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I have been trying to work out how many Queen's Speeches there have been since I was first elected to Parliament. I certainly vividly remember the first one I attended, which was in 1997 and was replied to by Sir John Major. It was clear at that stage that the new Government were in the ascendancy; the place was packed with Labour Members. Some of us who had arrived in this place for the first time were keen to make a contribution, but the Conservative parliamentary party as a whole was very dispirited; that was clear from how
empty the Conservative Benches were. In that respect, things have changed a lot over the subsequent 12 or 13 years. This is the Queen's Speech of the current Government of course, and yet we have had only one contribution from the Government Benches so far-although we may have another powerful contribution in a moment. It seems that we on the Opposition Benches are keener to contribute than Members sitting on the Government side.
The Labour party abandoned clause 4 but it still seems to think that Whitehall knows best. It still thinks that if it pulls a lever, passes a law, or has a press conference in London, that will change the world. Indeed, a substantial number of the Bills that have gone through Parliament have had elements that have not been enacted or have not been introduced. From my experience of the past 13 years, I firmly believe that the only way of getting proper public services that are delivered well is to trust the people who are delivering them and those who are the recipients of them. I truly believe that decisions made in Dorset are generally better than decisions made in Whitehall. In terms of, for instance, the police authority, the fire authority or local government, an awful lot more can be done if we give people the resources and let them get on with the job, rather than always try to second-guess and always be introducing changes.
My experience of the health service over the past 12 or 13 years is that there has been constant change-health authorities have been changed, and there have been mergers. However, I have never known a change in the NHS or in local government to have either saved money or delivered better services; indeed, it is often a distraction from the delivery of decent services. If my party is fortunate enough to win the confidence of the British people in the middle of next year, one of the lessons that I hope my Front-Bench colleagues will learn is not to go in and immediately make fundamental changes. We should leave people in post, let them do the job, and give them clear targets. The "Whitehall knows best" approach is unsustainable.
I was going to mention home education, which my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart) dealt with eloquently and in more detail than I had intended to do. There are many parents who are committed to educating their children-some because their children have special needs or autism, and it is the only way they feel able to educate them-who feel they have been stigmatised, although I know that that was not the Government's intention. They already undergo an inspection regime, which they feel is fundamentally wrong. I therefore hope that if the education Bill becomes law before the election, we can iron out some of these difficulties.
The speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman) was measured and sensible, and it is a great pity that politics is to lose somebody who can make such a contribution; there are too few people in this Chamber who are thoughtful. He made some very good points, none of which I disagreed with. For example, he made a very good point about social mobility. One of my first experiences of politics involved Wiltshire county council. Several teachers who had retired decided to reappear on the county council. Most of them had grown up in areas of great poverty; some were from south Wales, and their fathers had been miners. They
were able to enter and make a contribution to teaching because the education system was able to give them the qualifications and skills and get them out of the mining villages. As all the social statistics are saying, we have lost some of the social mobility that our grammar school system, in particular, provided for many of our less fortunate constituents. I hope that a Conservative Government look to tackle that issue. The idea behind Disraeli's "one nation" conservatism is to give everybody the opportunity to use the skills that they have to get on. We have lost a lot of that.
What do I support in the Queen's Speech? Well, the Flood and Water Management Bill is a good one; water is a valuable element. Subject to seeing the detail of the Child Poverty Bill, I think it a good thing that we will be legislating in that area. I do not think there is any great disagreement with the bribery Bill, and we Conservatives agree with the cluster munitions Bill. There are many Bills that we partly support.
I hope we will have the opportunity to table amendments to the Financial Services Bill that reverse what happened to the Bank of England. One reason why we are where we are with our finances is the changes undertaken in the first flourish of the current Government: they gave independence to the Bank of England, but took away that large and important element of bank supervision. The country lost a lot as a result, and the Financial Services Authority has never fulfilled the same role with the confidence that the Bank of England showed.
It is interesting that we have a Bill that promises the halving of our deficit. I am always a little suspicious when people put into Bills aspirations for the longer term, rather than actions to deal with the given issue. We have a major problem with the public finances, and it will be a priority for whoever is elected in the middle of next year. Unless we tackle it, our children and grandchildren will be paying the very real costs of dealing with the heavy level of debt and the associated interest payments, which will divert money from important public services unless we grasp the nettle at a very early stage.
Inevitably, it was a short Queen's Speech. We know that a lot of it will not be enacted before the general election, and that there will be a lot of "boxing" and political debate over the next six or seven months; that is politics-we are all trying to put the best case for the future of our country. My right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) and our Front-Bench team now have a coherent policy programme that they can put to our country. That will make a major difference. I can honestly say that whereas the last three general elections were a foregone conclusion, the next one will be a fight, and there is a real chance that we can have a change of Government. That is what the British people want, and I hope it is a Conservative Government.
3.35 pm
Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab):
I must apologise for not being here at the beginning of the debate, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The simple reason for my absence was that I was attending a memorial gathering at St. Martin-in-the-Fields for Professor Peter Townsend, who passed away earlier this year. It was a tremendous gathering of people who will remember him from his days at the London School of Economics and for being
very much involved in the Child Poverty Action Group. Coincidentally, this Queen's Speech refers to the Child Poverty Bill and, in a way, I suppose that prompted me to think about coming in here to say a few words, especially given that this debate is on health and education, which are near and dear to my heart.
I listened to the hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Syms), who talked about passing laws. He said that that was almost a waste of time, despite suggesting a few at the end himself. It is important to remember that we do a lot of things in life and here in Parliament. We pass laws-Labour Members certainly do this-to try to better the lot of the many and not the few. That is one of the reasons why I wish to start off by talking about pleural plaques, which is a health issue.
A couple of years ago, the Law Lords, across there in the other place, decided that even though pleural plaques had been recognised for many years as the precursor to mesothelioma, which, as we all know, is one of the worst diseases that anyone can get, they would get rid of the compensation. I hope that the Minister of State, Department of Health, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien) will pass the message on, although we have already had meetings with the Prime Minister about this matter. Although it is not specifically mentioned in this Queen's Speech, it comes under the general heading of "any other measures"-I suppose that expenses could be thrown into that too. It is necessary to ensure that we make progress on this issue to restore the position to what it was way back in 2007.
Another thing that I want to say to my right hon. and learned Friend is that we do not want a scheme that will be similar to the one that the miners had for chest disease and vibration white finger. That was a wonderful scheme in itself-it got us about £4 billion to £5 billion for miners who were suffering from chest disease and vibration white finger-but it had, built within it, a system that forced every miner to have a separate solicitor. The net result was that the solicitors got a lot of money out of it. I must say to the House that we do not have to have that kind of system, because our system for pleural plaques and for mesothelioma could have a different basis. It could be based on the scheme that we had for pneumoconiosis back in 1974 and 1975 and for the slate miners in Wales in 1979. What we did then was introduce benefits based on the severity of the disease; we are talking about perhaps 10, 15 or 20 per cent. and it did not matter which pit someone worked at, that was the amount of money they would get. The pneumoconiosis scheme was completed by the Labour Government in 1974-75 in next to no time. No solicitors were involved, no solicitors got paid and every penny went to the miners and to the slate workers in Wales. What I am saying is that from here on in the Government should remember that scheme and introduce a pleural plaques scheme on that basis, so that we steer clear of these solicitors' making a small fortune out of every case.
So, that is the first thing that I want to refer to today. The other is that we should also remember that help for cancer is very important. I speak with a bit of authority on this, although I never thought 10 years ago that I would. I believed, like a lot of people in this place, that I knew everything about a lot of subjects. I thought I
knew a lot about the NHS but, frankly, I knew very little until I went in, when I realised that I had a big problem and had to have an operation to remove the cancer. It is then that we realise the importance of the NHS and of passing laws.
We raised the sum that was spent on the national health service from £33 billion in 1997 to about £106 billion today. When I lay there in that hospital, it was in the knowledge that more money would be coming from a Labour Government than had been in the tube. I do not think that we can avoid that argument. The Tories refused to support us in the 1 per cent. increase in national insurance and they made a big mistake. I am sure that they all recognise that now, because the national health service has grown in strength ever since we took that decision way back in 2001. That is why almost everybody who works in hospitals understands the ethos.
When I had a serious operation-open-heart surgery-in 2003, it was almost like being back in the pit. When someone is in intensive care, they see the wonderful teamwork. People can be seen answering telephones while dressed in suits, and suddenly patients see the same faces in nurses' uniforms helping because there is a crisis. It is like going back to those days when teamwork was essential working down a coal mine.
That is why we should all treasure the national health service. Of course, nobody is going to say that it is 100 per cent. perfect-it never will be. We have an ageing population-I am one of them-and once a person has been in, they keep going in. I have been to hospital in London more than 20 times ever since I had that operation. I have been for check-ups and for this, that and the other, hoping that everything is okay. That is why the £33 billion that is now £106 billion was not wasted on people who should not be there. A lot of people over the age of 60, once they start using the NHS, are going to use it for a long time. That is what we have to understand and what any Government will have to understand in the future. We must ensure that the NHS has the money to keep up that progress.
For instance, on dementia, a Bill will be introduced that will help people with dementia in their own homes. Everybody knows that it is a problem-the longer people live, the more likely it is that there will be many more cases of dementia. That is why I spend my time doing not just ordinary sudoku but killer sudoku to keep my mind going, hoping that I will not suffer the same fate as my mother and my sister, who both suffered from that terrible disease. That is why I welcome that Bill, if it will give some comfort to those people who suffer from that terrible disease.
We are debating schools today, too. It is important to remember that in the first 25 years for which I was a Member of Parliament, I almost never attended a school opening in my constituency where a substantial addition had been made to the school or where a new school had been built. I do not think that there were more than 10 in those 25 years. One thing that we should always remember in this imperfect world-nothing is perfect in schools, either-is that I have attended more openings of schools in my constituency in the past 10 years than I did in the previous 25.
In the past, people have heard me arguing in the House about a Church of England school that had hydraulic pit-props holding up its roof for 17 years. Under the Tory Government, I could not get anything
done, but it was one of the first things that happened under Labour because we injected a load more money into schools. We now spend about two and a half times more on schools in real money than in 1997. The result was that I got a new school in Bolsover. The Church of England school has been moved away from the castle to Welbeck road. There is a brand-new school. The kids have been down here about three times on visits. The same thing is true right across my constituency and I am sure that it is mirrored up and down the country. I want to ensure that it continues.
The health service will be a big issue at the next general election. As I said, we are already spending £106 billion. When we look at what is happening in the United States, we can appreciate just how valuable the NHS is. Everywhere we go, people tell us what a wonderful service it is now.
There are about 47 nationalities in the London hospital I go to. People on the right wing-the British National party-talk about sending people back. I do not know where. Forty-seven nationalities-I counted them when I was in hospital for all those weeks. I finished up with a United Nations heart. I had a Dutch doctor, a Syrian cardiologist and a Malaysian surgeon-the same one who operated on the last Speaker but one, Betty Boothroyd. He is one of the top five in the world. All those people worked together. If I had been in hospital for that open-heart surgery another month, I would have sorted out the Israeli-Palestine issue. All the ingredients were there. In a hospital, it does not matter where people have come from-they all work together. That is what we should remember when we hear talk about differences and sending people back. That is why debate is important.
We are beginning to come out of the recession. There is no question about it; it has been a terrible period, but there are enough green shoots to indicate that things are moving the right way at last. I forecast that would be the case at Prime Minister's Question Time about three months ago. I have been looking at the unemployment figures, and for the past two months, they have been going in the right direction. I thought it would be the turn of the year before we would see that. It is a wonderful and valuable indication of the fact that the stimulus we injected in the economy is beginning to work, particularly on jobs. We should remember that in the run-up to the next election. It will be a very important factor, because there will be better economic news every single month from now until we have the election in May, June or whenever.
How did we get into that mess? The world got into that mess because of what I call, loosely, instant gratification. Over the past 20 to 30 years, people have believed they could get summat for nothing. We have been living in a credit card society where people do not appreciate that they have to struggle to get something valuable. They have been able to get things at a whim. That instant gratification spread through families and through bankers, who believed there would be money to burn for ever. The net result was that everything fell in a heap and we have had to sort it out.
People say that we have been saving banks, but I do not use that language. I say that we intervened in Northern Rock, HBOS, the Royal Bank of Scotland and others simply because 70 or 80 per cent. of our constituents had deposits in those banks. All of us
across the House recognise-or should do-that we had to save the banks because if we did not, we would not have saved all our constituents' deposits in those banks. We saved the deposits, and we should say that time and again.
As for bankers, Members can put me on any list that calls for a curb on bankers' money and bonuses; I will sign any such motion that is put in front of me. But believe me, we had to intervene. If one of the large banks had fallen, the rest would have fallen like a pack of dominoes, and we all know that. However, we saved our constituents' deposits. There are six months or so before the next general election. The two issues that we are discussing-education and the national health service-will be major factors in that election.
I believe in the argument that we should spend money now to get the unemployment total down; that is more important than saying, "We'll do it some time in the future." We do not want another 1929 to 1935. My father was out of work in the pits for all those years. Some people say that the recession ended in '32, but by God it did not. It lasted much longer than that. It was only when German rearmament took place under Hitler that our Government suddenly realised that they wanted more coal, and my father and his mates were able to get back to full-time work in the pits. We have put in place a scheme to avoid that, and to get people back into work now; that is what we should work on in the next six months and beyond.
I will look forward to another Labour Government administering the national health service, which looks after me and everybody else. Whatever people say about big government, the national health service is very important to us when we are lying on that hospital bed; by God, we are thankful for it.
3.52 pm
Mr. Lee Scott (Ilford, North) (Con): There are not many occasions on which I agree with the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), but there is one issue on which I do: the importance of a national health service. Last night in my constituency, I held a meeting, and more than 200 people turned up to hear about the plans to cut accident and emergency and other services at the King George hospital. That hospital serves my Ilford, North, constituency and is based in the neighbouring constituency of Ilford, South. Not one person in the room, with the exception of the representatives from the primary care trust, thought that it would be a good idea to cut services in the accident and emergency department. Not one of the clinicians who came to see me beforehand thought that it was a good idea. The only people who said that it was a good idea were the people from the primary care trust who proposed it.
I asked what would happen if someone was knocked down outside the King George hospital. I was told that even though it has an active accident and emergency service, they would not be seen there, but would be taken to Queen's hospital in Romford. That is a new hospital, and I am very happy that the people of Romford have it, but we have to look at what it has replaced. There was a hospital in Harold Wood; there was already a hospital in Romford; and there was the King George hospital. Now the proposal is for just one A and E department, based in Romford, to serve all my constituents.
In the London borough of Redbridge, where my Ilford, North, constituency is located, there has been a lot of house building over the past few years, and more is taking place over the next few years. Those homes are needed, but where are the services that the people who live in them will use? Where will those people be taken if they are ill?
Despite the fact that it has been a difficult year for every Member of this great House, I believe that one of the greatest honours that anyone can have is to serve as a Member of Parliament. When we are elected, we are elected to represent the people who put us here and their interests. That is what I pledged to do, and that is what I will continue to do while I have the honour of serving as the Member of Parliament for Ilford, North. To those ends, I ask, as I did earlier when I intervened on the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, the Government to intervene, to stop the proposals now and to impose a moratorium. I thank my party's Front-Bench spokesmen for saying that they support that. There should be a moratorium until after the general election, when what is best for the residents of Redbridge-for my constituents-can be considered and discussed outside a political forum.
At last night's meeting, a member of the primary care trust said that he wanted the NHS to become like Marks and Spencer. Those were his exact words, and they will be reported in the local press, which chaired the meeting. He said that he wanted the success of Marks and Spencer to be repeated in the NHS, because it gave its customers what they wanted. Well, the customers of the NHS in the London borough of Redbridge do not want to lose their accident and emergency department. If it were lost, it would be the equivalent of Marks and Spencer saying, "This is our best-selling line, so we're not going to stock it any more." I urge the Government to make the intervention that I have requested, and in the winding-up speeches perhaps we will hear whether they are willing to do so and put a stop to the closure now.
I shall move on to an education matter: the plight of children suffering from autism and Asperger's. There is a postcode lottery, but there is no one-size-fits-all solution for those children, who are some of the most needy in our community. In various debates over the years in which I have been in the House, I have called for the ring-fenced funding of education provision for children suffering from autism and Asperger's. The issue was not mentioned in the Queen's Speech, but I ask whether it, too, can be looked at under the heading, "Other measures". Those are the two points that I felt it vital to get across, and, on behalf of my constituents, I ask that they be listened to and acted on.
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