I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Preston (Audrey Wise) on her speech and on the priority she gives to children's health, which is extremely important. I am sure that all Labour Members share her priorities.
I should like to pay tribute to my predecessor, John Garrett, who was first elected in February 1974. Many hon. Members will know him not only for his contribution to the promotion of good management throughout the public services - and indeed, the private services - but for being a scourge of complacency in the civil service through his membership of the Treasury and Civil Service Committee and, before he entered the House, for the advice he gave to the Fulton committee. He will be warmly remembered, particularly in Norwich, for the consistently tremendous work he did for the constituents of Norwich South and in promoting the interests of the citizens of Norwich.
It is a tremendous honour to have been elected to represent Norwich South - the southern part of the great city of Norwich. It is an historic city; the former second city of England. It has an historic cathedral, a Norman castle, a guildhall, monastic buildings in Blackfriars and a mediaeval city centre. It is an educational centre, with the University of East Anglia being one of this country's outsatnading universities. It has a city college, which is entering into tremendous new agreements to give the young people of our city, through partnership with Bull Technology, the information technology qualifications that are needed in the modern world.
Norwich research park has a series of institutions that put Norwich at the forefront of food research in Britain. One of the things about which I am delighted is the commitment in the Queen's Speech to establish an independent food standards agency, which we in Norwich will be urging should be located in our city as a principal researcher into the quality of food.
The headquarters of the Stationary Office, which publishes Hansard, is located in Norwich. Despite the depradation of the sell-off that the previous Government ordered, The Stationary Office intends to provide the Government with the quality of service that it has historically provided.
Norwich is a regional financial centre. The headquarters of the Norwich Union and Sedgwicks are located there. There are tremendous resources in the city for all financial services. It is also of course the culture and media capital of the region, producing regional television programmes, and being home to the Broads national park authority, which extends within the boundaries of my constituency. There is a theatre and an art college, and the city is the home of the Canaries, who are hoping to return to the Premier League, although I regret to say not for the comimg season.
I am glad that the people of Norwich strongly support the Queen's Speech and the themes of work, welfare, education and health. They know that youth unemployment must be tackled and that only the Labour Party's proposals for a windfall tax to provide jobs, education and training for young people can do so. They know that a minimum wage is needed - specifically in Norwich and Norfolk, where low pay is traditional. Indeed, my predecessor referred to the incidence of low pay in that part of the country in his maiden speech in 1974. The people of Norwich will welcome the commitment to a minimum wage.
The people of Norwich will also welcome the commitment to minimum class sizes of 30 pupils for five, six and seven year olds. Some primary school classes in my constituency have as many as 39 pupils. The people of Norwich know that the changes will make a substantial difference. Norfolk as a whole has been the subject of the previous Government's guinea-pig approach to nursery vouchers, which caused major problems in Norwich. We are delighted that a proper nursery scheme will be established through the state education system and that the nursey voucher scheme will be abolished.
I should like to focus on a specific, small health matter: the measure to clarify the legal power of the national health service trusts to sign PFI contracts. I hope that the Bill to implement that will have a rapid and trouble free passage through both Houses. It is needed because banks are holding back from signing PFI contracts - public-private partnerships - because they are uncertain about the legal status of NHS trusts. There may be other reasons, but that is one. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said yesterday, one of the Labour Government's missions is to remove the red tape that has stopped investment in the health service. By clarifying the legal status of hospital trusts, we will enable the acceleration of public-private partnerships and investment in health and the building of new hospitals and health faclities. I strongly support the measure in the Queen's Speech and the accelerated resources for health that it will offer.
The issue is especially relevant to Norwich, because a PFI scheme for the Norfolk & Norwich Hospital awaits agreement from the banks, having been signed in November. The scheme faces the obstacles that I mentioned earlier. From our experience in Norwich, we welcome the election of a Government who are committed to developing private-public partnerships more successfully than in the past.
Under the previous arrangements, the people of Norwich were not allowed to know - for reasons of so-called commecial confidentiallity - which services, ranging from clinical services to canteen cleaning, will be included in the PFI arrangement.
The local people were not permitted to know which specialisms would be available at the new hospital; the prices that would be charged for services; or whay guarantees the previous Government had to give to sustain the deal. They were not permitted to know about any future plans for existing hospital sites, even though hospitals had been closed, thus reducing total bed numbers in Norwich. They were not permitted to know what transportation arrangements had been made to ensure that people could use the new hospital on the outskirts of the city at Colney. It would have been better if the new hospital, like the old, had been planned for the city centre - as originally proposed - instead of outside.
The Labour Government are not responsible for the flawed process that led to the PFI agreement, but they will have to do their best with their inheritance. The Bill that was announced yesterday will accelerate the process and I welcome it. I know that the new Government will use the Bill to build a much more democratic, open and accountable procedure under which people can learn about the investments under the PFI schemes and public-private partnerships. We will encourage more much needed private resources for, and greater investment in, health, and we will also encourage a system that allows people to participate fully in the discussions, unlike the PFI schemes that the previous Government operated. We will end the unaccountable secrecy of the unelected quangos, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said yesterday, and we will establish the necessary public, open discussions and a new flow of investment.
The people of Norwich South welcomed the Gracious Speech yesterday. They know that it will make a dramatic difference to the people of the city of Norwich. I have great honour and pride in speaking in the House today and commending the speech to you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
The real choice was thus between the Colney site and no new hospital at all. The stark reality is that the outgoing Conservative Government ensured that the new hospital would be built at Colney.
Despite the significant advantages of a formal review, it could not change the central fact that the contract to build the hospital at Colney had been signed six months before the General Election, and was legally binding. I took the view that my duty as Norwich South's MP was to fight for the best possible deal for Norwich on the basis of the real situation we face, rather than to pursue an impossible mirage.
Accordingly, I have started assembling evidence and campaigning on four aspects of the new hospital where I believe we can make a difference.
I need finally, however, to deal with the more political points which have been made by some of your correspondents, notably from the Green Party (eg Denise Carlo) and the Liberal Democrats (eg Andrew Aalders- Dunthorpe 5/6/97, 14/7/97). They have accused me of a variety of political crimes from "U-turns" to "failing to take off my shirt and fight".
These attacks are fundamentally misplaced. As MP for Norwich South I have represented my constituents views to Ministers in the strongest possible terms - not least because I personally support them - but it would be foolhardy and ignorant to ignore the facts as we found them after may !st. My shirt has been off and will continue to be off, but on the basis of what can be achieved and not on the basis of might-have-beens.
At the Blackfriars meeting before the election I stated clearly that though my personal prejudice was to favour a location of the hospital at its current site, I said that "with caution" because I, like everyone else, did not have access to the full facts. Thses are now available, as I have set them out. There has been no "U-turn".
Finally, as I have made clear for some weeks to the KOHIN campaigners I am not prepared to campaign for objectives I know to be unattainable. We must start from where we find ourselves now rather than where we might have been six months ago. It is misleading to suggest that a new hospital in the City Centre is a feasible option. It is not, as Ms Carlo has known for well over a month.
Like her I regret that truth, but my job is, and will continue to be, to fight my hardest to secure the best possible deal for my constituents.
Charles Clarke MP
Norwich
Eastern Evening News 3rd July 1997
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