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Bob Spink (Castle Point) (Con): The emblem of a benevolent and sympathetic society is that we care for vulnerable people and protect them. If we can do nothing else here, we as Members of Parliament should be thinking of vulnerable people at this time of year.
I sincerely thank the Prime Minister for his help and intervention in the childrens hospice funding crisis that arose this year. He gave £27 million to fill the short-term funding gap, which was a very good thing for him to do. He is also totally behind the continued review of the long-term funding of childrens hospices, so that we can ensure fair funding for those important institutions.
I want to discuss two groups, the homeless and children with special needs. Homelessness is a major problem. It is timely to address it as we canter towards Christmas, with all its wonderful joy and brilliant gaietybut for some it can be a lonely, cold, forbidding and often deeply depressing time, and we must not forget those people.
We have just seen the 40th anniversary of the BBCs screening of Cathy Come Home. Shortly after that first screening came the formation of Shelter, a wonderful organisation with great, good and dedicated people working in it. It is time to take stock. Like Shelter, I want to focus on the key issues of concern surrounding homelessness. There has been a systematic failure to invest in social housing for rent. The main problem was not the right to buy council housesan excellent policy that I supportedbut the failure to invest the proceeds of those sales in replacement social housing for rent.
During the 60s and 70s, more than 100,000 social houses were built each year, but in the last decade only about 20,000 such houses have been built each year, which is an unsustainable level. That problem needs to be addressed. It lies at the root of Britains housing crisis and explains why 1 million children are growing up homeless or in damp, cold or overcrowded accommodation. The evidence shows that bad housing has a devastating impact on the education, health and life chances of those children, leaving them at risk of permanent social exclusion later in life. That is damaging not only to them, but to society at large, which is often denied the positive contribution that they might otherwise make.
The Communities and Local Government Committee endorsed Shelters campaign to persuade the Treasury to deliver at least an additional 20,000
social rented homes above the current levels being achieved. Hopefully, that will be set out in next summers comprehensive spending review. I have been arguing for more social housing in Castle Point for10 years, but no action on that has been taken by those responsible, and I continue to argue the case for my patch. We must also take seriously the Barker review on housing. It has many important conclusions, and it provides a strategy to cut the number of homeless households trapped in temporary accommodation. We must establish policies that will ensure genuine successes and advances in that area over the next two or three years.
The current homelessness facts are frightening. More than 94,000 vulnerable, homeless households, involving 130,000 children, are currently trapped in unsuitable temporary accommodation. Homeless children in temporary accommodation miss on average a quarter of their schooling. Shelter found that living in overcrowded conditions damages childrens educational prospects. Almost half of parents described their children as often unhappy or depressed, and said that their education had suffered as a result. Of course, that is common sense; it is not rocket science.
About 500,000 households, including 905,000almost 1 millionchildren, are living in overcrowded conditions. That must be tackled. According to a Shelter survey,90 per cent. of families living in overcrowded conditions felt that the overcrowding was damaging their childrens health. More than three quarters of the households had no member working, either because health or mobility problems prevented that, or because of insecurity in respect of accommodation, or because of the poverty trap which stops some people getting low-paid jobs. Shelter estimates that the additional cost to the public purse associated with the use of temporary accommodation is about £500 million.
These concerns must not be confused with those to do with the protection of our precious green belt, or with the defending from new threats of expensive flatland development, which is an issue in many constituencies, particularly in the south-eastsuch development is, of course, designed for profit rather than to tackle genuine social housing needs. We must also find better ways to bring into use those houses that are empty and not in use.
I do not seek to score any political points; homelessness is too important for that. In recent years, the Government have started to make progress in tackling homelessness, and they have done some very good things. My contention is that that progress has been a little slow and I would like them to move faster. I know that there is cross-party support for that. The Government have strengthened the legal safety net for homeless people. They have required local authorities to take a more strategic, preventive approach to reduce the number of people forced to sleep rough and to reduce the length of time that homeless families with children are placed in unacceptable bed-and-breakfast accommodation.
However, at the same time there are massive pressures from immigration. The number of homeless households in temporary accommodation has almost doubled from 41,000 in 1997 to almost 100,000 today.
The average length of time that a homeless household spends in temporary accommodation before being rehoused has increased from 98 days in 1997 to 267 days now. The proportion of people who spend more than a year in temporary accommodation has increased from 11 per cent. in 1997 to 24 per cent. now. We need further action quickly.
A social exclusion unit report entitled Breaking the Cycle identified the number of homeless households as one of the five key factors holding back progress in tackling social exclusion. The Treasurys child poverty review also highlighted the importance of tackling homelessness if the Governments child poverty objectives are to be met. The Every Child Matters Green Paper also identified homelessness as one of the key factors associated with poor outcomes for our children. Christmas is coming, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and the goose certainly is getting fat. We must think of those in need and resolve to do something next year to tackle the problem more firmly.
I want to make three important points about vulnerable children. First, we must ensure that those who need statementing for special educational needs get that service quickly, with minimum delay, frustration and bureaucracy. In England, the average proportion of children statemented for SEN is 2.9 per cent.; in Essex, we statement only2.4 per cent. If we had the English average, another610 Essex children would be statemented. As a decent MP, my question is: why are those children not being statemented? Are we betraying them; are their needs being denied? As I see it, there are only two explanations. Either there are far fewer SEN children in Essex than the English average, which strikes me as statistically improbable; or Essex is failing parents and betraying our most vulnerable children. If the latter is the case, it needs to be exposed and stopped. Through this debate, I am demanding clear answers from the Department for Education and Skills, and from Essex, as to why this anomaly exists, and what will be done to deal with it if we areas I strongly suspect we arebetraying our most vulnerable children.
My second point on vulnerable children is that we must value and support, in deed as well as in word, our schools for those with moderate learning disabilities. We must make parents aware of the availability of such schools and of what they can offer special children, and we must encourage choice and referrals. Essex has again been found wanting in this regard. It is trying to strangle the countys few remaining MLD schools by stealth. In recent years, the number of referrals to MLD schools has fallen dramatically: not by half or by 75 per cent., but by even more than that. Parents are being given misleading or no information, which means that they cannot make an informed choice. Sometimes, mainstreaming is right for special children; at other times, they need special schools and MLD schools. Parents, not councils, know best what is right for their children.
Mrs. Dorries: As my hon. Friend is doubtless aware, I recently wrote a minority report on children with special educational needs. In the course of my research, I discovered that the figures for Essex are quite low because many children are being exported out of Essex and educated somewhere else. My hon. Friend might like to look into that.
Bob Spink: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is an expert in this area, for that intervention. I am talking about children with moderate learning difficulties, who are not exported outside the county. They are certainly not exported from Castle Point, where there is a wonderful MLD school called Cedar Hall. Its referrals have been cut in the past two years to a very small proportion, compared with two years ago. That has happened not because there are fewer SEN children, but because of the policy of Essex county council. A campaign on this issue received national publicity, and the Prime Minister addressed it in the run-up to the last electionas did Maria Hutchins, one of my campaigning constituentsas my hon. Friend will doubtless recall.
My third point regarding special children is that we must get more speech and language professionals into work. The problem here is the Government, not the county.
The current shortfall of professionals is intolerable.My hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (John Bercow), in his inimitable style, treated Westminster Hall to a speech on this issue on 28 November. He said:
At present, some 7,000 therapists are on the books. It is estimated that there is a shortfall of 2,283, which...will bemet only by 2013.[ Official Report, Westminster Hall,28 November 2006; Vol. 453, c. 4WH.]
The House will see that allowing a whole cohort of children to be betrayed in that way for the next five years or so is intolerable.
So homelessness and special needs children are my main concerns as I canter towards Christmas, but I wish to make a couple of additional points. I need an answer on an important matter concerning the importation of liquefied natural gasLNGinto Canvey island. I have asked Ministers previously, but I have not had a straight answer yet. I ask the Minister on the Treasury Bench to urge the appropriate Minister in the Department of Trade and Industry to acknowledge that there is no Government safe siting policy for top-tier LNG COMAHcontrol of major accident hazardsites. Such a policy would specify details such as acceptable distances from residential homes and schools and in the absence of such a policy I cannot see how an inspector could possibly allow an appeal for such a site. If there is a safe siting policy, may I have sight of it so that I can test the policy against the dangers that my constituents would face from that unacceptable proposal? I do not think that there is a policy, and that is a problem for the Government.
A key factor is that the island has no reasonable or sustainable means of access in an emergency, be it an LNG escape or another flood. So I make my now traditional cry from the heart for another separate access to the island, which should probably be from the Northwick road area. I congratulate Councillor Rodney Bass, the cabinet member at county hall, on his consistent support for our third road.
In a debate on 25 July I spoke about the rationing implicit in the NHS caused by decisions of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, and the postcode rationing of treatments even when they have been approved by that body. Since then, the finances of the NHS have been shown to be in difficulties, with cutbacks, closures and redundancies that bring shame upon those of us who believe that the
NHS is the jewel of the welfare state and something that we as a nation should cherish. I readily accept that additional money from our extra taxes has been put into the NHS by the Government, but we still needindeed, we have a dutyto question why the outcomes are not proportionally much better. The Royal College of Physicians consensus statement on hepatitis C in 2004 stated:
What is certain is that, if we do not invest now, we will not be able to afford the consequences of failing to tackle this epidemic.
As I pointed out in July, cost-effective treatments are available, which are recommended by NICE, so why have we identified only 23 per cent. of the carriers of that disease while Australia, for instance, has identified more than 80 per cent.?
Then there is coronary heart disease. The British Heart Foundation statistics database calculates that the overall cost of CHD to the UK economy is £7.9 billion a year. So much of that human tragedy and cost burden is preventable. Cholesterol is a factor in about half of all CHD fatalities, more than any other risk factor. Cholesterol levels can be controlled and reduced, particularly for high risk patients, by lifestyle and cost-effective treatment in primary care. But 79 per cent. of the NHS health care costs for CHD fall to in-patient costs and only 3 per cent. to the primary care sector. That proves the old proverb about a stitch in time saving nine.
While I am on the subject of the NHS, I ask whatever happened to simple common sense and decency. A little girl ended up with no limbs and a wonderful and caring community clubbed together to help her to rebuild her lifetwo of the people who helped to raise the funds are coming for dinner with me at the House of Commons tomorrow night. Yet we see utterly stupid and uncivilised policies that damage that little girl. Let me quote from an e-mail from my constituent Tony Simmons this week. He states that
a lot of people raised a lot of money in this borough for
to get her on her feet. I see in the news today that she has been turned down for NHS physio because her limbs were not supplied by the NHS. Who are these toadies who make judgements like that, she is a child for gods sake. If you get a chance, put your oar in, stir up a bit of muddy water.
My oar is well and truly in, and paddling furiously. May I wish that little girl, her family, homeless people and all at the Palace of Westminster a joyous Christmas and a healthy and peaceful new year.
Mr. Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con): I shall be brief, but I want to refer to two matters in connection with the railways that the hon. Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle) touched on earlier. The first arises from the Ufton rail crash of just over a year ago, and I must declare an interest: my house is a few hundred yards from the site of the crash, and I was there about five minutes after it happened. Moreover, land surrounding the site is in my ownership.
I want to talk about the needs of my constituent David Main, who lost his wife Anjanette and his daughter Louella in the tragedy. In a few months, an inquest into the crash will be held at Windsors
Guildhall, and it will involve representatives of the Department of Transport, the rail operators, Network Rail and the Health and Safety Executive. All of them will be well represented by barristers, and they will have all the support that they need. In contrast, the victims are being denied the proper legal representation that they need.
The Legal Services Commission recognised the problem when it gave Mr. Main leave to obtain the exceptional funding that is available in such cases. However, the Department for Constitutional Affairs has opposed the LSC award, and Mr. Main has been forced to take the matter to judicial review.
The madness of it all is that winning the case will cost the Department more than giving Mr. Main the legal representation that he needs would. Two groups of civil servants are fighting over their different pots of money, and the Minister of State at the Department for Constitutional Affairs is unable to give leadership in the matter. At the bottom of the pile is my grieving constituent, who just wants to get on with his life, and who should be allowed the legal representation at the inquest that he needs.
We saw the Minister of States irascible performance at Question Time earlier today. However, I hope that the new year will imbue in her a spirit of good will so that she will be able to say that the judicial review process is a ridiculous waste of public money and should be dropped.
I turn now to a problem to do with rail services to and from west Berkshire that affects many more people. I am indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr. Vaizey) for tabling early-day motion 526, which has been signed by hon. Members of all parties. I urge others to continue to put their names to it, as it concerns the chaos following the introduction of First Great Westerns new timetable on 11 December. The new timetable is causing real unhappiness, and huge ill will towards both the company and the Government.
A year ago, First Great Western bid for and won a franchise that included a very prescribed timetable that had been set by the Department for Transport. Its central purpose was to increase capacity from cities and large population hubs at the expense of smaller communities and commuter regions.
Earlier this year, people in my part of Berkshire ran a huge campaign that involved a petition that was presented on the Floor of the House and letters and e-mails of protest to Ministers and senior people at First Great Western. I had a meeting with the then hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate, who was rail Minister at the time. I subsequently attended another meeting with the then Secretary of State for Transport, who is now the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. At that meeting, I was accompanied by my neighbour and right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram), who represents an area at the end of the branch line running through my constituency that was going to be extremely badly affected.
Our experience at that second meeting was surreal. I sat on the Secretary of States right hand side, and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Devizes sat on his left. All three of us sat on the sofa, and the
Secretary of State was using Bradshaws rail timetable to decide how many trains should stop at Kintbury, Hungerford and other similar towns. If the former Secretary of State had not had such a svelte physique, I would have said that he was the ultimate fat controller. What an absurd situation it was, with rail timetables being decided in that way.
I am glad to say that I was able to write to the Secretary of State after the consultation period and thank him for listening, because many of services to the smaller stations in my constituency that had been under threat were reinstated. However, the inconvenience that has arisen from many of the train times remains. Many people are having to spend longer commuting and changing trains, and it is taking them an awful long time to get home. We have still lost a great number of services, the most important of which is the late night train from Paddington to Newbury, which was much valued by local people.
I have discovered that, as a result of the train changes, people have changed their work patterns enormously. Previously, they decided to stay longer at home in the morning, to have breakfast with their children, take them to school and then go to work, and come home on a late train. Now, they can no longer do that. Peoples social lives have also been dramatically altered. Many young people used to go to Reading in the evening; they can no longer do it because we have lost the late train.
When I raised the matter in questions to the new Minister with responsibility for the railways, the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Glasgow, South (Mr. Harris), he replied that I had
probably been misinformed about cuts to services.[ Official Report, 17 October 2006; Vol. 450, c. 723.]
I was so incensed that I wrote to him because there self-evidently had been cuts to services in west Berkshire and the whole area. I received a wholly unsatisfactory reply.
As a result of the new timetable that came in last week we have fewer trains, longer commuting times and massive inconvenience to the commuting public, who are having to change trains. Without much warning, First Great Western has changed the rolling stock on two key commuter trains from Hungerford through Newbury and Thatcham and beyond. Instead of two Turbo trains with approximately 550 seats, it is now using Adelante trains with 282 seats. This has caused chaos and severe overcrowding.
Some of the 220-plus e-mails that I have received from the travelling public have given a graphic account of the sheer misery that has been visited on them in west Berkshire in recent days. I quote just a few of them. One says:
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