Debate on the Address

Debate between George Howarth and Tim Loughton

Thursday 19th December 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir George Howarth)]

Order. Fascinating and relevant though this topic is, I hope that the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) is not going to embark on a whole debate on the positioning of letterboxes. I do not think that there was any mention of it in the Queen’s Speech.

[Tim Loughton]

That is why I am going to move on very quickly, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Another measure was absent from the Queen’s Speech. I am making no reference to the current Speaker, but we need to change the procedures in the House so that we have a way of sacking a dud Speaker. We did not have that in the last Parliament, and I moot it now as something that the Procedure Committee may wish to consider.

I am particularly pleased with the big emphasis in the Queen’s Speech on the climate emergency. The Environment Bill that was published just before the election was an excellent and comprehensive piece of work, and there are many ways of improving it. Whatever people might say, the Conservatives have terrific green credentials, including our being the first country to have a legally enforceable target on net zero carbon emissions. Although 2050 is too far away—I have no doubt that as technology develops, we will be able to bring the date forward—the fact that we have that target and are determined to see it through is great credit to a Conservative Government.

Renewable energy sources now account for just under 39% of our electricity generation—up from 6% in 2010. Onshore wind accounted for just 7.5 terawatts an hour in 2010, but the figure is now 30.5. The £5.8 billion that we put into the international climate fund shows us taking responsibility towards the climate emergency internationally, and not confining our actions to the boundaries of our country.

We should be proud of the action that we are taking and will continue to take on plastics, and on the protection for the 4 million sq km of ocean within the British overseas territories. We will build on all that in the new environment Bill, which will put environmental principles in legislation and create legally enforceable targets. It will establish a world-leading environmental watchdog in the office of environmental protection, which will include climate change. It will also set out plans to enhance the drive from Government, public organisations and private business to deliver environmental improvements and sustainable growth. It will enshrine the “polluter pays” principle. It is important that we have extended producer responsibility schemes, so that those who use packaging and sell products in it are responsible for its sustainable disposal, recycling or reuse.

The measures in the Bill to restore or create wildlife-rich habitats to enable wildlife to recover and thrive are also important, as are the targets and legal action on air pollution. We should be very proud of those.

Measures on the NHS have been much mentioned. Extra spending will be enshrined in law in the hope that we can at last stop using the NHS as a political football. In every election in which I have stood, as sure as eggs are eggs, we are told, “There are two weeks to save the national health service” or, “There’s a week to stop the wicked Tories selling off the national health service”. Why would we want to? We have the best national health service in the world. It is one of the things we are most proud of and famous for. Why would we want to do a deal with the United States that meant paying more rather than less for drugs? That nonsense must stop.

I am pleased that we have the best hospital in the world in my constituency. Worthing Hospital was rated outstanding in all five criteria; better than any other acute hospital in the country, yet 12 years ago, the last Labour Government tried to downgrade it. Let us not forget that the Labour Government and their fascination with keeping debt off the balance sheet saddled the NHS with £18 billion of debt, with at least one hospital trust spending a sixth of its annual income servicing the private finance initiative debt for years to come. Let us therefore stop using the NHS as a political football.

I hope we will work together on adult social care to find solutions that work for all our constituents. An ageing population means that the health challenges will be greater and more complex in future.

I welcome the announcement of recruiting and retaining the additional 50,000 nurses. We also need incentives to get more medical students coming out of medical school to go into general practice. That is a particular problem in the south-east of England, where the money is there, but we cannot find the GPs to take up the positions.

We must do more about mental health, particularly with child and adolescent mental health services. I am therefore pleased with the references to mental health in the Queen’s Speech. As someone who has chaired a perinatal mental health charity and the 1001 critical days all-party group, I know that we must do much more earlier for the mental health of parents and young children. One in six women in this country will suffer from some form of perinatal mental illness. There is a 99% likelihood that the mothers of 15 or 16-year-olds in this country who have mental health issues suffered from some form of depression or mental illness during pregnancy. We should concentrate more of our resources on preventing mental illness, which undermines the important bond of attachment between a parent and a child in those crucial early years.

We must ensure that more of our children are school ready. I hope that some of the extra investment in the NHS will be used for our health visitors. As I said in a debate before the election, we had a great record under the Cameron coalition Government. Health visitors detect the early warning signs of things going wrong between parents and children. They are there to give help and support.

I welcome the reference in the Queen’s Speech to the troubled families programme. It has been tremendous and should be continued and expanded. There should also be a pre-troubled families programme, which is applied preventively to families before they get into the difficulties that the troubled families programme deals with.

This year, some 32,000 children will go into care. I have a long-standing interest in that and I have declared it in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. We must do much better for children who go into the care system. I do not know whether the figure of 32,000 is too high or too low. We must ensure that the right children go into care, that their life chances are improved while they are there, and that they get a second chance at a good, stable and loving upbringing in those vulnerable early years.

I welcome the reference in the Queen’s Speech to levelling up school funding. It was announced in the autumn statement and it was the biggest issue for me in the election campaign and, indeed, in the previous one. Every school in my constituency, and in every constituency, will receive an increase in per pupil funding next year. In one primary school in my constituency, the rise will be 8.2%. Those are real increases, to the sort of levels that heads told me they needed. They will now get them. We need to ensure that a rise in standards and outcomes accompanies that additional funding so that no child, whatever their background, is left behind.

We must also stop what I call the apartheid between those who go to university and everybody else. Many people go to university for whom it is not the most appropriate route. There are vocational and other courses that would be more appropriate, but for too many schools, if the pupils do not go to university, they are the also-rans. That is the wrong attitude and culture. We need to change that mindset and reboot the apprenticeship programme that did so well in the coalition Government years. We should restore funding and improve the standards and range of opportunities available in our further education colleges. For example, Worthing College is outstanding. It is well managed and has some fantastic outcomes for our young people, but I want more of them to benefit from the opportunities there.

I particularly welcome the Bill to prevent vexatious prosecutions of veterans. We expect and receive remarkable service from our servicemen and women. We put them in danger—on the frontline in times in conflict—and they are always there for us in times of turmoil and natural disaster. The least we can do is protect them and keep them safe from the frontline of vexatious litigation. I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Minister for Defence People and Veterans, who has championed that cause along with others in the House.

I welcome the return of the Domestic Abuse Bill. I pay tribute to the former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) for championing that cause. We need to ensure that the measure goes through at speed and does what it says on the tin.

I welcome the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Bill. Lower paid staff have suffered from being ripped off for too long.

Hon. Members also mentioned our record on animal welfare. The Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Bill will reinforce the fact that we respect animals in this country and that people who are cruel to animals deserve to be called out and punished properly for it.

I also appreciated the reference to human rights and sanctions in Her Majesty’s speech. As a former chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for Tibet, I suggest that that must include calling out China. The death of some 1 million Tibetans at the hands of the Chinese since the invasion in 1959 is still not properly recognised. Now, there are more than 1 million Uighurs in supposed re-education camps. The abuse of human rights in that country continues to be appalling. The Chinese ambassador to the United Kingdom continues to refuse to come to this House to meet members of the all-party parliamentary group for Tibet to discuss our concerns over what is happening in China. The environmental catastrophe that is taking place in the Tibetan plateau, which is responsible for servicing the water supply of about a quarter of the world’s population, is deeply worrying. China needs to be called out and held to account on a human rights level and on an environmental vandalism level, and I hope that the words in the Queen’s Speech will be translated into action.

Can I just put in a plea for the south as well? Rightfully, there are many promises and plans for investment in infrastructure in the north of England, and I very much applaud that, but the A27 is the most crowded and congested road in Sussex at the moment, and we need the upgrade to the A27 between Worthing and Shoreham that was recognised in the previous roads plan but has still not materialised.

May I end on one thing that is not in the Queen’s Speech? It is an issue that featured rather disgracefully during the election campaign, and it is that of the so-called WASPI women. Many on this side and, of course, on the other side have championed the case of the 1950s pension women who were hit disproportionately by those changes in the pension age under previous Governments. Many of us have been lobbying the Government to acknowledge that disproportionate disadvantage and to do something about it. I will call on the Government again and, working with my co-chair of the all-party group on state pension inequality for women, we will continue to put pressure on the Government to acknowledge that and do something about it. The Labour Opposition’s uncosted promise of £58 billion, which did not appear in their manifesto, disgracefully raised false hopes in vulnerable women. That amount was almost half the NHS budget, and it was never going to happen. I do hope that we can come up with a realistic, deliverable, doable offer for those women who have suffered and are suffering disproportionately, because that is the right thing to do.

This is a comprehensive programme for government for the next four to five years, and I very much support it. This is the programme of an ambitious and progressive one nation Conservative Government, of which I am proud to be a supporter. It is a programme to take the United Kingdom forward after these last few dark years of gridlock and division. It is a programme for an optimistic and bright future, and I very much hope that this House rallies behind these measures, because that is the right thing to do for the whole of the United Kingdom.