Christmas Adjournment

I will not give way any more, because I want to cover a lot of other subjects. Unfortunately, we are paying for the police for the whole of London. We have very few police in Romford. Collier Row particularly suffers from a lack of police. Inner London receives the funding; outer London does not. My constituency suffers terribly, despite the fact that crime is going up dramatically there. There is also a lack of funding for our parks and open spaces. I pay tribute to local organisations such as Friends of Cottons Park, Friends of King George’s Playing Field, and Friends of Rise Park, who have done an enormous amount of work independently of Government and the council to raise funds and attract sponsorship and grants to upgrade their local parks. I am delighted that a new group called Friends of Lawns Park has recently been launched, with my support and that of the local councillors for Mawneys ward, Councillor Robby Misir, Councillor Melvyn Wallace, and Councillor Peter Gardner. I am concerned that again we are going to lose post offices, which are an essential part of the lifeblood of our local community. A couple of years ago, despite campaigns by myself, councillors and local people, six post offices were shut as a result of Government policy—those in Rise Park, Ardleigh Green, Gidea Park and Collier Row, as well as two in the Mawneys area. I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will assure me that no more post offices will be closing in Romford. Romford was the first local council to bin political correctness and fly the Union jack, the flag of our country, from the town hall not just for a few days a year but every day of the year. That decision has now been followed by many other councils, but it was made in the teeth of opposition from the Labour council at the time, which said that it was not the right thing to do. We now also fly the cross of St. George to represent England, and we are proud to do so. I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will tell me why, despite the enormous expense that has gone on building Portcullis House and its flagpole, no flag has ever flown from it. How can that possibly be right?