Mr Warren Hawksley: Mr. Deputy Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity of raising a very important issue: the future of British canals. My interest in canals developed when I was a young boy in Shropshire. I suppose that my parents took me along most of the towpaths around the Shropshire Union canal while exercising our dog. I also admit that I fished in the canals on several occasions. I rarely boated on them,...
Mr Warren Hawksley: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what representations he has received about the future of wild salmon in Scotland. [17320]
Mr Warren Hawksley: Has my hon. Friend any specific proposals to restrict the commercial netting of salmon, which seems to be one of the major causes of the reduction in numbers?
Mr Warren Hawksley: In following the hon. Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin), I shall start by saying that I am afraid that I have perhaps more confidence in the police than he does. I believe that we should back them. We should back them against the civil liberties lobby in particular. In the Bill, we have a balance that is just about right. This is an important Bill. It is one of a series that the Home...
Mr Warren Hawksley: I served on the Shropshire county council education committee in the days when we had selection. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that parents might be so ambitious for their children as to believe that they would be successful and attend grammar schools? That might be why parents responded in the way that the hon. Gentleman claims.
Mr Warren Hawksley: That is not an issue in my constituency. The argument in Halesowen and Stourbridge is whether we should have grant-maintained schools. The local branch of the Labour party is doing everything it can to ensure that parents in my constituency are deprived of that opportunity. They are pressurised not to have grant-maintained schools. I believe that the Labour party is applying similar pressure...
Mr Warren Hawksley: Does my hon. Friend agree that the language of dustbins to describe education for 80 per cent. of children is a disgrace? It is the assumption that those schools will be failures that is the problem. There is no reason why they cannot be good schools. We used to have such schools in Shropshire.
Mr Warren Hawksley: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what initiatives the Prison Service is taking to control prisoners' access to drugs. [10557]
Mr Warren Hawksley: I had hoped that when people were sent to prison, there would be an opportunity to reduce the amount of drugs that they took. I welcome the mandatory drug-testing regime, but its results show that in Cardiff 74 per cent. of tests were positive and in Featherstone and Dorchester the figure was more than 50 per cent. Has any disciplinary action been taken against the warders and governors of...
Mr Warren Hawksley: I support the new clause. I have argued for corporal punishment on many occasions and I am pleased to do so again. Last year, I introduced a ten-minute Bill that attracted more support than I had expected. I served on the Standing Committee on the Bill now under discussion, but I did not table an amendment. However, in 1984, I believe, on the Criminal Justice Bill, there was a whole day's...
Mr Warren Hawksley: When I tabled my amendment in 1984, the British Medical Association issued a press statement saying that it would not support it, but I had letters from doctors throughout the country saying that they were prepared to carry out their responsibilities if the law approved.
Mr Warren Hawksley: Will my right hon. Friend consider arranging a debate before the recess on the allocation of lottery funds? One thinks especially of the allocations made by the charities board. In the most recent round, it gave money to gay organisations and to people fighting asylum deportations, yet refused an application for about £160,000 by Crimestoppers for a campaign called "Say No and Phone", which...
Mr Warren Hawksley: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his consultation document—it is a move in the right direction and it is right that the problems of financing care should be tackled. I have two points. First, will he develop the further stages of the process and the timing of that? Secondly, I hope that he will be able to give my constituents an assurance that they will have a choice between council...
Mr Warren Hawksley: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will make a statement on how his benefit reforms will help people off benefit and into work. [19702]
Mr Warren Hawksley: I thank my hon. Friend for that answer, which is good news for everyone. Does my hon. Friend agree that the so-called welfare-to-work schemes, which often involve minimum wage levels, result in people being put out of work rather than in more jobs? Does my hon. Friend agree that such proposals are best described as work-to-welfare schemes and are the sort of schemes that the Labour party pushes?
Mr Warren Hawksley: In following the hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Cox), may I say that I agree not only with the concerns that he expressed, but with some of his concerns that the Bill perhaps does not go far enough and may result in some problems. I apologise to the House, as a constituency engagement this evening means that I may have to leave before the debate finishes. I have explained to my hon. Friend the...
Mr Warren Hawksley: I remember 1967, as I am slightly older than my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Mr. Carlisle). I agree entirely with his point. We were given the example of what happened in Norfolk—I was in rural Shropshire in those days, when one was more likely to hear cows than music from gramophones, as they were then called.
Mr Warren Hawksley: I agree entirely with my hon. Friend, but I fear that we are straying out of order, so I shall not follow up in too much detail his point about the Beatles. I seem to remember that problems were caused not just by the noise of the group, but by the crowds that it attracted—many hundreds of thousands turned up.
Mr Warren Hawksley: I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. I was about to widen the scope of the debate and consider some of the many surveys on noise problems conducted by the Government's building research establishment. It found that, after sunset, two thirds of the population were exposed to noise above the 35 dB limit recommended by the World Health Organisation. It found on a sample survey that between 60...
Mr Warren Hawksley: My hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Mr. Carlisle) is always diligent in looking after his constituents' interests. I am sure that he checked at what time the riddling took place. If it were at 4 am, there might have been legitimate grounds for complaint. If the noise was more than 35 decibels, one can understand why action was felt to be necessary. More than 20 people have died as a...