Christmas Adjournment

It is a shame that my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) is not in her place, because I want to take on her contribution to this debate regarding reorganisation in Cheshire. She attacked the decision announced today to replace the existing seven local authorities—Cheshire county council and the six district councils—with two unitary authorities, and she supports Cheshire county council's campaign to replace those seven local authorities with one unitary authority. Cheshire county council's campaign has been predicated on the view that that option saves it, which is wrong because it actually abolishes it. My hon. Friend attacked our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government by saying that this decision was hers and hers alone. However, it has been through the full process of government and has Treasury approval, so my hon. Friend is wrong on that account, too. She then tried to portray the decision to create two unitary authorities as costing Cheshire council tax payers money. That is wrong—a two-unitary solution in Cheshire will actually save them money. More money will go into local services, and there is a possibility that the council tax will be reduced. My hon. Friend then attacked the decision by saying that it was without support. This is where she is being completely disingenuous, because the proposal for two unitary authorities is supported by me and my hon. Friends the Members for City of Chester (Christine Russell) and for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller). To be fair to the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton), he also supports it, rather than having a single unitary for the whole county. Moreover, the proposal is supported by four out of the six districts, so it does have support. My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich went on to say that she was against the proposal because it would prevent three health centres, a new school and a railway station from being built in her constituency. That is absolute nonsense. The primary care trust will deliver health services in Cheshire, the Government themselves, through building schools for the future, will deliver the new school, and I suspect that Railtrack will be responsible for the rehabilitation of the railway. My hon. Friend said that the proposal would adversely affect national health services in Cheshire. Strangely enough, Cheshire already has two primary care trusts that will fit very comfortably with having two unitary authorities in the area. She then said that the proposal would adversely affect education. As we all know, the delivery of education in the area is devolved down to schools. Cheshire's excellent schools will continue to deliver their excellent services when we have two unitary authorities; I can see no particular problem with that. My hon. Friend finished by saying that there was cynicism at the heart of the decision to create two unitary authorities in Cheshire. I ask the House to consider this for cynicism. Two weeks ago, we should have had the announcement that we were to get two unitary local authorities in Cheshire. It was delayed. My hon. Friend went to see the Chief Whip and said, ““If you go ahead with the announcement, I will resign from the parliamentary Labour party, I will campaign against this decision and I will vote against the parliamentary Labour party on Europe.”” And we are accused of being cynical. I hope that that puts the record straight, and that this proposal goes ahead with the support of my hon. Friends and of the people in the two areas, which will be better served by having unitary local government than by the current two-tier system. Having got that off my chest, in the time left I will deal with the two local planning issues that I had originally wanted to start by raising. Both have national implications regarding ways in which I would like to see the law strengthened. In Weaverham, which is a very nice village in my constituency, there is company called Anaconda Investments Ltd. It purchased a plot of land with four existing dwellings, and put a proposal to the local authority to demolish those dwellings and replace them with six houses and flats at three-storey level. Vale Royal borough council, the planning authority, refused that planning application on three separate occasions. It was eventually granted on appeal. If Anaconda had stuck to the permission that it was given on appeal, I would not be raising this issue now. However, it decided to overdevelop the site, and everybody who has looked at it agrees that it is completely overdeveloped. Anaconda was then told to put in fresh submission—a fresh, retrospective planning application—which it did. The local authority refused that retrospective application. It went to appeal, and the local authority's position on one of the blocks in this development was upheld. That block remains in place. The area is oppressive, and the block in question seriously affects the residential and visual amenity of my constituents Mr. and Mrs. Carter, of 6 Greenwood close. The development is completely out of character with the area in which it is located. The council served an enforcement notice on the company, and that notice is going to appeal some time in the new year. The problems arising from that development dovetail nicely with those of another development in the green belt in my constituency. A group of Travellers purchased a greenfield site in my constituency, occupied it without planning permission and turned it into a Traveller's site. The local authority, Vale Royal borough council, acted very quickly in trying to get the Travellers removed. The case went to court, and the judge refused to grant the removal and allowed the Travellers to stay. They have, I think, permission to stay until next July, which will mean that they will have been on the site for well over 18 months. The field in question is, as I say, a greenfield site in the green belt. It was designated green belt in the first review of the Vale Royal local plan, yet a group of Travellers is riding roughshod through the planning procedures. I want the Department for Communities and Local Government to strengthen planning law to give local authorities more enforcement powers to deal with particular planning applications that are granted on appeal, so that they can make sure that they comply with the parameters established on appeal. Where the green belt is breached, local authorities should be able to take effective action to stop that happening. That is an important thing that we could do. It would give local authorities far more power to intervene and would give the courts less power to frustrate our planning laws. The next important issue that I would like to raise with the Minister relates to the Criminal Records Bureau. A constituent—I shall call him Mr. Smith to protect his identity—applied for a job as a gardener with a company called Peverel Management. The application form asked whether he had any criminal convictions, and he ticked the box marked ““No””. Peverel did a check on my constituent with the CRB, found that he had two minor convictions and sacked him on the spot. The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 makes it clear that those two convictions were spent convictions, that my constituent did not have to declare them on his form and that they should not have barred him from employment or brought him the sack. My constituent could not go to an industrial tribunal because he had not been working for the company for longer than six months. He has not been reinstated, and there is no provision in the 1974 Act to take action against people who breach it by refusing to take account of the fact that a conviction has been spent. The situation is even worse, because the Police Act 1997 says that it is wrong for people to seek information from the CRB in such circumstances—a provision that was also broken. The only thing that the CRB can do is deregister the company that applied illegally for the information. My constituent found himself out of work and the company found themselves completely at odds with the law, but no sanction was taken against it. That is serious, and I urge the Minister to take up the issue with her ministerial colleagues. I shall finish on a tragic note. On 24 October, two of my constituents, both young boys, Guy Davies and Kieran Coupe, were killed on the M56 in the Murdishaw part of my constituency. Information will doubtless emerge at the inquiry as to why two young boys, who were aged six and a half and seven, were on the motorway at the time of night that they were, but this was a tragic event for their families and for the people driving the cars involved in the collisions. I immediately met the chief constable, the chief executive of Halton borough council and senior management from the Highways Agency. They were all of the opinion that we ought not to have a knee-jerk reaction to the tragedy, and that we should examine the situation to see whether there was anything that we could possibly do. Two things that I would like done occurred to me. Fencing on motorways is designed to keep farm animals off the carriageway, not to prevent anyone from gaining access to motorways. I would like the Highways Agency to re-examine the safety precaution measures to see whether we can make it more difficult for pedestrians to get on to motorways, particularly where they run through areas of high population density. We must also ensure that the green cross code and road safety issues are taught at even the youngest levels in our schools, and outline the serious dangers involved in very young people finding themselves on main roads and motorways where they ought not to be, as happened in this case. I again offer the families my sincere condolences. In the 90 seconds left available to me, I want to raise one other issue: police pay. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) made a powerful case for the police pay review to be implemented in full from 1 September. He made the pertinent point that each police authority has already budgeted to pay the 2.5 per cent. increase and that we are doing something unnecessary. We have lost a great deal of police good will. They do not have the right to strike, nor do they have access to the other forms of industrial action that other public sector workers can take. They need to be able to have confidence in a pay review body that will deliver them a fair wage for the very serious job that they do. Even at this stage, I urge the Minister to re-examine this issue so that we can ensure that the UK's police officers have a fair wage for doing an extremely dangerous job and for putting their lives on the line. We must give them the confidence that the outcomes of their future pay negotiations will be met in full. If we can do that, we will be able to rest assured that we have got far greater numbers of police than ever before, that they have greater powers to do the work that they carry out on our behalf and that they are properly remunerated for the work that they do. That would be an excellent Christmas present for Her Majesty's police.