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Health and Education

I am delighted to have the pleasure of following the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), who has given the House a very polished performance, if I may so describe her maiden speech. It was fluent and knowledgeable about her constituency, and there was an element of passion as well. On behalf of everybody else here, I can assure her that she will not need to worry too much about weight watchers, because she will be run ragged in her new post, as her constituents will soon find out her e-mail her address; she will then not have time to go weight watchers, and she will be running around the streets of Hackney in any case. The hon. Lady took great pride in the fact that she and her hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), as two ladies representing the borough of Hackney, represent the only borough represented only by women. It is clear on the Labour Benches that the Labour party is revelling in the idea that there are many women Members on that side of the House, but I remind the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch that the first woman Prime Minister came from the Conservative party, and that it was she who rescued this country from oblivion. I can assure her that the ladies in this party have played an important part in the life of this country as well as of our party. I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Wallace) and my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) have been able to make contributions, which I have much enjoyed. They both bring a military flavour to the House. As one who is involved in defence activities on behalf of my party, I am delighted to welcome them to the fold. I want to raise the serious plight of the primary care trust that serves my constituency and two other issues, although I recognise that I am out of place as an old lag in a field of maiden speeches. The Gracious Speech refers to the Government’s intention to"““continue to improve the quality of health services””," which implies that health services are already improving. My constituency is served by Blackwater Valley and Hart PCT, which suffered a £2.6 million deficit last year, even after it implemented a £3.8 million cost-reduction programme, and is set to incur a further £8 million deficit this year. The Government claim to have provided a very generous settlement, but half of the £13.8 million increase will go on the increased cost of the acute hospital tariff, over which the PCT has zero control. That money will not buy a single additional operation. The rest of the money will be swallowed by other costs such as the unfunded part of the new GP contracts, revised hours for junior doctors, continuing care, prescriptions and so on. Dr. Nigel Watson, chief executive of the Wessex local medical committee secretariat, which represents GPs throughout Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset, has said:"““The current situation is the worst I have experienced in 23 years of working in the NHS. The financial pressures for 2005–06 are so serious that unless significant action is taken money will have to be taken out of the system and services cut or reduced . . . The PCTs are looking at reducing the whole work force, including managers, by 5 per cent. The result is that there will be no additional doctors or nurses appointed in Hampshire, and natural wastage means we will lose a few more.””" That statement is a savage indictment of Government policy that flatly contradicts Ministers’ extravagant claims. My constituents are suffering as a result of the biased funding formula, which discriminates heavily against the south-east. Blackwater Valley and Hart PCT attracts 22 per cent. less funding than the national average, yet our problems are similar to those in the rest of the country, and we face considerably higher local costs. It was no mean feat to meet the targets on 78 per cent. of the national average allocation and with only £2.6 million overspend, but to fund my constituents on that false basis in perpetuity is simply unacceptable. The Department of Health now proposes to deduct any overspend in the current year from next year’s allocation, which is an extraordinarily vindictive arrangement, the ultimate logic of which is that the PCT will end up paying the Department. The second issue that I want to raise has a bearing on both health and education. The Prime Minister has suddenly discovered that respect is a commodity in short supply in this country, a message which was doubtless personally reinforced by his recent encounter with the electorate. The biggest problem facing Britain today is the breakdown in family life. It is hardly surprising that so many young people have such little respect for other people or property when they have no resident father and when the Government pump out an incessant message about knowing your rights and place such little emphasis on accepting responsibility. My point is graphically illustrated by this article, ““Sisters pregnant at 12, 14 and 16. So what does their mother do? She blames the school””, which appeared in The Daily Telegraph yesterday—if hon. Members have not read it, I urge them to do so. Collectively, those children receive benefits of £31,000 a year. The mother of the three girls was astonished that her daughters had become pregnant so young, stating:"““It just doesn’t seem possible””." It is hardly surprising that we have so many problems in our country when that sort of activity is becoming prevalent. According to an excellent and well-researched report, ““Experiments in Living: The Fatherless Family””, produced by Civitas in 2002, children living without their biological fathers are more likely to have emotional problems and to get into trouble at school, and they face a higher risk of experiencing health problems. That message may be unpalatable—unlike hon. Members who are making their maiden speeches, I do not have to be uncontroversial—even to the so-called modernising tendency in my party, but the message is crystal clear. We owe it to today’s young people to rescue them from growing up in an environment that is devoid of respect. We need to frame a benefits system that rewards those who do the right thing instead of, as now, rewarding the feckless, and we need to reinforce the message that marriage is the surest foundation for raising children. My third point relates to my principal passion outside politics, which is aviating. I have held a pilot’s licence since I was 17, and I am very proud to represent the birthplace of British aviation, Farnborough. Sadly, the Gracious Speech does not refer to any form of aviation. On 16 October 2008, which is within the probable lifetime of this Parliament, we shall celebrate the centenary of Samuel Cody’s first sustained flight from Laffan’s plain, Farnborough. Britain remains to this day a world leader in aerospace, and the movers and shakers in that business were invariably captivated from their earliest years by the magic of flight. Today, general aviation faces a range of threats. As early-day motion 141 and the letter in yesterday’s The Daily Telegraph, which was signed by such legendary figures as Neville Duke and Raymond Baxter, testify, the wonderfully evocative vintage aircraft ““Sally B””, the B-17 immortalised in the film ““Memphis Belle””, is grounded thanks to new EU regulations, which demand that it be insured as if it were a passenger-carrying Boeing 737. How ironic that an aircraft that contributed to the liberation of Europe should be taken out of the sky by European bureaucrats. I hope that the EU will see the error of its ways and enable the B-17 to participate in the combined 60th anniversary VE-day/VJ-day celebrations on 10 July.