Tag: Maiden Speech

John Denham – 1992 Maiden Speech in the House of Commons

Below is the text of the maiden speech made in the House of Commons by John Denham on 20 May 1992.

While offering you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, my congratulations on your new post, may I also thank you for the opportunity to make my maiden speech in this historic debate? Looking around the Chamber, I suspect that I will set a record as the new Labour Member to have sat the longest time in one sitting before making a maiden speech. I only hope that, by the end of it, no one will feel that few have sat for so long to say so little.

We have heard some good maiden speeches tonight. I was especially interested in the speech of the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Mr. Milligan), who represents the constituency next door to mine. Last week, he wrote to the Boundary Commission suggesting that the ward of Woolston in Southampton be transferred from the Eastleigh constituency to my constituency. It is an extremely strongly Labour-voting ward. Whilst the transfer would therefore have the deplorable effect of ensuring that the hon. Member for Eastleigh remains the Member for that constituency for as long as his party selects him to do so, it would also have the admirable effect of achieving the same result for me in my constituency. That seems to provide a basis for a long-lasting partnership between the two of us.

I am interested in election results. My majority might be described as wafer-thin. I replace the only person to break Labour’s line of electoral successes in the constituency since the second world war. Chris Chope was above all a conviction Thatcherite politician. When he told the press that he cried when Margaret Thatcher lost the leadership of the Conservative party, he restated his political position in a memorable way. He also confounded some of us by finally revealing the issue on which he could show such deep human emotion.

It is debatable whether Chris Chope’s resolve to drive a six-lane motorway deep through a beautiful Hampshire down finally cost him his seat, but the determination with which he set about the task was certainly typical of him. I do not want to seem ungenerous. In the constituency, Chris Chope will be thanked by many hundreds of families for his work on the Housing Defects Act 1984. There are many pre-cast reinforced concrete homes in the constituency. Secondly, although a member of the Tory Right, he never attempted to play what is euphemistically known as the race card in my constituency. By refusing to use poison for political advantage he contributed to the fact that, although racism is definitely serious and present in the constituency, it is by no means as bad as it is in many other multiracial parts of the country.

Thirdly, from the moment that Chris Chope entered the House to the moment he left it he was a politician who stood up consistently and forthrightly for the values in which he believed. As far as I know, he never tried to shift with the tides of changing public opinion. That is probably what he would most like me to say about his time in the House.

While waiting to make my maiden speech, I could hardly say that I felt at home, but at times I felt a sense of deja vu. As far as I can remember, my first involvement in a national political campaign was during the referendum on Europe. I voted no, but as time went by, as transnational companies came to dominate our economy more than ever before, as the financial system was deregulated more than we had ever thought possible in the 1970s, and as our economy became more integrated with that of Europe, as Europe became real and inevitable, there were times when I wondered what had happened to the ghost of the “no” campaign of the 1970s. Had it, like a traditional ghost, been doomed to wander the corridors and rooms of a venerable palace? Sitting here tonight, while my eyes closed occasionally and while I listened to the voices around me, I could hear the ghosts of that campaign. I believe that such ghosts are better exorcised than reincarnated.

I represent a large part of the great city of Southampton. There are few cities in this country which have been so shaped by the world at large and which have done so much to shape the world at large. My city’s history is international, cosmopolitan, ambitious and courageous. The banks of the Rivers Itchen and Test, which flow through and past my constituency, have over the centuries been invaded, raided and bombed. Troops have left the port of Southampton to go to many conflicts—English archers to Agincourt and allied troops to the Normandy beaches among them.

In its time, the Saxon port of Hamwic was a rival to Viking York in the wealth and extent of its trade links, even then reaching deep into the heart of modern Russia. The Pilgrim Fathers left from Southampton—not Plymouth, as Plymouth’s tourist board sometimes claims—on their historic voyage to America.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, the development of the modern port once again put Southampton at the heart of an international network of trade and of people. From the Huguenot weavers onwards, people have come to my city from all parts of the world and all parts of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland to make Southampton the place that it is today. Because of that history, the international world and the European world hold few fears for Southampton today. It is a great European city and will grow as a great European city. A city council report, which was debated today while I was here, stated: Southampton must stand for quality, equality and opportunity as a leading cosmopolitan city in Europe. If any right hon. or hon. Members are at a loose end in the recess next week. I invite them to Southampton and to the international trade fair which opens next week. Visitors will be struck by the commitment, vision, participation and strong partnerships for success in Europe which exist in the city.

After all, what is the significance of hundreds of schoolchildren and older students participating in educational exchanges, or of pensioners attending the recent European pensioners’ parliament in Strasbourg? What is the significance of a chamber of commerce forging strong links with other chambers of commerce in Rouen, Le Havre, Barcelona and elsewhere, or of trade unions regularly meeting their colleagues in Germany, France and Spain?

What is the significance of traffic engineers collaborating with colleagues in Greece and Germany on the problems of urban congestion, or of the university, the institute of higher education and the technical college with literally hundreds of academic and training links? What is the significance of a city council whose ties with Le Havre and Rems-Muir-Kreiss are not tea parties but the real basis of economic collaboration and of co-operation in training, research and culture?

I suggest that the significance is that Europe, in a city such as Southampton, is not an abstract entity to be dissected in an academic way as some hon. Members have done today. Instead, it is a living reality. All the links that I have mentioned, and many others, are part of a real commitment on the part of the city to make Europe work.

My city has a breadth of vision of Europe. It is a vision that includes the understanding that Europe, above all, must be for people. Those of us who live in a great European city, one that is already organically tied to Europe in every part of its daily economic life, know that economic success is only half the challenge.

I have constituents who ask questions about Europe. Pensioners ask whether there will be a European future for them or whether they will always be the most shabbily treated pensioners in Europe. Parents ask whether their children have a European children’s future or whether they will always have less chance of child care and nursery education than children in most other European countries. Young people ask whether they will have a European future here or on the continent without the quality of education and training that other young Europeans enjoy.

Those who ask those questions do not do so because they do not want to be part of Europe. They want to be full partners in Europe in every way, in a Europe for people and not in a Europe with 11 players and the United Kingdom on the substitutes’ bench. In Southampton there is participation, commitment, vision and partnership.

Yesterday, the director of the chamber of commerce wrote to me as follows: A significant ingredient in our future economic development is the close partnership existing between the Chamber and the City Council. It is a Labour city council that is at the heart of Southampton’s European drive. It is not doing everything and controlling everything, but it is shaping, guiding, focusing, supporting, providing an infrastructure, opening up the waterfront, investing in science parks and providing services which are at the core of a successful united effort in Europe. As I have said, it is a Labour city council.

I must contrast the mood and achievement in Southampton with much of what I have heard in the House and with the Government’s record. The Government’s commitment is shallow. The bottom line is that nothing shall be done to promote Britain’s interests in Europe which can possibly conflict with the interests of the Conservative party in Britain.

There is narrow participation in a Europe for business perhaps, but not for a Europe for people. There is myopic vision in which the options seem to be, “Take it if you like it; leave it if you don’t.” There is no understanding of grasping Europe and using it as the opportunity that it really is. There has been a rejection of partnership. The Government have turned their back on the proper role of elected government at local, national, regional and European levels in shaping a Europe for all their people.

There is not time to dwell on the details of the many Divisions which lie ahead, tomorrow and in the coming weeks, and it might not be proper to do so in a maiden speech. I know, however, that the message which goes from the House must be that what Southampton is doing is right. Any message going from the House which questions what a city like Southampton is doing to be a great European city will be a great and bitter disappointment to the thousands of my constituents who are building a new Europe and a great European city.

December 9, 2015
David Miliband – 2001 Maiden Speech in the House of Commons

Below is the text of the maiden speech made by David Miliband in the House of Commons on 25th June 2001.

I have listened carefully to the serious and interesting contributions in this debate. I extend my congratulations to hon. Members who have made excellent maiden speeches. My hon. Friends the Members for Aberavon (Dr. Francis), for Morley and Rothwell (Mr. Challen) and for Telford (David Wright) made powerful and persuasive contributions. My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Mr. Bryant) showed that, although he may have abandoned the cloth, he has not lost the gift of the preacher. I am grateful for the chance to join them and address the House for the first time.

South Shields is a constituency where unemployment is three times the national average, where the rate of economic inactivity is one of the highest in Britain and where the collapse of the mining and shipbuilding industries has brought massive economic change and wrought real economic pain. It is therefore appropriate that I should make my maiden speech in a debate on economic policy as part of a Queen’s Speech that is dedicated to defining and reforming the Government’s role in a modern society, for I am here to represent a constituency and to stand up for an ideal—the power of our action together to create a more equal, more productive society.

A maiden speech is a daunting occasion. One of my predecessors, Mr. Cecil Cochrane, waited 12 months before opening his account in the House. He then said: I was commissioned … to render the Government every possible support during the War, and I am not certain … that I have not rendered that support better by keeping silent than I should have done by asking you … to notice me before.”—[Official Report, 22 May 1917; Vol. 93, c. 2205–206.] I hope that I do not come to regret opening my mouth sooner than Mr. Cochrane, but my commission is to represent the people of South Shields and it is about them and their needs that I want to speak.

First, I pay tribute to my immediate predecessor, David Clark. He spent 22 years working hard for the people of South Shields and had a distinguished ministerial and parliamentary career. He has a permanent memorial of his commitment to the constituency and his passion for the environment in the magnificent leas, now owned by the National Trust, along the South Shields coastline. I am sure that he will make a distinguished contribution to the other place.

South Shields is a town of rich heritage and great diversity. It is known for its river, its mines and the sea. It is also a political town, steadfast in its values, rich in a tradition of radicalism and reform rooted in trade unionism and community organisation. The people of South Shields know the dignity of work, the difficulty of economic change and the difference that an active, enabling Government can make; they know how high quality public services can liberate them as individuals and lift up our entire society; and they know that although there has been progress in the past four years, the work to tackle inequality of life chances is nowhere near done.

South Shields has real strengths. The Port of Tyne Authority has more than 1,000 employees; shipyard and engineering workers have skills and expertise second to none; and there are growing companies in the manufacturing, retail and finance sectors. After four years of fast progress, the performance of our primary schools now outstrips the national average. South Tyneside college is a world leader in marine and nautical studies. Crime in South Shields is falling and housing and social services are improving.

The town boasts more than 200 voluntary organisations, as well as Britain’s oldest local daily newspaper, the Shields Gazette South Shields did not just provide the inspiration for Britain’s most-read author, Catherine Cookson, but now has a vibrant artistic life centred on the old Customs house. Its coastline is magnificent, its neighbourhoods diverse, and its people warm and hard working.

There is more. South Shields football club is only 12 divisions off the premiership, in the Albany Insurance northern league. For a nervous first-time candidate, the local team provides the perfect answer to the difficult choice between professing allegiance to Newcastle football club or Sunderland football club. In that, as in much else, South Shields has no trouble finding a third way.

South Shields also has a long, proud, multicultural tradition. The town’s roots go back to Roman legions and Danish settlers. Our Yemeni community, about 1,000 strong, dates back to the 1890s. The Bangladeshi community, of similar size, now into its third generation, is ready to challenge Birmingham as the curry capital of Britain. Both communities play a vital part in the life of South Shields.

The River Tyne has sent whalers to the Arctic, shipped trains to the Punjab, refuelled Navy destroyers for the fight against fascism and sent the first lifeboats to sea to rescue those in trouble; in return have come goods, ideas, investment and people. Just as the river gives and the river takes, so South Shields depends on what we take from the world and what we can give back. I have special reason to know this.

Over 50 years ago, my distinguished predecessor as Member for South Shields, J. Chuter Ede, was Home Secretary in the 1945 Government—probably the greatest reforming Government in our history. One of his hardest tasks was to make decisions on immigration applications from millions of refugees around Europe. There were many hard cases. One application came from a man who had spent the war here, separated from his wife and daughter who were in occupied Belgium, but with his son, who studied at school and then served in the Royal Navy.

The man who lodged that application was my grandfather, Samuel Miliband. Despite long correspondence, the then Home Secretary felt compelled to deny his application. There could not, he wrote, be exceptions. My father had previously been given leave to stay, and later, I am pleased to say, my grandparents were allowed to join him.

Inclusion and opportunity have been the great motors of progress throughout human history. For me, it is a sign of hope for South Shields, and hope for Britain, that the grandson of a man denied residence in Britain by the then Member for South Shields can, 50 years later, represent South Shields in the House; but my job will not be done until every person in South Shields is able to develop every part of his or her potential to the full.

South Shields is a great town with great people, but they have so much more to give. It is the Government’s job to help them all to shine. Unemployment has fallen by more than 1,000 since 1997, but in Rekendyke ward, it is more than 17 per cent.; in Tyne Dock, 11 per cent.; in Beacon and Bents, 11 per cent. Those figures represent a toll of misery and waste. Some 60 per cent, of young people in South Shields fail to get five good GCSEs—more waste. Long-term illness, often associated with mining, affects one in five households—more pain.

To those who say that economic policy is for middle England and social policy for the Labour heartlands, South Shields replies I that a strong economy and a strong society are inseparable and must be built together, with leadership from Government. In South Shields, icy North sea winds lead people to say “cold hands, but warm heart”. Today, we need a Government with helping hands and a warm heart.

I am glad to say that the priorities of the Queen’s Speech are the priorities of South Shields. In my previous role, I was privileged to play an advisory part in developing the manifesto on which the Labour party was elected to serve a second full term, but I now feel much more privileged to be elected by the people of South Shields to ensure that they receive the full benefit of the policies in that manifesto.

South Shields needs investment in skills, transport and business support to tackle unemployment. We need investment and reform to support our teachers in building up secondary education and to sustain all staff in building up the health service. We need modernisation of the tax and benefit system to tackle child and pensioner poverty. As well as innovative legislation for new ideas, we need effective administration of policies already announced, from expansion of services for under-fives to swift action for miners’ compensation.

South Shields has a unique political history. I am the only Member of the House who can say that, since the first Reform Act of 1832, his constituency has never elected a Conservative Member of Parliament. Until the first World War, the Liberal tradition was dominant, but for 70 years, South Shields has been a Labour town. Throughout that period, South Shields has benefited from flashes of Labour radicalism. The Housing (Financial Provisions) Act 1924—known as the Wheatley housing Act—brought council housing. The 1945 Government brought new health facilities. The 1964 Government brought development assistance. The 1974 Government brought child benefit. The 1997 Government enacted the new deal and the minimum wage. Through all that time, however, South Shields suffered because those flashes of radicalism were never consolidated by two consecutive terms of Labour government.

For 70 years, South Shields has felt like a Labour town in a Conservative country. Following the general election, I am glad to say that South Shields feels like a Labour town in a Labour country, making common cause across divides of tradition and geography with people across Britain who share its values and its priorities: public services based on need, active government dedicated to spreading wealth and opportunity, communities built on tolerance and mutual responsibility.

South Shields is bounded by the River Tyne and the North sea, but our town is outward looking. Our community is south Tyneside; our economy is Tyne and Wear and the wider north-east; our commitments and connections stretch across continents.

I chose to stand in South Shields and now South Shields has chosen me. I believe in the potential of inclusion, the power of opportunity and our responsibility to extend it to all. That is the hope for South Shields. That is the message of the Queen’s Speech. That is the cause that I shall stand for every day that the people of South Shields choose to send me to this House.

December 9, 2015
Alan Milburn – 1992 Maiden Speech in the House of Commons

Below is the text of the maiden speech made by Alan Milburn in the House of Commons on 11th May 1992.

It is with a great sense of pride that I rise to make my maiden speech—in, appropriately enough, a debate about the future of British Rail. As hon. Members will know, the railways and the town of Darlington, which I am proud to represent, are virtually synonymous. Darlington, however, has another reputation, of which hon. Members are probably aware: its reputation as a barometer marginal seat.

It is my pleasure to say a word or two about my predecessors. My immediate predecessor, Michael Fallon, was a man of impeccably right-wing views. Indeed, he remained a devoted follower of Mrs. Thatcher even when that fell somewhat out of fashion on the Conservative Benches. He was, none the less, a hard-working Member of Parliament who rose to junior ministerial rank, and I wish him well in his new career outside Parliament.

I also pay tribute to my two immediate Labour predecessors, Ossie O’Brien and Ted Fletcher. Ossie had the misfortune to serve in the House for only six weeks after his splendid victory in the 1983 by-election; Ted, by contrast, sat for nearly 19 years, often bucking the national trend by dint of his diligence and personal popularity in the town of Darlington. Like those hon. Members, I will always put Darlington’s interests first, and will do my utmost to maintain their record of service to the town’s residents.

As hon. Members will know, Darlington gave birth to the railways, and so helped to spawn the first industrial revolution. Happily, that spirit of engineering enterprise and skill remains alive today in the string of top international companies for which Darlington is home: Cummins, Bowaters, Torringtons, Rothmans, and Cleveland Structural Engineering, to name but a few. One of those companies, Cleveland Structural Engineering, beat off international competition last week to win the contract to build the Tsing Ma bridge in Hong Kong. The bridge will be the largest structure of its kind in the world, and, like the Sydney harbour bridge, the Tyne bridge and the Humber bridge, it will be built in my constituency. I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the House will join me in congratulating both the work force and the management of CSE on their well-earned success. Whenever I have visited the Yarm road factory, I have been immensely impressed by the skills and commitment that I have seen there; now, they have obtained their just reward.

Although I am delighted by Cleveland’s success, after hearing the Gracious Speech I am less optimistic about the future for British industry as a whole. The speech was virtually silent about the economy, which remains in such dire straits. That the word “unemployment” did not even earn a mention is an insult to the 4,740 people in the Darlington district who remain without work. The recession has already cost 1,300 manufacturing jobs in my constituency, but all the major forecasts suggest that unemployment is set to go on rising.

Last year’s record fall in industrial investment risks plunging the country into a repeat of the economic mistakes of the mid-1980s—capacity failing to meet demand, thus forcing up imports and prices and lea ding inevitably to a Government-engineered slowdown. Companies such as CSE deserve better than that. They should be able to rely on the same support as is available to their foreign competitors from their home Governments: measures to stimulate investment in training, transport and technology. Yet here, in the middle of the longest recession since the war, we have the spectacle of the Durham training and enterprise council being forced to cut adult training by more than 20 per cent. in Darlington because its budget has been squeezed dry once again. It is a scandal that those offering youth training will have to provide more for less. Funding for non-endorsed training weeks has fallen from £31 to £28. What was training on the cheap is rapidly becoming training for a pittance.

These cheap and nasty cuts are pouring Darlington’s future down the drain. I fear that, without a change in policy, Darlington’s very real potential for economic take-off will be grounded, even before it has started. That would be a tragedy because, as Cleveland’s success amply shows, we have much to be proud of in the town of Darlington. The town is ideally placed to be at the core of a new industrial revolution that will bring more high-quality, high-skilled, high-tech, and high-paid employment.

Darlington’s fortunes, however, depend upon the Government removing the ideological blinkers that so restrict their vision and rethinking their hostility to manufacturing and their indifference to the north. The Government’s preoccupation with the privatisation of the railways is, classically, a triumph of ideological hope over the experience of those countries who owe their fast, efficient and safe railway systems to Government policies on planning and investment. The dictum that the market, and nothing but the market, can bring prosperity to areas like the north has proved disastrously wrong. After 13 years, unemployment is higher, the number of people in work lower and the gap between the rich and the poor ever wider.

Last week I listened with great interest to the Prime Minister’s promise to open up the powers of Government to public scrutiny. I hope that he will go one stage further and devolve power out from Whitehall to the regions and nations of our land. If the Prime Minister is serious about breaking down concentrations of unaccountable power, he will begin by reversing that process of creeping centralisation that has so characterised Conservative party policies since 1979. The north not only needs restoration of regional policy and proper investment in our transport infrastructure to allow us to compete against better placed regions and nations at the core of the single European market, but we need the right to determine our own future through a new structure of regional government that will take power from the centre.

Any process of devolution should include giving towns such as Darlington the right to run all their own services. In 1974, Darlington lost its county borough status because of the last Conservative reorganisation of local government. Ministers now have an oppportunity to put matters right by returning to the people of Darlington the powers that are rightfully theirs. I am looking not for any special favours for Darlington, but for policies that will rightly reward the vigour, loyalty and skill of its people. Too many of my constituents have paid the price for the records that the Government have set in the town in recent years—record bankruptcies, record mortgage repossessions and record hospital waiting lists.

I fear that the policies in the Gracious Speech mean yet more of the same. Darlington deserves a new spirit that forsakes the short term, the quick fix, the “me at the expense of the rest”—a spirit that says that all of us rely on common services because we are all part of the same community.

For those of us who grew up in the north-east, the past few years have seen a loss of that sense of community which used to characterise life there. When the Conservative party declared that there was no such thing as society, it acknowledged that, by its policies, people had been cut adrift from their communities, and as community has been denied so hope has been smothered. Hope can return to the communities of the north-east, but it needs policies that put talents to use rather than allow them to go to waste; policies that will reduce crime by putting sufficient police officers on our streets. It means policies that will restore pride by cleaning up our environment. It means tackling the obscenity of homelessness and investing in our hospitals and schools. It means, above all, giving regions such as the north-east and towns such as Darlington the chance to compete. It will be my privilige to fight for those policies in the House, I hope for many years to come. I shall do so in order to benefit the whole community of Darlington.

December 8, 2015
Francis Maude – 1983 Maiden Speech to the House of Commons

Francis Maude

Below is the text of the maiden speech made by Francis Maude in the House of Commons on 27th October 1983.

I cannot hope to match the rhetoric of the hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Madden), who spoke with great passion. I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity in this debate to make my maiden speech. I am not quite the last of the new intake of Members to get off the mark, though the list of those who have not done so is gradually diminishing.

My constituency is more recreated than new. It has been absent from the political map of Great Britain for about 98 years. It disappeared under the hand of the Boundary Commission of 1885. I would be delighted to follow the convention of paying tribute to my predecessors from that time, but, even in the healthy climes of Warwickshire, North, I have not been able to find anyone who remembers them.

Warwickshire, North was created from two previous parliamentary seats—the old seat of Meriden and the old seat of Nuneaton. It has been used to a high standard of parliamentary representation. The old seat of Meriden was one of the most marginal seats in Britain and changed sides politically at each election. It had a series of talented and hard-working Members of Parliament, including my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Speed), my hon. Friend the Member for the new seat of Meriden (Mr. Mills) and, between them, Mr. John Tomlinson, who was my Labour opponent in June. All three of them served their constituencies and the House with distinction. They worked for their constituents most conscientiously and all are remembered in Warwickshire, North with gratitude and affection.

The Member who represented the old Nuneaton constituency, from which I have the town of Bedworth, was Mr. Les Huckfield, who I believe worked hard for his constituents wherever they were. I am sure that he will make his involuntary absence from the House a temporary one.

It is customary to talk about one’s constituency and I find it a pleasure to do so. It is in the area of the west midlands which is precariously balanced between but excluding Birmingham, Coventry, Nuneaton and Tamworth. It contains a wide range of activities and occupations. There is an example of virtually everything except, I think, deep-sea fishing. There are four flourishing coalmines with industrious and extremely realistic work forces. There are many square miles of extremely efficiently husbanded farmland. There is a multitude of small, specialised and innovative engineering firms, about whose interests I shall have much to say on other occasions. It contains a number of towns and villages which are expanding and which are providing housing for people working in Birmingham and Coventry. All in all, it is a demanding, stimulating and delightful constituency which I am proud to represent.

The Health Service is increasingly perceived not to be short of resources. There is a mismatch between needs and resources. This explains the apparent paradox that there are too many acute hospital beds while there are still long but, I am glad to say, decreasing waiting lists. There are thousands of beds in acute hospitals that are not being used by those who need acute medicinal care.

About 20 years ago provision was made for people not in need of acute care in cottage hospitals, which we now have to call community hospitals. Nursing care was provided with overall medical supervision from general practitioners. In our wisdom, we chose to get rid of them, but they had many advantages. I believe that in future we shall have to look towards that sort of provision if we are to match needs to resources. The cottage hospitals were cheap to run and they were local. That was especially important in rural areas where people wanted to visit elderly relatives in hospital. The fact that they were close to the areas that they served was an enormous advantage. They were small and because of that they were efficient and cheap to run.

The problem is to decide how we shall pay for that sort of hospital. We must look to much more effective management of resources within the Health Service. There are many parts of the service which are overmanned and it is folly to ignore that unfortunate fact. These areas are not overmanned only by ancillary workers. In some parts of the service there is an over-provision of medical resources and, as I have said, we must match resources to needs.

There is a massive inertia built into the present NHS management structure. I served for a short period as a member of a district health authority shortly after the reorganisation of the NHS. It took an extraordinarily long time for any changes to be made. I believe that the fault lay with the system of consensus management which arose in the early 1970s. No one person carried final responsibility for what actually happened. Members of the district management team took it in turns to act as chairman of the team, and that meant that the system had inefficiency built deep into its structure. I am delighted that the Griffiths report recommends the appointment of chief executives and general managers, who will carry the can for the units that they run. This is an essential step if we are to get inefficiency out of the system.

Many part-time members of district health authorities do a good job, but even those with a will to do so have difficulty in rooting out inefficiency. They do not have the time to do so and in many instances management is incapable of providing the information on which they need to act. It came as no surprise to some of us that in the recent review a number of authorities were unable to provide figures and information on the number of people that they employed. If anyone in the private sector tried to run a business in that way, he would not be around for long. It is astonishing that such a situation was allowed to continue for so long. It is a source of delight to me—and it should be to the entire House—that dramatic and radical action is being taken to improve the level of efficiency of management.

There exists an attitude which has fossilised the way in which we view the National Health Service. The idea seems to be propounded by Opposition Members that it is uncaring and uncompassionate even to contemplate the possibility that the Health Service is working at less than full efficiency. It is as though, in allocating money to the Health Service, one puts a label on it saying “NHS”, and then one cannot follow where it goes. One cannot find out how it is spent. One assumes that because it goes to the Health Service it is automatically going to a good cause. One does not improve the Health Service just by pumping in money to make the statistics look better. The Health Service exists to provide a service to patients, and we must make sure that the money goes where it is needed.

It is therefore folly, when a private contractor can provide an ancillary service better than the direct labour force, to set one’s face against it. The right hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Kinnock) made a number of points in his passionate speech about the way in which private contractors can operate. One cannot guarantee that a private contractor will provide a perfect service, any more than one can guarantee that a direct labour force will provide an adequate and efficient service. The difference is that if a private contractor falls down on the job it is possible to replace him immediately. As the privatisation of ancillary services develops, there will be an increasingly large number of firms which are able to take on the work at short notice. There will be competition and efficiency in those important services.

Discussions about the National Health Service have been surrounded for some years by a cloud of muddle and cant. Now we have to tackle the real problem, not so much of shortage of resources as of making sure that the resources we have go where they are needed. That is the challenge for the future, and it is a challenge that the House must face.

December 8, 2015
Michael Martin – 1979 Maiden Speech in the House of Commons

Below is the text of the maiden speech made by Michael Martin in the House of Commons on 17th May 1979.

It is a privilege to represent the Glasgow, Springburn constituency. I have lived in the constituency for more than 13 years, and before that I resided in the neighbouring constituency. Therefore, I know of the good work that my predecessor, Dick Buchanan, has done for the area. I was pleased to learn that he was held in high regard in the House. He had many fine qualities. I was always impressed by his willingness to give service to the community. As a young man he was a shop steward in the local railway workshop, and he fought for, and succeeded in getting, better conditions for his workmates. When he was city treasurer in the old Glasgow corporation he was responsible for many projects which are still of benefit to the people of Glasgow. I am sure that the House will join me in wishing him well in his retirement.

At one time Springburn had a thriving railway industry which produced steam locomotives. In fact, Springburn made more than half the number of steam locomotives produced in the world. Many of them are still in use in Africa, India and South America. The industry not only employed thousands of skilled and semi-skilled workers but provided work for the smaller firms in the area. I am convinced that had the private railway companies ploughed their profits back into the industry Springburn would not have the unemployment problem that it has today. I hope the Government recognise the need to strengthen the Scottish Development Agency so that it can bring new industry to Glasgow and to places such as Springburn. My constituency needs industrial revitalisation to prevent its becoming an industrial graveyard.

The constituency has various types of housing. In the Dennistoun district there is a mixture of private and local authority tenements. In Petershill we have the highest multi-storey dwellings in Europe—33 storeys high. In Germiston, Balornock and Barmulloch we have mainly council housing stock. The Cow-lairs area consists of private tenements, where many of the tenants are suffering from landlords and property owners who have neglected their properties and refused to carry out repairs for more than half a century.

Recently an organisation known as Norman Properties operated in the area. Its activities were questionable, to say the least. Young couples, desperate for a house of their own, had to pay as much as £1,000, only to find that they had no legal rights when the local authority introduced compulsory purchase schemes. The good people of Cowlairs deserve better, but the private sector has failed them miserably.

The only hope for the people in this area is for council house building to be speeded up and for encouragement to be given to community-based housing associations, which have an expertise in the modernisation of older tenemental properties. I hope that the Government do not intend to make cuts in the Housing 496 Corporation’s budget, because it does an excellent job in building up such organisations.

Reference is made in the Queen’s Speech to the sale of council housing. It worries me considerably that the Government may feel that they are giving some sort of freedom to the sitting tenant. Have they considered what it will mean to the types of tenants whom I have just described? The sale of council housing will mean that the good-quality housing stock will go to the highest bidder and not to those in need. Have the Government considered the consequences of selling houses in a city such as Glasgow, which consists largely of tenemental properties? Who will ensure that the owner-occupier maintains his share of the council tenement? Who will ensure that the owner-occupier looks after the communal facilities, such as the back greens and the drying areas, or even the paths leading up to the tenements? Who will make sure that these communal facilities are looked after? I foresee many practical difficulties in the proposal to sell council housing.

I should like to bring to the attention of the House the fact that less than a year ago every party on Glasgow district council called upon the Government to make Glasgow a special case. Glasgow has many problems, and it needs a massive injection of capital to revitalise the city and attract new industry. I hope that the new Government will give Glasgow such consideration.

December 3, 2015
Iain MacLeod – 1950 Maiden Speech

Below is the text of the maiden speech made by Iain MacLeod in the House of Commons on March 14th 1950. MacLeod later became Chancellor of the Exchequer in June 1970 although died a month after whilst still in office.

I think the only thing that draws new Members of this House to their feet to take part in these Debates is the sure knowledge that they can rely, as I rely tonight, on the traditional courtesy and kindliness of Members of this House.

We are today considering an Amendment which has been put down arising out of Supplementary Estimates amounting to about £148 million. Of that vast sum something like two-thirds, or nearly £100 million, is attributable to the National Health Service. All hon. Members are very familiar with the growth of the cost of this scheme from its first presentation to this House in 1946, when the House discussed it on the basis of a scheme costing £152 million a year, or about £3 per head, until the proposed Estimate for next year, which is about £400 million, or some £8 per head.

The first point I should like to make is that, formidable though these figures are, they are net figures and they do not show the full cost of the Health Service scheme, partly because of the transfer payments from National Insurance and partly because of various recoveries, and also because of the superannuation scheme, which shows inevitably in its first few years a surplus which will have to be repaid later, but which at the moment disguises the true cost of the scheme. It is true to say that when an announcement is made, such as the Chancellor made this afternoon, that there is to be a ceiling put on this scheme, we must remember that, in the absence of drastic action, the cost of this scheme will inevitably increase, for, apart from the reasons I have given, we are an ageing population, and for the next generation, in the absence of dramatic scientific or medical discoveries, the demands of sickness will inevitably increase.

It follows that the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Minister of Health have got themselves at the moment into the position of Alice and the Red Queen. The House will remember that the inhabitants of Looking-glass Country had to do all the running they could do to stay in the same place, and if they wanted to get somewhere else they had to run twice as fast. If our resources — and this has come from both sides of the House — are inadequate — and they are and they will be for a long time to come — then it follows that we must establish priorities as between the social services and also within the social services. On this theme of priority I am quite certain there is general agreement on both sides of the House. The Minister of Health last year at the Socialist Party conference said that priorities were the religion of Socialism, and last night, speaking in this Chamber in the housing Debate, he returned to the theme of priorities, about which we have heard both from the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Dr. Stross) and from my hon. Friend the Member for Luton (Dr. Hill). We should look for a moment on this scheme to see if, in fact, the correct priorities are being observed.

I should first like to refer to a matter that has been touched on already, and that is the bill for the general dental services, which at the moment is exceeding the bill for the general medical services. If we include Scotland, that means that some 10,750 dentists are being paid more in terms of gross income than some 21,000 doctors. Even if one makes all the adjustments in favour of the heavier cost of practice expenses that dentists have to bear to the full 52 per cent., which is I believe the amount allowed, the dentist at the moment is paid by the State far more in terms also of net income than is the doctor. I have no hesitation in saying that that is an indefensible position.

I am myself both the son and the grandson of a doctor. I believe that relative to their training, their qualifications, their ability, the load of responsibility that they ceaselessly shoulder, and above all the hours during which doctors are at their patients’ service — in my father’s house as in every other general practitioners that was 24 hours of the day and seven days of the week — doctors are by far the worst remunerated profession in the service. I have not the slightest doubt that there is no question, and there never will be of a doctors’ strike, for it is unthinkable for doctors to have anything remotely resembling a strike, but I think we should be wise not to presume too far on the infinite and most statesmanlike patience which the medical profession has shown in these last two years.

The second point I wish to make has also been touched upon. In Section 22 of the parent Act and in the White Paper which preceded it, and in the speeches of the Minister of Health on Second Reading and in Committee, stress was laid over and over again on the need for priority dental treatment for certain classes. Quite obviously that is a sound principle, for if the teeth of expectant mothers and those of infants and young children be sound, then in a generation we will have dentally a sound nation. Hon. Members know that, in fact, these priority classes — I am not arguing about the responsibility; I am stating a fact — are being neglected today, and there are many areas in this country in which the school dental service has virtually broken down. Wherever the responsibility may lie—and I know it causes the Minister of Health, the Minister of Education and the Secretary of State for Scotland great concern — the fact is inescapable that almost the only thing that was made deliberately by the Government a priority in the Health Service has failed.

The third point and the last on priorities which I should like to make is — there is a small Supplementary Estimate put down under research, presumably referring to the Minister’s powers under Section 16.

Dr. Morgan (Warrington) : Too small.

Mr. MacLeod : Too small perhaps, but I remember reading last year that the Minister of Health stated that he was awaiting information from the Peckham Health Centre to enable him to determine whether he could make a grant under his powers under Section 16. I do not know whether that has been done or not, but I know that on the same day that I read about these Supplementary Health Estimates for nearly £100 million I also read that the Peckham Health Centre was closed because it could not collect £20,000, which is one five-thousandth part of the amount to be passed in this House tonight. I suggest there is something sick at heart in the service, something desperately wrong with the priorities in a service in which that sort of thing can happen.

If it has been agreed that these figures are formidable, all thinking people, whether they are inside or outside the House, and everyone concerned with the future of this service are also agreed that the priorities are clearly in many cases unsound. Is it possible for us to suggest what has gone wrong? Very diffidently in a sentence or two before I sit down I should like to give my view on what has happened. The traditional function of the social services, as I understand them, is to rescue the needy from destitution, the sick from ill-health, and the unfortunate from the consequences of their misfortunes. It is a principle that was expressed very clearly by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition at our Brighton conference two years ago when he said this: The scheme of society for which we stand is the establishment and maintenance of a basic minimum standard of life and labour below which a man or woman of good will, however old and weak, will not be allowed to fall. I should like to take with that something said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Eden) in this House on 26th October, which was very badly misrepresented in the course of the recent election. This is what he said: Has not the time arrived when we must, as a nation, recognise that the principle of the social services ought to be that the strong should help the weak, and not to try to aid everybody alike indiscriminately? That is the whole basis on which I want the examination of this problem.” — [OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th October. 1949; Vol. 468, c. 1366.] I agree that that is the basis on which we should examine this problem of the minimum standard, and, secondly, of the duty of the strong to help the weak.

Today — and this is what I think has gone wrong—the conception of a minimum standard which held the field of political thought for so long, and in my view should hold it still, is disappearing in favour of an average standard. To an average standard, the old-fashioned virtues of thrift, industry and ability become irrelevant. The social services today have become a weapon of financial and not of social policy. This may sound Irish, but it is both true and tragic that, in a scheme where everyone has priority, it follows that no one has priority. This principle goes deep in the difference between the two sides of the House.

Perhaps I may sum up my argument in one sentence. I would put it like this: I believe that the conception of the minimum standard and the duty, which ought to be a proud duty, of the strong to help the weak, not only forms a nobler and juster basis for our social services but is a basis that is infinitely better matched to the independence and the character of our countrymen.

December 3, 2015
Peter Mandelson – 1992 Maiden Speech to the House of Commons

Below is the text of the maiden speech made by Peter Mandelson in the House of Commons on 14th May 1992.

It is my pleasure to commend my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich (Mr. Austin-Walker) on an excellent maiden speech. He demonstrated tremendous experience and knowledge, qualities that will enable him to make many more valued contributions to the House in the future. I only hope that I am able to acquit myself as ably as he has done.

In representing Hartlepool, I have the honour of succeeding Ted Leadbitter, who was as popular in the House as he was admired in his constituency. Ted Leadbitter was first elected in 1964. Supported by his wife Irene and his indomitable agent, Mrs. Elsie Reed, he lost no time in demonstrating his diligence and, equally, his independence.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn), who was Postmaster-General at the time, describes in his ministerial diaries for 10 February 1965—when the Labour Government had a majority of only three—how a new hon. Member, Ted Leadbitter from West Hartlepool, had written to complain about a telegraph pole being put up in front of a constituent’s home. Refusing to be fobbed off with some bureaucratic response, the MP of three months’ standing rang up my right hon. Friend’s office with the message: Mr. Leadbitter regards the Postmaster-General’s reply as so rude and evasive that he does not propose to come to the House or to accept the Labour whip until the answer is withdrawn and the pole is removed. The pole was duly removed. I am sure that hon. Members can agree that in such important matters—to parody Edmund Burke—I, too, should be a representative of my constituents, not a delegate of my party. I can reassure the Whips, however, that I am not aware—at present at any rate—of any misplaced telephone poles in Hartlepool.

Ted Leadbitter’s predecessor, the first Labour Member to be elected for the constituency, in 1945, was David Jones. A man who knew poverty and unemployment at first hand, Mr. Jones dedicated himself to freeing his constituents from the appalling social conditions of the time, “the evil days”, as he called them, of ill-health, poor housing and insecurity in old age. David Jones’ memory is particularly special to me because he was a friend of my grandfather when he was a Member of this House, and he spoke for David Jones at several elections.

When they took their seats, my predecessors took pride in representing the two Hartlepools. While I represent only one in name, I am conscious of the fierce community loyalties in both Hartlepool and West Hartlepool. Even before the two Hartlepools were each denied their own borough status, music hall references celebrated the local demand for home rule. In the review of local government to which the Conservative party is committed, the minimum that would be acceptable to current residents is the restoration of full unitary authority status to Hartlepool. I shall continue the work of my predecessor in supporting that change.

Hartlepool’s great strength is that it rightly sees itself as a community, with shared needs, strongly felt local loyalties and a sense of common purpose and civic pride. That pride is especially strong now. Our football team, Hartlepool United, is at its highest ever league position in the history of the club; the West Hartlepool Rugby Football Club has gained promotion this season to national division one; and first-class cricket has arrived in the town, with the selection of the town’s club as a venue for Durham county cricket.

However, there are serious challenges to be faced by my town. Fifty years ago, Hartlepool, like other towns, even with its social problems, was at least more industrially secure because of the success of its shipyards, engineering, steel-making and manufacturing. The task of the coming decade, as we approach the 21st century, is to transform a now industrially poorer and less confident Hartlepool into the thriving industrial community of the future that it can become. That is why the people of Hartlepool are now embarking on an era of change. They do so in the knowledge that it is not possible for any community or town—or, indeed, political party—to try to recreate the future in the image of the past.

For the first time, in the general election, the Labour party in Hartlepool received more than 50 per cent. of the popular vote. It was a vote to embrace change but it is still change for the same purpose now as it was 50 years ago: to use the power of the community, acting together, to improve the individual circumstances of all. Central to that process is a modern economic policy; new ways of revitalising industry; innovative solutions to the problems created by social change; and sustaining economic growth in ways that are friendly to the environment.

My aim is to see new opportunities created for my constituents so that the confidence and optimism experienced in former times can be enjoyed once again by old and young alike. New opportunities do not mean opt-out schools and opt-out hospitals. When the services of thousands of patients opt out and the local hospital ceases to feel like the local community hospital, when thousands opt out of schools and the local schools cease to be like local community schools, the foundation on which the community is based is being removed.

What is true for our public services is also true, although in a different way, for industry. We cannot rebuild the industrial strength of our nation when manufacturing investment fell by 13 per cent. last year and is still falling now. When apprenticeships are axed and young school leavers fail to find training places, when firms are denied the chance to adapt to new skills and technology, we are eliminating the means by which depleted communities can become strong again.

The local training and enterprise council has seen a 20 per cent. Government cut in its training budget this year. At a time of rising unemployment, is that any way to restore industrial strength to our country? The result of that short-termism is both to deprive our young people of the opportunity that they need to get on in life and to deprive the nation of talent and ability of its people, which is critical to its future success.

When the Conservative party changed its leader and softened its rhetoric, the promise was of a classless society, a nation at ease with itself and opportunity for all. But what hope is there for the young person without a job due to the recession, without training due to cuts in funding, and without benefit due to the actions of a Social Security Minister who is now Prime Minister?

What opportunity is there for the thousands in my constituency and the millions in this country, struggling in poverty and living on the margins of our society? What ease is there in the mind of anyone, in or out of work, if our industrial base, and, therefore, our economic future, lies untended and in neglect?

In truth, there cannot be hope, or opportunity or ease unless we all accept our responsibility to help create them and, in doing so, realise that this benefits us all. Yet when we examine the Government’s economic policy we find that urgency and responsibility absent. In large part, that is because the Government cannot break free from their past. The days of reliance on some invisible hand of the market are as discredited as those of centralised planning and the command economy. We need a new partnership between the public sector, the business community and the Government, based not on dogma but on co-operation to secure objectives in the interests of the economy as a whole. The principle of co-operation is more relevant than ever, even if we must look to different ways and new methods to fulfill that principle.

Let me stress that the townspeople whom I represent are looking for neither handouts nor subsidies from Government. They have never deluded themselves that the man in Whitehall knows best. In the absence of a Government willing to back the scale of investment in new skills and technology which we need in Hartlepool, the town has not sat back. Over the past decade, the local authority has worked tirelessly to bring in new employment, in both the service and industrial sectors. Indeed, even with the drastically reduced help available from central Government, the partnership between public and private sector has achieved much.

The new marina, being built with the backing of Teesside development corporation and the borough council, is a symbol of the town’s efforts at recovery, even if it has not brought the employment that many hoped for. It has, however, helped to draw to the town the new Imperial War Museum located in the north, and I hope that that exciting project will receive the Government’s full support. The marina will also enable the town to play host to the Round Britain yacht race this summer.

Hartlepool has made a powerful bid for the Department of the Environment’s city challenge programme, and if it is successful, as I earnestly hope it will be, it will further help to transform the appearance and economic potential of Hartlepool’s central locations.

All those initiatives show how willing we and similar communities are to work with any opportunities opened up to us. But imagine how much more successful the industrious people of Hartlepool would be with a Government committed to re-skilling the work force and actively supporting our local industrial effort. That co-operation is needed now.

Hartlepool and the whole of the north face immense competitive challenges: the savage nature of the current recession; the creation this year of the single European market; and the completion, in a few years, of the channel tunnel. If we fail to invest now, we cannot meet those future challenges.

In rhetoric, the Government accept that case. But they should also realise that to will the ends without willing the means is, as Tawney said, akin to inviting unwelcome guests to dinner in the certain knowledge that circumstances will prevent them from being able to attend. What Hartlepool and the north-east desperately need is not another cynical invitation to share in the nation’s fortune, only to find that no place is set for it at the table. In the 1990s we need a decade of regeneration—in industry, our public services and our social cohesion. We can achieve that, but only if we recognise the size of the task to be done and the utter necessity of working together as a nation to achieve it.

Those values of partnership, co-operation and social justice represent all that is best in the Labour party, as true today as ever. It will be my privilege to advance those values on behalf of my constituents and my party throughout my time in this House.

December 3, 2015
Denis MacShane – 1994 Maiden Speech in the House of Commons

Below is the text of the maiden speech made in the House of Commons by Denis MacShane on 16th May 1994.

I have addressed many audiences and many chambers, but none quite as intimidating as this, with my true friends behind me and my real opponents facing me. I gather that convention demands that one must be polite, so polite one must be.

I am very conscious of coming to the House in place of Jimmy Boyce, a man who came from a part of our society about which not enough of us know. He was unemployed for many years, a victim of the very cruel policies that have cost so much for some of the great talents of our nation over the past 15 years. I come from a different background, but I will fight for the causes that Jimmy supported. I hope that I can in some way measure up to the service that he provided to Rotherham in the short two years in which he was a Member of this House.

I am also conscious of the fact that I follow in the footsteps of Stan Crowther who is well known to the House and was a great public servant to Rotherham over 50 years of political life. I am also conscious of following in the footsteps of Brian O’Malley, the man who inspired me when I first became involved in politics. He collapsed at the Dispatch Box, another victim of the stress of public life. Like everyone else, I was glad of the tributes paid to John Smith in the press. We speak no ill of the dead; perhaps from time to time, my old friends in the Gallery may speak some good of the living.

Last week was for me the best of weeks and the worst of weeks. When I came to the House on Tuesday, John Smith greeted me and said that it would be a day that I would remember for the rest of my life. John Smith talked of a dream, but the dream was extinguished when, on Thursday, he left us. He spent a whole day with me in Rotherham, seeing the steel plant and the college, and talking to Asians and to party members. He left a message of hope for a new and better Britain.

I am proud to have been elected by the people of Rotherham to represent their interests in Parliament. They have not always been so happy in their choice. The first Member for Rotherham—a Member for Yorkshire in those days—was Sir Thomas Wentworth, later the Earl of Strafford. Older Members of the House may remember that he was executed on a Bill of Attainder in 1641. He was promised that his life would be saved by none other than King Charles I, but he was, of course, sacrificed.

Alas, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Thames (Mr. Lamont) and the right hon. and learned Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor) are not with us today. They must know how poor Thomas Wentworth felt as they, too, were given the full support of a Prime Minister—a sure sign that they were about to mount the political scaffold. ‘Put not your trust in princes’, were Thomas Wentworth’s last words. The spirit of Rotherham and, indeed, of Yorkshire ever since has been one of sturdy self-reliance and a rejection of authoritarianism and the centralising forces that Toryism has represented throughout the ages.

Rotherham was the place where Thomas Paine, that most noble of commoners, who brought democracy to America and the ‘Rights of Man’ to Europe, even as he was forced into exile by the Pitt Government, built his great suspension bridge. I do not know how many hon. Members know that Thomas Paine was a great manufacturer as well as a great democrat. The bridge was a feat of great engineering, as important as in many ways as his enunciation of the rights of man. Paine’s bridge was built by the Walker Brothers of Rotherham, whose cannons sunk Napoleon’s fleet at Trafalgar.

What would Tom Paine find if he returned to Rotherham today? The great manufacturies, on which Adam Smith based his ‘Wealth of Nations’, have all but disappeared, 25,000 jobs have gone since 1979 and the coal mines, which once promised Britain its own energy source safe from the perils of foreign disturbances, are now capped. The local council, with the money and the will to build homes for the homeless, is prevented from doing so by the most centralised administration since that of Charles I.

Paine would find poverty in Rotherham, I am sad to say, as bad as anywhere in Europe. Indeed, he was dismissed from Government service for arguing for fair wages for public servants. Poorly paid public service, he argued, attracts only the ill-qualified and breeds corruption, collusion and neglect. He went on: ‘An augmentation of salary sufficient to enable workers to live honestly and competently would produce more good effect than all the laws of the land can enforce.’ I offer that to our low-wage merchants on the Government side of the House. We already knew that Thomas Paine was a great democrat and a friend of Rotherham manufacturing, but it came as news, even to me, that he believed in a statutory minimum wage 200 years before its time.

For all those problems, Paine would find, as would anyone who visits Rotherham, a town and a people whose spirits are unbroken despite all that has been thrown at them in the past 15 years. The pedestrianised town centre, which is one of the nicest in Europe, is spoiled only, alas, by the pressure on shopkeepers arising from the declining purchasing power of the citizens of Rotherham.

One of the world’s most advanced engineering steel plants, UES, is at the cutting edge of modern technology. I must to say my hon. Friends, talk not of steel as an old industry. Steel is one of the most modern and advanced sectors of our economy.

There are new partnerships between the chamber of commerce, the training and enterprise council, the local council and the trade unions, which support unity and a common cause to promote Rotherham.

Tom Paine would also find a very great sense—Tom Paine was, if nothing else, an internationalist—of feeling that, if Rotherham is to succeed, Britain must play its full part in Europe, because Britain is part of Europe as surely as Yorkshire is part of Britain.

I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath), the Father of the House, who, since 1938, has stood for, yes, a Tory vision of internationalism against isolationism and that yellow streak of appeasement and opting out, which has always shamed the Conservative party, as it shames it in so much of its policy today.

We are part of Europe and the Euro-septics on the Government Benches may want their cash-and-carry Europe, in which each state takes what it wants. They decry centralisation, yet they have gone through the Division Lobby voting for measure after measure after measure to transfer power from local authorities—indeed, from the House—to give it to their friends in privatised companies and quangos. I want to see power shared downward to the regions, to communities, horizontally to the sister units of civil society in Europe, but, above all, I want to see power made accountable.

If we are to live in an international community in which trade and travel and money and ideas can go through porous frontiers, at least we, as human beings, as subjects of Her Majesty, as citizens of Europe, should have the right to have the human spirit protected through regulation of trans-frontier activity. Yes, Europe is too important to be left to Brussels, but if we are to fight for British interests, we must do so by promoting transparency, democracy and accountability in all European institutions. R.H. Tawney described the hereditary disease of the English nation as ‘the reverence for riches’ and went on: ‘If men are to respect each other for what they are, they must cease to respect each other for what they own.’ I apologise to the hon. Ladies present and to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the references to the rights of man and quoting men. I see myself, after post-modernism and post-industrialism, as the first ‘PPC’—post-politically correct—hon. Member.

England is the most money-obsessed country in Europe. Switch on the BBC and every five seconds there is some Brylcreemed spokesperson for the bond markets telling us how the dollar is doing. The BBC and ITV tell us the price of the stock market at any moment, anywhere in the world, but have ceased to report on the values needed to bring cohesion back to our communities. I do not blame them. They take their lead from those who rule our society and until we get public interest hands on the tiller of the state, instead of the sticky fingers of so many of the Conservative Members and their friends in the till, the media can do no more than take a lead from those who put a price on everything, but know the value of nothing.

For all our obsession with cash, Britain remains the poor man of Europe. Italy’s gross domestic product per capita in 1960 was exactly one half of Great Britain’s. Now, it has overtaken us. We have been so busy preaching at Europe and trying to teach Europe the secrets of the United Kingdom’s economic record, we have committed, to use James Fenton’s phrase—how pleased I was to see my old friend become professor of poetry at Oxford on Saturday— ‘the fault of thinking small and acting big’. Perhaps we have forgotten that we have some lessons to learn; lessons about partnership, lessons about the successful countries in Europe. Germany, even after unification, has a lower unemployment record than our own. The Benelux countries and the new entrants are successful, too. Those who proclaim themselves Thatcherites, such as in the Prime Minister’s favourite holiday country Spain, have the worst record of job creation and balanced development.

The core answer from Europe—one of vital importance to Rotherham and one to which I intend to commit myself in the House—is that manufacturing is not dead and, despite all the best efforts of the Government, should not die. The rising sun has been coming here continually to try to save a sinking England, but we now find that Japanese investment is going to Germany, to France and is leaving these shores.

If I may refer, as a socialist, to my favourite Sunday reading, The Sunday Telegraph tells us how well Germany is doing, that the Japanese research and development centres are installing themselves there and that the Japanese now prefer to be in Germany because of its high skill base, good labour relations and its position as Europe’s engine of growth.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) blamed our balance of trade on Europe. I have to say to him that it is 15 years of anti-manufacturing policies, of the destruction of partnership, of the lack of investment and the money that has flowed overseas that has been at fault. In fact, if we would learn from our European partner competitors, Britain would be in a much better shape.

It is not only an economic question. I was privileged to have many conversations with John Smith when he was in Rotherham and he talked of the constitutional changes that Labour would like to introduce, such as the end of the absurd spectacle of hereditary Members in another place making and casting laws, the need for national Governments for Scotland and Wales and regional assemblies, and the need for a referendum—not on electoral reform as I see it, but on re-thinking the way in which we govern ourselves. That is part of the constitutional package that I think is necessary for a new Britain.

As with John Smith’s commitment to full employment and to trade union rights, we are seeing fleshed out a new programme to reconstruct our lives in Britain as great as that which we saw after the war, but, this time, with us secure in the heart of Europe.

A Europe of what? Is it a ‘Europe des patries’ as General de Gaulle said? That is difficult for us. We have four nations, but what is our fatherland? That is not a word that we can use easily as British people. It is not a united states of Europe or a stepping stone to Tennyson’s ‘Parliament of the World’, either. After many years working in Europe, I find the Germans more German, the French more French and the Italians more Italian. It is only we in Britain who seem to live in a permanent identity crisis about who we are and what it means to be British. That is because the old Toryism is dying. The new Labourism is not yet born. As a consequence, the morbid symptoms of corruption and xenophobia that lie at the heart of the Cabinet are everywhere to be found where the Government are at work.

Those who are hostile to Europe are to be found in all nations. We have the Euro-sceptics here, there are the French communists and now we have the Italian fascists. I have with me the programme of Philippe de Villiers, the conservative right-winger in France. He wants Europe to be protected against any imports from outside the Community. He wants also a Europe in which national controls stop immigration. Like the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, my father came here in the 1930s. He was a refugee from fascist Europe. The Europe that is described by Philippe de Villiers is not one of which I want to be part. Indeed, I am not even sure whether Conservative Members believe in such a Europe.

Closing the door to foreign immigrants and to exports from around the world is not a Europe in which we need to believe. We in Europe should defend our interests, but, at the same time, we in this country should deepen our friendship with countries such as Germany and—I declare an interest because my wife is French—France. In the words of Victor Hugo, ‘France is the adversary of England as the better is the enemy of the good.’ I am conscious of returning to the country that made me. I have returned from elsewhere in Europe, where I worked for many years. I have learnt much, and some of that learning I might bring to the House. I am not ‘A steady patriot of the world alone, The friend of every country but his own.’ I remain British. I am proud of the schools that made me and of the health service that put me together when I cracked my head open in the 1950s. I am hopeful that such again could be the kind of United Kingdom in which my children can grow up. It is a country in which we always refer to faith, hope and charity. But greater than any of those concepts is justice.

I will argue for justice for the people of Rotherham. I will strive for economic justice for the unemployed and social justice for the weak and disabled people of Rotherham. I so much agree with those who say that the best tribute that we could pay to John Smith would be to pass the Civil Rights (Disabled Persons) Bill, which was recently talked out. There must be ‘plain justice’—justice for the criminals who walk free in an England that opts out of Europe. In so many parts of our communities, unfortunately, it seems to opt out of decency and law and order. If I can deliver any part of that message during my time in the House on behalf of the people of Rotherham, I shall be well pleased.

December 3, 2015
Clare Short – 1983 Maiden Speech in House of Commons

Below is the text of the maiden speech made by Clare Short in the House of Commons on 29th June 1983.

I am grateful for this chance to make my first speech, as I prefer to call it, in this House. I intend to follow tradition and speak about my constituency. However, it is impossible for me to follow the tradition of not being controversial, for what is happening in my constituency encapsulates much of the harm done to many parts of the country by the policies of the Conservative Government.

I wish first to pay tribute to my predecessor, Sheila Wright, who was the hon. Member for Birmingham, Handsworth in the last Parliament. I am the Member for Ladywood and a large part of Handsworth has come into my constituency. Sheila Wright worked with me when I was a candidate and she was a Member of Parliament. For a long time she supported and helped me in my work. She is a friend of many years. She worked for the people of Handsworth for five years as a Member of Parliament and, before that, for 25 years as a councillor. The best tribute I can pay to her is the one that was paid during the election campaign by many people in the area who spoke warmly of her, sent their regards to her and remembered all the help she had given to them and their families.

It is a great honour for me to represent Ladywood in this House. It is an honour for all of us to represent our constituencies, but in my case there is an added honour in that I come from Ladywood. I was born there, grew up there, have many friends there and many members of my family live there. Therefore I care about my constituency with the intensity with which people care about the place from which they come. I make the pledge to my constituents that I shall work with all my ability and energy to represent and fight for their interests for as long as I am here.

The people of Ladywood are suffering terribly from the Government’s policies. According to the census of April 1981, Ladywood has the sixteenth worst unemployment in the British Isles. The male rate of unemployment then was 25 per cent. Unemployment in the country has doubled since then, and the male unemployment rate in my constituency is now 50 per cent. For school leavers it is 95 per cent. People say cynically that it cannot get much worse than being nearly 100 per cent. It can, because the period of unemployment is getting longer all the time; young people leave school and go on a YOP scheme—now being replaced by the youth training scheme, which will be no better, and in many ways will be worse, than the scheme it is replacing—and are then unemployed for ever-lengthening periods.

In Britain as a whole, two out of every three school leavers are unemployed, as are one in four of all under-20s and one in six under-25s. A whole generation is being blighted. Of the total unemployed, more than 1 million have been unemployed for one year or more and more than 500,000 for two years or more. They are living in grinding poverty, and the hopelessness they feel about their future is destructive and intolerable.

Long-term unemployment is growing faster for young people than for any other group. Of the 1 million who have been out of work for one year or more, 250,000 are under 25, and they comprise the group for whom long-term unemployment is growing fastest. That is damaging to the future of the nation. When we damage our youth, we damage ourselves.

Half the population of Ladywood is black and half is white, and we are nearly all immigrants. I am a child of Irish immigrants. The white community is made up of immigrants from Ireland, Scotland, Wales and many other parts of Britain who came to Birmingham in more prosperous days to seek a better life for themselves and their children.

The black population similarly came, more recently, from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Caribbean for exactly the same purpose. We are the same sort of people. We sought out our homes in the west midlands because we wanted to better our lives and those of our families.

Now, everything they hoped for and came to the west midlands to achieve is being snatched from them as a result of the collapse of the west midlands in the recent past. In the 1930s the west midlands escaped much of the suffering that went on in Britain. Today the west midlands symbolises the destruction that is being done to the British economy by Conservative policies.

We were told by the Prime Minister yesterday that recovery is patchy. Indeed it is; there are no signs of recovery in my constituency. As has happened in many other areas since the election, another major closure has been announced and unemployment is rising. It is not true to say that this amount of unemployment, misery and suffering is creating anything good. Nothing is coming out of it except pure destructiveness, and that is not only intolerable but stupid. It is said that productivity is going up. In fact, the less efficient firms are closing down; inevitably productivity goes up, but nothing new is created.

Investment is at an all-time low. That means that we are laying down nothing new for the future. We cannot secure a recovery and a better future without investment and that investment is not taking place. The money that is available is flowing out of Britain to invest in other countries. We have North Sea oil—we are lucky to have it—but it is being wasted. I understand that £17 billion a year is being poured down the drain merely to keep people unemployed. These people want to work. They want to be productive and we must recognise that a large part of the nation’s wealth is our people and their capacity to produce. We are arranging things in such a way that they cannot produce. We are damaging them and ourselves.

During the election campaign I was asked repeatedly, “Why are the Government doing this to us?” The people in the west midlands see clearly that there is destruction everywhere and that nothing new is replacing it. They said, “It is claimed that the Government’s policies are designed to reduce inflation but when we had inflation we all had incomes, our incomes increased and we lived better. We now have nothing and we still have inflation.” There are two rates of inflation in Britain and the one for the poor— for those who live in council houses, for example—is still increasing. Nothing is coming out of the Government’s policies.

The right hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell), the former Secretary of State for Transport, said that we must get rid of inflation to create jobs, but that is not true. Inflation has been decreasing and more jobs have been destroyed. We have seen that happen in the recent past and we know that we are not creating jobs. The policy is not working.

In answer to the question that was put to me by my constituents, I explained, “We have an extremist and dogmatic Government who are deliberately using unemployment” — that is what monetarism is — “to reshape our society. They are using unemployment to frighten workers, destroy trade unions and cut wages. They have a vision of a more unequal society, a more competitive society. They say that from that will come more efficiency and, therefore, more economic prosperity.”

The people of Ladywood, my right hon. and hon. Friends and I reject the Government’s policies. We do not want the future that they hold before us. It is not acceptable to us and, what is more, it is not even working.

We frequently hear the excuse that the problem in Britain is the problem of the international economy, over which we have no control. It is clear from OECD figures and American Bureau of Labour statistics that unemployment in Britain has increased massively faster than in any other industrialised country. Britain led the world into recession, but an international recession is made up of individual national recessions. If in turn we each throw our economies into recession, we shall have, of course, a great international recession. We started it and similar policies to ours have been pursued in the United States of America.

We can now start to undo the recession. We can work with international partners to change the world economy. There should be no excuse there. There can be jobs for all, and it is our duty and obligation to organise our society in such a way that everyone can work, make a contribution and get a decent income. Anything less than that is unacceptable.

There are nine old people’s homes in my constituency, and I visited them all during the election campaign. They are all desperately short of staff. There are nine old people’s homes in a sea of unemployment. People are queuing for jobs all around them, but those responsible for running the homes are not allowed to employ more staff to take care of the elderly. That is the result of public expenditure cuts. Pretence is made that cuts in public expenditure are cuts in bureaucrats but that is not so. The cuts lead to reductions in the staff who can care for the elderly and the very young. It is disgraceful and unnecessary.

The great sadness for the people of Ladywood is that they see what is going on in the knowledge that they have rejected it. However, they must continue to suffer because it seems that the rest of the country has to learn the hard way. The Government’s policies are not beneficial to any of us.

Racial equality is important to the people of Ladywood. As I have said, half of my constituents are black and half are white. However, we are united in our need for jobs, decent schools for our children, decent housing and proper health care. We need to respect one another. We must respect all the various racial groups in our society and we must work alongside one another, or it will not be a good place in which to live and work.

The black community in Ladywood has been undermined and hurt badly by the Government’s actions. The Nationality Act 1982, which was placed on the statute book in the previous Parliament, has made the black community feel insecure and unwanted. That includes the generation which came as immigrants and the generation that is growing up that was born in Britain. These people must be made welcome and be part of our society, or it will be dangerous for us all.

Black people, especially those who originated from the Indian subcontinent, are harassed constantly by disgraceful immigration procedures. Many of them have approached me already to make representations. There are families which want to look after their aging parents and which can afford to do so. They have a house and they want to care for them. However, we do not allow Asian families settled here and which are prosperous to look after their aging parents.

I am making representations to the Minister of State, Home Office about a case which encapsulates all that is wrong with our immigration procedures. It concerns an old man who is a citizen of the United Kingdom and the colonies. He fought for Britain in the first and second world wars. He was made a prisoner of war by the Japanese. He has come to Britain and has been refused entry. He is here on temporary admission while I make representations. That old man is shocked and astounded that the country that he respected, honoured, worked for and fought for will not allow him to come in as a visitor. That is what has been done to a large part of the population in my constituency and it is not good enough. It is not the behaviour of a civilised society and we can do better than that.

I shall draw my remarks to a conclusion in a form that will reflect part of the speech of the right hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East (Mr. Pym), who was the Foreign Secretary in the previous Government. The Government must not think that their increased majority means that they have a mandate for their policies. They were given a smaller vote than that which the previous Government secured in 1979. They did not win a great victory in areas such as Ladywood, where more than 50 per cent. of the people are opposed to them. The intensity of that opposition is great. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Government are hated in my constituency, especially their leadership. People hate them with vigour. This is divisive, destructive and damaging to our society. If there are not changes, I fear for us all.

December 3, 2015
Douglas Hurd – 1974 Maiden Speech in the House of Commons

It is a great honour to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker, and to ask indulgence as a new Member speaking for a new constituency.

Mid-Oxfordshire includes part of the old Banbury division, and part of the old Henley division. It would be impertinent to comment on my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten), as he is very much with us, but it is right that I should say something about Mr. John Hay, who represented Henley for 24 years before standing down at the last election. He very kindly came to support me during the campaign, and it was immediately clear how much respect he enjoyed among the people in Wheatley and the surrounding areas, whom he represented so well for so long.

Mid-Oxfordshire is one of those constituencies which look a good deal more rural than they really are. It contains a successful farming industry, but it also includes many thousands of people who go to work in the city of Oxford every day. It has a good deal of industry tucked away in rather improbable places behind old Cotswold facades. For example, the town of Witney has made itself famous for one industry. It is no good talking to my constituents about an energy policy which is based just on coal, oil, gas and nuclear energy. No energy policy will satisfy the people of Witney unless it includes maximum support and encouragement for the manufacture and use of blankets.

My constituency also includes the town of Burford. I was reminded of the town when the Secretary of State for Employment was fascinating us yesterday with his description of Cromwell as one of the great forerunners of Socialism. It is true that in the seventeenth century there were in this country Socialists, or Levellers. On Burford Church can still be seen the bullet marks where Cromwell lined up the Levellers against the wall and shot them. The Secretary of State for Employment is lucky to be separated by several centuries from his hero, the Lord Protector.

In the two years I have known them the constituents whom I represent have shown a keen interest in the affairs of the outside world. That is particularly seen in the degree of support which now exists for a foreign aid programme—something that has impressed me very much.

Before I say something about that, I should like to deal with a matter of great personal interest to me. I shall try to do so in an uncontroversial manner. As you may remember, Mr. Speaker, I spent four years in a humble capacity in the British Mission to the United Nations in New York. I should like to say a few words about the appointment of the British representative there in the past two weeks. During the four years that I was there under the late Sir Pierson Dixon—the father of my hon. Friend the Member for Truro (Mr. Dixon)—I came strongly to the conclusion that the top permanent job there was one for a professional diplomat. The reason is simple. He does not have to deal with just one Government, with one set of Ministers or officials. He now has to deal with a hundred missions almost in perpetual motion, as well as with the Secretary-General and his staff. If the skills of professional diplomacy are needed anywhere, they are needed in New York.

That is borne out by the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Caradon, who went there with a great reputation, which he still enjoys, great eloquence and great experience of the United Nations. Yet I wonder whether that experiment was a success. It seemed to me that Lord Caradon was constantly arousing, through no fault of his own, expectations which the Government at home were not always able to fulfil. Now the experiment has been repeated in different, and perhaps less promising, circumstances. The new representative will replace a respected professional diplomat who has been there for a few months and who has worked himself into the job. He will go as the political appointment of a minority Government, with all the uncertainty which that involves. I wonder whether, through no fault of his own—this is no criticism of the distinguished person who has been appointed—he may find himself in a rather difficult and sad position.

The decision to hive off the Ministry of Overseas Development from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is a repetition of what was done in 1964. I am a little puzzled why this should be done again. It seemed to me that the foreign aid programme fared pretty well under the guidance of my right hon. Friend the Minister for Bridlington (Mr. Wood) and also under my right hon. Friend the Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Sir A. Douglas-Home). Indeed, it survived, better than had been usual in the past, the attacks of those wishing to economise in public expenditure. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that the head of the Department was a member of the Cabinet, whereas in future that will not be the case.

The argument has been that one needs a separate Department so that one can have a consistent long-term aid programme which is not bedevilled by the short-term comings and goings of foreign policy. That is an essential part of the case. Yet immediately we are up against a controversy over technical assistance to Chile and the suggestion that we should cut off that programme for short-term political reasons. This is the real problem, and it also affected the Conservative Government in respect of Pakistan and Uganda. This is what happens when one comes up against Governments whose actions are in some respects offensive to public opinion in this country. However, aid programmes are supposed to benefit people, not Governments. They are long term, and must be left to the long term if they are to be successful. If they are constantly messed about because of changes in political opinions in this country or in the receiving country, they are not likely to succeed. This is a genuine problem which has faced Labour and Conservative Governments, and I am sure that it is a topic which the Minister for Overseas Development would like to consider.

I make one final point about the aid programme. It is common ground that most Government expenditure programmes depend on public support. It is also true that in terms of the British foreign aid programme a good deal of progress has been made in recent years, thanks to the efforts of all parties—but support arises only if the programmes, as part of the foreign aid effort, are based on the real world and on what is happening in it. There have been massive changes in the real world in recent months. We now have before us a group of newly-rich States in oil-producing countries. Some, like Iran and Nigeria, have large populations on which to spend their money, but there are others which do not have large populations and which will face difficult problems when dealing with the resources to which they have suddenly become heir. Their decisions have sharply affected the prospects for developing countries, particularly those with no resources of their own. Therefore, it is reasonable that these newly-rich States should be encouraged to share the burden now borne by the aid-giving countries—a burden which we have been carrying for so long. I hope that the Government, either alone or through the EEC, in the dialogue with the Arabs to which the Foreign Secretary referred this afternoon, will make this point to them as strongly as they can. The oil-producing countries should be brought to recognise that with their new riches they carry new responsibilities. This is an important point if we are to continue to maintain progress in this country in persuading our fellow citizens to continue to bear part of the burden.

December 2, 2015