Communities and Local Government/Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

It is a pleasure to be called in a debate with such high-quality contributions. I listened with rapt attention to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock), who got the balance between two distinct parts of the Queen’s Speech eloquently and passionately right. I was also impressed by the speeches of the right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) and of my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley), except for one small part, which I will come to later. This, like all Queen’s Speeches, is, I hope, driven by the people we represent. Otherwise, why is the Queen making such a speech? My experience in the House suggests that this place goes wrong when we cease to listen to what is happening outside, to what people are feeling, to what they care about and to what they are prioritising. In 1989, after the Green party got nearly 15 per cent. of the vote in the European election, suddenly, every political leader said, ““We would never have a party elected in this country that did not prioritise the environment as the No. 1 issue.”” Over the years, we have all seen both public prioritisation and political prioritisation of the environment fade away. Three years ago, I spoke to the most senior member of the Government, urging him to give greater priority to the environment. Interestingly, even three years ago, I could not convince him but, during those three years, there has been an amazing turnaround in consciousness about the importance of the environment. Things have changed. The Queen’s Speech is welcome. I received 350 cards urging a climate change Bill and I am pleased that many of my constituents will be happy that there is to be one. However, it must be the right climate change Bill, and it is a shame that we did not have a marine Bill as well. Before I talk in depth about the environment, let me point out that I had lost my voice last Thursday, so I could not speak in the education day of the Queen’s Speech debate. We have the wonderful tradition of being able to speak about anything in the Queen’s Speech and I wish to say what was left out. There was talk of sustainable and viable communities, but let us look at what has happened in my constituency. It is a pretty average constituency—Huddersfield is fairly representative of the rest of the country—and, during the time that I have represented it, I have been able to see how many well-paid manufacturing jobs have gone, to be replaced by very low-paid jobs in retailing and distribution. That sometimes makes me wonder: Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda and the other major supermarkets make enormous profits, as do other service sector companies, but I go into their stores and the people who run them and give tremendous service seem to be paid very little. There is something strange about a sustainable community in which we have a large and increasing number of people who are expected to live on not much more than the minimum wage. I shall return to supermarkets and the environment. Something else missing from the Queen’s Speech debate is sufficient emphasis on housing. I intervened during the speech of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to point that out. That is not only the responsibility of the Government, because the financial sector has also been irresponsible, by, for instance, selling people mortgages on five times their average earnings. As we all know, people can self-authenticate their salary for a long time. That bodes ill for the future and, if there is a downturn in the housing market and a hike in interest rates, it bodes ill for people’s ability to maintain themselves in their accommodation, while helping to continue to fuel the rise in house prices. House prices in Huddersfield have increased by about 100 per cent. in three years. That means that the first-time buyer, who used to be able to take their first step on the property ladder by buying a little back-to-back house or a conversion, can no longer do so. Now, we in my local authority of Kirklees have 10,000 people on what is an authentic waiting list. That especially impinges on younger people. In some parts of the country, that ladder does not exist, and I would have liked some attention to have been paid to that in the Queen’s Speech. Prisons is another matter that worried me when I read the Queen’s Speech. I was the shadow Minister for prisons for the four years up to 1992, so I got to know the police and prison services fairly well, and one lesson I learned is that we cannot change criminality in our society by building prisons. That has been tried in the United States and it has never worked. We can keep on building prisons until an enormous percentage of the population are in prison, as in the United States, but that will not address the cause of the problem. We need much more focus on rehabilitation. About nine months ago, my Committee—the Education and Skills Committee—published a report on prison education. When prisons are as full as they currently are, there is a decline in what can be done to rehabilitate prisoners. There is something very wrong with the prison estate, and if that is considered in parallel with the undermining of the probation service, that is wrong. That should have been addressed, and I hope that it might be addressed as the Queen’s Speech progresses through the Commons and the Lords. It is not right to undermine a profession that meets all its targets and has a real reputation for delivering, despite scant resources and the backdrop of the National Offender Management Service reforms over several years that have destabilised the entire prison estate. As the Member for Huddersfield, it would be dishonest of me to ignore immigration. There is a lot of populism associated with immigration and many dangers inherent in talking about it. My constituents are pretty fair-minded; indeed, we live in a fair and balanced society in which all the communities and faiths work and live together and get on extremely well. I have heard of no one in my constituency who does not want an effective, speedy and fair immigration system, but we do not have such a system. There are lost souls living in my constituency who cannot work or sustain life. They should have been given a decision and sent back whence they came a long time ago, rather than being tortured by long delays. There should be a guaranteed period within which all immigration cases are decided. We must also have an immigration system in which the cheats do not prosper. In the household in which I was brought up, one of my mother’s favourite watchwords was, ““Cheats never prosper.”” Those who believe that should not look at immigration, because there, too many cheats do prosper. I have honest constituents waiting to be reunited with members of their family—waiting for a legitimate decision on a particular immigration question—who see people who abuse the system and jump ahead of them. That causes great discontent and unhappiness. Returning to my education and skills brief, in looking at our immigration system, I wonder how many more unskilled people we need in this country. Yes, we need skilled people, but bearing in mind the complexion of my constituency and of our society, I am not sure how many unskilled people we need. A balance should be struck in terms of prioritising the skills of those who migrate to this country. Turning to the subject that I normally focus on, I hope that there will not be as many surprises in the education element of this Queen’s Speech as there were in the last one. What looked like a fairly innocuous Bill gave me an enormous amount of work over the ensuing months, but we eventually put to bed a much improved Education and Inspections Bill that has now received Royal Assent. The further education Bill in this Queen’s Speech is an interesting one. I hope that its progress through this House will be influenced by my Select Committee’s recent report on the FE sector, and by our observation that a balance needs to be struck between the driver of ““train to gain””—of training for a particular job—and remembering our responsibility to community education. That will be very important as we face the issue that my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford referred to: how to teach people about the environment and make them understand that they can make real changes in their lives that will make a real difference as we try to meet the climate change challenge. In meeting the climate change challenge, too much emphasis is put on international Governments, rather than on what we as individuals can do. As I said in a speech to a school the other day, it is about the individual as well: it is about changing ingrained habits that will not be easy to change. I said, ““Are you going to give up eating so much fish? We in this country eat a lot of fish—indeed, there is a fish and chip shop on almost every street corner. Are you going to give up your cheap holidays in Spain?”” We went through a catalogue of such issues. Unfortunately—this was the day after the Stern report—I also said, ““Are you going to give up your bonfires on bonfire night?”” Of course, I have now become known in the House as ““Bonfire Barry””, but this is a serious point. I would still like to know why the person at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs who was telephoned about this issue said that bonfire night had a negligible impact on emissions, given that the National Society for Clean Air tells me that 14 per cent. of all dioxins are released into the air on or around 5 November. There is a lesson to be learned there. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made an important announcement on education, and it is always pleasant to hear an announcement on an issue on which one has been campaigning for years. It is a disgrace that anyone under 18 should leave school and enter work or unemployment without training. It is our duty to our children—and all those under 18 are still children, despite the Liberal Democrats’ wishes—to refuse to countenance them starting work with no training at 16 or to become unemployed at that age. Every child should be in training, a job with training or education. My right hon. Friend recently made a speech about that, but the Queen’s Speech contained nothing about the delivery of it. I finish by returning to the important issue of climate change. It will be delivered only by individuals making sacrifices. We should not kid ourselves that it will not be painful. It will not happen without some pain, and that may mean taxation. If the rumours are right that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs wrote to the Chancellor saying that we may have to raise taxes to pay for tackling climate change, I welcome that. As I say, we may have to give up things that we like and make sacrifices in terms of heating our homes and so on. Other possible changes have been mentioned today. Queen’s Speeches are marvellous. They give us a sense of direction for the rest of the Session. We hope that we end up with well-written laws and decent pieces of legislation because we have improved them, but laws also have to be administered. Sometimes, Ministers change jobs so fast—especially in education and environment, two of the areas that I hold dear—that they have moved on by the time they get a grip on the subject. That is not good for government or for any of the big issues that we face. There is also churn in senior and middle ranking civil servants, who are moved on—it is called continuous professional development—soon after they get to know the job. Not many people in my constituency deal with £50 notes often, but this year Adam Smith will appear on them. His philosophy suggested that the benign effect of everyone pursuing their own selfish interests would add up to the greater good, but that will not work for climate change, which will need national, international and individual co-operation to achieve.