Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey)

Following overseas development questions earlier today, I must be the only Opposition Member who is quite pleased that the Minister for Overseas Development is in the other place.

Any new hon. Member rising to make their first speech in the Chamber cannot help but be aware of the history and tradition that reside in it. Traditionally, a maiden speech is non-controversial, praising one's predecessor and describing the constituency, yet some distinguished hon. Members, past and present, have maintained a tradition of rabble-rousing and controversy. Indeed, we have heard some speeches like that this evening.

Which tradition should I follow? I believe that no tradition deserves to be honoured for its own sake but only for its intrinsic merit and relevance to modern-day conditions. We must move with the times if we are not to atrophy into some quaint but irrelevant sideshow, fit only for tourists to admire.

In a real sense, the fact that I am here tonight is a most welcome break with tradition, because it is my privilege to be the first Labour Member for Wallasey—an honour for which I thank the voters of the constituency and those who worked so hard on my behalf. I believe that I can say with some feeling, as Shakespeare wrote, that some traditions are More honour'd in the breach than the observance. It is not my intention, however, to break with the tradition of paying tribute to my predecessor, the noble Baroness Chalker. She was a formidable opponent, and I know that she was a popular and well-respected Member of the House—and deservedly so. She served Wallasey well for 18 years. I recall that she was the first Member of Parliament whom I questioned when I attended a meeting of the Hansard Society as an enthusiastic 14-year-old schoolgirl. I remember asking her a question about the future of the other place, which specifically related to its possible evolution as a democratic chamber. She gave me a response that I could not agree with then and I still do not agree with now, but as long as the other place remains in its present form I am certain that she will make a worthy contribution to its deliberations and I wish her well.

The constituency of Wallasey is located across the Mersey from Liverpool in the north-east of the Wirral peninsula. The derivation of the name most generally accepted is that it means "Island of the Welshmen". The pre-Doomsday history appears to show that the area was used by Celts sheltering from avaricious Saxon raiders. Thus Wallasey can, I believe, rightly express its solidarity with the endeavours of its Celtic descendants in Scotland and Wales who must, in the aftermath of the general election, engage once more in a similar activity.

Wallasey is a place of constrasts encompassing residential areas, derelict docklands, council estates and a seaside resort. The years of Conservative rule have hit Wallasey hard. Not only have two recessions in a decade decimated the basic manufacturing industries on which the prosperity of the area was founded—especially the shipbuiding industry—but the continuing recession is threatening what is left. As a result, unemployment in the area is a chronic problem which affects nearly one in five of the working population if one counts those who are left out of the reckoning by the statistical redefinitions of unemployment so loved by the Government.

It is not unusual for me to meet constituents who have been jobless for 10 or 11 years, but the Gracious Speech —as has been pointed out many times today—made no mention of that problem. Any decent humanitarian Government would develop a strategy to deal with it and I implore the Conservatives to do so. Worthy attempts are being made by Wirral council and the local chamber of commerce to attract new business to the area, but their efforts have been undermined by the recent decision to raise the tolls on the Mersey tunnels to unacceptably high levels. That has hit commuters and businesses and is acting as a brake on any possible economic revival.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newport, East (Mr. Hughes) recently initiated an Adjournment debate on the increase in the Severn bridge tolls. There is a similar problem with the Mersey tunnels about which my constituents feel very strongly. It is high time that the Treasury did something about the injustice of tolls and the unfair penalties currently meted out to those living in areas where the local authorities were far-sighted enough to build essential river crossings—whether bridges or tunnels —long before the Department of Transport got around to it.

I welcome the commitment in the Gracious Speech to combat the trafficking and misuse of drugs as there is, unfortunately, a growing drug problem in the Wirral. It is not only a personal tragedy for the victims of this scourge but it contributes to the rising rate of violent crime and causes much needless fear and misery. We must recognise the extent to which poverty and deprivation help to fuel such problems. It cannot be right to create a two-tier society which excludes significant numbers of people from the advantages that many others take for granted and then to expect that social problems will not emerge as a result.

It will not surprise Conservative Members if I say that there are many aspects of the Gracious Speech with which I cannot agree. Of its proposals, the attempt to privatise British Rail and British Coal are among the most objectionable. Other hon. Members have spoken in more detail about their objections to those proposals and I intend to confine myself to a few comments about the principle of privatisation itself. I see little merit in it. Indeed, I believe it is driven by the ideological obsessions of the Conservatives and lacks a firm empirical or theoretical justification.

One link that it is important to pinpoint is that between privatisation and redundancy. Another discernible link is that between privatisation and the seemingly inexorable rise of chairmen's salaries. For example, British Gas had 104,000 employees in 1980 but only 81,000 10 years later. Meanwhile, the chairman's salary had increased from £109,000—almost £1 for every employee—in the year of privatisation to £370,000 last year. It is safe to say that that has been an above-inflation increase. I think that many users will also have noticed the increased efficiency in sending final demands and cutting off the supply which the privatisation of the utility has brought in its wake. The primacy of profitability over all other concerns in privatised industries often means that social obligations come a long way down the list. There is a great deal of nonsense in the current dogma on the Conservative Benches that private is somehow good and public is bad. These proposals are based on that false premise and to that extent they are undesirable and wrong.

The Prime Minister said in his post-election speech that he intended to be a Prime Minister for all the people, not just for those who voted for him. The people of Wallasey will judge him by those words. They expect action to return prosperity to their area, and that means a sensible regional economic strategy and a flight from the current economic dogma which these privatisation proposals symbolise.

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