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Local Government and Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Before I commence my speech, the House may wish to know that I chair the Community Development Foundation, which administers grant programmes for both the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, although I have no pecuniary interest in that process. The three main themes of the Queen's Speech are security, aspiration and democracy. Security means continuing the battle against crime and antisocial behaviour. At the same time, we must celebrate the confidence with which the police and the communities in which neighbourhood teams are well established do so, while redoubling our efforts to thwart terrorists. As for aspiration, no youngster should leave education without the necessary skills, and no one should be denied basic skills in adulthood. We want to ensure that every family has a decent and affordable home, and we want to ensure and enhance dignity at work through greater flexibility for employees and the enforcement of rights such as the right to the national minimum wage. On democracy, we demand that our services should be truly accountable and personalised, and that all decisions are taken at the appropriate level of government. I will come back to that issue later. I am delighted that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is in the Chamber. When he was at the Department for International Development, I was his Parliamentary Private Secretary for four years, and with due diligence, I notice that he has been present in the Chamber even longer than me today, missing only 10 minutes of debate. He will be aware that climate change is one of the biggest issues, if not the biggest issue, confronting us. I want to raise two things with him. First, climate change has a political architecture: individuals, communities, Governments and international organisations must work together and take co-ordinated initiatives to tackle the problem. It has the same political architecture as fair trade and the global relief of poverty, and his experience in the Department for International Development of working on the Make Poverty History initiative puts him in an ideal position to apply those principles and leadership to climate change. Secondly, I would rather that we had an 80 per cent. reduction target for CO2 and fail by 5 per cent. than have a 60 per cent. target and exceed it by 5 per cent. Not only is the target about meeting our share of international responsibility but it may well have to make up for others' shortcomings. Whatever experts say, the 80 per cent. target gives us some wobble room if we need it, whereas the 60 per cent. target does not do so. Those issues need to be tackled early, as other hon. Members have said. My High Peak constituency covers most of the bases in DEFRA's portfolio, and I should like to draw a number of issues to my right hon. Friend's attention. First, the aggregates levy sustainability fund, which is administered by DEFRA, puts money back into communities affected by quarrying. It is currently under review under the comprehensive spending review procedure, but because that money is hypothecated, it must go into communities affected by quarrying. I hope that my right hon. Friend can give me an undertaking, not necessarily today, that this will continue to be the case. Hill farmers in High Peak are almost all in the 10th decile of income, as they farm land with a low productivity. They are concerned about the nitrate vulnerable zone regulations, and they require an assurance that they will receive help to meet those new challenges. The national park dominates the geography of my constituency. The principles behind the park are well understood and supported by the Government, but rural housing is a problem. Housing in national parks is a particular problem, because in rural areas, wages are generally lower than in urban areas but house prices are higher. Social housing in rural areas per head of population is less than half that available in urban areas. In addition, the particular constraints on planning in national parks and the extra costs of building, where that is possible, make energy conservation in both new homes and old homes extremely difficult and exacerbate the problems of rural housing. These problems are largely seen not in rural areas but in the cities, where young rural families migrate when they cannot get homes in rural areas. Finally on DEFRA, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State knows, because I have told him often enough, that High Peak is the spiritual home of the right to roam. We had the Kinder trespass in 1932, and earlier this year we marked the 75th anniversary, which our right hon. Friend the present Foreign Secretary attended as the then Environment Secretary. A couple of years ago I was delighted to be present to welcome the first open access land designated under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000. I am disappointed that we are not going to extend that right yet to coastal areas. After we brought in the CROW Act, we spent three years working out the detail of implementing it. I am sure that we can do that with the right to access the coastal areas, and I hope my right hon. Friend will look into the possibility of bringing that forward separately from the rest of the marine Bill. I shall address the rest of my remarks to the Department for Communities and Local Government, and make one or two observations about the nature of democracy in the 21st century. Initially, perhaps, democracy was about communities looking after their own and being entirely self-sufficient—the idea of communes, kibbutzim and so on—but in an interdependent world, that is not possible. Yet the idea of electing people to look after our interests is only 200 years old in this country, and even that took 140 years to mature. Next year it will be only 60 years since we abolished the university vote and the double vote that some people had, when they could vote at both residential and business addresses. We have had our present franchise for only 60 years. Although there are those who want to return to the era of rotten boroughs and who would support the right of millionaires to pump tens of thousands of pounds into selected local Conservative campaigns in order to ensure that the sheer firepower and weight of money behind their campaign might achieve what the force of argument clearly cannot—that is, Conservative victories—I am delighted that we will deal with that under the legislation proposed in the Queen's Speech. Today we have a 24-hour global news media. More people rely on the internet than on newspapers for news. We can attract thousands to petition No. 10 Downing street on a website within hours. We can make or break careers by voting people out of ““Big Brother”” or into the final of ““Strictly Come Dancing””, and we can also force leaders of the G8 to stick to their resolve to tackle global poverty by mobilising globally on the scale of Make Poverty History. When there is such a groundswell of opinion, people expect something to happen. They understand why some collective ambitions cannot be fulfilled, if it is explained to them. People understand when politicians try hard but temporarily fail to achieve those ambitions. Being British, we also understand the historic art of compromise. However, people do not understand when politicians do not try to understand and resolve their problems. The lesson from this is that democracy is not something that happens every four years, but something that happens 24 hours a day. In response to those pressures and demands, I welcome the recent comments of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government about the empowerment of communities. The CDF, the organisation that I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, has been asked to take forward the initiative on empowerment by bringing together third sector organisations involved in communities and involved in helping local people have more control over the issues that affect their local environment. A mechanic goes underneath a car to look up and find what is wrong from the bottom. He has a better understanding of what needs fixing in that car and how than does the garage proprietor, who looks from the skylight and sees only the bonnet and the roof. Our communities are the mechanics. They are constantly looking up and seeing how things work or why they do not. They often know better than the one looking down from on top what needs doing. Councils are better at their job when they ask people what they think of the services that they receive, when they take public concerns on board and when they see themselves as the servants of the people. Communities, as well as individuals, can have aspirations. Lower crime, better lighting, less dog fouling, more play areas, a better balance between the needs of the motorist and those of the pedestrian, better disabled access, faster clearing of blocked drains—all are community aspirations that have been brought to my attention in the past two weeks. If it is legitimate for communities to influence such issues, why not allow them to influence major capital investments made locally, the deployment of staff in their communities and the ownership of community assets? The issue is about campaigning and empowering communities and the organisations that represent them. The message that communities send out to politicians, particularly local politicians, is, ““You are part of the democratic process, but you are not the democratic process itself.”” The people in communities have to be part of that process and must be able to influence what goes on around them. I am proud that we are getting to grips with the issue, finding out what works, disseminating good practice and calling all politicians to account for themselves. Through our commitment in the Queen's Speech to improve the security of all, to recognise the aspirations of all and to recognise the democratic aspirations of communities, I am sure that we will continue to deliver the progress that we have started on for another 10 years and more.