Debate on the Address

Gareth Thomas Excerpts

Wednesday 9th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke). I enjoyed his speech very much—even the more provocative parts. I suspect that many of our constituents who have children with special needs will empathise with his comments. I confess that I did not understand his reference to grandparents occasionally being annoying, but perhaps that is Conservative party code for something else. I also empathised with his description of many of his constituents not having had a pay rise for years and struggling to keep their jobs. I therefore say gently to him that I do not understand how he can say with a straight face that the Budget was good for those families. Nevertheless, I enjoyed listening to his speech.

Two years into the coalition, it is striking that the Queen’s Speech has so little to offer to solve the challenges that our country faces. Its measures show that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor did not listen to the anger of Britain’s citizens last week and that they are ignoring the now considerable economic evidence that a new direction is needed. Equally clearly, the confident communities that our constituents want to live in will seem further away than ever, with declining levels of social capital, public services under greater pressure than ever, and the opportunity to have real influence over how key services are run at local level growing ever more distant.

My constituents tell me that they are now seeing fewer police officers than for a long time. The fact that the Government are announcing legislation to set up the new National Crime Agency when police numbers are dropping, and that the Metropolitan police want to close all the cells at Harrow police station with little notice and even less discussion, suggests that Ministers are out of touch with what is happening at the grass roots to the services that our constituents depend on.

Given the present Home Secretary’s now notorious description of the Conservative party, it is perhaps appropriate to wonder, in the light of the Queen’s Speech and the Budget, whether the “nasty party” is very much back in evidence. Over the next 12 months, we will see more cuts that will once again hit the most vulnerable and those least able to help themselves. If the measure in the Queen’s Speech goes through, it will become easier to sack the strivers, the hard workers, those who speak out, those who blow the whistle on bad practice and those who, for just one period in their lives, are at their most vulnerable through illness, if their face does not fit.

There has also been a tax cut for millionaires, which hard-working families and pensioners are being made to pay for. To cap it all, the Conservative party is agonising once again about all things foreign. It is again anti-European in tone, and predominantly anti-aid, too. Above all, it is on the economy that the Prime Minister needs to tell the Chancellor to change course. Bank lending continues to fall as businesses continue to struggle. Year on year, net lending to businesses has now fallen in every single month since the coalition came to power. How many times have we heard the Prime Minister promise to get the banks lending? Despite all the hype that Project Merlin and, then, banking reform were the answer, bank lending continues to fall; it was down 3.5% last year alone.

My right hon. Friends on the Opposition Front Bench have consistently warned that the Government’s austerity plan was self-defeating, and that cutting spending too far and too fast at the same time as putting up taxes such as VAT would backfire. America, and indeed a series of countries in Europe, have taken a far more balanced approach to reducing their deficits, with strong plans to produce jobs and deliver economic growth. Why could the Chancellor and Prime Minister not have listened to and looked at what is happening in those countries? As a result of their mistakes, my constituents are suffering. Their bills are up because Ministers will not really challenge the big energy companies. There is certainly a Bill to introduce electricity market reform, but it will come far too late in this Parliament to make a real difference to the size of the bills my constituents will have to pay.

In many cases, mortgage rates are rising, while tube fares have never been so expensive. In Harrow town centre in the heart of my constituency, I have never seen as many empty shops as there are now—a daily demonstration of a recession that has been made in Downing street. Harrow council, told by the Mayor of London to plan for a huge increase in housing units over the next decade or so—half in Wealdstone and Harrow-on-the Hill—is seeking to use this open door policy for developers to try to redesign, reinvigorate and redevelop the heart of our borough, despite the recession. It is, however, striking how difficult it is at the moment to persuade developers to put affordable housing at the centre of their plans—for example, on the Kodak site, set to be home to a potential 3,000 housing units. For those in Harrow who want to get on the housing ladder, the prospect of being able to buy their first home in the Harrow community where they grew up seems ever further away.

The next generation, hammered by the high cost of tuition fees from October this year, will wonder why there is so little to help them in this Queen’s Speech. There is nothing to make the cost of going to university easier—just cuts in the funding that their university is receiving. They face higher living costs while they are at university, and now there is the possibility, as announced in the Budget, of a tax give-away for private universities, many of which are run by hedge funds.

Equally striking is the recent absence of “big society” language from the rhetoric of the Prime Minister’s speeches. Community groups that were championed when the Conservatives were in opposition are now left very much on the sidelines. Huge cuts in funding that began to hit hard last year will hit even harder this year. Last week, the head of Volunteering England warned that the network of volunteer centres across the country is beginning to fragment, with a number set to close this year. Why, at a time when we need national renewal, are we set to make it harder for people to give something back through volunteering? The National Children’s Bureau has warned that 25% of the charities it contacted that help young people and children believed that they might have to close next year. Charities that were promised Government contracts will now know that they were hollow words when Ministers spoke them.

The Work programme, run by the Department for Work and Pensions, has seen the private sector winning 90% of the prime contracts. Charities that were told that they would get 35% to 40% of the referrals under the Work programme are seeing at best half that—fewer than under the future jobs fund. More than 100 charities have lost confidence and walked away, yet there is nothing in the Queen’s Speech to seek to address those problems. Indeed, an independent audit published by Civil Exchange and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust at the weekend argued that there is

“an implicit bias towards the private sector in tendering”

and that

“it is particularly hard for small, local voluntary organisations to compete for contracts.”

I suggest that this is the Serco society, not the big society, so it is hardly surprising that some 70% of charity chief executives did not think that the Government respected or valued their sector.

Arguably, the most fundamental challenge identified by the audit is how to extend social action to a younger population and across socio-economic groups. The core, it says, of those who provide the majority of volunteering are more likely to be middle-aged, to have higher educational qualifications, to practise their religion actively and to have lived in the same neighbourhood. There is nothing in the Queen’s Speech to suggest that the Government understand how to get more people enrolled in their communities or even the desire to do so.

Where, indeed, is the co-ops Bill that the Prime Minister once promised? This comes on the back of no serious effort to remutualise Northern Rock over the past 12 months, no serious interest in encouraging more energy co-ops to emerge, no sustained effort to encourage real involvement in the running of football clubs by football fans through football supporters’ co-operatives, and no requirement to promote a diverse market in financial services for the Financial Services Authority or its replacement to help financial mutuals. Sadly, the Queen’s Speech confirms that once again the Government have walked away from the real practical measures that could have helped the co-op and mutual movement to grow.

One of the Bills that will be before the House during this Session will be a crime and courts Bill, the details of which I shall examine especially carefully. As I made clear earlier, my constituents will be sceptical about the benefits of such a top-down change when they are seeing fewer police officers on the ground. I recently organised meetings between constituents who are experiencing challenging antisocial behaviour problems near the Racecourse estate in Northolt, which my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) will know particularly well—

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

It wasn’t me.

[Mr Thomas]

It also occurs in south Harrow. What frustrated those residents was the lack of visibility, at key times, of police officers who could have moved on local troublemakers, and, indeed, could have deterred them from gathering in the first place. Constables are routinely deployed away from their wards, and are rarely available for standard safer neighbourhood team duties in those areas.

What is most worrying, however, is the threat to close the custody suite at Harrow police station. With no consultation, the Metropolitan police have decided to shut the custody suite, which consists of 13 cells, in mid-September. There will then be no more cell capacity in Harrow. All those who are arrested will have to be transported to out-of borough police stations—to Kilburn and Wembley—by a minimum of two officers, more if there is a possibility that the prisoners could turn violent. Given the number of annual visits to Harrow’s cells by alleged criminals—an average of 5,000, I believe—and given the time that it takes to travel from my constituency to Kilburn and Wembley, that represents a loss of between 10,000 and 20,000 police officer hours. Officers will be wasting time by acting as transport couriers for alleged criminals when they could be investigating, detecting and, better still, preventing crime in Harrow.

[Stephen Pound]

I do not want to hijack the Queen’s Speech into matters of custody accommodation in west London, but is my hon. Friend as surprised as I was to learn that a place called Polar Point has opened at Heathrow airport to receive those who used to be in custody in Harrow and Ealing, and that the decision was made by a company called Emerald, which is apparently the privatised cell provider and which doubtless refers to the prisoners as “customers”?

[Mr Thomas]

I am indeed very surprised by that information. One is always grateful when additional cell capacity is provided elsewhere in London, but it is hugely disappointing that there is still a threat of closure of the custody suite in Harrow.

I have not received any formal explanation from the Metropolitan police of why they think that the closure is necessary, let alone been consulted. Given that CID officers tend to be based where custody suites are housed, and given that space is to be set aside at Wembley police station for Harrow CID officers, it does not look good for the future of borough-based policing in Harrow, and it certainly does not look good for the long-term future of the 110 CID officers who are currently based there. Almost a third of our own police officers will have to spend some of their time out of the borough if the cells shut. Let me ask this question of the Metropolitan police, and indeed of Ministers: why should my constituents have any confidence that those 110 CID officers will continue to be based in Harrow in the long term? I hope that, even at this late stage, the Home Secretary will encourage the Metropolitan police to think again.

This Gracious Speech is striking in that it does not include a Bill to fulfil the commitment that 0.7% of our national income should be spent on development assistance. The three major parties all committed to legislating on that. Indeed, before the last general election, I had the honour of taking such a Bill through the pre-legislative scrutiny process. There is a strong case for Britain continuing to set an example on the provision of international aid for people in less well-off countries. We should think of the current west Africa food crisis and the huge numbers of people at risk of dying of hunger there, and of the considerable remaining health challenges in respect of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

The lack of action by the Government parties in respect of the ancient, yet still very important, United Nations commitment that every rich country should give 0.7% of its income to help the world’s poorest is a huge missed opportunity. In the forthcoming debate on the Gracious Speech, I look forward to hearing the Secretary of State for International Development give a clear and detailed explanation as to why he has failed to convince his colleagues to introduce legislation to that effect.