Debate on the Address

Kevin Foster Excerpts

Wednesday 21st June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, and it was wonderful to hear the maiden speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) a few moments ago.

I should start by saying that 8 June was an interesting day for me. The calling of the election came as quite a surprise, given that Hazel and I had already arranged to get married on the Saturday. Out of the window went the stag and hen nights; the stag night became an election count. Our marriage attracted quite a bit of publicity, as a result of Mr Macron’s election as President of France. Our marriages were not the only thing we had in common: my 53% of the vote was not quite his 60%, but it meant that we were similar in two ways rather than just the obvious one that the media were so interested in.

This will be a significant Parliament, given the challenge of Brexit and the result of the referendum this time last year. The whole House will need to rise to the challenge. There will be difficult negotiations and we will need to look carefully at what is offered. We will need also to act maturely and responsibly, because the decisions made in this Parliament will be as significant as those between 1970 and 1974—the decisions that took us into Europe. I hope that we can have a genuinely mature and sensible cross-party debate. Sometimes such expectations are dashed, but I hope that on this occasion we can all see that the issue is not about scoring a cheap point for tomorrow’s headlines or a few votes at the next general election, whenever that is, but about decisions that will affect the next generation. I hope that that will be the focus of our deliberations.

On my reaction to what we saw at Grenfell Tower, some may have seen that I was with some of the survivors earlier tonight on a Channel 4 programme. I saw a man’s eyes well up as he talked about five members of his family having been lost. I heard the frustration and anger of residents who had raised questions again and again about safety in their homes, and I heard about the issues that had been raised post the refurbishment. There is clearly a need for answers and for people to be held accountable for what has gone on. It is inconceivable that an £8.7 million revamp of a tower block does not include money for non-flammable cladding and a basic sprinkler system. The decision-making process at the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation needs to be looked at closely.

I hope that we as a Parliament will be given the opportunity to debate fully and openly the outcomes of the public inquiry that will report in due course, but I also hope that we see an interim report that tells us the likely cause. As was touched on in other contributions, people will be wondering whether there is a similar block or a similar risk in their area, and that is why we need an interim report about the likely cause, followed by a full public inquiry.

I hope that the Government, in setting the terms of reference and consulting on the inquiry, will be conscious of the need to get to a result slightly more quickly than we have seen with some other public inquiries. We do not want this to become like a tale of “War and Peace”, when we could be getting on with debating these things in the House. I certainly hope that those on the Treasury Bench will make sure we have proper time in due course to debate the outcomes and to look at legislation. It is also important that any such legislation is enforced, and I suspect that that will also come out of the ongoing inquiries.

Let me return to the Queen’s Speech and to my constituency. I am, of course, pleased to hear direct reference to delivering fairer funding for schools. For many years, for reasons now lost to history, Torbay schools have been some of the lowest funded per pupil in the whole country, and that desperately needs to be addressed. There are certainly inequalities issues in Torbay, and we are not just a leafy retirement area. We have real challenges, and our schools deserve to be fairly funded. That is why I am pleased to again hear a commitment on that issue. Yes, there will be a need to work through how the funding formula works correctly for all, but concerns cannot be used as a reason to stick with the current formula, which so disadvantages many children in my constituency.

Ours is a coastal area, and we have a fishing industry, so it was interesting to see a direct reference to fishing in the Queen’s Speech. I think there will be some real opportunities from bringing fisheries back under UK control, and I hope we can have a strong debate about how we manage our fisheries for the future, because it is in everyone’s interests to have sustainable fisheries. It is in no one’s interests to go back to the idea that we could somehow go out, fill the boats up and come back in each day. There will need to be a system of management, and there will need to be agreements with the European Union and with our traditional allies, such as Norway and Iceland, about how the fisheries are managed. However, I certainly welcome the fact that there is a clear mention of the issue in the Queen’s Speech.

It would be remiss of me as an MP representing a constituency west of the Dawlish coastal railway not to mention our hope not only that we have specific debates about the future of High Speed 2 and its extension, but that we have strong opportunities, and the Government bring forward strong plans, to make sure that the south-west has the resilient railway it desperately needs. We cannot have a repeat of 2014, and we cannot continue to have a system where the tide times and the shipping forecast affect whether there is a train heading out of the region from my constituency, from Plymouth or from Cornwall. A solution has to be put forward so that we can make a permanent difference.

Finally, I was pleased to hear the references to technical education. South Devon College does a superb job, but it can only do so much. We need to enhance the status of technical education, and I hope we see a drive to deliver new institutes of technology or new universities focused very much on a technical agenda, because those provide the skills that are so desperately needed. If we want to grow our manufacturing base, we need people with the skills who are able to take the jobs.

As my time comes to a close, I remember my maiden speech two years ago, in which I talked about what my mother used to say to me—sadly, she has been departed for a few years. She always said, “Kevin, whatever you do, do your best.” That is what I hope I have done over the last two years, and it is what I hope to do over the rest of this Parliament as well.