Mr Siôn Simon (Birmingham, Erdington, Labour)

I hardly need tell you, Madam Deputy Speaker, or any other Member how overawed and inadequate I feel. It seems that the eyes of the world are on me, even though they probably are not. I am bearing in mind the one piece of advice that all the wise old stagers have given me, "Remember, this may be a big moment for you and your mum, but it is of no interest whatever to anybody else."

In these dying hours before the summer recess, I feel embarrassed to inflict my clumsy first stab on a House accustomed to much better. Nevertheless, I am glad of the chance to say a few words about my distinguished predecessor, Robin Corbett, who, having entered the House almost 30 years ago, has a lot of friends here. Happily, although they have to make do with me as his replacement, they have only to walk to the other end of the building to find the noble Baron Corbett of Castle Vale in all his ermine finery and splendour.

Robin Corbett is a good man who served our community in Erdington admirably for many years and, as well as much else, did great service in the House as Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee. Since I took over from him, he and his wife Val have been extraordinarily kind and helpful to me and I have no doubt that those who visit the other place will find him sticking up for our part of Birmingham with the same vigour and valour as he displayed here for so many years.

Erdington is a place worth sticking up for. I grew up in the adjoining constituencies of Perry Barr and West Bromwich, East, the northern parts of which melt into Erdington and Kingstanding, and those places are special for the same reason—their people. I shall not pretend that my constituency is the most conventionally beautiful corner of England. As it happens, I love Spaghetti Junction, which is lucky, because I live almost directly under it. But that is okay—I am a Brummie. I was raised among the concrete and the canals, so I feel the same way about contraflows and flyovers as did Priestley about the Pennines and Ted Hughes about the corncrakes, the kittiwakes and all that country malarkey that I am not au fait with.

I cannot pretend that Erdington is bucolic, but it has its graceful nooks and crannies. At Rookery House, Peter Hulse's beautiful gardens are an oasis of tranquillity and peace, but I must take this chance to call on Birmingham council to ensure not only that Rookery House remains the great amenity that it is, but that it is developed into an even better amenity, with the house itself brought into full public use.

My point, despite the delights of Rookery House, is that people are Erdington's great strength. This nation's second city is, unusually, its most patronised and least appreciated. There is almost no aspect of Brummagem that escapes the attention of comedians from elsewhere, but I am glad of the chance to assure you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that we really do not care about that. We can easily live with all the jokes about our shopping centres and our accent, because we have an indomitable sense of who we are and where we come from.

I am not at all embarrassed to describe the people of Birmingham as the very backbone of this country and that is true not just because of what we do or what we make, although that is still what we are most famous for, and rightly so. In Erdington, we make the S-type Jaguar, which is a beautiful British car that is keeping alive a great British brand. We also make some of the world's finest machine tools at Cincinnati, the overwhelming majority of which are exported. At Valor heating, we make the famous old gas fires that still keep Britain warm in winter. Members will not be astonished to learn that, at Dunlop Aircraft Tyres, we make an extraordinary variety of aircraft tyres.

Until recently, we made the tyres for Concorde, but under the Concorde safety review, the contract was unilaterally and disgracefully awarded to a French tyre company, even though there is no reason to believe that its product is any safer than Dunlop's. Even though that happened before I was elected, the inability to do anything about it already feels like my first failure as an MP.

By any standards, the recent efforts of those and other Erdington companies have been outstandingly impressive. Neither the strong pound nor the weak euro is doing any favours to exporters, but those companies are soldiering on because they have a solid mixture of good management and progressive trade unionism, which is the bedrock of modern manufacturing and will continue to be so.

As I keep saying, it is not what we do but who we are that makes me proud to represent Erdington, Kingstanding, Pype Hayes, Castle Vale and our other communities. What is special about us is how normal we are. By "normal", I mean what normal normally means, not what Norman—or should that be normal—Tebbit means by normal.

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