Whitsun Adjournment

There are a few matters relating to my constituency that I wish to address. Before I do so, however, as a new Member who joined the House in 2005, I want to say how shocked I am by the way in which Parliament works, and how democracy is often thwarted here, rather than advanced. Perhaps I was simply naive before I came here and knew very little of politics so did not see the reality, but I hoped that my belief that the House was the seat of people who come here to stand up for things and fight for truth and justice was right. Like everyone else, I have been horrified by the revelations over the past few weeks, but if there is any silver lining, it is that it sometimes takes something of seismic proportions to shake the corridors of history in Parliament and to change things for the better. I hope that all hon. Members—and I was listening to the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen), who made a good contribution—will consider how the House must handle the future so that we can regain the trust and confidence of our constituents. I was very proud and privileged to become a Member of Parliament, and I hope to feel that way again very soon. With regard to the fair funding of schools in my constituency, if I say that per pupil Hackney receives £6,170, Camden £6,161, Islington £5,812 and Haringey £4,987, the House will realise that the children in my constituency receive more than £1,000 less, which is £32 million less per year. Because Hornsey and Wood Green has all the characteristics of those three inner-London boroughs, it has to pay its staff inner-London salary rates, which are much higher than the outer-London rates that it receives, and that is unfair. Children face being taught in larger classes and schools have difficulty in obtaining teachers and equipment, and that has a deleterious effect. I have raised this in Prime Minister's questions and he was kind enough to acknowledge that that was an anomaly, and I have met the Minister for Schools and Learners twice. A review is under way that will report in 2011, on which I have been refused a representative to make the case for Haringey, and I have received no assurance of any day of reckoning that will reckon in a way that I might wish to see it reckoned. Today I bring to the House another request that the children in Hornsey and Wood Green should not continue to receive £1,000 less per head than neighbouring boroughs when we face some of the worst poverty and deprivation in the country and when we have for so long received so much less than comparable boroughs. I have lost five sub-post offices in my constituency and since those closures the queues have grown horrendously. People have to wait up to 50 minutes and the average wait is 12 minutes, which is quite a long time given that it includes those occasions when there is no waiting time at all. I have been working with the Crown post office in Muswell Hill, which has put every effort into reducing its very long queues, and by adopting queue management techniques and other methods it has managed to reduce the waiting time to three minutes. Highgate used to have two sub-post offices, one at the top of the hill in Highgate village and one at the bottom by Highgate station. The one in Highgate village was closed, making it difficult for older people and parents with buggies to get to the other one. People who receive those little slips saying that the postman tried to deliver something while they were out, which is a great nuisance but it happens to all of us, have to go to the Highgate station office, which is always impossibly busy, and if they go at 12 noon on a Saturday when everyone who works during the week goes, the queues extend out into the street and are incredibly long. I am sorry—but not that sorry—to have to pillory that office in the Chamber, but it is a small, dirty, badly kept sub-post office where it is incredibly unpleasant for people to wait, and it is far too small to cope with the overspill that has resulted from the closure of the other office in Highgate village. There has been a devastating knock-on effect from the closures. I should like the Government to reconsider this and to re-open the Highgate village office, so that the elderly, home workers and mothers with buggies, who are all having a difficult time, do not have to queue for the length of time that they do currently. That goes for Alexandra post office too. I come now to one of the most serious issues that has arisen in my borough during the last year, and that is the tragedy of baby P, an issue on which I have spoken in the House a number of times, but I wish to raise it again. As the lead agency and the most to blame, Haringey council was rightly the first in line to get it most fiercely in the neck, and the consequences of that are well know through the media. There have been a number of sackings and a great revolution with the bringing in of a new director of children's services and new systems. In the last few weeks attention has been drawn to the health services, which I have sought to raise and put on the radar. I have always felt that the children's health services that led to the tragedy were a mirror image of what went on in Haringey council. In the last few weeks, the investigative journalist, Andrew Gilligan, from the Evening Standard has exposed the failings within Haringey PCT and Great Ormond Street hospital. I have raised this matter in the House before, but it did not receive the same attention then that it did when it appeared in the Evening Standard. Four paediatric consultants worked in the children's health services, which were commissioned by the PCT to Great Ormond Street, and I had often wondered why there was a locum. On inquiring, I found that since 2006, of the four consultant paediatricians, two had resigned, one was off sick and one was on special leave, so the locum, who so famously failed to recognise the broken back and ribs, was incredibly overworked. That is no excuse; obviously she was a dreadful doctor to miss such serious injuries. Nevertheless, that makes one think. What has been exposed in the past couple of weeks in the Evening Standard includes the staffing shortages, which rather than being addressed have been denied by Great Ormond Street. Unfortunately, one of the results of the righteous indignation of the nation over Members' expenses is that those very important stories have not resulted in pressure being applied to the NHS management that I might have wished, but it is now carrying out a proper investigation into what was going on in health services. The spotlight passes from one agency to another and I am still pursuing a public inquiry because many issues have not yet received the full glare of public scrutiny. I have campaigned for the publication of serious case reviews. It is such secrecy that has kept events under the radar. When concerns are raised, whether by politicians, whistleblowers or whomever, ranks are closed and secrets are kept, and the only victims are the children whose problems are not resolved, while the defensive nature of such agencies is turned on the bringer of bad news. The baby P tragedy is the tip of the iceberg because of all the cases beneath the radar that never receive such publicity. We also need a public inquiry to look into what part the budget played. Ofsted has almost got away scot-free, yet it was Ofsted that gave Haringey a clean bill of health with a three-star rating while all this was going on. When the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families instructed it to go in again, it gave a one-star rating. Something is going on. Inspection agencies must be pure and above board and not be influenced in any way by the political situation or governance. There are issues around whistleblowing, secrecy, gagging orders, the budget and opposition politics. What should someone in a responsible position in a borough such as Haringey do if they cannot get any of the scrutiny processes to take on board an examination of child protection in the borough? Famously, Sharon Shoesmith told the overview and scrutiny committee, "My department is not in need of any scrutiny. I commend it to you." We know what happened shortly after that, so a mechanism that triggers an early intervention must be introduced to the political process, too. There is no use in being so defensive. The argument follows on from what the hon. Member for Nottingham, North said: we must get all our processes right. The issue is not just about the House or expenses; it is about how we do politics. So, I am still campaigning for a public inquiry. I shall briefly touch on another issue on which I have campaigned. Will Pike, a British citizen, was hideously injured as he tried to escape the Mumbai terrorist attacks. Terrorists were walking up and down the corridors in his hotel in Mumbai, looking for British and American citizens to kill. As far as the terrorists were concerned, it was a war. Mr. Pike escaped by climbing out of a window, but the sheets that he had tied together broke and he fell. He will be paralysed and in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. His father is a constituent of mine, and I am working with him. The expenses furore also hid a story in the news about the campaign to secure compensation in this country for British citizens who are injured in terrorist attacks abroad. If one is injured in this country by a terrorist attack, one is entitled to compensation, and our argument is that if it happens to someone somewhere else in the world, they are still our responsibility and we have a moral obligation to ensure that they come home and are looked after. I have asked for a meeting with the Prime Minister, but I have not had a reply yet. If I do not get one soon, I am going to contact Joanna Lumley to help me. [Laughter.] Well, she seems to work the miracles! I shall briefly touch also on mental health issues in my constituency. St. Ann's hospital is our local mental health institution, and it has been consulting on closing one of its in-stay wards. We do not have the capacity to cope with the number of people who need admission to mental hospitals, and I met a series of service users who are absolutely desperate, because their loved ones need to go into hospital, but they cannot get in. When I brought all their considerations and problems to the attention of the management, I was told, "We're going to improve care in the community. We will put in the underpinning and enable them to live in their own homes, because, of course, it would be more preferable for them to live in their homes." However, such consultations ask people whether they agree with the principle, "Is it better if you can keep someone in their own home?" The same philosophy exists for older people. In principle, if the safety net were gold-plated and one could be sure that people would be looked after properly, having not just their medical health and mental health needs attended to, but their socialisation needs, one might be tempted to agree. However, the reality in Haringey and Hornsey and Wood Green falls far short of what people would need if such services were to exist, and I am scared that the process will go ahead regardless. The consultation has nothing to do with the real needs and desperate situations of those people and their families. I wanted to bring the issue to the Government's attention, because I am sure that Hornsey and Wood Green is not the only place in which mental health facilities are not adequate to cope with the great needs that people have. I want to get that point on the record, so that Barnet, Enfield and Haringey mental health trust sees what I have said about it, stops consulting, just listens and, I guess, does what I say. My speech is a whistle-stop tour, but my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) said that that was what one did in an Adjournment debate.