Education and Opportunity

Al Pinkerton Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)]

Madam Deputy Speaker, I am grateful to you for allowing me the opportunity to intervene in this important debate and, in so doing, to give my maiden speech. I also congratulate you on both of your recent election successes and welcome you to the Chair.

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Derby North (Catherine Atkinson). I was delighted in particular to hear about her recent abseiling exploits. I wondered whether she was giving a maiden speech or making a pitch to be the next Lib Dem party leader, but it was wonderful to hear her rich and powerful evocation of Derby North—I thank her very much. I also pay tribute to the other maiden speakers today and last week. The quality of speeches and the intellectual energy of those new Members suggest that this Parliament will be enhanced by a new generation of thinkers and doers who will serve this place and their constituents well.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I am especially grateful to you for allowing me to catch your eye on an occasion when education is placed in the parliamentary spotlight. I have dedicated my working life to teaching and researching in higher education, most recently as a Professor of Geopolitics at Royal Holloway, University of London, where I worked with generations of incredible students who have gone on to incredible things in the public, private and charitable sectors. I am proud to say that three of my former students were candidates in the recent general election, at least two are current heads of office or special advisers to senior Members of the House, and one is a rising star of the lobby press. I take no credit for what they do—what they have achieved, they have achieved themselves—but I hope that they will forgive me if I feel some pride in what they do and the contributions they make, even if those contributions are all too often disproportionately favoured towards the Conservative party.

Surrey Heath is blessed with an extraordinary state and independent school system within and local to our constituency. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work that teachers and senior leaderships do in supporting generations of young people, providing them with knowledge and the critical and practical skills that are vital preparation for further learning and successful careers. As was reinforced in the recent general election campaign, Surrey Heath’s state schools achieve all of that while edging ever closer to financial crisis.

I welcome and will support any initiative put before the House that will raise educational standards and drive opportunity. Education, after all, is the engine of social mobility and our country’s future economic prosperity. I sincerely hope that, with this change of Government, the hostility that has been directed towards the UK’s genuinely world-leading universities will end. The new Government now have an opportunity to walk the sector back from the brink of financial crisis—indeed catastrophe, as I saw in the newspapers this week—and to recognise again the intrinsic value of higher education, and the role of our universities as powerful instruments of local economic growth and the foundation of our national success in research, innovation and skills.

Surrey Heath is a wonderful place to live. We are blessed with striking and historic landscapes. As the name of the constituency suggests, we are defined by ancient lowland heaths: lasting remnants of prehistoric woodland cleared over the centuries and kept clear by grazing, burning and cutting. Although not strictly natural, these heaths are the preserve of unique ecosystems and biodiversity.

Chobham common is one of the finest remaining examples of lowland heath left anywhere in the world. Wildfires are common—increasingly so—as we are gripped by the climate crisis. We are grateful to the brave men and women of Surrey Fire and Rescue, who battle the toughest of conditions to keep residents and their property safe. They deserve our fullest support, especially now as they go into battle again, facing another round of cuts to that vital-to-life service.

Surrey Heath is a borough and a constituency with a long and proud military tradition, from the development of Chobham armour in the 1960s to the present-day home of ATC Pirbright—a place that any new recruit to the British Army will come to know all too well. Surrey Heath is also home to Gordon’s school, founded in 1885, which is both an award-winning state boarding school and a national monument to General Gordon of Khartoum. The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, where British Army officers are trained, straddles the boundaries of Surrey Heath and nearby Bracknell Forest—although most of the RMA’s buildings are technically in Berkshire, I will claim them a little for Surrey Heath today.

There can be no doubt of the connection between Sandhurst and Surrey Heath’s main market town of Camberley. Camberley is a product of the Royal Military College, which was formed in Sandhurst in 1812. In the years that followed, settlements formed at the margins of the college, including the planned community of Cambridge Town, named after the Duke of Cambridge, the head of the British army at the time. As the town grew, so did confusion between Cambridge Town and Cambridge, its much less well known and less distinguished namesake somewhere in the midlands—apologies to hon. Members representing Cambridge. This problem was especially felt by users of the postal service, whose letters would frequently find themselves long delayed and hundreds of miles from their intended destinations—150 years has gone by, and little has changed.

Royal Mail requested a name change, and it was the newer upstart Cambridge Town that relented, changing its identity in 1877 to Camberley: a portmanteau referencing the River Cam, which still runs underneath the town; “Amber”, in reference to nearby Amber Hill; and “ley”, which is the Anglo-Saxon for a forest clearing and commonly used as a suffix in nearby placenames such as Frimley and Bisley, also in Surrey Heath.

Surrey Heath has a rich musical and artistic tradition. Camberley was the childhood home of Sir Arthur Sullivan and Bros—rich musical tradition—and today is home to musician, astrophysicist and animal welfare activist Dr Brian May. Daphne du Maurier wrote “Jamaica Inn” while living in Frimley, and we are hopeful that a blue plaque may soon mark that spot as Surrey Heath’s contribution to British literary history. We are home to extraordinary local, national and international businesses too numerous to mention, as well as a vibrant charitable and voluntary sector and a community of multiple faith traditions, ethnicities and nationalities, including a large and historic Gurkha community.

During the pandemic, residents self-organised into a remarkable community-wide response to covid-19. Surrey Heath Prepared delivered essential food parcels and thousands of prescriptions to the isolating and vulnerable—an expression of community resilience and solidarity when it was most needed. I hope that contributions by the likes of Surrey Heath Prepared and mutual aid groups will not be forgotten in the inquiry under way into how the UK responded to the pandemic.

Following the recent boundary review that brought the beautiful villages of Normandy and Pirbright into the constituency, Surrey Heath is officially the resting place of at least two significant figures of empire. Sir Henry Morton Stanley is buried in Pirbright, near the home he created for himself after his return from Africa. Perhaps worthy of greater celebration is John Pennycuick, an extraordinary engineer and colonial administrator with the vision and skill to construct the Mullaperiyar dam. Since its construction in 1895, the dam has been credited with saving tens of thousands of lives by protecting communities from seasonal flooding, and for bringing nearly a quarter of a million acres of land into crop-bearing productivity. Today, Pennycuick is revered in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu—children are given his name in his honour—yet he is almost unknown here in the UK. I hope that his mention in this House today may be a small contribution to addressing that historical absence.

Today, drivers on the M3 motorway slip quickly and efficiently—when it is not clogged up—through Surrey Heath as they travel between London and the south-west, often without even realising that they are passing through this fine constituency. On the other hand, Surrey Heath road users may be more aware of the less smooth and much less efficient point of entry on to the M3, at the junction with the A322. My predecessor Michael Gove—more on him in a moment—spent many an hour at that particular road junction over the past few years, but even his formidable talents could not resolve this serious, shared, local frustration. I hope I can make some headway on that issue in the months and years to come.

In Restoration England of the 1600s, hold-ups on the highways of what is now Surrey Heath were of a rather different kind. The Great West Road, known less prosaically today as the A30, was the main connecting route between London and the great port cities of the south coast. It was a lucrative prospect for highwaymen and opportunistic cutpurses, especially on the long, isolated stretches around Bagshot Heath. William Davis, the so-called Golden Farmer, and Claude Duval were two of the most notorious and noteworthy of the 17th century land pirates. Duval is recalled as a “gentleman of the road”. Gracious to the point of obsequiousness, he would relieve you of your jewels while dancing with your wife and complimenting you on the finery of your apparel. An abhorrer of physical violence, the history books recall him as a master of politeness, smiling pleasantly to your face while metaphorically sticking the knife in.

Now, the sharp-eared among you may recognise a passing—one might even say limited and specific—similarity between Duval and another more recent gentleman of Surrey Heath’s roads. I refer, of course, to the former Member for Surrey Heath, my predecessor, Michael Gove, who served the constituency and this House with considerable distinction and flair for just shy of 20 years. Both were men possessed of a singular vision, noted for their grace and observance of the highest courtesies and manners. Unlike Duval, there is no evidence to suggest that Michael’s outings to the A322 involved any public displays of dancing. Those, as far as we can tell, he saved for the nightclubs of old Aberdeen. Conservative Members to my right may go further, but for my part I am certain that that is where any similarities end.

Michael Gove will rightly be remembered as a transformative Minister, even by teachers—this is a debate on education—who will consider him transformative, but not necessarily beneficially so. He was a talented parliamentarian. His oratorical skills marked him out as a once-in-a-generation performer at the Dispatch Box. He will be greatly missed in this House by both his friends and his opponents, and I am sure they will want to join me in wishing him well in whatever his future has in store.

Personally, I am hugely indebted to the people of Surrey Heath for electing me to be the first non-Conservative MP for our constituency in 118 years. This was a vote to be taken seriously again—one for a local MP who will work in this place to further the cause of a great community. And we need that now more than ever. Surrey Heath’s roads and rail infrastructure require significant investment. It cannot be right that it takes longer to travel between Camberley and London in 2024 than it did a century ago. We need to end the postcode lottery of health, and to address the deep inequalities in life expectancy and life opportunities that scar and divide our communities. I welcome the commitment of the Secretary of State for Health to prioritising the rebuilding of RAAC-affected hospitals, such as Frimley Park hospital in my constituency, but we need reassurance that the new Frimley Park will be the right hospital providing the right services and sited in the most appropriate location, accessible by road, rail and bus, and that it does not come at the expense of losing vital green or amenity space. We also need a fair deal for our young people, with genuinely affordable homes, and new educational and training opportunities. We urgently need to fix Surrey’s broken special educational needs provision. In the spirit that there is always more that unites us than divides us, I look forward to working with Members across the House to achieve those things for Surrey Heath and in support of communities across the UK.

Finally, our families all too often pay a high price—indeed, the highest price—to enable us to do what we do in this House, and to participate in the long and stressful campaigns that go before and which, soon enough, will come again. In closing, I express my love and thanks to my wife, Philippa, and to my children, Jamie and Will, for putting up with me, for their limitless support, and for being the best team anyone could ever hope to be part of.

[Several hon. Members rose—]