Debate on the Address

I wish to begin my remarks tonight by paying tribute to the four firemen who tragically lost their lives a few days ago. I commend the valued efforts of their colleagues and others in searching for the bodies, so that their loved ones may at last have closure. I pay tribute to them—I hope that the House will not misunderstand my remarks—because I wish to draw attention to their exemplary courage, which seems to have gone against the grain of other examples that we have seen in the past few years or months, when other public servants have not acted with sheer indifference to risk and their own lives. I am thinking of the police community support officers who, apparently, would not go into a pond to save a drowning boy because they had not been trained in the correct way to do so, or because of our health and safety culture. I am thinking of the ambulance men I read about at the weekend who would not run along a sandy beach in case they tripped—again, because it might have been against their own health and safety rules. I am thinking of many other examples over the past few years of local councils imposing arbitrary and unnecessary restrictions on people's fun, whether on bonfire night, at conker matches or at street parties. There have been restrictions on other activities, too, including on the Royal British Legion being able to collect in its normal way. Too many such incidents have happened, and in many ways that has curtailed people's ability to take risks and do things. The firemen were unique—well, no, they were not unique because others have taken risks of that sort, but they are unique in my mind because they stand out as having gone against the grain in the past few months. I hope that they will be remembered for many years. Their families should bear in mind the fact that they did not die in vain; apparently they arrived at the scene and charged in, thinking that there might be people in the building who could be saved. No doubt there will be an investigation and no doubt we will all say that it must not happen again, but in some ways—I hope that the House will not misunderstand this either—I hope that it does happen again; I hope that some time in the future, human beings, wishing to save the lives of other human beings, take risks that are against the rules and against our health and safety culture. In so doing, I hope that they live, but if they do die trying to save the lives of others, they will not die in vain. I am disappointed that there is nothing in the Queen's Speech to curtail the excesses of the Health and Safety Executive and to reduce the litigiousness of our society. I have my criticisms of Sir Ian Blair—I think it is time that he stepped down for the mistakes that the Met made—but it is an absolute farce that the Metropolitan police were tried for the de Menezes shooting by the Health and Safety Executive in a health and safety trial. If the Met had to answer questions on the matter—and there were very serious questions to answer—that should have taken place under the auspices of the Independent Police Complaints Commission. It is the proper body to operate police complaints procedures and to make judgments on the suitability of the commissioner, or the culpability of any other officers concerned. Until this country does something about the constant litigation that prevents schoolteachers from taking children on proper trips, and until the Government bring forward legislation that enables us once again to become a risk-taking society—within sensible limits—rather than a risk-averse society, we will not be the economically successful nation that we aspire to be. We heard wonderful speeches today on why children are not performing well at school, or want to leave school, or are fed up with school. In schools, we see part of that pervasive culture: we avoid children's taking risks, we avoid judging them, and we do not challenge them too hard. We have to get back to being a risk-taking society. I am disappointed that there is no Bill to give teeth to the Competition Commission or the Office of Fair Trading. After 18 months of intense investigation, the OFT came to the conclusion that when it came to milk, our supermarkets were screwing farmers ruthlessly: the supermarkets give farmers about 18p a litre for milk and sell it for 54p, and 18p in the middle disappears somewhere. The Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs discovered that two or three years ago, after a few months' investigation. Now that we discover, through the OFT's big inquiry, that supermarkets are doing what we have known about for some time, what is to happen next? Of course farmers have had a few pence more per litre in the past few months, but that is not because the supermarkets have suddenly developed a guilty conscience. It is not because they have decided that they must pay the primary producer more. It is thanks to India and China buying up vast supplies of dry powder and milk on the world market. If farmers in our country are one day to receive a proper, decent price for milk, it will not be because of any action taken by the Competition Commission or the OFT; it will be because of China and India and their insatiable demand for dairy products. Nothing in the Queen's Speech gives the OFT power to take action when it finds problems. There is nothing to deal with the outrageous, unfair banking practices that our consumers are faced with. There may have been some unwise lending by the banks, but we know how they will claw back some of the money: through unfair bank charges, unfair credit card charges and unfair payment protection insurance. Recently a constituent recommended a wonderful website to me called moneysavingexpert.com. I must practise what it preaches more often. All parties in the House are concerned about the massive amount of private debt. That excellent website is geared towards consumers. It tells them how they can save money and deal with some of the malpractices of the banks. We can appreciate the size of the debt problem if we consider the fact that the website has had 4.3 million downloads by consumers of a document on how to reclaim unfair bank charges. There is a template letter written by the excellent Martin Lewis, who runs the website. There have been 107,000 downloads of information on the payment protection insurance scam operated by banks, and 35,000 downloads of the template on how to reclaim unfair credit card charges. There is a huge problem out there, and I see nothing in the Queen's Speech to deal with the aspects of it that I have mentioned. I urge the Government, through the Lord Chancellor, to remind judges not to close down current legal cases against banks in which customers are reclaiming unfair credit card charges. On 27 July, the OFT agreed a test case on bank charge reclaiming, and that has put a halt to all other cases in which unfair bank charges are being reclaimed. That halt does not apply to unfair credit card charges and payment protection insurance, which in millions of cases was probably unsold; but apparently many judges are saying, ““No, you can't go ahead with that claim because the OFT has a test case, and it is all closed down.”” That halt relates only to bank charges, and I hope that the Government, through the Lord Chancellor, will urge judges to let the cases go ahead. I come back to my earlier point: let us have legislation that will give the OFT and the Competition Commission the teeth that equivalent bodies in America have. My final point on banking is that at least the chief executive of Citibank had the decency to resign when the problem hit the fan. There were no such resignations from chief executives in Northern Rock; they were no doubt sustained by their friends on the Government Benches. I regret that there was no Bill to simplify recycling in the Queen's Speech. I am passionate about doing my recycling. I find it more difficult, with dodgy legs, to carry all my different boxes, bottles, glass and papers to the recycling heaps in Eden or Carlisle in my constituency. In the Westminster area, we are blessed with multi-recycling: one bin takes all, apart from polystyrene and garbage. I encourage other councils to do likewise. It makes it simple. Westminster boasts that it has an 80 per cent. recycling rate. Admittedly, a large part of what is collected is burned for fuel and power in electricity stations, but I might take into account the extra hot water and Fairy liquid that I use when washing all my little bottles and plastic jars to make sure that I have practically sterilised my rubbish that is going into the recycling tips. As for other people doing the same, when I see the Liberals driving to the recycling bins in their Volvos, I wonder whether we have got the economics of the matter right. However, I believe in recycling. I also believe in cutting waste and in ensuring much more home insulation. We must do all of those things, as well as recycling. It is grossly unfair of councils to impose charges on people for not putting out the correct bins on the correct day with the correct boxes and bags, and to refuse to take some of the things that we are given, such as Tetra Paks. If they will not recycle Tetra Paks, what are we supposed to do with them? What am I supposed to do with the polystyrene that was wrapped around my last computer monitor, if the councils refuse to take it? Rather than the Government encouraging councils to impose penalty charges on people who put a chip wrapper in the wrong box, they should say to councils, ““You have a three-year deadline in which to allow the public to put all recyclable material into multi-purpose bins.”” Perhaps they should say to supermarkets and goods suppliers, ““You also have three years to make your packaging materials easily recyclable.”” That would mean no composites—no more Tetra Paks of cardboard, plastic and foil stuck together, which cannot be recycled. Suppliers should not sell products in polystyrene if no one will recycle it. The burden has been passed on to the innocent. I started off as a highly ignorant consumer; I thought that all plastic was plastic was plastic, but now I discover that in the areas covered by my local councils there are about 20 different kinds of plastic. I have to run around popping it in different holes in different bins on different days of the week.