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Summer Adjournment

The first issue that I shall raise has already been raised by the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes). That is no surprise, because it is the question of the closure of the emergency clinic at the Maudsley hospital. All the Members of Parliament in south London, the two local authorities of different political persuasions and health scrutiny committees of different political persuasion united to say that they did not want it closed and that they did not want it moved to an inferior position at King’s College hospital. The former Secretary of State for Health did not listen to any words that we said. I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will make a point of drawing this matter to the attention of the new Secretary of State for Health even though that has already been done. The local paper, the South London Press, has led a very good campaign on this issue, and has really got people in south London to see mental health issues as central to the problems that many of my constituents and other Members in south London face. Each week now in the South London Press we read of people who have been treated very badly indeed, and we read of the bureaucracy that is involved in that change. And yet £6 million was going to be spent, although it has not been spent yet, to move a service that nobody wanted moved. I still do not understand the reasoning behind that. I am delighted that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has made three changes in the last week or two, and all of them are on issues on which I voted against my own Government—on the questions of cannabis, casinos and 24-hour licensing. I am hopeful that, over the next few weeks and perhaps by the time that we come back in the autumn, there will be more changes on policies on which I was against the Government and on which they have now seen the error of their ways. I hope that the new Secretary of State will look again at the issue that I have raised, because it is not too late to change. I also wish to draw to the House’s attention the way in which the ballots for arm’s length management organisations are carried out and I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will refer it to whichever Minister is responsible for monitoring the conduct of those ballots. There has recently been a ballot in Lambeth for an ALMO and I was ashamed by the way that my borough handled it. The ballot form was biased and set out in a way that was clearly one-sided. Something like £400,000 was spent on glossy brochures, DVDs and all sorts of other things that were sent to tenants, and they amounted to propaganda as to why the tenants should have their housing put out to an ALMO. Despite all that, there were questions such as"““Are you aware that the ALMO could attract over £200 million of additional investment to make homes decent in Lambeth?""Yes No Don’t know""Are you aware that with the ALMO for Lambeth you will remain tenants and leaseholders of the Council?""Yes No Don’t know””." The whole ballot form was not in any way a fair way to ask tenants’ opinions, especially after the expenditure of £300,000. Ironically, of the 30,986 council housing tenants and residents who had the right to vote, the total number of valid votes cast was 8,278. Of that, the number voting yes was 3,518, the number voting no was 3,362 and the number voting ““don’t know”” was 1,398. The council leadership portrayed that as a great victory for the ALMO and claimed that it had received the support of 52 per cent. of the tenants voting. However, when we add the figures up, we see that a minority of the people voting voted for an ALMO. I ask the Deputy of Leader of the House to make sure that the Minister responsible is made aware of that. Although we need extra resources to improve the homes in my borough, setting up a bureaucratic way of proceeding is not what residents and tenants want. I hope that Ministers will study that carefully and realise that Lambeth council would have done much better to spend its money and resources on improving the repair system and the whole system for the management of housing rather than on paying overtime to extra staff to knock on doors so many times that the residents told them to go away and locked their doors. Lambeth might then have had the chance to become a two-star housing authority, which it is not. Instead of Lambeth council wasting money, it could have campaigned for the fourth option of direct investment in local authority housing. That is needed and I hope that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is moving towards greater support for council housing. I am fed up with the terms ““affordable housing”” and ““social housing””. Let us get back to using the term ““council housing””, because that is what people mean when they talk about improving some of the housing. It does not mean that other types of housing cannot be built, but people know what council housing means and that is what we want. The House should not adjourn until it has debated another issue. For 150 years, we had a wonderful universal postal service that was carried out by the Royal Mail. It was the envy of the world, with low, uniform stamp prices and six-day deliveries. I believe that the rapid introduction of full liberalisation in January 2006—well ahead of all other European countries—has created an unlevel competitive playing field for the Royal Mail that is now threatening its commercial viability and the future of the universal service. Postcomm has not carried out its duty very well in allowing foreign competitors to enter the UK market while denying the same opportunity for Royal Mail to compete in Europe. As the Communication Workers Union predicted, competition has amounted to cherry picking and to allowing the private competitors to cream off the Royal Mail’s most profitable bulk mail business. Real competition has proved a myth, with no other competitor being prepared to develop a national collection and do all the things that we are so used to with Royal Mail. Those who run Royal Mail, Mr. Leighton and—I’ve forgotten his name, but I do know him. [Interruption.] Mr. Crozier. They have got themselves into a situation where they are refusing to negotiate properly with the Communication Workers Union. I have a long association with the Communications Workers Union, dating back to when it was the old Union of Communication Workers, and I know that the people who work for the Post Office do not want to strike. However, the Royal Mail has handled the situation appallingly. It goes on about huge salary increases for its workers, who actually earn a small amount, while people such as Crozier award themselves huge amounts of extra money every year. Over the summer, the Government need to get involved, address the issue, and knock some heads together at Royal Mail. There are two final issues that I would like to mention. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) will probably have more to say about one of them. It is quite wrong that we are going off for the long recess without having a proper debate on the need for a referendum on the European Union constitution. For me, it is still a constitution. It is disgraceful that, unless it has been produced today, we still have not seen an English edition of the so-called constitutional treaty. It is quite clear that the vast majority of the original 250 proposals in that constitution are there in black and white as they were before. A very strong commitment was given in the manifesto that I stood on that we would have a referendum on that constitution, and we need a referendum. The demands for that will grow over the summer. Before we come back in the autumn, I hope that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will change his mind on that, as we changed our minds on the original referendum—unfortunately, we were not able to have that referendum because other countries voted against the constitution. Finally, a lot of my constituents will be travelling this summer. They will be flying off and using the airports. I want to put in a word for some kind of reality check on the question of terrorism and the various measures that have been introduced. I am absolutely certain that one of the things that the terrorists want to do is to change our way of life and to change the basic idea in this country that we do things within the law and we do not change our behaviour too much. I am afraid that, as a constant traveller—quite often I go back and forward to Northern Ireland, where there is no alternative but to fly—I have noticed the attitude and the way in which people handle the security process. Quite honestly, if anyone wanted to do something, they would simply do it around the long queues at check-in and security. The Government have to allow a more common-sense approach to hand luggage. I had tiny bottle of blackberry jam, which my mother made, taken off me because it was slightly bigger than the size of blackberry jam that I would have been allowed to carry. There is no common sense in the attitude to the kind of measures that are being taken. Unless we take people with us on the measures, people will react. Although everyone wants to see normal security carried out, they do not want to see more and more people acting as if they just quite enjoy having a little bit of power over ordinary people. I hope that, over the summer, Transport Ministers do not react too much to suggestions that there should be even tighter security. We should take a common sense approach and recognise that the answer to terrorism does not lie in just making the lives of everybody in this country more difficult. I am sure that many other Members want to speak. May I wish you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and all the staff a good long recess? We London MPs do not disappear off; we are usually seen wandering around the House of Commons where lots of work is going on, because we do not go off unless we are actually on holiday.