Summer Adjournment

Amanda Milling Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Stirling (Steven Paterson). Given that Staffordshire is often used as the quarry for much of the midlands, I very much sympathise with him. It is also a great honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), who made a very thoughtful speech.

On Monday, I saw two reasons why there is great hope in Stafford for the economic future. One was the almost-completed General Electric factory on the Redhill business park, which Staffordshire County Council set up a few years ago and which will be an extremely important source of employment and innovation for the future. General Electric will base its automaton division there. The second was Biomass Power, a manufacturing and design company that makes biomass equipment. I visited its gasification plant, which will assist the Bombardier works in Belfast in Northern Ireland. That will help Bombardier reduce its energy costs, which is one of the reasons why it will be successful in Belfast. As a result of these and many other initiatives, the percentage of jobseeker’s allowance applicants in Stafford has fallen from 3.2% to 1% over the last six years. During that time, we have welcomed two new Signals regiments, 1 and 16, and they are already playing a major role in the life of our communities. They have been a welcome addition to our community.

A new retail development is due to open in the coming two months on the edge of the town centre, and we need to ensure that it does not suck the life out of the middle of our town centre. The borough council is working with many people, including me, to see what we can do to bring more life into our beautiful town centre.

Stafford is a great centre for volunteering. The proportion of volunteers per head of population is one of the highest in the country. One of our excellent local volunteering organisations is Staffordshire Women’s Aid, which has just opened a new refuge. I very much hope that a Home Office Minister, or my right hon. Friend the new Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, who is a Staffordshire MP, will come and open it formally at some point.

Stafford is building large numbers of houses. We have an excellent local plan, which means that the houses are, by and large, being built in the right place, but I would like to point out the problems that speculative development brings. With a good local plan, there is absolutely no need for speculation, because we have planned the number of houses that we need. Speculative development simply wastes everybody’s time.

[Amanda Milling (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for his support following the closure of Rugeley B power station. Will he join me in trying to get all parties—national and local government—to do everything they can to get the site redeveloped as quickly as possible?

[Jeremy Lefroy]

Of course. My hon. Friend has done incredible work on that and I will support her in whatever way I can, because the site is on the boundary of my constituency as well.

I want to make two other quick points about housing and planning. First, I have already raised in the House issue of the lack of enforcement. It is so important to ensure that when planning permission is given, development is carried out in accordance with it, and that developers do not try to take bits away or add bits that have not been approved. Secondly, could we find a way of ensuring that the new roads that are put into new housing estates are quickly available on maps, especially electronic maps and satnavs? For many months, if not years, those roads do not appear on such maps, so people do not know how to get to the new houses that are being built.

I want to talk briefly about health. The county hospital, about which I spoke many times in the previous Parliament, is now doing well. The accident and emergency department is seeing more people in 14 hours a day than it did in 24 hours a day at its peak, although I continue to urge the restoration of a 24-hour service, which I believe is vital. Many of the wards in the hospital are being refurbished. The stroke unit—a rehabilitation ward—is under review. Many of my constituents have pointed out how important it is. It is all very well talking about helping to rehabilitate people at home. If that is best for the patient, that is fine. In many cases, however, such patients are better served by going to the rehabilitation ward as day cases or for a few hours in a day.

I raised this morning with the Leader of the House the question of drug and alcohol treatment in Staffordshire. We face a cut of up to half in the funding for such treatment and the closure of some excellent units. That cannot be right, and it has to be stopped somehow. I have also raised the question of health visitors. The amount of money dedicated to health visitors is under review, if not being cut. Health visitors play an absolutely vital role in Staffordshire, as they do across the country. Reducing their numbers will be counterproductive, and it will lead only to more pressure on acute hospitals.

The funding of the NHS is a long-term issue, which is why I have joined the right hon. Members for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) and for Birkenhead (Frank Field) to look at the ways in which we could have a much longer-term funding picture for the NHS and social care. It is quite clear that after 2020, even if the current plans go ahead—I fully support them—we will have some major holes in health service funding.

On transport in our area, I asked about the four-lane running of motorways in questions to the Leader of the House last week. The Transport Committee wrote an excellent report on that, and I ask the Government to look at this matter most carefully. I believe that some of the four-lane running is dangerous. It has now been proposed for junctions 13 to 15 of the M6 in my constituency. Before that goes ahead, I want the Government to look at the system that operates on the M42 smart motorway, which is much better than the permanent four-lane running elsewhere.

As far as rail is concerned, the Norton Bridge viaduct has been put in at the junction on the west coast main line, and it is bringing great improvements. I am very much in favour of that, just as I am against HS2. I continue to be against HS2 because, in my opinion, there are much better alternatives. I am in no way a nimby on this, but there are alternatives that would be cheaper and would provide greater connectivity to far more cities across the country.

Finally, there is a proposal for a massive rail freight interchange in my constituency, which would take up many acres of the green belt. We must look at that most carefully. The proposals brought forward by the developers consortium are simply not acceptable at the moment, and they must be looked at very carefully. This is a national issue, and I urge Ministers to look at this most carefully to see whether there are not alternative sites for this rail freight interchange.

--- Later in debate ---

[Amanda Milling (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House on his new role.

To start with, I will stick with the theme of trains this afternoon. I recently joined council leaders and the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), who is not in her place right now, at an event looking at the progress of the Chase line electrification. I have to say that the engineering works in Walsall town centre are truly impressive—I have been amazed at how they have been undertaken under the shops in such a way that the shops did not have to close—but while they are due to be completed, as planned, by the end of 2017, it has recently come to light that the class 323 electric trains required for the line might not be available for up to a year. This news emerged following various questions and letters I had been writing. I was somewhat concerned about the gap in time between the completion of the electrification engineering works and the trains being run on the line. Once the electrification of the line is up and running, it will mean faster trains and a more regular service, which will alleviate many of the problems faced by current passengers, particularly overcrowding. Without the 323 trains, however, passengers will not be able to enjoy the benefits of a faster and more regular service.

I recently wrote to the previous Secretary of State for Transport, my right hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (Mr McLoughlin), about this particular issue. As a former Cannock resident and councillor, he is very familiar with the Chase line and has always been incredibly supportive of the electrification project. I hope that the new Secretary of State for Transport will be equally supportive, although I doubt whether he could possibly know the name of every bridge along the line, as his predecessor did. I will, of course, raise specific issues with the new Secretary of State because I want to ensure that Chase line passengers can enjoy the benefits of the electrified line soon after the engineering works are complete.

I have spoken several times about Rugeley B power station, including mentioning it once this afternoon. Last month saw the end of electricity generation at Rugeley B. My immediate priorities have been about helping and supporting the workforce to find new jobs. I was particularly pleased to see so many people at my jobs fair last month, and I do hope that everyone working at Rugeley B is successful in finding new roles.

One of the other consequences of the power station closure is the loss of business rates to Cannock Chase District Council, equating to around £1 million a year—not an insignificant sum for a council of its size. Although, in time, this gap will be met by the income from the new Mill Green development—for those who do not know, it is a designer outlet village, similar to those in Bicester and Chester Oaks, that will be coming to Cannock soon—the council faces a short-term financial problem, with a gap to be filled. I recently attended a meeting with the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones), and leaders from the council. We called on the Government to provide some transitional funding to help manage the short-term problem; I take the opportunity to put that on the record.

With the phasing out of coal-fired power stations by 2025, and with several announcing closure or part-closure in the coming years, Cannock Chase District Council is unlikely to be the only one facing financial difficulties as a result of the loss of business rates. I urge the Government to consider ways of financially supporting councils that are affected by the closure of coal-fired power stations.

[Bob Stewart]

I would like to make one other point, slightly flippantly. For generations of soldiers, that power station has been vital to learning the art of resection, or working out where we are. The power station can be seen from miles away, so soldiers can take a bearing on it, go on the back bearing and work out where they are. It will be sad not to have that aid for teaching our soldiers how to map-read.

[Amanda Milling]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. Those iconic cooling towers can be seen from the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) and right down to Tamworth and Lichfield, although we do not necessarily all agree about their beauty.

Finally, I shall move on from power stations and talk briefly about the fantastic work of the Newlife Foundation for Disabled Children—a charity in my constituency that provides specialist equipment for disabled and terminally ill children across the UK. Last week, I was proud to sponsor its incredibly impactful exhibition in the Upper Waiting Hall.

New Department for Work and Pensions figures show that the number of disabled children has risen dramatically to roughly 1 million—an increase of 20% over the last 10 years. For some time, the Government have been calculating public funding for the provision of paediatric equipment on the basis of the outdated statistic of 0.8 million. I support the calls from Newlife for the Government to review the statistics that they use to calculate public funding, and I look forward to raising the issue with the new Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work when we return to the House in the autumn.

Let me say one last thing. My office manager will not forgive me if I do not mention Watchman V. Watchman V is the Staffordshire regimental mascot, and is also the Staffordshire MPs’ entry to the Parliamentary Dog of the Year competition. I urge everyone to vote for Watchman V.