Christmas Adjournment

David Amess Excerpts

Thursday 18th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered matters to be raised before the forthcoming adjournment.

I move the motion on behalf of the Backbench Business Committee, and I want to raise several points before the House adjourns for the Christmas recess.

The place in which we work has changed and continues to change. I pay tribute to all the staff who work here. However, I have a number of worries, including that if we leave this place for five years, when it is refurbished, we may never return. I am very concerned about our sitting hours, which have had a deep impact on the catering facilities. Many of the facilities used to be very busy, but half of them are now empty. I am very concerned about the prices of refreshments generally. The refreshments are excellent, but the prices have put off charities from having events here.

I praise the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 2013, which was introduced last year by my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Sir Richard Ottaway). However, a couple of constituents came to see me to say that it is very expensive to get the licence, and that they do not believe the legislation is fully funded. All sorts of people are just paying lip service to it, so I urge the Government to ensure that extra support is given to local authorities and the police to monitor scrap metal sites and mobile dealers.

I had the privilege to pilot the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act 2000 through the House, but the issue of fuel poverty still has to be addressed. I am delighted that the Government are rolling back green levies, and increasing the winter fuel payments and the warm home discount. However, some families are still suffering from fuel poverty. I encourage all constituents to consider switching to an energy provider or to a tariff that is cheaper and suits them best. A list of accredited switching sites can be found on the Ofgem website.

I am delighted to report that Southend high school for girls and Southend high school for boys have been chosen to represent England at the world school athletics championships in China next year. I hope that everybody rallies behind them so that they do very well.

I have mentioned to the House before that Councillor David Stanley leads the wonderful Music Man project, which enriches the lives of people with learning difficulties. I am delighted to tell the House that it will be performing at the London Palladium on 21 June 2015. I am hoping that my good friend, Sir Bruce Forsyth, will compere the programme. Tickets will be available next month.

The House will know that Southend is the alternative city of culture 2017. I am delighted to announce that at the end of January 2015, c2c will be naming one of its trains in recognition of that, and that there will be a talent show in the Arlington Rooms in February next year.

Earlier this year, I had the honour of hosting a number of Koreans at the Leigh Elim church. That is particularly pertinent given the story in the news today. Those wonderful people from Korea are praying for this House. I hope that Members take comfort from the fact that those people are working on our behalf in a far-off land.

I want to comment on a number of all-party parliamentary groups that I chair. As we all know, some all-party groups are absolutely farcical and do not meet much. I chair the all-party parliamentary group for the Philippines. People from the Philippines do marvellous work. Its care workers are second to none. I am sure that I have the House’s support when I say that, thankfully, the number of casualties of the terrible flooding that the Philippines has experienced as a result of Hagupit, which made its first landfall on 6 December with a force equivalent to a category 3 storm, has been relatively small. I know that the Philippines would like to thank the British Government for their generosity in the wake of the typhoon. The Department for International Development has activated its humanitarian rapid response facility and agreed to a £2 million fund to help the humanitarian relief that is being provided by GOAL, Christian Aid and Oxfam, which are all established in the Philippines.

I am very concerned about the situation in Bahrain. I continue to receive reports from individuals of ongoing torture, arbitrary detention and extra-judicial killings. The recent sentencing of the activist, Zainab al-Khawaja, is of particular concern. The Foreign Affairs Committee this year claimed that it had found no evidence of progress in Bahrain and I have asked the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to list it as a country of concern.

I am the joint chairman of the British parliamentary committee for Iran freedom. I urge the Government to refer the regime’s human rights dossier to the United Nations Security Council for punitive measures and the prosecution of the Iranian regime’s leaders. The Government should realise that something needs to be done, particularly in respect of Camp Ashraf.

I am the chairman of the all-party parliamentary fire safety and rescue group. I praise the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt), who is responsible for fire, resilience and emergencies, for supporting the work of the APPG. A number of concerns about the built environment and schools remain unresolved. The group wants to work more closely with the appropriate Departments.

I was pleased that when we voted against the prayer on Monday, we received strong assurances from my hon. Friend on firefighters’ pensions. I visited one of my local fire stations last week and was made aware of all the concerns that were raised in the debate. I was delighted to hear her confirm that if someone fails a fitness test through no fault of their own and does not qualify for ill-health retirement, they will be redeployed or receive an unreduced pension.

I am the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on maternity. Having fathered five children, I think that I have a few qualifications for that. I was delighted that we organised an event, in collaboration with the National Childbirth Trust, to honour a number of maternity groups throughout the country that are providing an excellent service for parents and their babies in the first 1,000 days.

How many times have we heard that mental health is the Cinderella service? Of course, all political parties say that they will do something about that. I was very concerned to find out, when I met a group who are proposing a mental health manifesto, that although people with mental health problems account for 23% of the disease burden, they receive only 13% of NHS expenditure. Something needs to be done about that.

Thinking of the season of good will and Christmas, I am chairman of the all-party parliamentary hepatology group. I urge hon. Members to read the group’s report on hepatitis C, which highlights the catastrophic consequences of failing to address the alarming rise in liver disease in the United Kingdom, which is caused by preventable viral hepatitis, alcohol misuse and obesity.

I know that a number of colleagues have been lobbied recently by Parkinson’s UK. I agree with its campaign that calls for Duodopa to be commissioned routinely, based on national eligibility criteria. I would like to see more transparency from the clinical priorities advisory group in relation to that treatment.

I was lobbied recently by the Institute of Customer Service. We all want the highest quality of service possible. It has concluded that the major enablers of excellent customer service in the public sector include a focus on customer insight, the co-creation of services with customers, simpler processes and employee engagement.

I will end—[Hon. Members: “No!”] Well, I could go on a little longer, but there are 18 other speakers. I will end with an issue that I have mentioned on a number of occasions, which concerns Southend hospital, the South Essex Partnership Trust and Monitor. Because of what happened between 1997 and 2010, I believe that this place has increasingly lost a lot of power. I want to take this opportunity to praise all the doctors, nurses and ancillary staff who work at Southend hospital and for SEPT. However, I am appalled by the management standards.

The chief executive of Southend hospital left, but she seems to have moved on seamlessly to another job, even though she took a £25,000 pay increase before she left. We have also been left with an £8.5 million debt. That is quite wrong. I want to know where the governance from the chairman has been. I want the chairman of Southend hospital to be replaced and I want a new management structure to be introduced.

Monitor came to see me in October, and it has taken longer than two months to get back to me. A meeting was supposed to take place in my office this morning, but it seems not to have happened. I am not best pleased about that. I want to know who exactly is running the hospital on an interim basis, how much they are being paid and what their expertise is.

I say again to the House, SEPT is a huge organisation. It is top heavy with management. I am not going to leave this matter alone until the current management are replaced and until what went on under the last management, by which I mean the previous chief executive, is addressed. What is happening at those two services simply is not good enough.

I extend my thanks to c2c, Arriva, the Genting Club, Waitrose, Morrisons, Tesco and all the other good organisations that have helped our community in the past year. I hope that that will encourage others to follow suit.

I wish you, Madam Deputy Speaker, Mr Speaker, the other two Deputy Speakers, all colleagues and all staff of the House of Commons a very happy Christmas, good health, peace, prosperity and a wonderful new year.