Private Finance Initiative

Steve Barclay Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Andrea Leadsom]

I was coming to exactly that point. The point is that funding the project through a special purpose vehicle means that it is not consolidated into the national debt picture. In other words, it is an off-balance sheet form of financing. Therefore, for a Government who want to spend a lot of money on capital projects without blowing up their national debt picture, it is the perfect opportunity.

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Further to the point made by the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), is it not a central claim made by the industry that part of the advantage is the management of construction risk? One of the issues, however, which my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire referred to, is the bundling of contracts. The construction risk and the design are bundled with the management service charge, and that drives some of the complexity, which drives some of the cost.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I think that my hon. Friends are reading my speech, because that was to be my next point. They have obviously been given advance notice. That is exactly the point: the builder, in theory, takes the risk on a project such as building a school, and the LEA only ever starts to repay the debt when the school is built and everything is in place. Theoretically, the builder takes the project risk. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay) says, in reality there is bundling, and because there are sometimes unique risks to a project, often those revert to the LEA. The perceived advantages from the fact that the builder takes the project risk are therefore not always as clear cut as they might appear. In the end the major advantage has been that of not consolidating the debt on the national balance sheet.

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[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I am conscious that my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) wants to speak, so I shall try to limit my speech to half the time remaining.

In this debate and as a member of the Public Accounts Committee, I have heard about many of the things that have gone wrong in PFI, but I want to focus not on the past but on the future. I shall do so by discussing three areas: first, contract design, because 61 PFIs are being planned; secondly, contract management, because there is a big disparity between private sector and public sector expertise, and I do not get a sense that it is being addressed, so it will continue to lead to poor value for money; and thirdly, if time allows I would like to touch on the secondary market, in particular the greater role that insurers and pension funds could play in certain elements of PFI and the regulatory task force that the Treasury has set up. It will be interesting to see how that will interplay and report back to the House.

First, on contract design, my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) mentioned bundling. We had rather disturbing evidence from a Treasury official at the PAC last week, who suggested that bundling remained necessary because without it the design and construction would not take on board maintenance costs in future. I suggest that they can be decoupled. It is possible to design and put out to tender in such a way that the construction risk is assumed through the PFI if required, by buying in management expertise from the private sector. However, the tail, where there is certainty of revenue, which is particularly attractive to other forms of finance companies, can be decoupled. That will also avoid some of the complexity of contracts, which is where the opaque pricing structures often lie and the legal costs come in. I would welcome clarity on the extent to which the 61 pending PFIs will be bundled.

[Mr Bacon]

What is interesting is that the Treasury sounded more reluctant to see unbundling than David Metter of Innisfree, who gave examples of projects in Canada where unbundling appears to work perfectly well.

[Stephen Barclay]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is helpful for the Minister to look at that example as a benchmark.

Secondly, although I am conscious of time, I want to cover the public sector comparator. Hon. Members have touched on the fact that it has often been flawed, because the PFI was a way of taking deals off the balance sheet and it was the only show in town, but there have been other imperatives. There was a regulatory imperative—not to mention, with a lot of marginal seats in the north-west, a political imperative—to go ahead with the Manchester incinerator, even though it was, at 350 base points, over and above the 300 threshold that the Treasury had at the time. Likewise, there was a defence imperative to go ahead with the air tanker contract, which was appalling value. The existing fleet was falling apart and there was no fall-back position, so there was a defence need for that contract to go ahead. It would be interesting to get from the Minister a sense of the extent to which guidance has changed to guard against some of those risks, and how we as a House get visibility of whether a viable fall-back position has been developed for some of those 61 contracts.

Thirdly, specifically on defence, the response in the Treasury minute of December 2010 is a little ambiguous. It says:

“The Government does not agree with the Committee’s conclusion…on the applicability of PFI to Defence, but agrees with the Committee’s recommendation.”

It will be interesting to see how guidance on defence PFIs will be refined.

I welcome the appointment of David Pitchford in connection with the major projects defence review. That will be useful in addressing some of the problems we see with these contracts, such as their long-term nature and the increased costs.

[Stella Creasy]

rose—

[Stephen Barclay]

I will give way, but I wish to allow time for my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South to speak.

[Stella Creasy]

Briefly, does my colleague on the Public Accounts Committee share my concern that Mr Pitchford has said that he was not looking at PFI as part of his work in the Major Projects Authority? That seems to have been an oversight.

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[Stephen Barclay]

I was just coming on to that exact point. Clarity would be welcome as to what falls under his remit.

Turning to management, my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South made a point about disparities. One disparity is that, to take as an example Innisfree, that firm has consolidated 24 hospital PFIs with one provider, while 36% of hospitals have fewer than one full-time equivalent person managing PFI contracts, and 12% have no one managing them at all. There is disparity in how contracts are being negotiated and managed, and even a good contract will be ineffective and poor value for money if it is not effectively managed.

In the Treasury minute it says that the Romford pilot, which health officials set great store by, will “hopefully” provide data that trusts can use, but there is no scope to enforce that and no requirement for an increase in the amount of data being asked for. Again, we hear that there is a potential solution, but that solution is not enforceable, the amount of data required will not be increased and there is no transparency in the expertise at the centre. The Department of Health has only four people providing PFI expertise, and the Public Accounts Committee will hopefully get a note from Treasury officials clarifying that.

Finally, in the secondary market there is a problem with regulatory arbitrage, with different treatment of insurers and banks in their access to the market. It is important that the Treasury arm that deals with regulation is joined up with the arm that deals with finance. On the refinancing taskforce, the acknowledgment that life insurance and pension funds are important alternative sources of finance is not clear in the February 2011 minute. It also states that

“the refinancing task force will act on this recommendation”.

That is very welcome, but how will it do it, and by what date? How will the House get scrutiny of that?

Perhaps the Minister can touch on these areas in her closing remarks. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) for the work that he has done in this campaign and for the formidable way in which he has taken it forward.

Oral Answers to Questions

Steve Barclay Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I blame the Labour Government. During the election campaign, the Labour Home Secretary said publicly on television that police numbers would have to be cut if Labour was re-elected.

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

T3. What assessment has my right hon. Friend made of the cost to the public finances of an emergency cut in VAT and the disastrous impact that would have on debt interest?

[Mr Osborne]

The estimate is £51 billion over this Parliament, which I guess is just another nail in the coffin of the shadow Chancellor’s economic credibility.

Oral Answers to Questions

Steve Barclay Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

We got into office in 2010-11, and we abandoned those spending plans for the years ahead.

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

The Chancellor has a strong commitment to open and transparent government. Will he therefore ask his officials to look again at the number and value of special severance payments paid by foundation trusts, which must be reported to his Department but which his Department is not currently willing to disclose?

[Danny Alexander]

I should be very happy to look again at the matter and to talk to the hon. Gentleman about it.

Public Accounts Committee

Steve Barclay Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I am conscious that time is short and a number of colleagues wish to speak, so I shall abridge my remarks accordingly. However, I would like first to endorse the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) and other members of the Committee, in paying tribute to the stewardship of the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge). I would like also to thank the National Audit Office, which serves members of the Committee tremendously well.

It sometimes feels as though, as members of the Public Accounts Committee, we are getting a glimpse into the cosseted world of the television studio interviewer. We can climb on a pedestal and enjoy the clear view of hindsight. We have the safety harness of asking questions rather than giving answers. We can look at issues in isolation, rather than being distracted, as decision makers are, by many competing challenges. Yet in the short period in which I have been a member of the Committee, the same issues have kept appearing, with the ticking frequency of a metronome—a lack of accountability; poor data quality; insufficient testing of pilots; inadequate project change controls; and a mismatch of management skill sets. What binds many reports is unnecessary complexity, which invariably adds cost and masks inefficiency.

However, in this, the annual debate on the Public Accounts Committee, it is right to step down from the comfort of our perch and set out some solutions to the challenges that we face. In particular, I want to touch on five areas, subject to the time available. We need to clarify the letters of direction signed by accounting officers on their appointment and make such letters Department-specific. We need to improve the transparency of the information given to Parliament by ensuring that the NAO has unfettered access to National Rail, the BBC and the Bank of England. We need to redefine the role of senior responsible owners, to ensure that the current gap between skills and requirements is addressed. We need to introduce greater standardisation of the data presented by Departments to Committees, to facilitate better benchmarking across Government. We also need to embrace different mechanisms—some of that is already happening—so that we not only hold those making decisions to account, but look at different forums and opportunities to learn lessons.

I do not put forward those suggestions in the belief that they are in any way revolutionary. Nor do I believe, given that not even the brightest of our Sir Humphreys have managed to solve them—indeed, the Public Accounts Committee has been in existence since 1836—that my proposals are a panacea. They are simply some areas in which the Committee can start to change the direction of travel in a practical way.

I want to give the House an example to illustrate the first of those points, and perhaps the Treasury can take this away as an action for today. It relates to the letters sent to permanent secretaries. The letter dated 13 October 2010 appointing Martin Donnelly as permanent secretary of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills makes reference to “RfRl, 2, and 3”, without defining what these are, and to section 5(6) of the Government Resources and Accounts Act 2000, to section 5(7) of that Act, and to chapter 3 of the “Managing Public Money” document. It also requires him to look at the Treasury handbook on “Regularity, Propriety and Value for Money”. I suggest to the Treasury that a new permanent secretary taking over the reins of a Department has better things to do than read those documents.

We saw in the evidence from Sir Bill Jeffrey that there had been a discussion about why he had not sought a letter of direction, when signing the contracts for the aircraft carriers, on the ground of affordability. There was a lack of clarity there, and that was in conflict with the letter that the Committee had received from Sir Nicholas Macpherson. So it is clear that there are issues there.

[Mr Bacon]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Stephen Barclay]

I will not, because other colleagues need to speak. In fact, I have time to discuss only this one issue, and I will not talk about the other four. I hope that the Treasury will conduct a review of the letters that go to permanent secretaries, so that they can at least be made Department-specific and self-contained as stand-alone documents. At the moment, they are unclear, and that gives rise to the kind of confusion that we saw in relation to Sir Bill Jeffrey and others.

Banking Reform

Steve Barclay Excerpts

Monday 29th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the well-crafted speech of the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna). I, like him, welcome the chance to debate this important issue. I must preface my remarks by declaring, in the interests of transparency, that I too used to work in the industry. I worked on both sides of the regulatory fence—as a regulator in policy and supervision roles, and in the insurance and banking sector—prior to entering the House.

The depth of anger felt by our constituents is very much underestimated in the City and in Canary Wharf. Constituents might hear the technical jargon that is often used in such debates, but they are not confused by what went on: they know that senior bankers made big mistakes yet kept their massive payments; they are incredulous that the banks have returned so quickly to paying bonuses, as the hon. Member for Leeds East (Mr Mudie) said; and they are frustrated that the rhetoric of reassurance from the banks is so often at odds with their own experience as customers, particularly when it comes to the fair treatment of customers.

As my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) pointed out, the motion is—dare I say it—poorly drafted when it states that “no action” has taken place. Indeed, the hon. Member for Streatham endorsed that view from the other side of the House. There has been a flurry of regulatory initiatives, such as more intensive supervision by the Financial Services Authority following its admission of regulatory failure over Northern Rock; and on derivatives, which the motion mentions, the capital requirements directive will subject contracts that are not cleared through a funding house to higher capital requirements. So, action is taking place. Likewise, the Government’s amendment rightly focuses on structure and, indeed, prudential policy, but it is silent on the key issue on which I shall concentrate: enforcement against individuals in banks.

Before doing so, I must say that so far the debate has been silent on the short-termism fostered by the pension fund management, and in particular on the pressure that that puts on chief executives, who risk being fired if they do not add shareholder value. In banks, people fear missing the targets set by their chief executive more than they fear the regulator.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Is not one of the serious issues with bonuses, and the point that my hon. Friend makes, that there emerged a kind of cool option, whereby bankers could receive a bonus but never lose out? Should the system not be reformed, so that bankers are able not only to receive a bonus, but to incur a loss? That would align them more with the return on whatever their bank is up to.

[Stephen Barclay]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct, and I shall come on to consider the quantum of fines that have been imposed, because it makes very strongly the point that he makes.

On the regulatory structure, I am sure that my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury will talk about the changes that the Government are rightly making, because we need to be clear who is in charge in the event of failure. The tripartite system did not make that clear. However, I am sure that he, like the previous Chancellor in his White Paper, accepts that there is no single institutional model to insulate us from a future crisis.

The Government are also right to focus on prudential policy, but I caution against a reliance on policy itself, because we need only look at how often it has changed. We are already on Basel III, Solvency II and MiFID II —the markets in financial instruments directive—and the next debate is on commission in the retail sector, which has been debated for many years.

To give a specific example of the flaws in new policy, let me direct the House to “best execution”—one of the features of MiFID that required banks to shop around to obtain the best price. It will not surprise Members to discover that when banks shopped around they happened to find, in accordance with their written policy, that the best possible price just happened to be the one offered by their investment banking arm. Notwithstanding, therefore, the limits of new structures and policy, I believe a clearing house for derivatives would be a welcome step and a key component in addressing opaque financial instruments, such as securitisations, which stopped people obtaining the required visibility in respect of bank balance sheets and which was central to stopping banks lending to each other. Alan Greenspan’s claim that derivatives efficiently dispersed risk throughout the financial system ignored the concentration of risk in individual firms. We need only look at AIG to see the effect of that sort of concentration of credit risk.

A perhaps more technical point is that clearing houses should be more consistently valuing collatoralisation requirements across all banks. The reason for that is the different requirements that apply to UK and German banks, for example, in terms of their capital standards and liquidity requirements.

The most glaring issue that needs to be addressed is that of enforcement—in particular, the lack of transparency that goes to the heart of the sense among constituents that people have had a one-way bet. That was the point to which my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) alluded. To give an example, the failure of enforcement and the lack of a taxpayer’s guarantee has been material, particularly now that investment banks are not partnerships; I do not think that many partnerships would have leveraged their capital up to 40 times, as many of the banks did. Put simply, the alignment of interest between shareholders who provide the capital and employees who allocate it is not as strong as was historically the case. That is one of the features of a shadow banking system in which the banks had no long-term interest in the securitisations that they structured and underwrote. We would not allow such a thing with an aviation or pharmaceuticals company; they could not design and profit from products that they expected to fail, as Goldman Sachs did with the Abacus deal.

In the final minute allocated to me, I turn to the quantum of fines. To put the matter in context, no fine has been imposed on any senior executive at HBOS, HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds or Royal Bank of Scotland. The biggest three fines, applied to Northern Rock, amount to less than £1 million—that is, less than the chief exec earned as a bonus the year before. The fines were subject to 20% and 30% discounts as a result of early settlement and on the grounds of hardship. For that reason, our constituents feel that no one has been held accountable. They have seen people walk away with the profits without being held accountable for the things that went wrong. As the Minister looks at the structure and policy, we also need to learn the lessons of why enforcement against individuals has failed.

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[Matthew Hancock]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention, because it brings me precisely to the final thing that the Government have already proposed, and which I think is central to preventing a recurrence of the financial crash: the decision to move the powers for prudential regulation to the Bank of England and to strengthen those powers.

Having quickly welcomed the action already taken, I want to concentrate on prudential regulation. The removal of powers of prudential regulation in 1997 was central to many of the things that Members on both sides of the House have talked about. The hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans), who is not in his place, spoke passionately about how his managers were telling him to lend more no matter what the customer needed. That was part of the rapid expansion of banks’ balance sheets, because there was no prudential regulation at the top of the size of those balance sheets. We also heard, from Government Members, about the rapid, uncontrolled run-up in balance sheets.

The idea of prudential regulation and having an institution exercising judgment, instead of just lots more rules-based regulation, has come of age. After all, the system before 1997, although imperfect, had prevented a run on any bank in the UK for 140 years, so it deserves some credit, and it deserves studying. So why would more discretion and judgment based in strong institutions work better than more rules? There are three key reasons. The first, as we have heard in many contributions, is that although rules can be set down in statute, statute can take a long time to change, whereas bankers can change and adapt very quickly. We have heard a lot this evening about regulatory arbitrage—another example of how financial institutions will change quickly to make the most out of whatever rules have been put in place on the ground. But the system cannot then adapt quickly.

Secondly and crucially, the system cannot adapt to innovations. We have seen massive financial innovation, especially with the development of computers over the past 30 years. However, to blame that innovation itself for the mess we are in ignores the fact that it was the lack of regulations—as my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) pointed out so eloquently, regulation is crucial to a functioning market economy—around these new developments and the attempt to regulate through explicit and specific rules, rather than the exercise of judgment, that was the problem.

[Stephen Barclay]

Is not one issue that mitigates the need for specific rules the regulator’s 11 principles, which act a bit like the 10 commandments? For example: “Principle 1: you must act with integrity. Principle 11: you must be open with the regulator. Principle 3: you must have adequate risk management.” It is inconceivable, given that those rules have legal force, that some of those catch-all principles could not be used in enforcement.

[Matthew Hancock]

They were not used, and that is the problem. A massive, heavy and expanding rulebook distracted the attention of regulators away from the big picture.

My third point about why discretion rather than rules is the best way for the future concerns the importance of the macro-economy, because we cannot separate monetary policy from banking policy. The size of banks’ balance sheets is crucial to regulating the supply of money in the economy. Having counter-cyclical rules rather than pro-cyclical capital rules, as we had under Basel II, is crucial. The exercise of judgment over a bank’s balance sheet is best done in the same place as the exercise of judgment over the macro-economy. Bringing those two things back together in one institution—the Bank of England—is a better long-term way of trying to wrestle with such difficult judgments than having them in separate organisations, which, as we heard in an earlier, eloquent speech, ended with the tripartite system, in which nobody was in charge.

Proposed Public Expenditure Cuts

Steve Barclay Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

The hon. Gentleman would know, first, that we are creating the new Work programme, which we believe will help people currently looking for work to get the skills and support they need to get into work. It will be a far better system than the one we inherited. Then there is the broader debate, alluded to in a number of questions, about how we reform the out-of-work benefit system to reward work and give people a greater incentive to take on additional hours of work. That is absolutely central to the debate.

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

The recent independent report by the National Audit Office found that on the last Government’s cost-reduction targets for 2010-11, only one Department had achieved even 50% of that target; that of the savings reported, only 38% could be relied upon; and that one Department had the distinction of achieving even less than 5% of its cost-reduction target. What representations has my right hon. Friend had on how to make up that shortfall?

[Mr Osborne]

Not many, is the answer. My hon. Friend is right to draw the House’s attention to the fact that what we used to hear from the Labour Government about efficiency savings—in the press releases issued at the time of their last Budget—was all guff. Anyone who has examined whether any of the former Government’s claims stack up has found that they do not. It is another part of the Labour party’s fraudulent record.

Finance Bill

Steve Barclay Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to make my maiden speech.

If hon. Members googled my name as a new MP, the first website they would find is that of Steve Barclay, the comedian and cabaret entertainer. I can assure the House that that is not me in an unregistered second job. My speech sadly lacks the zany comedy and musical backing that his performances offer, and the current headline on his website,

“Barclay storms the cabaret floor”

is one that my local paper—the Cambs Times—will never ascribe to my performance in the House.

It is the custom to pay tribute to one’s predecessor, but in my case, it is a real pleasure. Malcolm Moss represented the constituency of North-East Cambridgeshire for 23 years with great distinction. He served first as a town, district and county councillor before going on to defeat the talented Clement Freud. He was a Northern Ireland Minister in the previous Conservative Government before holding a variety of shadow roles, including playing a key role on the Licensing Bill. He was also a senior member of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the previous Parliament. Malcolm was widely liked in the House and locally and he will be very much missed.

North East Cambridgeshire stretches from the Lincolnshire and Norfolk border all the way down to the edge of Ely and Peterborough. It is the largest constituency in Cambridgeshire, which is the fastest-growing county in the country. It is perhaps better known by its former constituency name—the Isle of Ely—although it is better known still as the fens.

As I am sure all hon. Members will know, the fens were first drained in the mid-17th century to produce the fertile farming land we have today. It is a distinct landscape, with endless fields, and big skies hosting blood-red sunsets, beneath which traditional festivals such as the straw bear festival and the rose fair take place. Farming remains a crucial part of our economy, and as food security becomes ever more important, it is a vital national asset. Our fields and homes are protected by the work of the Middle Level Commissioners and the many internal drainage boards. I urge the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), not to interfere in those internal drainage boards, as proposed by the previous Government. That is currently under review.

I want to focus my remarks today on a second drainage that is taking place in the fens. This drainage leaves not fertile land, but barren areas, as more and more assets are centralised in our cities, paradoxically as houses are being built in rural communities. There is a misconception that all rural areas are rich. Eighteen of the 25 most deprived wards in Cambridgeshire are in fenland, and one in 10 people in my constituency have used the excellent services of the citizens advice bureau in the past 12 months alone, 43% of whom did so for advice on personal debt—the manager, Linda Hutchinson, does a formidable job. Prosperous areas mask pockets of deprivation in rural communities, and often float us above the aggregate score on which national funding is usually targeted.

The drainage of our amenities continues at a frightening pace: we recently lost our driving test centre even though it cost only £11,000 a year in rent; our new further education college was scrapped a month before building work was due to begin; and local pubs are closing. There is a battle on to save them, not least Claire Hammond’s fight to save the Nag’s Head in Eastrea. We now face the risk of the closure of our magistrates court, adjacent to which is our police station, the cells of which have already been closed. I will discuss this closure with Ministers in the weeks ahead. As a community, we pay twice as much to the Exchequer in business rates as we receive back in the local settlement grant. It is time that the funding imbalance between the rural shires in England and elsewhere in the United Kingdom is looked at again.

I want to resist the temptation today to focus on the previous Government’s legacy. Anyone in any doubt can look at that temple of waste, the regional fire headquarters in Cambridgeshire, which was built at a cost of £23 million and stands empty because the emergency phone lines cannot be made to work. Instead of large regional projects, we need to focus spending much more effectively to deliver the jobs and services that we need in rural communities such as mine.

First, we need to target money more wisely. The Budget was painful but necessary. However, I still feel that there are areas where policy needs to catch up with the new reality. Constituents in North East Cambridgeshire are staggered that we borrow money simply to give it away to countries such as China and India, which can afford their own space programmes. Likewise, factory workers in my constituency in food packaging, who are on modest incomes, wonder why councils can put as much as 20% of their total income into staff pensions.

Secondly, we need a clearer distinction between investment and spending—the lines have been deliberately blurred in recent years. The fens are only 100 miles from London, yet they are held back by the chronic lack of transport infrastructure. Wisbech, the capital of the fens, has no rail line when it used to have two train stations. There is a single-carriageway road, the A47, which has not been improved in decades. Its port—the only one in Cambridgeshire—was more used even in Roman times than today, and some of our villages around Wisbech get just one bus a week.

Money needs to be focused on things that can deliver economic return, including transport and our further education college. We also need to use money where it will directly save lives. I commend the campaign of my constituent Graham Chappell, who has done so much work to highlight the issue of deep waterways adjacent to fen roads, where we have had so many fatalities.

Thirdly, we need to empower our small business base far more. North East Cambridgeshire is not just about farming. We have many small and medium-sized businesses, such as the high-value engineering firm Metalcraft in Chatteris. I am delighted that we are expanding the apprenticeship scheme, but grants can also have a positive effect. In the commercial world, the aim is always to make it easier for customers to access products, and the public sector needs to do the same. It needs to cut the duplication and time-consuming paperwork so that small businesses that do not have specialised staff can access grants.

In more than 80 years, my constituency has had just four Members of Parliament. I hope that it is a tradition my constituents will continue. I will speak up for this forgotten fen landscape, which is distinct and beautiful and is not currently getting its fair share of resources. We need to target Government spending more effectively, so that we can unlock the potential that the fens offer and deliver the growth our economy needs.