Whitsun Adjournment

The Leader of Her Majesty's official Opposition, the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), came to my constituency on 27 April. The roadshow billed as Cameron Direct rolled into Colchester, stayed about an hour and then rolled on, the 28th stop of his national tour over. Admission to hear him was by ticket only, not for reasons of popularity, with a sell-out expected, but to keep out those who were not of the faith. I am glad that he came, and I am particularly grateful to him for publicly endorsing what the Conservatives are doing locally. That will boost the electoral fortunes of my party. Colchester is the only part of Essex that does not have a Tory council. I had hoped that the Leader of the Opposition would listen to local people on the biggest local issues in the town, but he did not. I hoped that he would persuade the county Tories that they were wrong, but he did not. The real losers in all that are not the Conservatives, although that would be a welcome by-product, but the people whom I have the honour of representing. Like it or not, national and local politics are part of the same fabric. They are interwoven. National decisions and policies affect local decisions and policies. Of course we must try to separate the two as much as we can, but the realities of life, so far as the Conservative party is concerned, were confirmed by the Cameron Direct visit to Colchester. Actually, I quite like the right hon. Gentleman as a person. We are on first-name terms. That dates back to when we served together on the Home Affairs Committee, notably on our inquiry into drugs. His views on the subject were far more liberal than mine, as the official record confirms. It also goes back to when, along with the shadow Chancellor, we met regularly in the mornings, here in the House of Commons, to discuss the issues of the day. Indeed, I recall providing helpful advice and encouragement to the right hon. Member for Witney when he decided to stand for the leadership of the Conservative party. One of the great delights of this place is the Members' bathroom, which is best described as a posh version of a typical sports changing room. It has a communal area, but separate baths and showers. It was here that we exchanged banter and political observations. Two of the policies that I suggested to the right hon. Gentleman as part of what he billed as his "compassionate Conservative" agenda have been adopted by him, although he has never given me the credit. Sadly, since his elevation to party leader, both he and his shadow Chancellor have stopped that early-morning visitation to the Members' bathroom; presumably, they have even grander surroundings to go to. It was thus in a spirit of comradeship that I sent the leader of the Conservative party a briefing about the political situation in Colchester. I sensed that perhaps the local Tories would not be frank about how, in May last year, against the national tide of Conservative victories, they managed to lose five seats on Colchester borough council and, with them, control of the council—the only place in the east of England where such a disaster for the Tories occurred. The huge rejection of the Tories in Colchester was due not to national issues but to local ones; I thought it would be helpful if I explained that to the right hon. Gentleman. He subsequently thanked me. Unfortunately, he ignored my helpful briefing, and endorsed the very policies that last year saw his party humiliated in Colchester. The front-page headline in the following day's Colchester Gazette read: "David supports school closure scheme". That is very helpful to my party, but a huge disappointment to the people of Colchester who are overwhelmingly opposed—the figure is 96 per cent., according to Essex county council's own consultation—to the closure of two secondary schools in my town and the reconfiguration of the five that remain, all of which will have to expand dramatically. The whole so-called public consultation was a farce. It is not only the people of Colchester whom the Leader of the Opposition let down by backing the plans of his Tory chums on the county council. The leader of that council, Lord Hanningfield, is one of his Front-Bench spokesmen in the House of Lords. Every Conservative borough councillor in Colchester is opposed to what their Conservative colleagues at county hall are proposing. There is a massive split in the Tory party in that part of Essex. Instead of backing the people of Colchester, however, the Leader of the Opposition chose to support the county Tories, based 30 miles away in Chelmsford. Colchester is one of the fastest-growing areas in Britain. In terms of population, it is the country's second-largest borough, with some 175,000 residents. There are many unitary councils with a smaller population. If Colchester had a unitary council, the two secondary schools—Alderman Blaxill and Thomas Lord Audley—would not be shutting. The borough council proposed alternative measures that would have meant retaining both schools. At December's borough council meeting, not a single Tory councillor backed both closures; they proposed a merger with a new academy on a new site, but at least they recognised that there needed to be a secondary school somewhere in the south of the town, where more than 2,000 new houses are being built on the site of the former Colchester garrison. The hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin), some of whose constituents go to Alderman Blaxill and Thomas Lord Audley, also supported the concept of a merger and an academy.