Easter Adjournment

Mike Freer Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman]

Absolutely.

We are on the cusp of the hospital’s redevelopment. We require the trust development authority to sign off the business case, and work will start on the orthopaedic hospital immediately, with the demolition of existing buildings, the building of a brand-new hospital, with a private hospital alongside it, and the creation of 300 new homes, which are desperately needed in Harrow. This is clearly being held up by NHS bureaucracy. The Chancellor granted the money back in 2010, yet we still await the start of the project.

On housing, my Harrow constituency has seen some 400 new starts, while there have been 560 new home completions in the last year alone, bringing new homes for my constituents. I am delighted that in the autumn spending review, the amount of money spent on housing is being more than doubled, which is something we should applaud.

Locally, we have heard some good news about schools. Park High School, St Bernadette’s, Canons High School and the Krishna Avanti school will all receive additional funding for massive improvements—almost complete rebuilding in some cases. There is also the Aylward school, which is in desperate need of new facilities. We have also had the go-ahead, thanks to this Government’s enlightened view, of Hujjat Primary School, which will be the first Muslim state-aided school, certainly in my constituency, and I strongly support it. Avanti House School will be the first state-aided Hindu school for secondary-aged children in the country. This is something of which we can be proud. It is being delivered in our multicultural society, and we are providing parents with the choice of education that they want for their children.

There is bad news, however. Harrow council has introduced the garden tax as part of its savings proposals. It is charging the princely sum of £75 for the service of collecting garden waste, and collecting it only once every three weeks. That is the highest charge in London. It is a scandal, because it is a monopoly service. So far, virtually no one has registered to use the service, but it is due to start on 1 April. What an appropriate date on which to launch such a foolish scheme. At the same time, fly-tipping and littering is a disaster. In Harrow, we are seeing fly-tipping all over the place.

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

Shocking.

[Bob Blackman]

It is indeed shocking. The council should get its act together and clean up Harrow for the benefit of everyone—although its failure to do so would make it even easier for the incoming Conservative administration of 2018 to deliver.

There is, however, some further good news, which concerns Bentley Priory Museum. Bentley Priory is the site from which RAF Fighter Command delivered victory in the second world war, at the Battle of Britain. The Chancellor has given us £1 million for an education centre on the site, so that children and young people—and those who are not so young—can come and see for themselves what happened during the Battle of Britain, and how close we came to defeat. The fact that the few delivered victory for us is a tremendous thing, and we must ensure that people, young and old, understand and remember how close it was.

An issue that I have raised in the House on numerous occasions is the plight of the disabled when it comes to securing blue badges for parking in Harrow. Every day I learn that someone who is clearly disabled, and unable to walk any reasonable distance, has been prevented from obtaining a disabled parking permit. That strikes me as outrageous, and as a problem that we must overcome.

I want to make just one or two more points before I sit down and give the floor to others.

[Mike Freer]

Hear, hear.

[Bob Blackman]

I am more used to barracking from the other side. However, my hon. Friend is the Minister’s Parliamentary Private Secretary.

During the Budget debate, I raised the plight of the Equitable Life policyholders. It is to the eternal credit of the Chancellor and his team that we honoured our election promise in 2010, and delivered a scheme to compensate the victims of that scandal. However, there are still some very vulnerable people—the pre-1992 trapped annuitants—who have received only a small fraction of the money that is due to them in comparison with the loss that they suffered. I believe that we owe a debt of honour to those people, and that we should honour that debt by delivering 100% compensation to them.

Moreover, nearly a million people in other categories have not received full compensation, and I believe that they are also owed a debt of honour. We need to ensure that more money is provided so that those people can lead a proper life in retirement, because they had saved for their retirement and, through no fault of their own but as a result of a scandal, were then deprived of a reasonable income. The all-party parliamentary group for justice for equitable life policyholders now has more than 200 members, and we will continue to battle until such time as the Chancellor sees fit to let us have some more money for those people who are due compensation.

Another all-party parliamentary group of which I am a member, the all-party parliamentary group on primary care and public health, recently released a key report about the signposting of people in the NHS. Far too often, people who are ill arrive in accident and emergency departments when they should be seeing someone in the primary care sector, such as a GP or a nurse. We must do more to ensure that that happens.

I want to raise another health-related matter, namely stopping smoking. I warmly welcome the Chancellor’s decision to continue to increase the tobacco tax by 2% above inflation, with a 3% increase in the rate for hand-rolling tobacco. That is a good move, and it should continue. However, I think we should go further. Given that the Chancellor has now talked about a sugar tax to drive behaviour, let us have a tobacco tax to do the same. By increasing the tax on tobacco by just 1p per cigarette, we would deliver £500 million a year that could be invested in smoking cessation services.

This year, I had the honour of paying my first visit to India. My visit to Jammu and Kashmir cemented my view that that country, and above all the people of Jammu and Kashmir, should be reunited as part of India. They should have the right to be integrated, and the Pakistani forces should leave Pakistani-occupied Kashmir. I also had the opportunity to visit the world cultural festival. We talk about the brilliant work that was done at the Olympics, but I saw at first hand the festival’s 165,000 participants dancing and performing. Nearly 2.5 million people attended. We talk about the grand schemes that we organise, but just imagine what it would be like to put a festival like that together.