Debate on the Address

Cheryl Gillan Excerpts

Wednesday 27th May 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry). Although I may not agree with some of the sentiments expressed in her speech, I am sure she would agree with me that it is delightful to return to Parliament with so many women elected to this place, irrespective of their parties or which part of the United Kingdom they come from.

It is very sobering to remember that every Member who is elected to this House has equal voting rights over one matter, and that is the power of life and death over our citizens in this country in the shape of our armed forces. So I should like to echo the tributes that have been paid, from the Front Benches and by others, to our armed forces and the way in which they keep this country safe, and carry out their duties without fear or favour.

May I also congratulate you, Mr Speaker, on your re-election? In Buckinghamshire, we had a clean slate of Conservative MPs—I count you as one of them, although I do not question your impartiality in the Chair. It is good to see you returned to your rightful place. It may be that, from time to time, your unique skills will be called on to create order out of chaos and disrespect in this place, as we have already seen so early in the Session.

I also offer my congratulations to the proposer and seconder of the Gracious Speech. The good looks of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns), as identified by the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), have always escaped me, but no doubt he will now expect a starring role in “The Only Way is Essex”, rather than just talking about it in the House. I was particularly touched by the way in which my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray) seconded the Gracious Speech. She truly is a great champion, and her husband Neil would have been very proud of her today as she took centre stage in the House.

It is a great pleasure to welcome the Gracious Speech. It is doubly welcome to me because, as part of the class of 1992, I was never quite sure—especially after 1997—that I would live to see another Conservative majority Government. It is all credit to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and our formidable Conservative team up and down the country that we now have the opportunity to continue to steer the country and the economy in the right direction. However, the joys of implementing the manifesto with a majority Government will not be lost on Conservative Members, as we have a tight majority, to say the least. Already, the manifesto has caused controversy, and we have seen opponents trying to make mileage out of the absence of a British Bill of rights and responsibilities. But I am pleased that we are taking a deep breath before jumping in with such legislation. Having sat for the last two years on the Council of Europe, I want to ensure that we remain within the ambit of the European Court of Human Rights, but finesse those elements that have extended the power of the Court and hampered British justice in some cases. A period of consultation and reflection is right, and is the responsible route. I hope that it will lead to better legislation, drafted with precision.

[Mr Graham Allen]

I thank the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) for giving way as it gives me the opportunity to make the point that Mr Speaker wisely advised me not to make on a point of order earlier. Is not there now a perfect opportunity to look at this matter in some detail within the Select Committee structure, rather than rushing to judgment on whether we should abolish, amend or reform the Human Rights Act? Would not that prove that Parliament has a serious role to play on that issue and many others on the democratic agenda before us?

[Mrs Gillan]

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman, who has done an awful lot of work in this area. I notice that his Committee was time-limited and has now been rolled in to the Public Administration Committee, which now again covers the constitution. I had the pleasure of serving on the latter Committee in the last Parliament. If I have the pleasure of serving on it again, I can assure him that we will scrutinise this area very carefully, and I believe that that would show the House at its best. We do not want to throw out the baby with the bathwater in this instance.

After the election, I sensed great relief at the result among many of the people I talked to, and—as we would expect from a Conservative Government—the Queen’s speech proposes many important measures to ensure greater accountability and people’s security and safety. We are also offering people the opportunity to improve their lives. Job creation, job security and tax certainty lie at the heart of much of our legislative programme, but the Queen’s Speech also pays attention to the whole picture, relaxing and relieving the burdens on the lowest paid and the smallest businesses, widening home ownership and securing retirement prospects. There is no area that the Queen’s Speech does not touch.

The Gracious Speech also recognises our place on the world stage, and specifically our responsibilities to Ukraine and Iraq. The challenges that we face from extremism and increasing population movement will continue to occupy Government and the House for the whole of the next five years, not just this Session. I appreciate that some of our new neighbours will always be looking for opportunities to find the differences between us, but I hope that they will also look for opportunities to find common purpose, as we face a common enemy and protect the interests of the whole of this country.

I was a fresh starter, in both senses of the word, back in the 1990s, when the Maastricht treaty was debated in this House and the EU had only 12 members. The European Union referendum Bill will give new Members the opportunity early in their careers to reflect on our relationship with the now 27 other countries of the EU. In truth, every country would like to see some reforms, and like many of my constituents I look forward to seeing what the Prime Minister can achieve before putting the question to a public UK-wide vote. I hope the Government will resist the attempts to dilute the opinion of the UK electorate by introducing a four-country hurdle, as suggested by the SNP. It is the UK as a whole that is the member state, not the individual nations. I hope also that the Prime Minister will resist the temptation substantially to change the franchise in any way for the referendum.

I think every Government starts with an education Bill, and the present Government are no different. We have excellent schools in Chesham and Amersham, as we do in the rest of Buckinghamshire, and I share the Government’s determination to drive up standards and declare war on mediocrity and failure; but our schools in Buckinghamshire are not funded as well as those in other parts of the country and we do not receive the same level of grant from the Government. The national average per pupil is now £4,611 and we receive only £4,297, so I hope the Government will revisit what amounts to unfair funding. In our case, the unfairness is exacerbated by the fact that of the three elements that make up the funding in Buckinghamshire—the schools block, the early years block and the high needs block—we received no increase in early years or high needs funding, although there are increasing demands.

During the election, it became even more obvious to me that we are not engaging our young people in politics, no matter where they live. I want a new civic studies course or element to be introduced in the national curriculum, so that students can learn about the structures and relevance of our administrative systems and governance. As some parties are keen to change the franchise to include 16-year-olds, I would have expected universal support across the House for some real education in this area. It would also help me to explain to some of my constituents why they cannot vote for Nicola Sturgeon or Leanne Wood.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is making a very cogent speech. May I say how much I agree with her that we need more constitutional studies in our schools? Many of the youngsters I came across during the election said they were not going to vote, and when I asked why, they replied, “Because we don’t know enough about this political system—how it works in this country.” We need our youngsters to be better informed.

[Mrs Gillan]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s support. I know how much you have done, Mr Speaker, to improve the education of young people across the country, and I hope that this would be a natural sequitur to the work we do here in Parliament.

In Buckinghamshire, we have seen close-up the ongoing fallout from the terrible activities of one Jimmy Savile in child sexual grooming in cases such as the successful prosecution of the former head of Caldicott school. I hope the Government will now look again at securing mandatory reporting in regulated activities, so that we can increase the safeguarding surrounding our young people and schoolchildren.

I have had my brush with devolution, and devolution features quite strongly in this Queen’s Speech. I, like many others with shire constituencies, will study the city devolution Bill very carefully. It is all very well to hand more power to the city regions and I am supportive of the principle of putting decisions closer to people, provided that the consequences for other parts of the country are carefully considered. For example, I have a democratic deficit in Chesham and Amersham as a consequence of the governance of London, because Transport for London and London Underground own my stations, and to try to get step-free access at Amersham station involves an almighty battle, because the money is usually wanted elsewhere in London and not in my area, which does not have a vote in the London Assembly. In addition, we need to ensure that in implementing the new policy, the shire counties and other areas of the country not directly within or in the area of a city region do not have their funding squeezed or get forced into alliances that take decisions further away from their electorate.

[Boris Johnson (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that her constituents get a superb service from Transport for London, without which they would be much the poorer? It is thanks to the continued investment by this Government in London transport that we have been able to deliver record improvements in the underground generally.

[Mrs Gillan]

My hon. Friend has an impeccable record of providing services, but if he could provide me with my step-free access, I would be even happier.

I was pleased to see that the valuable work of the Silk commission is being taken forward in this Session, but I hope that the long overdue boundary changes and reduction in the number of MPs will also be taken forward. The Labour Government reduced the number of Scottish MPs when the Parliament received primary law-making powers, and that should have happened also for Wales when the National Assembly received its law-making changes. We are keen to rebalance the economy between north and south and east and west, but we also need to rebalance the representation in this House. An English MP’s work remit is arguably considerably different from that of the MPs for Scotland and Wales, who have Assembly Members and Members of the Scottish Parliament to carry out a proportion of the work that we do as English MPs. I very much hope that the changes to Standing Orders will deal with the perennial problem of the West Lothian question, which has still not been answered.

I could not speak in the debate without mentioning my pet project, of which I am a great fan—HS2—as high-speed rail is mentioned in the Queen’s Speech. In the previous Parliament the final compensation scheme was announced, but after five years the current scheme is still falling short of the fair and generous settlement that the Prime Minister promised. Constituents are having their lives and finances dissected and investigated in the sort of detail that could be said to be normally associated with bankruptcy or criminal proceedings. Even decisions on whether the Government should purchase their properties sometimes seem to be subject to lifestyle judgments being made by officials. In addition, the residents commissioner who was appointed last January has yet to agree to a meeting with me and has not published her quarterly report that was promised.

However, hope springs eternal. I was delighted that in our manifesto the Government will be maintaining the national protections for areas of outstanding natural beauty, national parks and sites of special scientific interest. As only 45% of the Chilterns AONB is currently fully tunnelled, leaving 11.4 km of the widest area of the AONB destroyed by shallow cuttings and so-called green tunnels, I feel sure that the fully bored tunnel which will protect the entire AONB must now be firmly on the Government’s agenda. In my view, this is the only way of mitigating damage to our rare habitat and fulfilling this vital commitment in the Conservative manifesto.

[Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mrs Gillan]

Forgive me—I have only a short time.

If there is to be more legislation on high-speed rail, I hope this Government will learn from their mistakes, many of which have been made in our constituencies in Buckinghamshire.

I, like many real Conservatives, am delighted with this Gracious Speech, so I am proud to give it a warm welcome. It is just the entrée for what is coming. We will have the Budget, and I know that many of our votes in this House will be close and hard fought, so our attention will always be demanded in this House. Lord Prescott may not have understood the meaning of aspiration, but perhaps I can help him. I feel that this is a Queen’s Speech of high hopes—high hopes for individuals, families, businesses and this United Kingdom. It gives me great pleasure to give it a warm welcome.