Christmas Adjournment

I have a cunning plan, Madam Deputy Speaker, that might appeal to the rest of the House. I suggest that, at the last minute, we should decide not to adjourn today. If we did that, then we could creep up to the Press Gallery tomorrow and see whether it was like the Mary Celeste. If so, we could telephone the news editors and inquire where folk were. They would probably say, ““Well, they told me they were down the Commons, clearing their desks and so on.”” Given how often our friends and brethren in the Gallery write about MPs going on holiday, we should try to spring a trick like that on them sometimes. However, I hope that we will keep the plan secret. Another good reason not to adjourn is the fact that many hon. Members have a lot of unfinished business. I want to pursue the many parliamentary questions that I have put down that so far have not received a reply, even though a response from the Government is long overdue. One such question, to the Home Office, arose from press reports that the Government had abandoned defending the Prison Service against compensation claims from prisoners taken off illegal drugs in prison and offered detoxification programmes as an alternative. To my astonishment—and that of constituents who have raised the matter with me—the Prison Service is being sued by those prisoners. That is incredible, but my parliamentary questions on the matter have received no reply. I cannot understand why the Home Office has not been able to give me a swift response. Similarly, the National Audit Office has been investigating the handling of grievance procedures involving Foreign Office staff. The Foreign Office has stonewalled scrutiny for months, but the NAO adjudication has now been received. Under pressure from me, the Foreign Office promised that the report would be made available on its own intranet, and that a copy would be placed in the House of Commons Library. I have not yet seen the NAO report, but I expect it to be highly critical. As far as I can ascertain, it is not yet available to be read by Foreign Office staff or Members of Parliament. In my view, the Foreign Office has a record of very poor stewardship in matters to do with what is now termed human resources, and the present position is very unsatisfactory. I hope that it will make sure that a copy of the report is available in the Library tomorrow, as I shall be there looking for it. This debate allows us to raise various matters to do with our constituencies. I want to remind my area’s train operator, c2c, and Network Rail about Tilbury Town station and the parlous state of access to it for disabled people, mums with prams and the semi-ambulant. The station has the town of Tilbury on one side, but no residences on the other, southern, side, so people who want to travel to London must negotiate an appalling footbridge. Earlier this year, money was made available under the Access for All programme to improve access to railway stations nationally but, to our disappointment and irritation, Tilbury Town station lost out. That is unacceptable: Ministers at the Department for Transport and those with responsibility for disabled people must work with representatives of the bodies to which I referred and revisit the problem. Indeed, the same accessibility problem at Tilbury Town is also familiar to people in South Ockenden and elsewhere along the same line and, as a matter of fairness and equality, it needs to be addressed with some expedition. I am very proud of the Thurrock marshes in my constituency; it is a site of special scientific interest that is of critical importance to wildlife and to bird migration. However, it is threatened by the motorbike fraternity and the extensive use of quad bikes. People are entitled to have a place in which to pursue their sport or enthusiasm, but the marshes are the scene of a clash of two legitimate interests. I want the Environment Agency and Natural England to review the matter with some urgency, to see whether they can work with the local planning authority to protect what is an invaluable site of national importance. The threat is continuing as we speak, and I have no doubt that it will increase over the holiday period. One of the flagship elements of the current Labour manifesto is the promise to make the Thames Gateway area a nice place to live and work, where people can have all sorts of recreational opportunities and where commerce can expand. I wholeheartedly supported the establishment of the Thurrock urban development corporation and, although I have been disappointed that the development has been slower than planned, there has been some movement lately that I welcome very much. Ministers often talk about joined-up government. The objectives of the Thurrock urban development corporation include providing both relatively low-cost homes for rent or purchase and some very valuable properties that will enhance the area and add to the social mix. If those objectives are to be achieved, the development corporation needs to be able to offer employment to people moving into the area, and to those who live there already. In addition, proper skills training will be needed in the development to the west that includes the Olympic site. That is the policy that I espouse, and I guess that it is shared by those Ministers who are responsible for the Thames Gateway. However, there is a quango—I forget its name—that is the Government organisation for the east of England. I do not know the names of the people who are its members, but I am sure that they are very busy. They claim that the Lakeside basin retail area should not be allowed to expand, on the grounds that it is not a regional shopping centre. That is an incredible and fantastic thing to suggest, but apparently that designation is critical to the area’s ability to expand. Clearly, people and interests across this east of England of which by accident we are members are frustrating the Government’s policy. I want to see joined-up government, and I want Ministers to tell these people to get real. We need this development to pump-prime all the other worthwhile initiatives that are planned by Thurrock urban development corporation. In parenthesis, anyone who knows Thurrock knows that, but for a decision taken at 3 o’clock in the morning in the Committee stage in the House of Lords in 1963 on the London Government Act, we could have been in London. We are London people; we have London’s river, we have London’s port; we work in London. To put us in the same pot as Norwich and Yarmouth is bonkers, but that is what is happening. I just ask for some common sense to prevail in the corridors of Whitehall. To rub salt in the wound, my constituency is still required to absorb London’s waste. You see these wonderful barges, Madam Deputy Speaker, passing the House on the river. They are about the only bit of river traffic there is. They are heading for Thurrock with London’s rubbish, and with it we will not put up much longer. We are not having it. It is unacceptable that my constituency should take London’s waste. I refer in particular to a place called the Mucking site, which is situated on the borders of my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon (Angela E. Smith). Our constituents have had to put up with the tipping of waste for decades. We have been promised time and time again that the life of the Mucking site would come to an end, but recently Cory waste management company sought planning permission to extend even further the life of the tip so that more barges can go down the river and deposit London’s waste. It is unfair, it is unacceptable, it is bad environmental policy and we have had enough. A planning permission was granted and then snatched back by Thurrock UDC, which is now the planning authority for these matters. It granted permission about a week ago, only to find that one of the persons who sat on the planning committee was disqualified from so sitting. I welcome that, because it allows a rethink on the approval. It should not have been granted, first from an environmental point of view and, secondly, from a statutory point of view, because one of the people who voted— voted in favour, I am told—should not have been there at all.