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petitions
Harpenden Memorial Hospital
6 pm
Mr. Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con): I present a petition signed by 8,713 local residents, including doctors, nurses and other employees who have worked at Harpenden memorial hospital and patients and relatives of patients who have been treated at the hospital, all of whom deplore the proposed closure of beds at the hospital. They say that the relatively small savings achieved by closing the ward are overshadowed by the huge impact on the care provided at the hospital for the most needy, frail, elderly and terminally ill people in the Harpenden area. They say that the closure is a breach of promises made at a public meeting in September 2005 when the people of Harpenden were told by the primary care trust that closing or running down the hospital would be bad for patient care and financially disadvantageous.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Secretary of State for Health to work with the St. Albans and Harpenden Primary Care Trust to ensure that the beds at Harpenden Memorial Hospital are not closed.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
Crawley Hospital
6.1 pm
Laura Moffatt (Crawley) (Lab): I present a petition of 32,000 signatures on behalf of 15,000 Crawley residents. The petition was tirelessly organised by Mrs. Rebecca O’Gorman of Crawley and concerns the closure of our accident and emergency department at Crawley hospital, which remains a difficult issue for many of us in Crawley.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Secretary of State for Health to re-instate the Accident and Emergency services at Crawley Hospital to accommodate 24 hour a day emergency demands.
And the petitioners remain etc.
Asbestos Storage
6.2 pm
Bob Spink (Castle Point) (Con): This petition is similar to one I presented last week, but residents have collected another 200 signatures, which they wanted me to present to the House. I am grateful for this opportunity to do so.
The petition is against asbestos storage on the Manor trading estate, which is an inappropriate site due to its proximity to schools and residential areas. I am grateful to Councillors Jackie Govier, Bill Dick and Colin Riley for their work fighting for their community on the issue.
The petitioners say that the proposal will allow the storage of hazardous asbestos waste, which would introduce unacceptable risk and increased pressureof use of local roads and that it is particularly inappropriate in view of the immediate proximity of residential homes and a primary school. The petitioners further believe that there are much more appropriate sites for that activity in the local area and elsewhere, which would not cause such conflict.
The Petitioners therefore implore the House of Commons to call upon the Government to do all within its power to ensure that Essex County Council reject the application as requested by the Member of Parliament for Castle Point.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
Saltaire Roundabout
6.4 pm
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con): I am delighted to present a petition on behalf of residents of Saltaire and surrounding areas of my constituency about congestion at Saltaire roundabout. The issue is extremely important to my constituency and I have previously raised it in the House with the Secretary of State for Transport. I am delighted to endorse the petition wholeheartedly.
I put on record my thanks to Rachel Adamson who spent a lot of time putting the petition together and collecting signatures. In only a short time, she collected 413 signatures, which is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the number of people who are concerned about the issue. The fact that she could collect so many signatures in such a short period shows how important the issue is.
Declares that the petitioners are extremely concerned at the danger to pedestrians and motorists of the current levels of congestion at Saltaire roundabout and believe that this is the most pressing transport priority within the Bradford district.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons call upon the Government to recognise the importance and urgency of this problem and to ensure that the Highways Agency works with Bradford Metropolitan District Council and local residents to come up with a workable solution.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
Winchcombe Hospital
6.5 pm
Mr. Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con): This petition, signed by 3,686 people—and growing—which is a large percentage of the population of the area concerned, expresses their objection to the proposed closure of Winchcombe hospital, which is in my constituency. The petition states:
The petition of the residents of Winchcombe and others, declares their objection to the proposals by the local Primary Care Trusts to close Winchcombe Hospital, a hospital which treats a good many elderly people, among others.
The petitioners believe that these plans are inconsistent with the Prime Minister’s and the government’s stated objective of moving care closer to patients’ homes and contrary to the Prime Minister’s and the government’s direction that community hospitals should not be closed in response to short-term budgetary pressures.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Secretary of State for Health to reject the financial plans being proposed by Gloucestershire’s Primary Care Trusts, and, in particular, to direct them to enhance the services provided by Winchcombe Hospital rather than to close it.
And the petitioners remain etc.
Drakelow Tunnels (Worcestershire)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.— [Jonathan Shaw.]
6.6 pm
Dr. Richard Taylor (Wyre Forest) (Ind): Mr. Deputy Speaker, please may I ask you to pass on my sincere thanks to Mr. Speaker for selecting this debate? I lost the chance to hold it last week, under rather unusual circumstances that completely terrified and floored me at the time. It is also a great pleasure to see the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Lammy). Previous clashes between us have been rather confrontational—when he was in the Department of Health—but this debate is friendly, not confrontational. It is a joy to talk about the unique collection of antiquities that happens to be in my patch. This is a matter of great importance to many of my constituents in the north-west corner of my constituency, where Worcestershire borders South Staffordshire—in the villages of Wolverley, Cookley and Caunsall, parts of Kidderminster, and Kinver, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack). He is supportive, as is the hon. Member for Dudley, North (Mr. Austin).
I have raised the matter now because I am aware that English Heritage and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport have been undertaking a heritage protection review, which I believe will lead to the Government’s heritage White Paper later this year. A letter to me from the deputy secretary of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings ended with this sentence:
“It is yet to be clear how effective the Review’s proposals will be, but the Drakelow site might well be worth raising in any debate.”
That is why I am raising the Drakelow site.
First, there are the tunnels. I am grateful to Paul Stokes for his volume “Drakelow Unearthed”, which I found in the Kidderminster library, which goes into great detail. Drakelow sits at the southern end of a ridge of soft red sandstone in which there are many caves. When Coventry had the tremendous blitz in the second world war, one of the factories making engines for aircraft was bombed out and it was realised that a safe place for making aero engines was needed. Drakelow was picked on because it is so easy to tunnel into the hills. In 1941, 160 ft below the hill top, the tunnels were started, at a cost of £285,000. They were intended to be a safe factory for those people displaced from Coventry.
The factory
was in full production by 1943 at a cost of more than £1
million, so even in those days costs went up tremendously.
Unbelievably, under the hill there are 3.5 miles of tunnels and 250,000
sq ft of working space. The site became literally a secret underground
city. For those who are interested in second world war aircraft, the
factory was building radial engines for the Blenheim and Pegasus
engines for Sunderlands. Production carried on until those engines were
no longer needed. I believe that the factory was
involved in the production of the first jet engines for Meteors, which
some of us will remember with great
affection.
Following that, the site was used for storage. It was then transformed and in 1958 it became one of the safe sites for regional government, if regional government had to move out of the main centres. Again, the site catered for approximately 350 people from all Government Departments. A home defence review was undertaken following the change of Government in 1979. The facility was again upgraded, this time ata cost of something like £2 million, and it became a regional government headquarters, rather than a regional seat of government. However, only abouta quarter of the site was used. The site was sold off in 1993 and has since been opened for occasional tours. It is privately owned.
The icing on the cake is what is on top of the hill. There is an iron age earthworks. There is a fort on the end of the hill that is protected on three sides by steep cliffs, with earthworks on the fourth side. It is a scheduled ancient monument that dates from 600 BC, so I am told. Next, in historical order, there is a large collection of rock-cut houses. As I said, the hill is made of soft red sandstone that is easy to tunnel into. Caves have been inhabited there since at least 1600. They were enlarged in 1769 and 1770 to accommodate the labourers who were building the Staffordshire and Worcestershire canal to connect the black country with the River Severn. They were enlarged yet again in 1850 and this time buildings were added in front. A local iron foundry master built those properties for his workers and made the development look like a Swiss village, with a fascinating little school and everything that was needed.
Edmund Simons, an Oxford scholar, has studied the dwellings. He describes them as
“a number of complexes of rock-cut dwellings which are amongst the best preserved (yet least understood) in the UK.”
“an exceptionally important ‘cave’ village of cave houses and rock-cut structures”.
In “Historic Worcestershire”, W. Salt Brassington described the dwellings as
“the most picturesque group in a natural amphitheatre below the earthworks of an ancient camp.”
He waxed quite lyrical as he went on to write:
“In comparatively few places in the world are civilised people found still living after the manner of primitive man”.
He wrote that in 1894. He also cited the following quote, although I cannot find its origin:
“in hollow holes, like swarms of tiny ants, in sunless depths of caverns”.
He continued by writing that in that part of the Severn district people
“have lived in caves from time immemorial”.
A monument to Richard Baxter is also in the same area. He was a non-conformist preacher in the 1600s who was described in the “Oxford Dictionary of National Biography” as
“one of the most learned seventeenth century divines”.
His well-known memorial, which was raised
in 1875, is a landmark in the town of Kidderminster, and it is
used as a perch by passing pigeons. He has one finger raised to the
heavens, and the dedication
reads:
“From 1641 to 1660 this Town was the scene of the Labours of Richard Baxter renowned equally for his Christian Learningand his Pastoral Fidelity.
In a stormy and divided age he advocated unity and comprehension pointing the way to ‘The Everlasting Rest’.”
Most significant of all is the line:
“Churchmen and Nonconformists united to raise this memorial.”
On top of the tunnels there are many antiquities, but recently there has been a threat to the tunnels. A developer wished to establish a training facility for unemployed people from the midlands, and although the development was small to begin with, it was probably intended to become much bigger. The local council turned it down—thank goodness—because it is green belt land and there were no transport links, and because of the chance of damage to the iron-age fort, the area surrounding the Baxter memorial, and the rock-cut houses. I believe that there is a precedent: in 1967, the then Home Secretary wanted to build a prison for 1,200 people in Wolverley—the next-door village—on the site of a former camp for American forces, but Sir Tatton Brinton, the MP for the area between 1964 to 1974, opposed the development. A public inquiry ruled against the development:
“The Home Office had failed to justify the siting of a prison involving many new permanent houses in a vulnerable part of the Green Belt and the spoiling of the attractive character of the area for an indefinite period”.
Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire) (Con): The hon. Gentleman kindly referred to my support. I want to put on the record the fact that I much appreciate his initiative in seeking the debate, and I congratulate him on securing it. He has given an excellent exposition, and my constituents in the Kinver area would wholly and utterly support everything that he has said.
Dr. Taylor: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention.
May I ask the Minister one or two questions about the heritage White Paper? Will it address the problems of complex sites such as Drakelow? In a letter to me, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings said—I hope that it got this right—that
“Among the Review’s aims is simpler but more effective treatment of complicated sites of the Drakelow kind, which have various conservation designations and many layers of history combining structures and landscape.”
Does the White Paper address the problems of antiquities that are privately owned? Some fabulous stained-glass windows in our area are privately owned, and no one can see them. I fully realise that people who own something like that, and who intend to sell it, need to accept the best price, and if they are thinking of developing it for tourism, they need help to do so. Does the White Paper say anything about that?
I have a dream for my
constituency. Sadly, in my area, industry is declining, with a few
notable exceptions, but tourism is building up. Already, we have some
exciting tourist sites. There is the Severn Valley railway and a huge
heritage railway facility is being developed; there are also the canals
and the beautiful
Litchfield basin, which has been dry for years. It is being dug out to
be refilled. We have a carpet museum on the drawing board. There are so
many attractions, and it would be splendid if the Drakelow complex,
demonstrating how it was used for aircraft production, the regional
seat of government and everything else, could be added to the
industrial heritage tour that we have set our sights
on.
In a letter to me, the head of conservation at the Council for British Archaeology, Dr. Gill Chitty, states that
“it seems that this complex and fascinating group of historic sites and buildings would benefit from a conservation plan—a study to identify what is uniquely significant about the heritage of the site, to bring together the views of all those concerned with its future and to set out how it can best be used and managed for the greatest public benefit.”
She goes on to say that she hopes that we will see in the White Paper
“a more integrated and better informed system for dealing with the protection of complex, multi-period sites like Drakelow Tunnels.”
I will finish by explaining what I think the word “Drakelow” means. “Drake” is a well known old English expression for dragon. “Low” refers to the caves immemorial where the dragon has lain low. According to a popular story, it was last seen in 1591. I am hoping that if we have a real plan for the preservation of that unique site, maybe the dragon will feel safe and we will see it again in the coming years.
6.21 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr. David Lammy): I thank the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Dr. Taylor) for securing the debate and for the opportunity to hear about a fascinating site. I, too, welcome this exchange, which is taking place in a friendly manner.
The historic environment is unique in telling the story of how we have interacted with our surroundings since prehistoric times. The Drakelow tunnels and the surrounding area are a rich illustration of that. In one small area, we have an iron age prehistoric hill fort, cave dwellings that are believed to date from the 19th century, the Richard Baxter monument, and the tunnels themselves, which alone provide a fascinating insight into the second world war and the cold war, as illustrated by the hon. Gentleman. I can appreciate why he considers the site to be of huge importance not just to his constituents, but to the region.
To set the context, it may help if set out the various regimes that we use to protect the historic environment. First, there are national systems designed to protect important historic assets. For buildings, that is the listed building system that protects buildings of special architectural or historic interest, graded at grade I, grade II* or grade II. For below ground archaeology, there is the system of scheduling, which is used to protect sites of national importance.
Mr.
Ian Austin (Dudley, North) (Lab): I congratulate the hon.
Member for Wyre Forest (Dr. Taylor) on securing this important debate
and on his fascinating speech. Will my hon. Friend the Minister examine
the
proposal made by my constituent, Mr. Roger Bruton, who served
his country with great distinction first in the Army and later in the
Territorials, where he was charged with responsibility for defending
the Drakelow tunnels and the regional government? He believes that
Drakelow should become a museum dedicated to the second world war and
the cold war years, which he says would be a major boost to tourism and
the economy of the west midlands, especially because of the large
number of American servicemen who were stationed in the
area.
Mr. Lammy: That is certainly an interesting idea that should be taken forward locally. My hon. Friend will know that there are several museums in the area, including the Hack Green nuclear bunker museum at Nantwich. When we look to see how we can preserve our heritage, it is important that we work with people at museums, libraries and archives, because they have the expertise to identify and facilitate funding lines.
Let me return to the current protection arrangements. Alongside the scheduling and listing regimes that I described, we have a regime for protecting individual assets, and there are also tools to protect areas of significance. Most importantly, local authorities have a duty to designate conservation areas, which are areas of special architectural or historic interest that have a character and appearance deserving of preservation and enhancement.
Those are the main statutory protection systems, but there are also a range of non-statutory protections available to historic assets. English Heritage is responsible for developing registers of historic parks, gardens and battlefields. In addition, almost half of all local authorities, including Wyre Forest district council, have developed lists of locally significant buildings. Information about a building, place or area can also be captured on the national monuments record or on the local historic environment record.
What do all those designation systems achieve? In some cases, specific designation regimes carry specific protections. For example, listed buildings are managed through the system of listed building consent, scheduled ancient monuments are managed through the system of scheduled monument consent, and some change in conservation areas is managed through specific conservation area consent. However, those individual regulatory regimes are designed to deal with only a small proportion of our historic assets. Most change to our historic environment is managed not through those regimes but as part of the planning system, whereby information about an historic asset may be taken into account as a material consideration in determining a planning application.
The Drakelow tunnels site is a
good illustration of how the various regimes come together, because
several protection systems are in operation. The tunnels themselves are
neither listed buildings nor scheduled ancient monuments. They were
considered for listing by English Heritage in the late 1990s as part of
a thematic review of the nine cold war regional seats of government.
Following that review, two of the regional seats, at Nottingham and
Cambridge, were listed at grade II. The iron age hill fort that sits
above them is a scheduled ancient monument, while the Richard Baxter
monument is grade II listed. The hon.
Gentleman is right to say that it is a complex sitewith
different systems bearing on it. Those protection systems sit alongside
mainstream planning controls and the priority given to heritage in the
Wyre Forest district council plan.
I have outlined a complex system of heritage protection in England. Indeed, we acknowledge that it is far too complex to be easily understandable. Thatis why we are finalising plans to make it more streamlined, open and accountable. We want to simplify our heritage protection systems and make it easier for local communities to engage with decisions that shape their environment.
In the time we have left, I do not want to go into the detail of our proposed reforms. Instead, I refer the hon. Gentleman to the 2004 document that the Department published, which sets out the proposed reforms in detail, or to the transcript of my recent appearance, with Baroness Andrews, before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. However, it may help if I briefly outline the key changes that we propose.
First, we intend to simplify the designation system by developing a new unified register of historic sites and buildings of England. That will bring togetherthe current systems of listing buildings, scheduling ancient monuments and registering parks, gardens and battlefields under a single designation regime. The register will make designation decisions easier to understand and dramatically improve the quality of information available about designated sites toenable owners, communities and local authorities to understand more about their historic assets.
At the same time as reforming designation, we will encourage local authorities to make greater use of local listing to provide recognition for locally important sites that may not be suitable candidates for national designation. As I have said, many authorities already make extensive use of local lists. Wyre Forest district council has already designated 300 locally listed buildings in Kidderminster and 350 in Stourport. We want to make that local designation process easier, and encourage more local authorities to use it.
Secondly, we want to streamline and simplify the consent regimes associated with national designation. We will introduce a new heritage consent regime, which will bring together scheduled monument consent and listed building consent in a single system.
We
will introduce new management agreementsfor historic sites.
They will encourage constructive
partnership between owners, managers, regulators and communities in
deciding how best to manage change to complex sites. Developing those
partnerships will enable us to reduce bureaucratic burdens on owners
and local authorities by reducing the volume of individual consent
applications.
Pilot studies have already shown that the reforms can bring genuine benefits. We intend to publish a White Paper setting out the detail of our reforms later in the year. Once implemented, the reforms are likely to have some impact on a site such as the Drakelow tunnels. Let me outline possible matters of special interest. The improved designation documentation would increase understanding and appreciation of the listed memorial and the scheduled iron age hill fort. The move to encourage greater use of local listing is also relevant. Local listing can make it clear, when planning applications are made, that people treasure the area and building under consideration, and that specific obligations go with it. Wyre Forest district council is already making extensive use of local lists. However, it is worth underlining that the Drakelow tunnels are not currently listed or scheduled. We have not, as far as I am aware, received any recent application to list them.
The Department will consider any application to have a building or site listed or scheduled, though the tunnels have already been considered for listing by English Heritage. It is also worth pointing out that most change to historic sites is managed not through individual designation systems, but as part of the planning system. I understand that the original planning application for the site in January 2006 has now been withdrawn. If and when a revised application is made, it will be for the local planning authority to determine, in line with the policies set out in its local plan, including those that relate to the historic environment, the future of the site, what is appropriate and how matters should proceed.
I hope that I have been able to underline to the hon. Gentleman the importance of the historic environment and the reforms that we are trying to introduce to make the system easier to understand and more open, transparent and democratic. Those reforms will also assist locally. However, local things can be done and, if the enthusiasm that he has shown today reflects how local people feel about the site, it is likely to be preserved for many generations to enjoy.
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-six minutes to Seven o’clock.
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