Debate on the Address

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Tuesday 25th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) on his speech. Anyone who looks at Parliament and thinks that we do not get quality people has not spent time listening to today’s maiden speeches and, I am sure, those that we look forward to hearing later. He will be able to look back on today as the time when he first impressed the House of Commons. I hope that he will do well and that other council leaders will also ask whether they might, in time, follow him here as others have before him. The range of talents and experiences that we need in our Members includes those who have served and done important things in local government. I congratulate him again, just as I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Richard Harrington) who did equally well, if at slightly less length. I think that the two of them will have much to contribute to the House.

On the subject of public service, I want to refer briefly to the obituary of Sir Peter Baldwin in today’s The Times. Anyone who reads about his life story and work, before and during his time in the civil service and later in voluntary organisations, will see evidence of his being one of those impressive people who offer themselves not just to Parliament, but to the civil service and for that matter local government as well. The obituary provides an exemplary account of a really fine man, showing how, for example, he helped people who use motorways and made it easier for disabled people to get around. He helped others in so many other ways, too. One would not have thought that this man was also involved in the cypher school at Bletchley, helping to decode Japanese signals. He was involved in a range of activities that were so important.

Of equal value on the spectrum are people who are often called bureaucrats or managers. As our health service goes on improving, I intend to pay more attention to medical records. There is not much point in asking consultants, nurses and other clinicians to do their job more effectively if the paperwork and the computer back-up do not work. I offer my helpful interest in this issue to Worthing hospitals. I would like to be taken around by those involved at all levels of the medical records process to see how we can free up our doctors and nurses to provide the care people need in hospitals and to make it possible to say to someone in hospital, “If you’re here, can we help make you better. If you should not be here, can we make your transition out to recuperation or back home as fast as possible?” All that requires keeping proper records. I am glad that we have managed to throw out most of the NHS IT system, which required my local hospital, on a budget of £140 million, to be given an extra £2 million a year to provide manual back-up for the new computer system, which worked even worse than the previous one. The NHS and the Government were warned, just as they were warned about the completely useless effect of the modernising medical careers and the medical training application service—MTAS—systems a year or so earlier. People must take responsibility for what they do.

The general election has not finished as there is still an election in Thirsk and Malton. My wife and I were there last Saturday, helping with the campaign. My grandmother’s first cousin represented the constituency for 44 years; if I manage to stay here another nine or more years, I shall beat him, which would be quite a joy. I recommend colleagues new and old to get involved in elections—this one is not a by-election but part of a general election—because it helps people to see what is going on around the country. We should continue to help in that way.

Even if we decide to pass the referendum Bill on the alternative vote system, I hope people will be warned against bringing in the single transferable vote system, which would have the effect of giving a permanent place in Parliament to the British National party and a permanent place in government to people in the position of the Liberal Democrats now. That is not to say a word against them, just as I would not say a word against the Free Democratic party in Germany, but there is absolutely no reason why they should be guaranteed a place in government. The ability to throw certain people out is an important part of the democratic process. I shall therefore oppose that. I shall also oppose it for the additional reason that under STV more MPs seeking re-election are assured of getting re-elected. I believe that fewer of us should be assured of re-election—or re-selection, for that matter. I think that it should be based on merit all the time.

To the person in my constituency who in a letter to the local newspaper committed herself to the electoral system that is used for the European Parliament, I say, “That is awful.” A closed regional list system is just about the worst system that can possibly be designed. It is easy to describe and fun to operate for the winners, but the number of places that can be changed is very limited. I shall support the Bill on the AV referendum and my constituents can make up their own minds as to whether they want it. AV by itself cannot do too much harm, but I give warning that STV would do a great deal of harm to our parliamentary democracy.

Radio 5 was one of a number of media commentators on the election. It has produced a book called “Commons Sense”, making some recommendations and offering advice from three former MPs. The first is Clare Short, who said:

“Stay close to the people who vote for you. That keeps your feet on the ground. And don’t be a clone; be true to yourself.”

The second is from Matthew Taylor, the Liberal Democrat, who said:

“The most important thing to remember is that you are no more important than the people who put you there, and your job is to do your best for them. Self importance is the politician’s original sin, and self interest the greatest vice.”

The third is from Ann Widdecombe, who said:

“The prayer I made when I became an MP was ‘Please, Lord, never let me lose my sense of outrage’.”

Instead of just processing constituents’ problems, we actually need to care about them. If the answers we get are inadequate, we need to be persistent. One of the nicest tributes ever paid to me came from John Sentamu, the current Archbishop of York, who described me in terms of “veni, vidi, velcro”—he comes, he sees and he sticks to it. One thing I am going to stick to—let me send out a warning, or rather an invitation to Ministers to co-operate—is seeing how many NHS consultants have been dismissed on grounds of breaking data protection rules.

I heard about a case from a doctor in my constituency whom I enormously respect, although it is about someone who is not in my constituency. I think that it was the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) who spoke about diabetes and the special needs of people with south Asian backgrounds. The consultant I am talking about knew that diabetes could be treated not only in hospital, but by educating people and helping them to change their lifestyles. She decided to get a project going under the primary care trust—part of the NHS and where confidentiality is supposed to be involved—and invited 80 such patients to participate. She sent out a list of names and addresses from herself in hospital to herself as part of the PCT-funded project, which had been approved by everybody, and she got sacked. It is difficult to understand quite why. The hospital trust that sacked her referred her to the Information Commissioner’s Office, as if she had committed a criminal offence, and to the General Medical Council, which has still not got around to deciding whether there is a case to look into.

I want to arrange a meeting with the people who run the employment tribunal, which found that she may have been wrongfully dismissed but not unfairly dismissed. They should be put in the same room with employment tribunal experts, the Information Commissioner’s experts, the General Medical Council’s experts, the hospital trust and preferably someone from the very top of the NHS as well as a Minister. Let us get it out into the open why a doctor who cares so much about her patients that she is willing to go the extra mile should get thrown on the scrap heap for doing something that someone else did not like.

I have been invited to the Biobank. I shall be attending for a three-hour session at Croydon. It wrote to me asking whether I would like to take part. I do not see the difference between that and someone being asked to come to a specialist education clinic for diabetes. I am going to be persistent on this issue. Until we get some kind of explanation and some kind of justice, I and others will be right to continue to do so.

I make a plea about standards relating to councillors—parish, district and borough councillors as well as county councillors and those in unitary authorities—as an incredible situation exists at the moment. If a complaint is made about a councillor, that councillor does not get a copy of it. Why should any invigilating committee or independent standards group on a council be expected to look into a complaint from a member of the public about a councillor if they do not tell that councillor—apparently, they cannot under the existing regulations—what the complaint is. I have seen that happen to a person who kindly acted as my agent at the election in respect of a case that both he and I had taken up. They cannot complain about me—well, they can, but there is no committee of MPs to look into it—but they did about him. There was nothing in the case whatever, yet it ran on month after month at enormous expense and to the great worry of my colleague, and with no representation made to him.

I received the following from the chair of the independent standards committee of Arun district council, which said that the regulations at the moment only allow the following to be disclosed:

“identity of the complainant (unless the complainant has sought and been granted anonymity)”

and the

“paragraph(s) of the Code of Conduct alleged to have been breached.”

It is quite clear that Arun district council and others are right to say, first, that the councillors about whom the complaints have been made should

“be sent a copy of the complaint at the same time as being notified that a complaint has been made”;

second, that

“before the Assessment Sub-Committee meet, the”

councillors should

“be asked if they wish to respond about whether they consider the complaint should be investigated or does the complaint indicate some procedural issue that could be more beneficially dealt with by Other Action”;

and, thirdly, that

“the process of reporting on Local Assessment decisions of ‘investigation’ and ‘other action’ be changed so that they are not public information until:

a. the Hearing Sub-Committee has made a decision, or

b. the Monitoring Officer presents a report to the Standards Committee setting out the action taken to implement and bring to a close a decision of other action.”

I can think of no other sphere in which a complaint can be made and submitted for investigation when the person being complained about does not know what the complaint is, and I hope that the position changes. Whether we keep the standards board is one question, but people who are dedicated to public service should not be exposed to such treatment. Councillors—especially parish councillors, but the same applies to members of councils at every level—should be treated properly.

Let me say something about prisons. In 1992, the prison population was 44,000. In 2010, it is 85,000. It costs, on average, £41,000 a year to keep someone in prison, and the outcomes of being in prison are bad. I do not think that we have £1,000,640,000 to spend on those extra people in prison when they do not come out better than they were when they went in. I am told—although I have not checked—that a Home Secretary who later became a Conservative Prime Minister said that the purpose of prison was for people to come out better than they were when they went in, and also that he halved the prison population. I am told that it was Winston Churchill in 1910, when he was a Liberal. That is another example of alliance, or of change. Given that Churchill was able to join the Conservatives from the Liberals, I hope that other Liberals will follow his good example.

The Prison Reform Trust has provided a great deal of information in its Bromley briefings, and I think that any Member of Parliament who has received those briefings should read them and discuss them locally. The Howard League for Penal Reform has made similar points. I hope that, as a result of their work, we will begin to understand that we must engage with Government—this Government, just as much as the last—to establish that the purpose of our policy, and the results of our actions, should be getting the prison population back down to 44,000. There may be a prison building programme, but I would rather try to find ways of ensuring that prisons are not overcrowded. We do not need a prison building programme, but we may need a prison rebuilding programme. Let us try to reduce the number of people who commit offences, and reduce the number of occasions when it is judged that a prison sentence is the right option. I suggest that anyone who reads my speech should also read the early chapters of Jeffrey Archer’s first book about prison, which shows how counter-productive even the first weeks can be.

Let me end by returning to the subject of my constituency, where one of the biggest issues is parking. I have been told that it is possible to raise the amount of revenue and reduce the amount of aggravation by training the parking control people to behave in a way that is humane and helpful, and to stop being jobsworths. I do not want to criticise any individual parking control person in my constituency, because I have not found myself offending, but people have asked me why they have to pay £8 for four hours and 13 minutes in a town centre car park. In the car park in Union place there is 24/7 paying. It is empty after 6 pm. The town centre does not have nearly as many people at that time and they can park on a yellow line.

Then there are the problems experienced by people with businesses who try to deliver a few bits of supplies in their estate cars rather than in vans, and are not allowed to use an unloading bay for five minutes. Such things are just wrong. Although parking is not directly my responsibility, I suggest that for those involved in public service throughout the chain of life—someone dropping a child at school, a doctor calling at an address, or a restaurateur trying to keep his business going—we should bring humanity back into the rules, and, if necessary, change the rules.

I have been in this place for some time. I have seen great improvements, which have normally taken place because someone has been dedicated to making the necessary change. If people say that only Government can make such changes, they are wrong. One of the greatest delights of my public service was reducing the incidence of over-the-limit drink-driving by young men by two thirds in about two years, with no change of the law, no change in sentencing and no change in enforcement. I believe that if we manage to get the public finances under control and also improve our social behaviour, we can probably make a great start during the next year or two. Once we start to achieve success, we shall be able to build on it further.

I hope that others who make speeches today and during subsequent debates on the Queen’s Speech will pay more attention to the individual Bills, but I believe that we have an opportunity to make the country better by building on some of the successes achieved by the last Government while also trying to make up for some of their failures.