Graham Stuart (Beverley & Holderness, Conservative)

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me to make my maiden speech in the House today. As my hon. Friends who have already made their maiden speeches have said, it is a great honour to be elected to this place. It is also a great honour to follow excellent speeches such as the eloquent one made by my hon. Friend Mr. Bone. Humility in the House and in politics generally can often be false, but the long road that he has taken to the House has taught him—a lesson that I hope all of us have learnt—to listen to the people and to respect them.

We have heard an excellent speech from my fellow Yorkshire Member, my hon. Friend Philip Davies, and I congratulate him on making an amusing and passionate speech. He is committed to what Yorkshire people and everyone else in the country are now looking for in their politicians: honesty. They want people who will tell it like it is. I hope that I am not being controversial when I say that something has happened in recent years to make people feel that that standard has dropped.

My hon. Friend Mr. Newmark made an excellent speech that went to the core of why he is in politics. I shall have to ad lib later, because it dealt with many of the themes that I had intended to address in my maiden speech. It was interesting that he, like me, has particularly identified older people as suffering under a system that puts means-testing ahead of dignity. Perhaps this is not a controversial issue, because there seems to be a growing consensus on the matter. Nearly everyone—with the possible exception of one person who often sits on the Government Front Bench beside the Prime Minister—now believes that older people need dignity, not means-testing. National associations have joined with all political parties bar one in believing that.

I should like to pay tribute to my predecessor, James Cran. He was described by The Guardian as a "flinty Aberdonian", but beneath the flint lay someone who was actually very considerate and kind. He was interested in improving things in general and individual people's problems in particular. Jim's lasting legacy is to be found in Withernsea. As a newly appointed Conservative candidate, I met several Labour councillors, and the first thing that they said was that the then sitting Member had helped to transform that town. If, after whatever career I have in this place, there are Labour councillors in the towns and villages around Beverley and Holderness who pay tribute to the work that I have done to help their communities, we can all accept that a true contribution will have been made.

My constituency has four towns: Beverley, Hedon and, on the coast, Hornsea and Withernsea. Beverley is famed for its beauty, its minster and its people. Many Members give quite a lot of history in their maiden speeches, but I do not plan to do that. One thing that I would offer is an invitation to an historic figure, the present Prime Minister, to join me on a visit to Beverley minster. There is a precedent for that. Henry V went to Beverley minster after Agincourt to give thanks. I suggest that the Prime Minister joins me in going to Beverley minster to give thanks for the French "non" in the referendum the other day. I am sure that, for different reasons, he joins me in a joyous reception of that historic decision.

The Beverley and Holderness constituency, which as I said has four towns, has existed only since 1997. In political terms, the area has an interesting reputation. We hear of rotten boroughs, and the truth is that in Beverley and Hedon we had two of the most rotten in the country. From—I think—1292, Hedon was able to appoint two Members of Parliament, and those appointed were a distinguished lot. One was Prime Minister for a day. Many of us in this House, even the strongest Back Bencher, might like to be Prime Minister for a day.

In Hornsea we have a tourist town. I heard my hon. Friend John Penrose inviting people to Weston. Hornsea and Withernsea offer equal attraction to anything that the south coast might offer, and I suggest that any Member visit east Yorkshire. We have Spurn point, which has the only full-time professionally manned lifeboat station in the United Kingdom. The crews are professional in their maintenance of the station, but the moment that they put their lives at risk in the lifeboats in the service of this country and its people, they are unpaid. Many medal winners for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution have served and worked at that point.

We have the largest onshore gas storage centre at Atwick. Indeed, at Aldbrough, we will have a larger still gas storage centre. I was interested—I hope non-controversially—to find when I went there just how low our gas stores become at the end of a winter. One thing that I hope to look at while in the House is the possibility of a strategic gas reserve for this country, so that industry or even households do not suffer from our running out of that vital substance.

The constituency has a large community with a predominantly agricultural and rural flavour. I am grateful for the fact that it is home to a farmer, Sam Walton, who is editor of Pig World. I thank him for taking me on a tour of farms in the area, and the National Farmers Union for helping me likewise.

Up from Spurn point, the Holderness coastline is one of the fastest eroding in Europe. My constituents want greater justice for the people whose homes, businesses and livelihoods are being drawn into the sea without compensation. It is a complex area, but I hope that the House can consider it. I know that hon. Members have discussed the issue and considered a fairer means of treating people who are paying a price for a natural process.

As has been said by other Members who represent rural areas, infrastructure is so important. Our area has an older than average population, yet they have inadequate public transport to link them to public services. It may take two or even three bus rides to reach the hospitals. We are lucky, however, in having community hospitals in Withernsea, Hornsea and Beverley. I was delighted to read in the Labour party's manifesto that it is committed to supporting community hospitals. It is all the more worrying, therefore, to find that the local primary care trust, which has a large deficit that is estimated to rise from more than £6 million to more than £8 million, is reviewing those hospitals, with the threat of closure. That was the No. 1 issue raised with me during the election campaign.

To follow my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree, in the national arena it is the plight of pensioners that particularly affects me and which I would like us to change. I am yet to meet the person—certainly in Beverley and Holderness, of any political persuasion and of none—whose vision of life is of paying taxes throughout their working life and contributing to society, and whose aspiration at the end of it is to have to fill out a 24-page council tax benefit form and a 12-page pension credit form in order to get enough money on which to live.

From talking to those in the new wave of Conservative Members, if I may call it that—it is certainly the first major new contingent of Conservative MPs since 1983—I believe that, regardless of traditional left-right politics, they are looking to meld a commitment to social justice with the traditional commitment to freedom and the belief that the Government should do less and set people free. I will work with colleagues to target that message. It is a message not to benefit the rich but to lift those on lower earnings.

I pay tribute to the commitment of Labour Members who are entirely sincere in their desire for a more socially just country. I even pay tribute to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for his efforts to try to lift those on the lowest pay. To some extent, he has been successful. However, the labyrinthine and complex system that has resulted means that a bus driver in my constituency who wants to improve his life and that of his family receives after deductions from his family credit just £1.97 an hour. That is not a vision of social justice; it is one of people trapped by a state that is holding them back. I hope that cross-party we can work to dismantle that, set people free and remove them from unnecessary interference—be they young or old, at the start of their career or at the end of it. If, regardless of party affiliation, we all work for that form of social justice during our time in this place, we will have done good work.

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