on preserving more than just buildings—it is aiming to preserve memories and culture. The way to preserve culture is to preserve memories and local knowledge. I am delighted with the Heritage Lottery Fund's involvement in a project to preserve the memories and history of the 1953 flood that swept across the south-east coastline, costing many lives, not least on Canvey Island in my constituency, where more than 50 lives were lost. I congratulate the Heritage Lottery Fund on preserving the history and memory of that event.

The Health and Safety Executive also does excellent work. It seeks to reduce accidents and is currently targeting major causes of accidents, including falls from height. New regulations on working at height that flow from EU directives will be coming through.

Where access is needed via an opening at height—for example, on a building site where lift shafts are being provided—the openings are a source of risk. Sadly, they have been a source of many accidents, including some fatal accidents; there was one this year. Traditionally, Heath Robinson lash-ups have been used to protect these accesses and block them off. Those have obvious disadvantages. For example, they do not allow access to be gained and resealed professionally. What is needed is a safe, professional, reliable, flexible and low-cost means of making the openings at height safe while retaining controlled access where necessary.
 
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I am pleased to congratulate a company in my constituency that has now developed such a contraption, the Fallgate system. Obviously, I have no pecuniary interest in that whatever. My only interest is in giving our dangerous building industry a reliable system that safely secures openings at height, thereby stopping unnecessary serious accidents—and, by the way, promoting employment in my constituency in the process.

I turn to c2c, which runs trains from Southend to Fenchurch Street that serve Benfleet in my constituency. It plans to remove from service five four-coach 357 train sets in September. That will move us down from 12-carriage to eight-carriage trains. When those trains arrive at Benfleet station, they are often full, and my constituents get a poor deal because they have to stand. There is overcrowding, which leads to a lack of safety. If those trains are moved in September, there will be less flexibility to replace a train set that is broken down, so train sets will have to be used more. Therefore, there will be less reliability and less flexibility, and cancellations will probably increase. The long-suffering passengers, who often even today, with the 12-carriage trains, have to stand and endure overcrowding for the 40-minute journey into London, will suffer even more.

That is happening at a time when the Government's policy, absolutely rightly, is to attract more people on to the trains and off the road. I therefore do not see the sense in the move. I know that the Government are not making the decision, but I hope that they will speak to the various authorities and put pressure on c2c to ensure that those trains continue to run on the Fenchurch Street line. We should not be cutting capacity on that line but increasing it by extending the use of longer trains and by extending train platforms. That would make environmental and economic sense for our country.

I turn to a more happy subject, because I do not want my speech to sound like a bit of a rant. I want to be balanced and reasonable, because there is far too much yah-boo in politics today. Let me offer a word of praise and thanks to our excellent, dedicated and often undervalued teachers and school staff and to national health service staff at all levels, whether nurses, cleaners, doctors or even managers—they, too, deserve this praise. I also praise police officers, who are often under-resourced and hard-worked, and who are suffering from more and more bureaucracy, and the hard-pressed council workers and the councillors themselves. Those people often work for lower pay than they could command elsewhere, and do so from a sense of vocation. They deserve more help and support from us politicians. They deserve more understanding of their lot, and they need us to get off their backs and let them do their jobs without the dead hand of bureaucracy and regulation that is being pressed on them more and more by this control-freakish, centralising Labour Government.

Now back to the yah-boo. My next section is extremely justified in the circumstances. I want to address the scourge of street crime and yob culture, which now seems to be a growing plague in society. I was astounded by the bare-faced audacity of the Prime Minister. His brass neck beggars belief. The Daily Mirror—yes, I still read the Daily Mirror—last Friday reported the Prime Minister's speech to the drinks industry in London. He said:
 
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"There's a clear and growing problem on our town and city centre streets on Friday and Saturday nights—and other nights too."

The Prime Minister, of course, wants the police to make full use of their new powers, and said so. He went on to say:

"New powers are there—they need to be used. As a society we have to make sure this form of what we often call binge drinking doesn't become a new sort of British disease."

I spoke of the Prime Minister's "audacity" because it was he who, through the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001, removed from the police the power to confiscate unopened cans and bottles of alcohol from the kids on our streets, who were consuming it and causing this nuisance. He seems to have a very scanty memory. I acknowledge that, following my private Member's Bill of last year, which drew attention to this issue and forced the Government into another embarrassing U-turn, they gave those powers back to the police through the Licensing Act 2003. They did so as a result of pressure from Conservatives—and, admittedly, from the Liberal Democrats—and from the police themselves.

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