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The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Phil Woolas): I cannot allow my Prime Minister to be attacked in that way without leaping to his defence. The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point and we all share the objective of stopping binge drinking. I acknowledge his efforts in that regard, but it was a court judgment on the interpretation of the power to confiscate alcohol on the streets that exposed the loophole, which we were then happy to close.
Bob Spink: I am grateful for that explanation but, whatever explanation the hon. Gentleman gives, it was this Government who had removed from the police the power to control underage drinking on the streets.
John Cryer (Hornchurch) (Lab) rose—
Mr. Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam) (LD) rose—
Bob Spink: I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald).
Mr. Heald: In fact, we pointed out in Committee on the Criminal Justice and Police Bill—on which I led for the Opposition—what the effect would be at the time when the power was changed. The Minister in question disagreed, but the Government were forced into a subsequent retreat.
Bob Spink:
I think that I have made my point, so I shall move on to overdevelopment, which is another scourge and a real issue in the south-east. Our green and pleasant constituencies are being ever more threatened and concreted over. Such overdevelopment is particularly damaging when it is linked, as it always seems to be, to a total lack of provision of suitable supporting infrastructure. That puts the existing infrastructure, which is already under stress, under even greater stress, and it damages our constituents' quality of life.
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I continue to resist all major new development proposals for Castle Point because that is the rational and correct thing to do, given the circumstances. Castle Point has a target of building another 2,400 homes in the next few years. The planning period is more than half way through, yet only 700 to 900 homes—not even half—have been identified and built. But in recent weeks, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has forced the target up from 2,400 to 4,000. That is simply not sustainable, and there is not even a hint of any new supporting infrastructure.
Canvey Island must get its additional access route and the A13 congestion problems must be solved before we go down this route, which would devastate our communities. The East of England Development Agency and those in charge of the Thames gateway are part of the problem. They could and should be good for our communities, but they seem intent on pushing for more and more development without the necessary infrastructure. However, it is not too late. I call on the Government to change the emphasis and to make sure that we establish the infrastructure before, or at least at the same time as, such development takes place. This is an extremely important issue for our constituents' quality of life.
I end on a very happy note. I want to put on the record the tremendous civic pride that the people of Castle Point rightly have in the achievement of Canvey Island FC, who this year gained promotion to the Conference and who reached last Sunday's final of the FA trophy. We lost to Hednesford Town, and to put it in colloquial terms, "We was robbed and the referee was blind." In fact, the referee was quite good.
We still had a most wonderful season. The club has strong community links and supports its youth teams well on Canvey Island. It is a source of great pride and joy to the whole community. The club has brought the community together, and I congratulate the players, the staff and the manager, Jeff King. Most of all, I congratulate the supporters who, along with me, Saturday after cold, wet Saturday afternoon go to all the ordinary games as well as the cup final.
3.55 pm
John Cryer (Hornchurch) (Lab): Following on from earlier speeches about post office closures, I want to mention—as I have mentioned on two previous occasions—that in my constituency four post offices face the threat of closure. The argument that is being used, as it probably is with regard to post offices in all constituencies, is that the business levels have fallen to such a point that the post office is no longer sustainable. That is in many cases an accurate argument, although not in all cases. The Government have to bear responsibility for the fact that the reason why business levels have fallen so low is that there has been a massive shift to direct payments into bank accounts. That has happened because of encouragement by the Govt.
Senior post office managers have told me that it has been made clear to them that when three options for the payment of benefits or pensions are publicised, the post office option always has to be No. 3. It is usually put in pretty obscure terms at the bottom or the back of the publication. Hence the levels of business drop and for obvious reasons post office closures come along. It is
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often pensioners who are at the receiving end of that, certainly in my constituency. I have a high proportion of pensioners in my constituency—they are the ones who use post offices and who tend to suffer when they close.
It is not good enough for Ministers to say that this is an operational matter for the board of Royal Mail or for regional Post Office managers. The Government are the 100 per cent. shareholder in the Post Office and Royal Mail, and they bear responsibility, at least to some extent, for what has happened.
I wish to raise a couple of other issues. The first is steel prices, which have received a lot of attention, especially in the financial pages of the press, during the past few weeks. The rise in steel prices is clearly causing problems for many businesses. In Rainham, in the south of my constituency by the river Thames, there are a lot of small firms, particularly engineering, light engineering and building firms. The rise in steel prices is starting to have a serious impact on their effectiveness and ability to compete and continue to do business. That comes after enormous rises, especially in professional indemnity insurance premiums. Often 9/11 is used as an excuse. In the past couple of years, we have seen premiums for small and medium businesses go through the roof. However, 9/11 is not a reason. It is an excuse for an insurance industry that is engaging in profiteering. Some small and medium businesses have gone under because the insurance industry has decided to take advantage of the general insurance and economic climate to increase premiums.
Next door to my constituency, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Jon Cruddas), is the massive Ford plant, which is still a considerable works and employs about 5,000 people. It surely has to be a matter of time before the rise in steel prices starts to have an effect on even the big trans-national companies such as Ford, which operate on a massive global scale. I probably have about 400 or 500 constituents who work at Ford Dagenham even today.
The hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) mentioned antisocial behaviour issues. Such issues have probably started to face all of us in our constituencies during the past few years. It certainly has in my constituency. The hon. Gentleman did not mention the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003, which is providing the police with some of the tools that they need to tackle the problem.
In particular, I have seen recently that the British Transport police—along with my local authority, Havering, and the local police force—is applying for a dispersal order for the eastern end of the District line, which runs up to Upminister and goes through three stations in my constituency. That line has been the victim of antisocial behaviour, some of which verges on criminal damage. That behaviour is obviously frightening for a lot of passengers travelling home late at night, and I have regularly seen it, too. There have been previous attempts to tackle the problem, and although the phrase "dispersal notice" has an unfortunate ring, as it sounds like something that would be used during wartime, the application of those notices should have the kind of effect that we all want—I certainly do, as I often travel back late at night.
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The final local issue that I want to raise relates to St. George's hospital in my constituency. It was the hospital that served RAF Hornchurch, which has now gone, although it covered a large area of my constituency until 1963 and was part of the ring of steel during the second world war. Probably all the greatest fighter aces of the second world war flew from RAF Hornchurch at one time or another, and a lot of injured pilots ended up being treated at St. George's hospital.
St. George's hospital comes under the aegis of the local primary care trust. There are several options for its future because it requires a lot of investment. Unfortunately, one of the options is closure, which is unacceptable to me—and I know that it is unacceptable to the vast majority of my constituents, as I have talked to and communicated with a large number of them. If the hospital closed, the facilities would be moved to Harold Wood hospital, which is a long way from my constituency, especially the southern part around Rainham and Elm Park. A lot of elderly people, who have similarly elderly relatives in St. George's hospital, particularly recovering from strokes and other illnesses, would have to travel, perhaps using two or three buses, to Harold Wood hospital and back again. That journey would take all day and it would be impractical for elderly people who live in Rainham and similar areas. Some sort of health facility must be maintained on the St. George's site, partly for historical reasons, but principally because we need a health facility for the elderly people who live in the south of the borough.
Lastly, I want to touch on an issue that hon. Members raised earlier: voter participation in the democratic process. The idea seems to be put around these days that if we modernise Parliament—I put that phrase in quotation marks—somehow voter turnout would magically rocket. The Liberal Democrats, in particular, latch on to that idea. We could change the language and procedures used in the House. We could even flatten it and build some modernist structure in steel and glass.
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