Rural Areas: Public Services

Lord Haselhurst Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Haselhurst (Con) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, in rising to make my maiden speech within a week of my introduction, I risk being thought very impulsive, but the subject put forward for debate by my noble friend Lady McIntosh was too tempting. She and I share something of the same approach to what life is like in the rural parts of our country. I can but seek encouragement from the words of the late Lord Butler of Saffron Walden, who at the outset of his maiden speech in 1965 said:

“I have been singularly well trained in parliamentary manners and etiquette, having been for some considerable time a Member of another place”.—[Official Report, 15/11/1965; col. 258.]


I pray that my similar but not nearly so distinguished background will protect me from any lapses of courtesy and custom in your Lordships’ House.

I also learned very early in my parliamentary life that we are well supported by attentive staff and officials. That has been amply evidenced to me once again since the start of my pre-introduction period. I wish to record my very grateful thanks to those who have already helped me so much, not least my mentor and my whip.

On 10 December 1966, a young man rose in the Royal Festival Hall to make a keynote speech at a crowded gathering of Conservative youth. A political star was born. His public life and mine have been intertwined in friendship, and just occasionally rivalry, since that time, so I am especially grateful to my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral for acting as my senior supporter. In his maiden speech he expressed his concern for the careers and well-being of young people. But just before the end he added:

“We must also ensure we make greater use of older people”.—[Official Report, 1/4/1998; col. 296.]


I draw some comfort from that sentiment.

A very high proportion of my previous service at the other end benefited from the tutelage of the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane. Our respective roles connected at many points: the European legislation Committee, the Deputy Speakership, the Administration Committee, the Estimate Audit Committee, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and restoration and renewal. In his maiden speech, the noble Lord spoke feelingly about,

“the condition of this wonderful building”.—[Official Report, 1/6/15; col. 217.]

I share his passion. Above all, the service paid to me by the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, was the fact that he was the person who revealed the value of a smartphone in providing full ball-by-ball updates for all first class cricket matches. I feel greatly honoured that the noble Lord agreed to be my second supporter.

In 1970 I became the Member of Parliament for Middleton and Prestwich in Greater Manchester. I was a Yorkshireman representing a Lancashire seat; perhaps that was at least a nod in the direction of diversity in those days. In that Parliament I had the opportunity to introduce the Youth and Community Bill. It had its Second Reading on 1 February 1974 and the Dissolution of Parliament took place one week later. There has been controversy lately about blocking Private Members’ Bills, but it seems to me that dissolving Parliament is taking it a bit far. Some 44 years on, I note that the honourable Member for Brighton Kemptown is trying to introduce a youth services Bill—which rather suggests that time has stood still on that subject.

When I was chosen for Saffron Walden, I was already persuaded from both a northern and an environmental perspective that a third London airport should not be in a rural inland site. On election, I have to say, partly at the expense of the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham of Droxford, that I found myself campaigning against major development at Stansted. Up to that point, I had thought that marching up Whitehall and orating in Trafalgar Square was for others and not for me, but circumstances forced that extreme action. The battle was lost and I have accepted the reality, but what I have not accepted so easily is the lack of connectivity that has occurred in its wake. In some bigger countries airports may be seen as welcome for the benefits they can bring, but in this country the opposite happens. Roads become more congested: junction 8 on the M11 is notorious. Who, after all, would decide to put a motorway services area there after making it the point of access to a major airport? And rail travel gets worse, because the decision taken in the wake of Dr Beeching’s report in the 1960s, leading to two rail tracks being ripped up, means that we have a totally inadequate railway from Liverpool Street to Cambridge when an airport has to be served, as well as many other extremely important businesses that are vital to the future of this country. So we get to a state where even the principal beneficiaries—the owners, the airlines and the employees—of a major development such as an airport, needed no doubt in the national interest, gradually become just as upset as the local communities in which they have been implanted by the absence of adequate infrastructure.

It is inevitable that the costs of providing the same range of public services to people are higher in rural areas than in towns and cities. But we are now in an era when technology can help us to bridge the gap. Distance can be made less of a problem by mobile telephony and broadband providing information, combating loneliness and dealing, as we now know, with health needs—and there will be other means, too. We ought therefore to recognise and espouse the principle of equality of entitlement. If you do business in the countryside, if you study in your rural home or if you farm, you need broadband and mobile telephony in order to function. The distinction between town and country has blurred to the extent where a great deal of business and industry now takes place in country areas. It is a growing political issue and it can be dealt with at a cheaper cost than many other projects which are seen as necessary—and, frankly, there is no downside.

I welcome what the Government have done to date so far as the spread of broadband is concerned, but I would urge them to look at two things in particular. One is the delays caused by companies taking on bespoke territory and then not moving fast to provide the service for which they get locals to sign up. That creates an enormous amount of ill will—and still communities wait for connection. There is also now the possibility of self-build, as we have learned from a community in Wales. If people can build the network for themselves, perhaps we should think of giving them incentives to do so. I believe that new technology can go a long way to help us bridge the gap between town and country.

The late Lord Butler in his maiden speech, albeit on a major issue that had prompted an emergency debate, spoke for 21 minutes. I have always felt that brevity rarely offends, and I hope that today it has not.