Summer Adjournment

Graham Allen Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

Madam Deputy Speaker, you and I played a part in the creation of the Backbench Business Committee in its early days. I am very proud of that and I hope you are, too. I am equally proud that it has restored the ability of Back-Bench Members of all parties to raise issues of concern to their constituents that other people may often think go unremarked. Even more importantly, when Members of Parliament are berated and abused regularly for failing to do their duty or for not doing what they should do, members of the public watching or reading these debates can see the absolute variety of work that Members of Parliament do which is unsung but vital in their constituency.

This debate is therefore very important, particularly for someone who represents one of the five most deprived constituencies in the UK, where there are very low incomes. This is not a competition, but Members in those constituencies have a high number of cases, and those cases deserve to be brought into the cold light of day so that people understand how many others live. I say that without any side, but it may be more difficult for some to understand the impact on individuals and on families of economic crises and of the swathe of policies and politics we discuss in here; it is much harder to ignore that when one represents a constituency that has very great difficulties if we get it wrong in this House.

I want to talk about a number of constituency cases, but one thing I ought to get on the record first—I do this without delving back into an issue decided in the recent referendum—is why people vote the way they do. I can hazard a guess about how some of my constituents voted. Of course they were concerned about the European Union and many were concerned about immigration, but many also used the vote in the referendum, as they rightly use votes in general elections and local elections, almost as a cry for help; they were almost saying, “We have problems. You need to look at us. You can no longer ignore us.” People do that in different ways. I am not saying that that influenced the outcome of the recent referendum, but I am saying that we here, and the people in and around constituencies like mine—people in the city of Nottingham, in my case—ignore that cry for help at our peril if we continue to feel that people can be marginalised or alienated from our politics and our politicians. That will not apply to many Members in here now; by definition, they are assiduous constituency Members by the very fact that they are here for this debate. I hope very much that we all take that lesson to heart; there is a divide in our society and in our country, and it is incumbent on all of us to do something about it.

I wish quickly to raise three cases to demonstrate the breadth of the things that Members of Parliament deal with and as an excuse to thank people who have been involved, as we all know, in helping us on our casework and helping us to be good Members of Parliament. Like everyone, I want to thank my staff, both in Westminster and in the constituency; across the House, these people make us the Members of Parliament that we are. I want to place that very much on the record.

I wish to highlight one particular case. My constituency staff worked incredibly hard to help a young man called Max Buxton, who has a severe hearing impairment. He was on an apprenticeship, and his employer made glowing comments about Max’s energy and dedication at work, but, in order to progress, Max had to climb the apprenticeship ladder. To do that, he had to pass an English qualification. Unfortunately for Max and for many other young men and women, their first language is British sign language, and it is very difficult for them to understand English, particularly written English. At my request, my staff raised this matter over and again with the relevant Ministry. I will not go into all the details of the case, but, after many months, it fell to me to do something that has changed the rules around qualification for climbing that apprenticeship ladder. After a visit to the Minister recently, he said that he would look at, and indeed change, the rules around British sign language so that it is equivalent to the English qualification.

That is wonderful news for Max Buxton and for colleagues in other constituencies who have similar problems, and that is the way that we work. When you—if I may use that expression, Madam Speaker—and colleagues around the House win a case for a constituent, they are also winning it for many other constituents, particularly when we help Governments of all colours to see the light and change the rules.

By working closely with people from another constituency—it happened to be Hull—I helped children in my own constituency to take up the free dental check that is there for all children. It was something that we had tried to do locally, but found that we could not do it as well as we wanted to, so we used an example of a practice called Teeth Team. Chris Groombridge and his team came to help us, and are still helping us. The moral of this story and this brief intervention is that if we continue to work together in this House, across parties, on the big issues and on the small, we can change our society and the lives of our constituents for the better.