Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Dan Poulter Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Dr Daniel Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to make my first formal contribution to the debates of the House. As many right hon. and hon. Members are aware, Sir Michael Lord, the previous Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, and a long-standing Deputy Speaker, was gravely unwell during the summer, and I felt it inappropriate to make my maiden speech while he was so ill. Members will be pleased to know that he is now making a good recovery and I am sure they will join me in passing our best wishes to Sir Michael for his continued recovery and for his retirement.

Sir Michael Lord was first elected for the then constituency of Central Suffolk in 1983. He was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to the right hon. John MacGregor in Margaret Thatcher’s Government and then, as many Members are aware, for 13 years, he served with great distinction, alongside Sir Alan Haselhurst, as a Deputy Speaker. In Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, Sir Michael will be remembered as a hard-working and diligent constituency MP.

The constituency of Central Suffolk and North Ipswich was created in 1997 from the then Central Suffolk constituency, taking in wards from what was then Suffolk Coastal and the northern wards of the Ipswich constituency. It is a constituency of great diversity. Central Suffolk boasts agriculture and a growing tourist trade. I am privileged to represent a very diverse population in North Ipswich, which includes the local Sikh temple and a Sikh community as well as a large Caribbean community.

As there are more than 100 parishes in my constituency, I shall not talk about each in detail, but I will outline some of the main concerns that affect both my constituency and Suffolk as a whole. Members may be aware that before my election to the House I was a front-line NHS hospital doctor. That experience has stood me in good stead in representing my constituents, particularly the health care concerns that they face. In the NHS we have a key battle before us to ensure that we keep front-line services at Ipswich district general hospital. Under the regionalisation agenda of the previous Government, we saw the loss of vital cardiac and cancer care services at the hospital. It is important that we fight to restore Ipswich hospital to its former glory and make sure that once again we provide the vital services that the people of Central Suffolk and North Ipswich need.

In a predominantly rural constituency, Hartismere is a vital community hospital that unfortunately was closed during the last three and a half years of the previous Government. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and his team when he was shadow Secretary of State for working with me to help reopen the hospital, which provides essential services to the older people, families and pregnant women who live in our rural communities.

It would be wrong of me not to draw attention to the fact that throughout Suffolk, thanks to the previous Government’s out-of-hours contract, we were left with only two GPs to look after 650,000 people. That is something we shall look to the new health care White Paper to put right.

Other challenges that face Central Suffolk and North Ipswich include the need to improve broadband services and access. Other Members may take access to broadband and high-speed broadband for granted—particularly if they represent more urban areas—but even if under current plans high-speed broadband is delivered to 90% of the UK, two-thirds of my constituents will still not have access to it. All Suffolk MPs will be working together to help deliver those services.

Many of my fellow East Anglia MPs believe that more attention needs to be paid to infrastructure in our area, particularly roads and rail, which have been badly neglected over the last few years. Indeed, for many years Central Suffolk and North Ipswich received only 80% of the average national spend per head of population. That has taken its toll on a road and rail infrastructure that badly needs investment.

My constituents, like many people throughout the country, will welcome the Bill. It will help us to give the country a clear legislative programme, with certainty about what the Government can do over a five-year period. There is so much to do in terms of welfare and education reform and delivering a new White Paper on health care, and in particular dealing with the profligate economic record of the Labour Government. We must make sure that we have a clear five-year programme in which to do that. A fixed-term Parliament can only be a good thing.