Debate on the Address

Tony Baldry Excerpts

Wednesday 8th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

I may have got this wrong, but it is my understanding that the Government are introducing two Bills—a paving Bill and a traditional hybrid Bill. Is that my right hon. Friend’s understanding? We will all have to look very closely at the small print of the paving Bill because within it, I think, will be the statutory authority to provide compensation for our constituents who may be affected. So without the paving Bill, our constituents, who may be affected by HS2 for a number of years, will not be able to receive compensation.

[Mrs Gillan]

The devil will be in the detail. The truth of the matter is that until recently there was no talk of a paving Bill, yet the project has been on the stocks for four years. It is a little late to discover that we need a paving Bill. Also, some commentators have already been referring to it as a blank cheque, which is not something anybody on the Conservative Benches wants to see.

I, like you, Mr Speaker, and like colleagues and neighbours both inside and outside the Government, and particularly in Buckinghamshire, have serious misgivings about HS2. The project was produced like a rabbit from a hat by the previous Labour Government. It has already blighted the lives of my constituents and will cause irreparable environmental damage to the Chilterns. It does not represent good value for money and will not bring the exaggerated benefits claimed by its promoters. Increasingly, informed commentators and experts have started to cast doubts on the claim that it will heal the so-called north-south divide, and those doubts are growing.

For me, HS2 fails on many fronts. It fails on the business case, which is fundamentally flawed, with a cost-benefit ratio that is eroding so rapidly that it is getting to a level at which it would not be regarded as worth while by any normal criteria. The calculations are based on false assumptions, with the forecasting assuming that all time spent on trains is unproductive. It also fails to take into account modern communications and working practices.

HS2 fails to observe environmental protections. The current plans and route design for phase 1, and the business case, are so conditional on speed that they sweep everything else aside. The route does not even try to stick to existing transport corridors but drives a steel arrow into the heart of the Chiltern hills, which were deemed so precious before now as to have been designated an area of outstanding natural beauty.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Every Queen’s Speech reflects work in progress, and we continue to make progress in seeking to bring down the cost of living, in welfare and in immigration—net immigration has been cut by a third, the deficit has been cut by a third and £1.25 million new private sector jobs have been created. This Queen’s Speech, in particular, reflects a work in progress because we are starting a parliamentary Session with no fewer than five significant Bills subject to carry-over motions from the previous Session.

In the past few months the Government have sought to act on welfare reform by putting a cap on welfare benefits of £500 a week per family, replacing disability living allowance with the more targeted personal independence payment and introducing universal credit, with the intention of removing any financial disincentive to work. If significant steps have been taken on welfare reform, much more work still needs to be done. I would like to highlight support for a number of measures in the Queen’s Speech.

On immigration, we need to have a responsible debate. It is always a difficult subject to raise. After 30 years in this House, my constituents know where I come from on the issue. During the county council election campaign in north Oxfordshire, I found many people who are concerned about immigration. Many complained that under the previous Government there had been 13 years of open borders. I think that the Government have been absolutely right to implement a number of policy reforms to the immigration system to make it more robust. Those reforms have already seen net immigration cut by a third since the general election.

One can compellingly argue that immigration control is necessary to help preserve the very Britain that immigrants want to move to. We must all recognise that since 2004 nearly half a million non-British people have arrived in Britain—I stress—each year, which means that more people have arrived on these shores as immigrants in a single year since 2004 than in the entire period from the battle of Hastings to the year of my birth, 1950. That was a deliberate policy of the previous Labour Government, not something that happened by accident or was the primary result of obligations to the European Union. The failure to manage immigration properly has threatened the liberal Britain and the very traditions and culture that have made Britain special. Those who are truly tolerant and believe in tolerance are those who believe, as they should do, in controlling immigration.

One thing on which I hope every Member of Parliament would agree is that those who have been found to have no right to be within the jurisdiction should be removed from it as speedily as possible. I was therefore pleased to hear the Home Secretary announce to the House on 26 March that she intended to bring forward an immigration Bill in this Session. She said:

“The final problem I raised is the policy and legal framework within which UKBA has operated. The agency is often caught up in a vicious cycle of complex law and poor enforcement of its own policies, which makes it harder to remove people who are here illegally. That is why I intend to bring forward an immigration Bill in the next Session of Parliament that will address some of these problems.”—[Official Report, 26 March 2013; Vol. 560, c. 1501.]

When meeting people in my constituency surgeries, I never cease to be amazed by the number who were, for example, considered not to have refugee status many years ago and who then appealed to the independent immigration appeal tribunal, only then again to be found by an independent judge not to have refugee status. They were found not to be entitled to be in the country, but absolutely nothing has happened and they are still here, and they will doubtless remain here in the hope that if they stay long enough they will be able to assert some claim to family life under European human rights legislation.

Last July the Government introduced tough new rules seeking to protect the public from foreign criminals and immigration offenders who try to hide behind family life as a reason to stay in the UK. The new rules set proportionate requirements that reflect Parliament’s view of the balance between the public interest in deporting a foreign national offender and their rights under article 8 of the European convention on human rights. It appears, however, that some immigration judges are not paying sufficient heed to the new rules, and it is thus right that new primary legislation is introduced to put beyond doubt the correct overall approach to article 8 in immigration cases.

I think that almost all my constituents find it particularly offensive that foreign nationals who commit serious crimes are not pretty much automatically deported. Indeed, pressure in prisons such as Bullingdon in north Oxfordshire is made worse by the fact that the prison system is having to accommodate foreign nationals who have completed their terms of imprisonment and who it seems difficult, if not impossible, to deport. Shockingly, at the recent rate of removals it would take some 200 years to remove all those who are illegally present in the United Kingdom, and unless we take serious and sustained action their numbers will probably grow at a faster rate. We can all have debates about the size, scale and purposes of legal migration to the country, but I do not believe that a single Member of this House can justify illegal immigration. Estimates vary, but there are credible estimates that the number of illegal immigrants is as high as 1 million.

I am sure that many of my constituents will also welcome the measure announced in the Queen’s Speech intended to limit the benefits of foreign nationals to stop people from overseas abusing the NHS and the welfare system. The basic point is that migrants should not have access to public services to which they are not entitled. I therefore welcome the proposed legislation on deportation and immigration.

I support the draft care and support Bill, which not surprisingly prompted a considerable number of detailed recommendations in the pre-legislative scrutiny published in mid-March. Most attention has been focused on the costs of nursing home care, but that is only part of what needs to be addressed. I have no doubt that in the debates on Second Reading and in Committee we will need to consider how we secure sustainable funding for the care system as a whole. We must ensure that those involved get appropriate information and advice, and appropriate access to advocacy.

As co-chair of the all-party group on carers, I am glad that the Government are giving recognition to carers, particularly given the increasing number who are having to manage work, their own family’s lives, and caring for frail parents. It is good news that they will receive more help, including, I hope, more access to respite care and training in care techniques. We should never forget that some 1.25 million people, most of them women, spend more than 50 hours each week caring for family members who cannot look after themselves, and the number will rise sharply as our population grows older. We need to ensure that carers do not feel isolated. On the contrary, carers should feel valued and appreciated by us all. They should feel able to have their needs assessed by their local authority and to get help, depending on their means. All carers should feel that they can get information about local groups that can support them and offer guidance on how they can help in caring for loved ones. Somewhere, either in the care and support Bill or the Children and Families Bill, Parliament needs to give consideration to the rights of young carers. Nevertheless, it is important that Parliament will at last be seeking to resolve the challenges of nursing home and residential care home costs, which are of concern to so many.

I have a hospice in my constituency, and I hope that the care and support Bill will ensure that patients at the end of life and their families are able to access the care they need to exercise choice. We must in no way underestimate this Bill, which will be a historic step forward. It will dramatically simplify the current legal framework for care and support, replacing provisions in well over a dozen Acts of Parliament with a single modern statute. It will modernise care and support law so that the whole system is built around people’s needs and what they want to achieve with their lives. It will clarify entitlements to care and support to give people a better understanding of what is on offer, help them to plan for the future, and ensure that they know where to go for help when they need it. Importantly, it will simplify the care and support system to provide the freedom and flexibility needed by care professionals and local authorities to innovate and to achieve better results for those who need the support of social care.

I spoke in the Second Reading debate on the Children and Families Bill, which seeks to improve provision for disabled children and children with special educational needs. I very much hope that during this Session that important Bill will complete its passage through Parliament.

It was clear from this Queen’s Speech that economic recovery is very much at the heart of the Government’s programme. The Queen’s Speech announces no fewer than five separate Bills intended to cut red tape and to reduce the national insurance burden on small businesses, together with other measures. This is very much a pro-business and pro-growth agenda that seeks to give practical help and support to job creators and millions of people working throughout the economy to promote growth. One of the biggest inhibitors to growth is the cost of recruiting new employees, particularly for small businesses. It is very good news that the Government intend to reduce national insurance bills each year by entitling every business and charity to a £2,000 employment allowance from April next year. That will be of particular help to smaller businesses in recruiting more people.

During this Parliament I have spoken about HS2 on numerous occasions, and I do not intend to detain the House by repeating everything I have said. If anyone is interested, they can find it all on my website at www.tonybaldry.co.uk/campaigns/HS2. I note, however, that the Government intend to introduce a paving Bill to secure the authority for departmental expenditure on HS2 phase 2. Those of us who are not convinced that HS2 is necessarily best value for money in transport infrastructure investment will need to be very careful about reading the small print of the paving Bill—the high-speed rail preparation Bill—as I strongly suspect that it will include a parliamentary mechanism that enables compensation to be paid to those affected by HS2, and I think that the Government may well have constructed the legislation so that without the paving Bill it will be difficult for constituents to access compensation. I suspect that many will actually welcome the High Speed 2 hybrid Bill, as it will give those affected by the proposed line the opportunity to petition Parliament and to have their arguments heard in detail by the Select Committee.

Every Queen’s Speech has a number of measures that have not been trailed. One such is the defence reform Bill, which is, as I understand it, intended to enable the Ministry of Defence to change the way it procures and supports defence equipment by reforming Defence Equipment and Support and strengthening procurement arrangements. The Bill will also increase the size and role of our reserve forces. The Bill is of interest to me because in Bicester we have one of the largest defence distribution depots in the country. I would say to Ministers that the quicker they decide to concentrate defence storage and distribution on Bicester, the better it will be for the MOD and for taxpayers. We cannot continue to drift. Deciding whether to focus defence storage on Bicester or on Donnington is not rocket science.

Some may say that this is not a particularly heavy draft legislative programme, but, as I said at the outset, it is important to bear in mind the fact that a number of hefty Bills have been carried over from the previous Parliament: the Children and Families Bill, the Energy Bill, the Finance (No. 2) Bill—that is, last year’s Budget legislation—and the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill.

The House will know that I voted against Second Reading of the other carry-over Bill, the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill. Like every other Member, I have only one vote, and I have to recognise that on a free vote of the House the Bill secured a majority, but I hope that it may still be possible to secure some further amendments, here or in the other place, in respect of certain conscience clauses so that people can continue to express themselves freely in support of traditional marriage and so that appropriate guidance is given to schools, particularly faith schools, on what they may teach in respect of marriage in a balanced way.

Over the next few days of debate on the Queen’s Speech, I have no doubt that, as has already happened today, some will draw attention to Bills that they consider should have been in the Queen’s Speech. I suspect that there will be a fair amount of comment about our relations with Europe. It is important to put any such comments into context. The Prime Minister has committed to negotiate a new settlement for Britain in the European Union. People questioned whether the Prime Minister would veto an EU treaty; well, the Prime Minister has vetoed an EU treaty. People questioned the Prime Minister’s ability to get the EU budget cut; well, the Prime Minister has succeeded in getting the EU budget cut. Given that previously it had not even been possible to freeze the EU budget, it was a significant achievement for the Prime Minister to secure a cut. People have questioned the Prime Minister’s ability to get powers back from the European Union, but the fact is that he got us out of the EU bail-out mechanism and saved the country millions of pounds. The Prime Minister has said that he is committed to negotiating a new settlement for Britain within the EU, and I have every confidence that that is what he will achieve. It will then be for the British people to judge that settlement in a referendum. There will be a referendum on our membership of the EU—that commitment is absolute.

This is a Government who have in the first few years of this Parliament introduced massive reforms to the NHS, public services and the welfare system. It is right that Ministers and the Government are able to spend time in focusing on ensuring that those reforms are fully and properly implemented. We should continue to support the Chancellor in his determination to continue to tackle the deficit, to sort out the nation’s public finances and to promote enterprise and growth in the economy.