Identity Documents Bill

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

I congratulate you, Mr Deputy Speaker, on your election and thank you for the opportunity to make my maiden speech. It is a privilege—an interesting one—to follow a fellow Birmingham MP, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming), who made the point very well that was brought out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) that there are those who believe in caricatures and myths.

Birmingham, which I am proud to represent, is a remarkable city, the birthplace of local government and municipal enterprise. Under Joseph Chamberlain and the visionary Victorian pioneers, Birmingham city council provided gas, water and electricity. The council built some of the first swimming pools because it understood the link between health and well-being. Some of those pools are still in use, including the great Moseley Road baths. Birmingham city council even established a municipal bank.

In the 20th century, under visionary pioneers such as Dick Knowles, the national exhibition centre, the national convention centre and the national indoor arena were remarkable examples of municipal enterprise and partnership with the private sector, which brought millions to Birmingham.

Birmingham remains the industrial heartland of Britain: 100,000 people work in manufacturing. Birmingham’s manufacturing contributes billions to our economy and to the quality of life and the culture of Birmingham itself. That is captured by the legend in the municipal museum,

“By the gains of Industry we promote Art.”

Birmingham is indeed a city of culture that deserves to win the accolade of European city of culture.

Birmingham is a city of diversity. As the proud son of Irish parents who left the emerald isle to escape poverty and to build a better life, I feel at home with what is the largest Irish community outside London, the Erin Go Bragh Gaelic games club, the magnificent St Patrick’s day parade and enjoying the craic in the New Inns. I feel at home in a city that celebrates its diversity: the Afro-Caribbean community and its churches, Vaisakhi, that great Sikh festival that brought 100,000 people to Birmingham’s Central park, and St George’s day, celebrated with passion in the working men and working women’s clubs, with more flags of St George being flown than I have ever seen before—English people proud of their identity and rightly recapturing the flag from the brain-dead bootboys of the BNP.

Birmingham is characterised by Brummie pride. There is a distinct ethos of hard work and enterprise, of smiling in adversity, of community and solidarity. I have attended excellent events such as that for Help for Heroes. These are proud people in proud communities in Erdington. Castle Vale, which I am privileged to represent—entered through Spitfire island, rebuilt under the remarkable Robin Corbett—is still a remarkable community to this day. It has a great community spirit; 5,000 people turned out recently to celebrate the life of a young girl who died of asthma and to raise money for charity so that no more would follow that terrible fate. Among the great communities of Erdington are Pype Hayes, the Asian community in Slade road, the traditional Green, Perry Common and Kingstanding.

Erdington is a constituency with manufacturing in its blood. Sadly too many workplaces have gone to the wall: Fort Dunlop, Cincinnati and IMI. However, there are still great industrial enterprises such as the Jaguar plant, the jewel in the crown of manufacturing excellence; GKN; Valor Fires, recently the winner of the Queen’s award; and small but dynamic companies such as Guhring.

Erdington is a stronger, fairer, better place thanks to 13 years of a Labour Government. The schools were rebuilt and new children’s centres were built, including the Gunter school and children’s centre, giving kids the best possible start in life. We have world-class health centres such as that in Stockland Green. Thousands of homes have been renovated as a consequence of Labour’s decent homes programme, including those on the Lyndhurst estate.

For all those advances over 13 years, Erdington has enduring deep-seated problems, including high unemployment. I have seen the impact of that. An excellent craftsmen from LDV lost his job and five years on was desperate to get back into work. A young builder from Marsh lane was almost in tears with frustration because he could not get a job in the industry for which he had been trained. Often there is still poor housing, long waiting lists and a lack of affordable family housing, which divides families and breaks up communities.

Crime is down thanks to Labour’s investment in the police and the excellent police community support officers in Erdington, but there are still too many examples of unacceptable antisocial behaviour. Too many people in Erdington were left behind, including those in Kingstanding. People lost their jobs three or four times in the 1980s and some of them never went back to work again. Two generations have grown up in workless households.

Erdington is a community that believes in the power of community, solidarity and self-help. I mention the excellent Enta project. Recently I was privileged to be with young men and women who had been brought back into the labour market by that excellent organisation, which believes in the legend of that song “You Raise Me Up”. But Erdington is a community that knows this: the deep-seated problems of jobs and housing are incapable of resolution without the power of good government.

For 25 years I fought great battles for working people in Birmingham. I am a Labour man proud of my trade union background, but I have worked with those from other political parties: the admirable hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff), who chaired brilliantly the recent Select Committee inquiry into the scandal of the Kraft takeover of Cadbury’s; Baroness Shephard, who stood alongside me and my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Jim Sheridan) in the drive to take the Gangmasters (Licensing) Bill into law, ending modern-day slavery; and the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell), with whom I fought to save Rosyth dockyard from closure in Scotland. Therefore, where the Government get it right, I will work with them, but where government, national or local, gets it wrong, I will stand up for the people of Erdington as their champion, fighting their corner, making a difference for them and with them, and defending that which matters to their lives. There can be no rolling back of those great advances that we have made. Yes, choices have to be made, but I will resist any notion of asking those who are least able to bear the burden to pay the price of the misdeeds of the bankers.

I have seen that at first hand. A young schizophrenic approached me in Erdington high street and said, “Jack, for 10 years I could not get out of my home. Now I can, helped by a local project. They are going to help me to get back into work, but what will I do when they close the project because of city council cuts?” Therefore, my message to the Government is this: if they cut the future jobs fund, they will deprive the unemployed of Erdington of hope; if they cut the child trust fund, they will deprive parents of modest means of the ability to pass on to their children assets for the future; if they cut Labour’s expansion of university places, it will not be the stockbroker belt of Surrey and Sussex that suffers, but the young working-class kids of Erdington who will be deprived of the chance to become the first in their family to go to university.

I pay tribute to my predecessors: Robin Corbett and Siôn Simon, who have served the people of Erdington well, and I hope to follow in their footsteps. I have one other message to Government: do not step back from what Labour has done in recent years on industrial activism—that necessary partnership between industry and good Government. Everyone now understands, in the aftermath of the financial crisis, that we must rebalance our economy, no longer be heavily dependent on the financial sector but again rebuild the real economy, including our manufacturing base.

Locally, I have seen this in Castle Vale. The admirable chief executive of the Castle Vale community housing association says that we have rebuilt the housing and built a community, but we have a desperate shortage of jobs. That is why my No. 1 priority will be jobs and manufacturing—and I have to say that the subject of ID cards did not come up once in the 4,000 doorstep discussions I had throughout the general election campaign.

My priority will be jobs and manufacturing. I want us to preserve what is left of our manufacturing base, which is why I will promote a “Cadbury’s law” so that we protect vital British industrial assets from hostile takeovers by foreign multinationals. That is why I will stand up for the future of the Jaguar plant in my constituency, and that is why I will work—with Government, I hope—to promote the hi-tech industries of the future. I want green manufacturing in Birmingham and a green investment bank for Birmingham, but as I know from experience of dealing with major manufacturing companies, there is a simple reality: manufacturing will flourish only if there is a partnership between good government and these world-class companies.

Historically, Birmingham was the laboratory of the world and the workshop of the world, combining British genius, enterprise and hard work. Too often now, however, it is British genius, but made in China. For both Birmingham and Britain, the single biggest task is the renaissance of our manufacturing industries, and I say this to the Government: do not walk away from Birmingham’s great industries, and do not condemn this generation to the fate suffered by that of the 1980s. In the 21st century, we must not have a generation of young people with no work and no hope. Birmingham, Erdington deserves better.