Dr Tony Wright (Cannock and Burntwood)

I should like, first, to congratulate you, Madam Deputy Speaker, on your appointment. I should like to congratulate the new hon. Members who spoke before me—my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, North-East (Mr. Ainsworth) and the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox)—who, in their different ways, were excellent.

I am particularly grateful to be called now because I have spent most of my life suffering from a disability which is known as alphabetical order. My name is Wright, which has meant that I have tended always to be at the end of queues. People who use the principle of alphabetical order tend to think that it is a democratic, a just principle. In fact, it is just only to people who fall at the beginning of the alphabet. I hope now to escape that disability and look to Madam Speaker for help.

As evidence of my disability, I have a small majority —1,506. I sometimes think that it might be larger if only my name were different! Research shows that, if one's name appears high on the ballot papers, one has a small advantage. I had thought that if my name were, to take some of my neighbouring Members, perhaps Cormack, Budgen, Cash or even Boothroyd my majority might be 1,507 or 1,508.

Thinking about it more, it struck me that that political disability had loomed large in British political life generally. If one considers the people who have succeeded and those who have failed, one sees the principle in action. One has only to cast one's eyes across the list of British Prime Ministers this century to see exactly what the principle means. From Asquith to Attlee, from Balfour to Bonar Law to Baldwin, from Campbell-Bannerman to Churchill to Callaghan, the principle has been rampant through the political history of the 20th century. The great political casualties of the century have been the Thatchers and the Wilsons.

Indeed, during the debate yesterday, looking at the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, I thought that there but for the alphabet would not be a man reduced to such a sorry parlance. If his name were not Waldegrave, he surely would not be the Minister for filing cabinets and name badges for ticket inspectors. I noted that the Prime Minister, like Harold Macmillan before him, had taken the sensible precaution of coming slap in the alphabetical middle.

Hon. Members will notice that in selecting a constituency—Cannock and Burntwood—I chose one very near to the beginning of the alphabet to reverse the principle that I have been describing so far. It is in south Staffordshire. It is the heart, the quintessence, of middle England. It contains the towns of Cannock, Hednesford and Burntwood. Hednesford was particularly proud this week as its football team reached the final of the Welsh cup. I will not detain hon. Members with the mysteries of how a town in Staffordshire can reach the final of the Welsh cup, but I am sure that the House would wish to congratulate the team on that splendid achievement.

It has the beauties of Cannock Chase on its doorstep. Its people hewed coal for 100 years and are now having to find a different future. Its history is that of England itself. It was represented in the House for 25 years after the second world war by Jennie Lee, whom Labour Members remember particularly fondly, and who I also associate with adult education. It was inhabited by people such as the present Conservative hon. Member for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack) for a time and by Gwilym Roberts, who will be remembered as a warm, passionate and committed Welshman. I am happy to report that last week he was triumphantly re-elected to Cannock Chase district council. Part of the constituency was represented for a time by the present hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Grocott). I pay tribute to him for the friendship and support that he showed me on coming to the House.

My immediate predecessor was Gerald Howarth, with whom I totally disagreed on everything. However—this is a tribute to him and me—we managed to maintain enough mutual respect to conduct a reasonably civilised election campaign. I acknowledge the work that he did for the people of the constituency and offer him just one word of consolation at this moment of disappointment for him. As one of the most fervent torch bearers for the handbag across the water, the present disposition of the House and of his party may not prove to be so congenial to him now as it was then.

As we have heard, many new hon. Members point to the contrast between what happens in this House and the din and clash of opinions outside—I refer especially to those who come hot foot from election contests in marginal seats—the subjects that people were talking about in the election. Like the miners in my constituency, who want to talk about the threat of privatising the only remaining coal mine. Or the blight caused by opencast mining ripping apart the environment. Or the distinction of having the first toll road—at least for 300 years—being driven through their countryside. They want to talk about cuts in the education system and about why there are no houses for the young people or enough jobs. They want to talk about such issues and they ask what the House is doing about them. Instead we find the ritual confrontations, the impassioned speeches to the near-empty Benches, the votes of which the result is already known. People outside ask what is going on—what is the House doing?

It is a fact—although it may be an unpalatable one—that this country has never taken the business of democracy very seriously. We have taken the idea of strong government and a strong executive very seriously but not democracy. Indeed, only half a century ago, in a classic formula, the Tory Leo Amery, when describing our system of government, said that it was government of the people, for the people, with but not by the people. It was said of Leo Amery himself that if he had been just half a head higher, and if his speeches has been half an hour shorter, he might have become Prime Minister.

This process is now being taken much further. We already have the most centralised, concentrated and secretive system of government in the western world and the Government are now removing the existing arenas in which people can argue, do politics and disagree. We have the most anti-pluralist Government presiding over the historic emasculation of local government, sweeping away diversity, pluralism and independence wherever they can find them.

In the spirit of non-contentiousness that distinguishes these maiden speeches, I say with all seriousness that an older Conservative tradition would have been extremely worried about such tendencies. It was that tradition which used to taunt the Opposition about their centralising tendencies and their ambitions to strip local government of its powers. Yet these are exactly the characteristics that have distinguished the past 13 years of Conservative party rule.

My final remarks will cover education because it is my trade. I have spent my life in education and I feel deeply and passionately about it. There is much to talk about, especially what is happening, to universities and the threat to adult education in which I work. But it is about schools and the government of schools that I particulary want to talk. I have worked a great deal with school governors in the past few years, and I am bound to say that I was a great enthusiast for the Government's school reforms and for the education Act of 1986 because I believed that it introduced a new partnership into schools.

The Gracious Speech mentions some changes that are to be made which will affect school governors. The Government have now betrayed—that is perhaps a strong word but not too strong a word—school governors. They are having to re-educate them in the task that they are being asked to perform. School governors thought that they had gone into the education system as volunteers—many were parents—to support their schools and the system. They are now being taught that there is to be no education system and that schools are to he pitted against schools, parents against parents and communities against communities. That will certainly be the consequence of enforcing universal opt out. Governors gave up their time believing that there was one system to care for all children, but they are now being told that the system is to be driven by market forces. It is not surprising that many of those people are now leaving school government in vast numbers because they are not prepared to do what the Government want. Therefore, the Government have huge recruitment problems for school governors as a direct consequence.

I return to where I began. I am grateful to have swapped the principle of alphabetical order for the principle of catching the Speaker's eye. I hope that that principle will continue and that we shall consign alphabetical order to the dustbin of history and that from now—at least sometimes—the first shall be last and the last shall be first.

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