Debate on the Address

I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman again. Counties such as Oxfordshire are getting increasingly hacked off that we are paying an ever-increasing amount in taxes and getting an ever-decreasing level of support from the Government. On average, every one of my constituents in north Oxfordshire pays £2,000 more in taxes to the Treasury than the Government spend on providing services to people living in Oxfordshire. In short, we are paying more and getting less. One phrase in the Gracious Speech that that my constituents will find particularly offensive in that regard is:"““My Government is committed to providing a healthcare system organised around the needs of the patient.””" Horton general hospital in my constituency is facing the threat of a serious downgrading of services whereby, for example, consultant-led obstetric services are to be removed and taken to John Radcliffe hospital. We will no longer have a special care baby unit or 24/7 children's services, notwithstanding the fact that they were introduced following a public inquiry when Barbara Castle was Secretary of State. I do not see how the Government can possibly convince my constituents that a serious downgrading of services at the local general hospital is in some way an improvement in the NHS and a health care system organised around the needs of the patient. It is also irksome when we see the Government wasting substantial sums of money locally. On Thursday, the National Audit Office, following a request by me, will publish its report on how the Home Office managed to waste, on its own figures, a phenomenal, staggering £36 million on the project to build an asylum centre at Bicester for 750 asylum seekers. This was always a crazy project condemned by every organisation interested in the welfare of refugees, and it is not surprising that eventually the Government came to their senses and scrapped it. What is surprising is that they squandered millions of pounds on this aborted project, where not a single brick was ever laid nor a single sod ever turned. The Ministry of Defence site where the centre was going to be built is exactly the same now as it was before the Home Office acquired the land. How could it possibly have spent, and wasted, £36 million on doing no work at all? We will probably never know the full truth because, despite the NAO inquiry, it conveniently managed to lose several of the papers relating to where the money has gone, so the NAO was unable to examine them. Like most of the Government's immigration policy, it is a complete shambles. We could have done a considerable amount locally with £36 million. No one can any longer have any confidence in what the Government do on asylum and immigration; they simply have not got a grip. As Martin Wolf observed in The Financial Times at the weekend,"““the government seems to have little idea how many immigrants are in the country. It has just had to admit that the number of foreign born workers who arrived since 1997 was 1.5 million. Since 1997, foreigners also seem to have filled more than half of the additional jobs created since 1997””." How can the Government get the figures so wrong? It was somewhat pathetic for the Prime Minister, at the Labour party conference, to bleat about British jobs for British workers. Rather than bleating such meaningless platitudes, he would be better advised to get a grip on skills provision in this country. The consequence of globalisation, as shown only too brutally last week in Banbury with the experience at what everyone locally still considers as Alcan, is that even skilled and experienced workers here are having to compete with Chinese or Malaysian workers, and low-skilled or unskilled workers can no longer find a job because their factory's production has effectively shifted to China. The Leitch report on skills made devastating reading, yet the response of the Government and the Prime Minister has merely been confusion at the heart of Whitehall. In a constituency such as mine, much of the training for work is done by the local further education college, but following the Prime Minister's reorganisation of Whitehall, Oxford and Cherwell Valley college of further education remains uncertain as to where FE stands. Is it the responsibility of the Department for Children, Schools and Families or of the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills? I wrote to both Departments asking them who is responsible for FE and received identical letters saying:"““We are consulting on this.””" No one in Whitehall knows who is now responsible for further education. The situation is equally chaotic as regards the learning and skills councils, which fund post-16 education and training. Next year, I intend to organise a skills summit in my constituency bringing together local employers and business leaders to ask them what skills they need in the M40 corridor between Oxford and Warwick as we go further into the 21st century. I hope that by next summer the machinery of Government will have sorted itself out so that we know who in the Government is responsible for FE and skills training and we can invite them to the seminar. It is pointless having a Bill on educational opportunity to tackle the question of what are described as NEETs—young people not in education, employment or training—and cutting benefits to youngsters if the Government have no coherence on FE provision, post-16 funding and skills training provision. I am not entirely sure as to the purpose of the Gracious Speech from the Throne in the other place when it was almost all trailed by the Prime Minister months before. It has always been clear that a large chunk of the parliamentary Session will be devoted to the consideration of the European treaty. I approach the Lisbon treaty as a pro-European. I want Europe to work. It is in all our interests that the European Union runs smoothly, and it is in all our interests that it is fit for purpose to tackle global challenges such as climate change, terrorism and illegal immigration. But—and this is a substantial ““but””—we were promised a referendum and there should be one. Everyone knows that the new treaty is a constitution in all but name. The EU Scrutiny Committee advised that only 2 of the 440 provisions in the treaty differ substantially from the original constitution. The Prime Minister is breaking a promise to put it to a vote, and I fear that people will see the fact that we are not going to have a referendum on the EU treaty as a further example of the Prime Minister's evasiveness. The Government say that no referendum is necessary because they have secured a number of exemptions from the treaty that are now being described as red lines. But will those red lines hold? One of the red lines has it that the EU charter of fundamental rights will not affect UK legislation, but that exemption may not be worth the paper it is written on. A number of MEPs have vowed to challenge Britain's exemption in the European Court of Justice, arguing that it violates the principle that EU law must be applied uniformly to all member states. The ECJ has consistently championed the supremacy of EU law, and the new treaty gives it sweeping new powers to rule on cases concerning justice and home affairs. The EU Scrutiny Committee has warned that the UK's current exemption from the European working time directive may be challenged in court by other member states. There is no guarantee in relation to the Prime Minister's so-called red lines. We should have a referendum because we were promised one, and as a pro-European I echo what was said by The Economist, which warned recently:"““The real danger is of Britain…not having a vote and watching the resentment feed into a movement to get out of the EU. Better to have a vote now." I certainly endorse that sentiment. We have known for a long time that we will be spending many hours during the Session considering the Climate Change Bill. Climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing us all. It is a moral challenge. The Select Committee on International Development, which I chaired during the last Parliament, conducted an inquiry on the impact of climate change on developing countries. Our report concluded that its impact will be felt disproportionately by low-income countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, because they are least able to manage the shocks of environmental change. This is a moral issue as well as a political one. There are three issues at stake. First, although aviation is not the biggest contributor to carbon emissions at the moment, it is estimated that by 2020, carbon emissions from flights will double, especially with the growth of budget airlines. My party proposes the idea of a tax not on passengers but on airlines to encourage full flights, and I am glad to see that the Government adopted that proposal in the pre-Budget report. Secondly, there is the need to monitor the reduction of carbon emissions. The Government say that the report on carbon emissions to see whether the UK is meeting its reduction targets should be with Parliament in 2012. That is far too far away. The only way to actively reduce emissions is to actively assess what we are doing to reduce them. Progress reports to Parliament should be made annually, so that we can see where we are and what we need to do to make further progress. Thirdly, on the Climate Change Bill specifically, we need annual targets to reduce emissions to meet the 2050 target for a 60 per cent. reduction. Everyone in this House knows that when we do not have annual targets, things simply drift, and the Bill will need to be clearer and bolder if we are to meet the agreed targets. One of the few new announcements trailed in relation to the Queen's Speech is that the Government want to extend the time that they can hold suspects without charge to 56 days. It seems to me that the Government are trying to pick numbers out of a hat. It was only in 2005 that Parliament agreed to extend detention without charge to 28 days. They then wanted 90 days. I believe that our freedoms are very precious. They have been won over many years, from the time of Magna Carta, which enshrined the principle that no one should be detained without lawful authority; the concept of habeas corpus is central to our system of criminal jurisprudence. We should not allow those who may threaten our security to corrupt our freedom and basic rights. If we do that, they have, in a sense, won something. They will have taken something precious from us. No persuasive evidence has been put to Parliament that we should curb our civil liberties—liberties that have been won over years, and which so many fought and died to defend. Allowing the state to hold people for ever-longer periods of time without charge would mean losing a freedom, which in itself would be something of a victory for those who wish to undermine our freedoms. We should not allow that. Given the introduction of a Constitutional Reform Bill to pave the way for a new bill of rights and responsibilities, it is similarly pointless for the Government to be busy undermining existing hard-won rights and freedoms. That brings me to my last point. I am proud to represent the garrison at Bicester. Men from the Royal Logistic Corps have been serving in Afghanistan and Iraq and we are very proud of them. There is understandable concern that the compact between the armed forces and Government is being undermined by poor pay and poor accommodation. Our armed forces are all too often overstretched, and recruitment and retention are being damaged. As we approach Remembrance Sunday, Parliament has to make sure that during the coming Session we spend time focusing on the importance of upholding the nation's military covenant with its service people past and present and their families. After 10 years of this Government, the Gracious Speech is a particularly disappointing one. As has been said, it could have come after a general election, which the Prime Minister was hoping to have at one stage before he bottled out. Given that, it is a surprisingly weak and thin speech that does nothing to address the fundamental challenges facing this country. We now see a Government imposing greater and greater tax burdens on individuals, families and businesses, while failing to address the ever-growing issues of globalisation or the threats to the British economy. The Government are simply running out of steam and vision.