Whitsun Adjournment

I apologise to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and other hon. Members, particularly those on the Government Benches, because I know that the Deputy Leader of the House is near boiling point in his exasperation at wanting to get away for the Whitsun recess. I can sympathise with that, because we had an important statement today on the Gurkhas and I had to rush out to celebrate with the Gurkhas who are outside. I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Bob Russell), along with myself and a number of others, was given one of these rather marvellous scarves as a token of the appreciation that the Gurkhas feel for the vote that the House took and which the Government have now respected. I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to one person in particular who has not had any credit in this whole saga, but who will, when the history is written, be seen as the key figure, notwithstanding the immense contributions made by so many other people, such as Joanna Lumley and others. That is a gentleman by the name of Peter Carroll, who picked up the campaign and ran with it six years ago in Folkestone, when the Gurkhas there went to their MP and failed to get support for their cause. Peter was the Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate at the time and has been involved since. He embodies the old principle that a man can achieve anything in life if he is prepared to give someone else the credit for it. Peter has given everyone else the credit for the campaign, but he has been very much the prime mover behind it. We all, but particularly the Gurkhas, owe him a considerable debt of gratitude. Let me deal with some local issues before we adjourn for the recess. I am particularly concerned about the effects of recent Government decisions regarding the building programme of the Learning and Skills Council on both Eastleigh college and Barton Peveril college, both of which were seriously encouraged by the LSC to draw up plans for replacing old buildings and for expansion. There was an important new scheme for higher skills at Rookwood, which would be very important for higher-value manufacturing skills in our area, but all that is now on hold despite both colleges having spent substantial amounts on professional fees such as architects' fees. They have spent more than £500,000, but they are not guaranteed to get it all back from the Government. It is a complete shambles. It is necessary to go ahead with those schemes, which would provide important benefits to future generations, and there is no reason to prevent them from happening. The principle that one can borrow to invest is well established in every soundly run business and it ought to be well established within government, but that principle is at stake because of the LSC's attitude towards Eastleigh college, Barton Peveril college and many other colleges across the country. While I am discussing Eastleigh town, let me congratulate my local council and its leader, Keith House, on opening the first cinema complex for many years in the town centre. That is the latest step in the borough council's efforts to ensure that the town is able to survive in an age when an increasing proportion of retail sales are being sucked into the maw of the great supermarket groups—Asda, Sainsbury and Tesco are all represented nearby in my constituency, and it is an enormous struggle to ensure that there is still life in the town centre, particularly given that it was recently calculated that in one expansion Asda added the equivalent of 60 town centre shops in new floor space. Finding new ways of ensuring that the town centre stays alive is absolutely crucial to the success and health of Eastleigh. The opening of the cinema and bowling complex, and all the leisure activities that we hope will come with it, is an important step on which I congratulate the council. Voluntary work continues to be absolutely crucial in my constituency. I commend in particular the expansion of the street pastors scheme. There was a successful scheme in Fareham, and it has now been launched in Eastleigh. I very much look forward to the scheme having an impact in the constituency by preventing young people from feeling alienated, and by ensuring that they have things to do. We have put a lot of effort into opening youth facilities in the constituency, and the street pastors have a key role to play in pastoral care and in helping to prevent the problems in town centres on Friday and Saturday evenings of which Members across the country will be aware. A key local issue for my constituency is the proposal in the south-east plan for a new town—a special development area—north and north-east of Hedge End, effectively surrounding the hamlet of Borley Green and spreading into the Winchester constituency as far as Durley. The lack of public consultation on those proposals flabbergasts me. Constituents would have had more notice, through the planning process, of a porch being proposed by a neighbour than they have had about 6,000 new homes being landed on their doorstep in a way that will change irreparably the communities of Botley and Borley Green, as well as the surrounding countryside. If we propose to build an extension to our home, we have to apply for planning permission, and those most directly affected will be notified directly, in writing. In this case, however, the body whose responsibility for consulting on the south-east plan is clearly set out in statute—namely, Hampshire county council—sent out generalised literature, much of which was not delivered in the areas that will be most affected by this SDA. We strongly oppose the siting of a new town in this position, particularly as there has been such inadequate consultation and inadequate work done on alternative sites. Another example of the planning process letting down my constituents arises further south, on the Solent at Hamble. The county council is proposing to excavate a gravel pit on the old airfield. It would scoop up a metre from the surface, but the council has provided no evidence that that is necessary. Quite apart from the impact of the recession, there has been a steady reduction in the requirement for building aggregates. The effect of going ahead with this plan would be to turn a greenfield site into an industrial brownfield site, which would of course be much easier to develop for housing under the planning rules. I believe that that is the real agenda behind this plan. It is no accident that Hamble airfield is owned by a housing company, or that that company supports the building of the gravel pit. It knows that that is a back-door way of getting planning permission to build much more housing on the site in due course. Given how stressed Hamble lane and the access to the Hamble peninsula already are, and the sensitive nature of Hamble village itself, this development would be a disaster, and we should oppose it. I very much hope that the county council will relent, and recognise that the development is not needed to provide aggregates for the county and that we should look elsewhere in due course. I want to mention two more issues. I agree with hon. Members who have mentioned the problems afflicting local public houses. We recently calculated that public houses in south Hampshire were closing at an even faster rate than the national average. This is not merely a question of ensuring that alcohol tax increases do not rise substantially above the rate of inflation, as some Members and some lobbies have suggested, but of tackling some of the dramatic giveaways by the supermarket chains. These are loss leaders designed to bring in trade, and they involve selling alcohol at below cost price. This is an important issue that we need to deal with. This week, I was encouraged by the support for the campaign for a minimum price for alcohol. Some hon. Members have suggested that young people in particular would oppose that idea because they would not be able to afford to buy alcohol, so I was pleased to see that the National Union of Students, among others, now backs the campaign. A minimum price would have the clear effect of encouraging people back into their community public houses. It is greatly preferable that when people drink, they do so in company, and in way that will enable their public houses to continue to be the centre of the community, as they have been in so many parts of the country until now. Lastly, I would like to mention a pressing need that I hope the Government will address. I hope that the Minister will be able to provide us with some reassurance on the desperate need to provide local authorities with the powers to re-regulate buses. We have an extraordinary fight going on between the dominant local bus company, Bluestar, and a young, new, innovative competitor, Black Velvet, which to its credit attempted to provide a number of important new services—connecting, for example, Fair Oak, Chandler's Ford and Velmore with Eastleigh. When those services, which were greatly welcomed by my constituents, began, the dominant company, Bluestar, suddenly took an interest in the same routes and decided that it, too, would run services just three minutes ahead or 10 minutes behind those already provided in an attempt to scoop up all the business. What happened is that the new, innovative and young competitor, Black Velvet, was driven out of these routes and had to announce that it did not have the financial resources to continue to provide these services. Then, lo and behold, a few weeks after Black Velvet had pulled the plug on the new routes, Bluestar turned round and said that it was pulling the plug on them as well. Frankly, that is outrageous, bully-boy behaviour on the part of the dominant bus company. I intend to take the matter up with the Office of Fair Trading to see whether any competition laws can prevent this sort of predatory behaviour against a smaller innovative bus company. I urge the Government to provide time to debate the issue in the House and ensure that local authorities have the regulatory powers to ensure real competition between bus companies rather than this sort of anarchy, which leads to a worse service for my constituents. Frankly, it is a scandal. I would like to pay tribute to my local daily newspaper, The Southern Daily Echo, for picking up the issue and campaigning on it. It is an important issue, particularly for those who rely on public transport. Those who do not have access to cars—often those on the lowest incomes—want better bus services and they are not getting them at the moment. It is time to look at the whole misguided policy of deregulating the buses, which emerged under the last Conservative Government, and to find a way of running them on a much better basis.