1 earlier: David Evennett I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in this debate on the Queen's Speech. I must say how much I enjoyed the speeches made by my hon. Friends the Members for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) and for Worthing, West (Peter Bottomley). Both of my hon. Friends gave us lots of ideas and things to think about as they covered areas of the Queen's Speech and the way forward on health and education. I am delighted to see the shadow Health Secretary on our Front Bench, because he has done so much for, and is so heavily involved in, health matters across the country. We very much hope that before long he will be responsible for the health of our country.
In the final year of this Parliament, at a time when this country is suffering so greatly because of the economic recession, it would have been expected that the contents of the Queen's Speech would be constructive and would attempt to deal with the real major issues confronting us. Regrettably, that was not the case and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley said, the Queen's Speech was very thin. I wish to highlight the fact that the Government Benches are devoid of any Back Benchers or participants in this debate on a very important legislative programme. Where are the Labour Members? There is no one on those Benches, save a few Members on the Front Benches. The empty Benches reinforce the belief that Labour Members, too, think that this Queen's Speech is inadequate to meet the needs of the nation.
In general, the Government's legislative programme appears to show that they have run out of ideas, and that this was a political speech and an attempt to save them at the general election. They will not succeed on that. They should be endeavouring to outline a programme to clear up the mess they have created over the past decade, be that in health, education, any other such matter or, more importantly, the economy. Too much of the programme in the Queen's Speech is, regrettably, partisan point scoring and is not about improving people's lives.
I am disappointed that the Education Secretary is not here, because his speech highlighted what is wrong with the Government and with this Queen's speech. His contribution was partisan and, regrettably, it was not constructive. When I intervened on him, I endeavoured to suggest that on education we should be looking to work together to improve in the areas where we need to improve for the benefit of our children and our country. On this occasion, we need real change to create jobs, reform the health service, deal with our huge debt, put forward plans on immigration and offer real reform in schools. The Government have nothing to offer on ideas, vision or practical policies. Most of their measures have been window dressing.
Two areas of great concern to my constituents and across my borough of Bexley did not get prominence in the Queen's Speech. In fact, some aspects of them were not mentioned at all. One is the NHS and the other is immigration. Cutbacks in our local NHS in Bexley, financial problems affecting our local hospitals, the closure of wards and the proposed permanent closure of the accident and emergency at Queen Mary's hospital, Sidcup, are causing anger and concern in my area. My hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) has come down to Queen Mary's to see the problems at first hand. We have a good hospital that is losing a facility that is much loved and much needed in my area. Obviously, we need reforms to the NHS to ensure that the system works better. We should not set our sights against change-we believe in change-but what we need is a new approach and I do not believe that this Labour Government can bring that new approach to the NHS or anything else.
As for immigration, there needs to be a change in both the approach and the policy. There was nothing in the Gracious Speech on a subject that even the Prime Minister recently admitted in a speech was causing concern across our country. One might therefore have expected some mention of it in the Queen's Speech or some proposals. Regrettably, that was not so.
Today's debate, of course, focuses on education and health-two of the most important issues to our constituents across the country. We all know that things need to improve and need to be better. Yes, money has gone in, but what are the results and the outcomes? That is what our constituents are looking for. I want to concentrate mainly on education today, and the Government's proposals are, I think, an admission of failure in education after 12 years in office.
As a former teacher and lecturer, as well as a father, grandfather and school governor, I remain very concerned about the state of education and our schools in this country. So much for the 1997 Government slogan or mantra of "Education, education, education." We have had so many education Bills and so many reforms, yet we still have many problems. That is quite an indictment of failure for the Government.
The Government have said that they believe that their new legislation will allow them to create world-class standards in schools, to listen to parents, to give them more information and to act to protect vulnerable children. These are commendable aims. We are all in favour of them and believe that they are vital. Why, after nearly 13 years, have we not achieved them? Why is still more legislation being introduced? The Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families should be ashamed, I think, of the Government's record in the field of education.
What will the new Children, Schools and Families Bill do? We heard a large number of interventions from the Secretary of State about the bureaucracy and the aims of the Bill to give guarantees to parents and pupils. That is commendable in principle-we want to see guarantees of good schools and a lot of these aims are worth while. The Opposition do not disagree with some of the principles, but we are concerned about the bureaucracy that will be created. Of course we want guarantees, of course we want parents to be more involved and of course we want teachers to be freed up from bureaucracy so that they are able to do their jobs. We want heads and schools to have more independence. Our proposals are not as unfettered as the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) tended to suggest, but we want to ensure that the professionals can get on with the job-whether they are in the health service or in education.
Many of the measures in the Children, Schools and Families Bill are to be welcomed. Some are really good ideas. As my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families said in an impressive, entertaining and constructive speech, a lot of the parts of the Bill that we agree with are measures that we proposed that have now been taken over by the Government. Of course we welcome that fact-anyone welcomes a sinner who repenteth, and this Government have a lot of sins.
Legally enforceable home-school contracts were an idea that we were very passionate about, proposed by the Conservatives. It is just a pity that it has taken the Government so long to come forward and accept them. Regrettably, however, the Government seem to be tinkering a lot with education rather than grasping the real need for school reform.
Of course, we must deal with the worst and poorly performing schools as a matter of urgency. Children are being failed by the system and in 2009 that is not good enough. The majority of children who are failing the most are those in the more deprived and difficult areas, who have fewer opportunities. That cannot be acceptable and must be attacked as a top priority.
In the longer term, the whole education system must be more responsive to parents. A system of legal guarantees, as proposed by the Government in their measure, could be expensive and time-consuming, and will not give parents more control over their children's education. We should be giving parents more real choice by opening up the system, not closing it down and introducing more and more bureaucracy.
In his speech, my hon. Friend was positive about the need for educational reform. We need a radical approach to transform poor and failing schools-not more bureaucracy. The Conservatives have positive and radical ideas. We believe that there should be a new generation of independently run state schools. We do not believe that local authorities should have total control over our education system. In some areas, they have failed to take the initiative.
I commend the local education authority in my borough of Bexley as innovative and good. We are looking towards even greater diversity. We have grammar schools, comprehensive schools and single-sex schools. We also have Church schools and some academies. The academy in Welling is doing well, and we hope that the new one in Crayford will open next September. The primary part of the school is already open-I had the privilege of opening it in July. We look forward to the innovative education at the school giving real opportunity to people in that part of my constituency. The Haberdashers' Aske's federation is behind the project and is to be commended for taking the initiative.
Conservatives want passionately to smash down the regulatory barriers, such as planning guidance and building regulations, so that it is easier for new providers to open a school. Moving to a per capita funding regime, whereby new schools are paid if they attract pupils, and introducing a pupil premium to direct extra funding towards the poorest pupils must also be a way forward.
We are keen on turning the best schools into academies, giving every school the opportunity to apply for academy status and extending the academy programme to primary schools. Forcing schools that have been in special measures for more than a year to be taken over by an excellent academy provider is a way of taking real action to improve schools that have been failing our children and communities. Giving parents the power to take over schools that local authorities want to close is another option for the future.
We believe in giving schools greater freedom, but that must come alongside making schools more responsible to parents. In that way, we shall have better and more balanced education provision for every child, all over the country, not just those who happen to live in an area where there are already good schools.
We want positive action. We shall look carefully at the pupil and parent guarantees of a legal right to a good education, but we have concerns. We believe that we need to free things up rather than increase bureaucratic regimentation and control, and to be much more effective at pushing up standards.
Standards are the key. People should have the opportunity to be educated, to aspire and to develop to their maximum potential. Many of us are very grateful to the state schools we attended and to our teachers. They gave us opportunities to get on and make something of our lives. I am certainly grateful to the teachers at my primary school and grammar school.
Teachers do a fantastic job. As my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing, West said in his excellent speech, teaching is a vocation. Teachers can really help pupils to develop. We should be grateful to people who go into that profession and give their lives to encouraging, enthusing and educating our young people. It is a tremendous career, but a demanding one. We should appreciate, too, the head teachers who give leadership and encouragement and set the benchmarks for their school. We believe in head teachers, teachers and parents, and we want more power for them, so that they can help improve standards, and can enthuse pupils and give them the necessary aspirations.
I conclude with a short word on the Queen's Speech in general. There is very little in it-and, to be realistic, how many of the Bills that it mentions will be enacted by the time the election comes? I do not know. The Queen's Speech is a missed opportunity for a Government who, when they came in, promised so much, but who have delivered so little in nearly 13 years. They are political to the last, as they always have been. The speech was a regrettable missed opportunity to deal with the issues facing our country. Therein lies the Government's tragedy. I am sure that the electorate will pass their verdict on them in the near future.
2 earlier: Nigel Evans Absolutely. I imagine that every constituency will have a number of families who are wondering how they will survive this Christmas. There might even be guilt on the part of some students, thinking that they will go back to university in January still having to rely on parental contributions so that they can eat and live. It is an absolute scandal. The Secretary of State said that more money is going into education, which is absolutely true, but this issue needs to be properly addressed.
At least the Secretary of State cheered me up no end when he said that this is the last Queen's Speech of this Administration. In fact, this is the last November of this Administration; next month will be the last December; and then we will have the last Christmas of this Administration-until we finally get to the general election, which will further cheer me up no end. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing, West (Peter Bottomley), I will be working very hard indeed for a change of Administration, but I suspect that we have a half-open door to a general public who want such a change and to see fresh policies and ideas.
Given the obesity time bomb in this country, the Government want more young people to get off the couch and participate in sport. We must do more to ensure that when youngsters go to school, they have the necessary facilities and time within the curriculum for sport. Sport must not be seen as the easy option, or something that they do instead of the serious work of academic education. Sport and a healthy lifestyle are vital to our youngsters, and in many senses this issue is relevant to the health arena. If youngsters participate in sport they will be healthier, and the health budget will probably thereby be less than if they were not doing sport, eating the wrong sorts of foods and leading very unhealthy lifestyles. This issue will have a huge health impact, so let us get it right now by investing in our youngsters through sport. Let us not treat sport as a Cinderella subject that is unimportant in schools. It is vital.
I also mentioned to the Select Committee Chairman the question of youngsters, in the main, getting a bad press, which they do; I do not know why. I know that it is easier for journalists to pick on the very small number of young people who do bad things, and blow it out of all proportion, as if everybody under the age of 18 is a young thug waiting to pick on some unsuspecting member of the public and rob them, for example. That is clearly not the case. I am co-president of the British Youth Council and in my estimation, having talked to young people, the vast majority are really interested in what they are doing. They actually want to make a contribution to society, and a lot of them do tremendous charitable work, day in, day out, of which we read very little in the newspapers. I wish that there could be a deal or pact with young people so that, for every bad story that a newspaper carries about them, they also print a good one about some of the great things that some young people are doing in this country.
Sometimes I hit the supermarket industry-I declare my entry in the Register of Members' Financial Interests at this point-for the way in which it forces down the amount of money that it is prepared to pay to the dairy industry, to give just one example. However, one thing that supermarkets do on education and training-I should mention Tesco and Sainsbury's in this regard-is operate the voucher scheme that provides computers and other equipment to a number of rural schools in my constituency that otherwise would not get access to it. I am sure that a number of MPs get the opportunity to present those goods to their local schools once a year, and I think that the scheme is fantastic; the gratitude, in particular that of small rural schools, is tremendous to see. If ever the supermarkets look to change the emphasis of that scheme, they could give shoppers an opportunity to donate their vouchers in store so that they could be reallocated to smaller, more rural schools, because the number of parents and grandparents collecting vouchers for those schools will be that much less. That is the one suggestion that I make to supermarkets.
I shall briefly discuss health. On this morning's "Today" programme, we all heard that Nexavar, a drug that would help and prolong the life of those with advanced liver cancer, is not going to be provided to those people, who are suffering, thanks to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. The reason given for their not being able to get the drug is that it costs too much. That is despite the fact that Cancer Research UK's chief clinician, Pete Johnson, says that the situation is enormously frustrating because people know how effective that particular drug is. Some 600 to 700 patients a year are affected by this. People who are suffering from cancer, and their families, are hearing that a drug is available that can prolong their life and are then being told that they cannot have access to it, despite that fact that people in Romania get access to it. What is so special about Romania that people there are able to get access to this drug when this advanced country, which is giving cohesion funds through the European Union to countries such as Romania, cannot give the same guarantee to its patients who are suffering and to the families who are suffering, in other ways, with them?
I hope that we can reconsider which drugs are made available to the public. Where a drug could improve somebody's life, there must be a really compelling reason for it not to be made available here when it is available in other parts of the world. Money simply cannot be the only criterion-if it were, we could say that we are not going to provide all sorts of drugs and procedures because they cost too much.
"N", "H" and "S" were the three letters missing from this Queen's Speech. As many hon. Members know, my mother died of clostridium difficile this year. I hope that when the Government, yet again, look at the procedures in place, they will place a special emphasis on tackling C. difficile and hospital-acquired infections. The number of death certificates mentioning C. diff increased each year from 1999 to 2007. In 2007, there were 8,324 such cases-an increase of 28 per cent. on 2006. Among death certificates mentioning C. diff, the percentage on which it was an underlying cause of death has been similar in each year, at about 55 per cent. The mortality rates in 2007 involving C. diff in the 85 and over age group were 3,429 and 3,396 per million of population for males and females respectively.
There needs to be far more education of, and awareness among the public on this. C. diff is not the same as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. On MRSA, we clearly need to ensure that our hospitals are clean and that the deep cleansing that the Government promise is delivered, so that people who go into hospital with one condition do not come out with another or die in hospital from a hospital-acquired infection. Why, for things such as C. difficile, are prebiotics not made available as a matter of course to ensure that people with one sort of condition are not left so weak that they then pick up a hospital-acquired infection?
I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in debating the last Queen's Speech of this Administration. We will all be going back to our constituencies at the end of this year and the general election campaign is fairly well started as it is. I am not surprised that a man who occupies the position of Prime Minister and takes 12 days to work out what sort of biscuit he likes dithers to a greater extent as to when the date of the general election will be. This Queen's Speech is a great wasted opportunity but, unlike the Lib Dems, I do not think that we ought to have spent the next few months trying to sort ourselves out. The only thing that will sort out Parliament and bring back the trust that people want to have in this institution is a general election. People widely expect one and the House that will come back will have at least 300 or so new Members. That new House will be elected with a mandate to clean up properly the arrangements for how this House should be working. Aside from the NHS, the other thing missing from the Queen's Speech was mention of something to deal with the legislation necessary to implement the Kelly findings; the Conservative party fully endorses those recommendations.
