Mr Robert Wareing (Liverpool, West Derby)

I understand that there are certain conventions in the House about maiden speeches being non-controversial. It is not merely that I do not want to be a slave to convention; it is because I am sent here by the warm-hearted and hardworking people of the West Derby constituency of Liverpool that what I shall say in my maiden speech is bound to be controversial to a considerable extent.

I shall start by saying a word about the West Derby constituency. I am very proud to represent it, particularly as I was born and brought up in Liverpool in the constituency of West Derby. Therefore, I am very proud to represent this part of my native city.

It is also a pleasure to know that before the boundary changes the part of the constituency in which I was raised was part of the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer), a Member of Parliament who has done tremendous work on behalf of his constituency. It is a pleasure to have worked alongside him in the politics of my party in the past.

West Derby is a name that confuses many people. It can be confused with the county of Derbyshire, but I hope that that confusion will not last long. When right hon. and hon. Members hear what I have to say from time to time—hoping that I shall catch your eye again, Mr. Speaker—I am sure that they will realise that West Derby is in Liverpool.

In fact, West Derby is older than Liverpool. The name West Derby appears in the Domesday survey of 1086. At that time Liverpool was simply one of six unnamed barley fields which were dependent on the royal manor of West Derby. It was not until 1895 that all of West Derby was in the city of Liverpool. When the Normans came to West Derby they built a wooden castle to keep the Anglo-Saxons under control. When I heard the Gracious Speech yesterday, I came to the conclusion that perhaps another castle will be necessary to keep the people of West Derby under control. Perhaps the name of that castle will be Tina's castle.

The West Derby constituency is an outer city constituency. It is not an inner city area, although it has all the problems—and sometimes more besides—of the inner city. Of all the constituencies in England, it has the unenviable position at present of being the ninth worst off in terms of unemployment. According to the 1981 census, 27·1 per cent. of the adult population was unemployed. All of us in Liverpool know how desperate the situation has become since then. In June of last year, there were the same number of jobs in Croxteth, the Gillmoss ward, as in Toxteth, and everyone knows about the dreadful events that took place in the Toxteth Liverpool 8 district in 1981. In fact, the wards of Croxteth Pirrie, which covers an area usually known as Norris Green, and Dovecot have one principal feature, and that is multiple deprivation.

I could not but agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) that multiple deprivation has been a major factor in delinquency and crime. The Gillmoss estate in my constituency has the unenviable record of the highest juvenile delinquency in any part of the European Community. One does not have to look far for the reasons. On the Croxteth housing estate — I hope that hon. Members will not confuse Croxteth and Toxteth — 43 per cent. of the adult population is jobless. As many as 95 per cent. of young people between the ages of 16 and 19 are without permanent occupation on that estate. Indeed, 81 per cent. of the population in that area live in supplementary benefit poverty, and that does not take into account the pensioners who do not draw supplementary benefit. Moreover, 15 per cent. of the pensioners in the Croxteth area live alone. The same situation applies in other parts of the constituency. In parts of the West Derby constituency, 75 per cent. of households are without a car or the use of a car.

A recent local working party survey in Liverpool showed that nearly all the people living in my constituency had difficulty in gaining access to general practitioners, clinics and hospitals. The world of BUPA is a very long way from the people in West Derby.

According to the survey, unemployment was having a detrimental effect on the health and well-being of people in Croxteth. Job creation programmes were simply masking the extent of the problem. One has only to look at Croxteth, Norris Green, Cantril Farm, part of which is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley, South (Mr. Hughes), to see the conditions in which people have to live. The boarded-up houses are not the type of accommodation that anyone wanting a decent home and standard of living would want to purchase. They are a testimony to years and years of domination by Liberals on the Liverpool city council.

If there is anyone in this House — I see that the Liberal-SDP Benches are empty — [HON. MEMBERS: "Where are they?"] who believes that there is something to be had from a Liberal-SDP alliance let him come to West Derby and we will show him what a decade of Liberal hegemony on Liverpool city council has done for the people in my area. Properties are left to be vandalised. There is a local bureaucracy in the housing department which is not always in sympathy with the people. People are treated like animals when they go to the housing department to get repairs and maintenance done.

An old lady came to me during the election campaign to ask for my assistance. She had been told to go to a house in Curtana crescent in West Derby where there was no lighting or heating and where the back garden and the front garden could only be described as a midden. The furniture van was actually unloading her furniture in the front garden. That was rectified temporarily, but only by my intervention.

There was the example of the young couple with a premature baby who had an operation shortly after birth for hydrocephalus. That baby was in high risk of joining the statistics of rising infant mortality in the area. The couple lived in one room. Dad slept on the sofa and mum in a chair because of the high levels of damp and mould in every other room in the flat. Ants eat away at the child's food and rats infest the gardens. The property-owning democracy is a long way from the people of West Derby.

Recently a pre-natal survey in the Croxteth ward of my constituency showed that it is in the 16 to 23-year-old age group that families are commonly started. In that area 90 per cent. of households in that age group had neither parent working. No wonder the infant mortality rate in that area is rising above the national, and indeed the city of Liverpool, average. It has risen from 10.5 per cent. in 1976–79 to 13·2 per cent. in 1979–82. That is the reality of living standards in the Tory Britain in which we live. It is a reality of which the Prime Minister appears to have no notion whatever. No wonder she failed to visit Liverpool during the general election campaign.

The Government's response to the conditions in which people have to live has been meagre. The Department of Health and Social Security staff are being cut and the people who are dependent upon supplementary benefit wait in vain at the weekend for the Giro slip to come through the letter box. They cannot turn to savings or to shares in the City of London.

The Gracious Speech said: My Government will pursue policies for … widening parental choice and influence in relation to schools. I am pleased to hear it. I hope that the Secretary of State for Education and Science will apply that to the Croxteth comprehensive school. The parents and pupils there have had to struggle against the Secretary of State in order to keep the school, the only non-Catholic secondary school on the estate. Those people who have sat in at the school, the teachers who have given freely of their time to teach the young people there and the people of the Roman Catholic, Anglican and Methodist faiths should be given credit for their support.

It is only since Labour took control of the Liverpool city council in May that changes have occurred. However, the struggle with the Secretary of State may continue and I beseech him through you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to look again at the position of that school where 70 per cent. of the pupils receive free dinners and where 40 per cent. come from one-parent families. They are being asked to give up a precious asset with marvellous playing fields which are just the sort of leisure facilities that could benefit the entire community. Moreover, it is a school which has suffered no loss of intake since 1978. Harrow was never like that.

Before the Secretary of State for Education and Science makes any decision, I ask him to visit my constituency to see the position, which he has not done so far. I approached the Under-Secretary of State with a delegation 18 months ago about the Croxteth comprehensive school and he had to admit that he had only driven past it. Ministers should visit Liverpool and see the conditions there for themselves. They should see the fight that is being carried on by those people with backbone and guts who are struggling for the people in their community.

Yesterday the Prime Minister mentioned the understanding of Merseyside of the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Thornton). I agree with the right hon. Lady. The hon. Gentleman understood Merseyside well enough to realise that if he stayed as the hon. Member for Liverpool, Garston he would have lost his seat in the election. Indeed, for the first time in history no Conservative represents any constituency in the city of Liverpool. The hon. Member for South Hams (Mr. Steen) left the Liverpool, Wavertree constituency. Therefore, we on Merseyside know that we owe nothing at all to the Tory party.

Some may say that we have been given a Minister for Merseyside. Much good has it done us. The right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) was followed by the right hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) and now we have the right hon. Member for Wanstead and Woodford (Mr. Jenkin). Despite the endeavour to create an international garden festival on the south dockside in Liverpool, which we all welcome, no one would say that that was priority No. 1. We require rear jobs and since we have had a so-called Minister for Merseyside we have lost 14,000 jobs. That is only counting those firms which have laid off 50 workers at a time.

One can see how bitter the people who sent me here feel about the progress that has been made under the Conservative Administration led by the Prime Minister. They contrast what the Minister for Merseyside has done for the people with that done by the Merseyside county council. For the relatively small cost of £4 million to the ratepayers, by giving grants to small businesses and by introducing a co-operative finance scheme, the council has created 6,000 jobs in the time that there has been a Minister for Merseyside. In addition, the council has enabled those people in my constituency who live in isolation on the seventh floor of a block of flats, old people wanting to visit their relatives and young people with families, to go into the city to the shops, art galleries and museums and to free themselves from the isolation of those miserable areas which so often lack facilities. We have done that by introducing our cheap transport policy. That is what is necessary if we are to free the people and give them the liberty that they need.

The Gracious Speech also refers to the need to maintain firm control over public expenditure. We all know that the Government have failed to do that, not that that should be a prime object. We know that the Government have increased public expenditure. Public expenditure as a percentage of the gross domestic product has increased from 41 to 45 per cent. during the Government's term of office, but it has been to provide for the dole queues which are the misery of those whom I represent. The multinational corporations go scot-free and it is often they who are selling Merseyside short. I have tried to spell out the social consequences.

I am proud to represent the hard-working people of West Derby as they are part of the most sophisticated electorate in England. Liverpool has suffered unemployment for a long time. We know that the experiment by the Conservative Government is not working and is never likely to work. We have also suffered the misfortune of the Liberals controlling local government. We have had poor representation from Members of Parliament who sought a lifeline by joining the Social Democratic party. I am glad that the electorate of Liverpool has been at one with the selection committees of the constituency Labour parties in Liverpool in saying that they want no more futile representation. My constituents will not be taken in by the Goebbels box that is in the corner of every living room in this land. The British Broadcasting Corporation, with its great reputation during the second world war as being the voice of freedom to the world, is no longer in that position. The BBC, with the rest of the media, was involved in the conspiracy to bring about, as it hoped—it will not be successful—the destruction of the Labour party, and the promotion of the Tory party and of capitalism's second string, the SDP.

When the people of the midlands and of the south of England realise that the unemployment that they have been suffering during the past couple of years is more than short term, and when they see their sons and daughters with CSEs, 0 and A-levels and even university degrees failing to get a job or failing to get the jobs to which they feel their youngsters are entitled, they will emulate the people of Liverpool and the people of West Derby. When they realise the truth, they will rise like lions and sweep away this reactionary Tory Government.

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