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Summer Adjournment

It is a pleasure to follow the positive contribution of the hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess). I had hoped to discuss several issues on a national and an international basis, but, given that other hon. Members have cut down their contributions, I shall do likewise. I will therefore concentrate on my constituency and the work done by the few to help the many. I want specifically to refer to those with disabilities and especially a radio station called Insight. Insight Radio was once called VIP On Air and deals with people who are blind or partially sighted. The station delivers information, has music programmes, newspaper readings and book readings that people can tune into, and generally helps people who have a sight problem. Insight Radio is a community radio station and broadcasts via a mast in the centre of my constituency at Anniesland Cross to radius of about 5 km. The station is also on the internet and broadcasts all over the world. It receives contributions from contacts in Australia and Canada, as well as other countries in Europe. The station does an excellent job, and I see my job here as being to try to assist it. Let me tell a story about why Insight Radio came into existence and why it wants to give information to blind people. There was a train from Glasgow to Edinburgh. The Edinburgh station at the end of line is Waverly—the other of the two main stations is the stop before, at Haymarket. ScotRail, which was in charge of the service at that time, put notices on all the seats in the train to tell everybody that the train would not stop at Waverly, but that it would stop at Haymarket. That was really good for people who could read the signs and knew that they were there, but blind passengers would have known nothing about it. Needless to say, two blind people got off at Haymarket, but thought that they were in Waverly and did not know where to go. Insight Radio provides a service in telling people that kind of information. Unfortunately, people have to have a computer, and blind people can have problems with computers, but the facilities and the technology are advancing and we hope that they will move further. I see part of my job as being to help Insight Radio get on to Sky radio services and freeview, so that it can deliver the service to approximately 2 million in this country who have such problems. That is one of the campaigns in which I hope to be involved when we return after the summer recess. Another campaign that I took up some years ago was on ATMs. It was pleasing when the Select Committee on Treasury took it up and Ministers jumped onboard, too. That was great, but when I first raised the issue back in early 2005, I did so in connection with a constituent who had gone to the ATM to get some money out. He had £40 in his account. Unfortunately, the ATM charged him £1.75 to get his money out, which meant that he could get only £30 out. That meant that the rest of his money just had to sit there, and in Yoker, in my constituency, that extra £8.25 could have gone a long way. Unfortunately, if my constituent had wanted to go to a free ATM, he would have had to pay a bus fare, which would have cost him £1.50. That was totally unfair, so I took up the cause, along with many others. I worked closely with a newspaper in Glasgow called the Evening Times, which was helpful. The newspaper helped to broaden the campaign and the Committee took it up, too, which also helped. I was pleased to receive a phone call last year—funnily enough, in the first week of the recess—from the Royal Bank of Scotland to say that the campaign had worked and that the bank was about to install 400 free ATMs throughout the UK. Since then, HBOS has also announced its intention to install 100 free cash machines in low-income areas in Scotland and the north of England; 74 have been installed so far, of which 38 are in Scotland. It is still looking for sites for the other 26, however, and if any hon. Members in those areas are looking for a free ATM, they should please get in touch either with me or with HBOS, which I am sure will try to install them in any deserving area. This campaign has given a lot of pleasure when things go right, and it is pleasing to know that I am now having difficulty in pinpointing sites for the other ATMs from HBOS that are not too close to other free ATMs. The first that I know of was put into a credit union by the Royal Bank of Scotland, and I want to see the idea being taken up by other credit unions, so that people who are paying money into a credit union do not have to take it there from a bank and perhaps run the risk of being mugged or attacked on the way. The bank was very helpful. Nationwide must also be congratulated on the work that it has done. HBOS started the red and green notices on the ATMs, but Nationwide took that a step further. It did a lot of work on the red and green stickers, which show which ATMs are free to use and which involve paying a fee. I hope that the Treasury Select Committee, the Government and hon. Members on both sides of the House will take note of this project. I believe that there is a case for taking it forward, particularly in rural areas, where people have been short-changed—no pun intended—by the banks. I do not live in a rural area, but I am quite happy to lend any assistance that hon. Members might require to contact the right people. This is certainly something that we, as Members of Parliament, should be doing to help our constituents. I want to mention the communications allowance that has been given to Members of Parliament. I know that some Opposition Members did not think that it was a great idea, but let me tell them, it will allow me to contact every one of my constituents. I am going to do that this summer by putting out a questionnaire to ask them what they want and what they think are the most important issues. I, as their Member of Parliament, can then address the matters that they think are important. I can then go back to them and they will be able to tell me whether I have done my job or not. Come the next general election, whenever it might be, they will have the opportunity either to vote for me or to replace me, but at least I will not have had to say that I did not have the opportunity to contact them and to let them know what I was doing, or that they could not contact me to tell me about their issues. I want to talk about the draft legislative programme and the Queen’s Speech. I have tried twice already—and I shall keep trying until I succeed—to introduce a Bill on employment retention and rehabilitation leave. People who become disabled or whose disability gets worse while they are in employment and who want to remain in employment should be given the opportunity to do so while being supported not only by the company but by the Government. They should be enabled to get back into work where they can pay their taxes, which will give money to the Treasury, and give valuable work to their employer, to whom they might feel that they owe something for having looked after them. I hope that hon. Members will support that measure when it comes back. I want briefly to mention yesterday’s announcement about the ships to be built in Scotstoun in my constituency, which has secured the employment of 2,000 workers. I also want to reiterate my point to the Secretary of State that I am still looking for the seventh and eighth Type 45 destroyers, and I certainly want to take part in the debate on defence procurement on the second day after we come back from the recess, to talk about what we are going to do with the MARS—military afloat research and sustainability—ships and to ensure that shipbuilding in the United Kingdom is up and running and will continue for quite a few years to come.