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Christmas Adjournment

I wish to begin by putting on the record the fact that this week marks the 90th anniversary of women being able to vote in a general election, and it is also the 90th anniversary of women being able to stand for Parliament. Seventeen women stood for election on 14 December 1918. Only one was successful, and that was Countess Constance Markievicz, so she never took her seat. The second woman to be elected, of course, was Viscountess Astor, who was elected in a by-election, but today I want to pay tribute to Margaret Wintringham, who was elected in 1921. She was the third woman to be elected and the second to take her seat, as well as the first Liberal woman and the first British-born woman to be elected. She was also the first woman who was actually involved in the suffrage movement to be elected. She represented the Louth constituency, which at the time included the southern section of the current Cleethorpes constituency. I pay tribute to her and all those pioneering women, because without their hard work I would not be able to stand here today and discuss serious issues before we rise for the recess. First, I want to talk about the death of Lance Corporal Mathew Ford. He was sadly killed in Helmand province on 15 January 2007. His name has now been inscribed on the war memorial in the town of Immingham, where he was born and where his mother still lives. His name joins those of those who died in the first and second world wars. I want to talk about Mathew today because we have recently had the inquest into his death, and his family have come away none the wiser. Outside Cleethorpes town hall, his mother said that from the day he died, she has not known what happened to him. She does not know why his body was left on the ground. She does not know why he was shot. She does not know who shot him. She hoped to find out from the inquest what happened, and sadly she feels that all those questions remain unanswered. There were discrepancies between the findings of the Royal Navy board of inquiry after Mathew's death and issues raised at the inquest. There was a great deal of conflicting evidence, and I feel that we owe our troops, and Mathew Ford's family, much more than that. I hope that my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House will help me to arrange a meeting between Mathew's mother and Ministers, so that she can raise her concerns about the conduct of the board of inquiry investigation. Such a meeting would also enable her to discuss some of the issues that were not investigated at the subsequent inquest. The details are very distressing, and I shall not go into them today, but I repeat that we owe it to the families of those who lose their lives serving this country to look into such matters. The next serious issue that I want to raise today concerns the rates paid by companies operating in Britain's ports, which affects some 700 companies around the UK. In a nutshell, those companies have received demands to pay their business rates backdated to 2005. The sums involved are incredibly large as a result, but the crucial factor is that since 2005 the companies have been paying their rates along with their rents directly to port operators, such as Associated British Ports. That means that they are being asked to pay double, which they believe—I agree with them—is grossly unfair. Some firms have gone under already because of the mess with the rates. The proposed solution is that companies do not pay the increased rates until 2010. That solution is not new—it has been used in the past, with orders being put through this House postponing the immediate implementation of rate revaluations, and I hope that a similar mechanism can be adopted in this instance. Many hon. Members attended Monday's very successful lobby on the matter in the House, but I worry for the future of the 700 companies if we do not come up with a solution. I hope that Ministers will meet some of the operators involved, and hon. Members have already lobbied my right hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government. We have also seen the Prime Minister, and at that meeting we stressed the seriousness of the problem and the large number of firms that are affected. I want Ministers to look at the real problems that the firms are facing by meeting representatives of some of them directly. I hope that they will also look at the possibility of putting through the House an order that would postpone the increased levy until 2010. To be fair to them, the Government have made some very helpful suggestions, but I fear that they will not be enough to prevent some firms going under. The next matter that I want to deal with today is more positive—compensation for former distant-water trawlermen who lost their livelihoods as a result of the cod wars. I have brought the matter up in these debates over the years. We have heard a lot about compensation for miners, for example, but a great many people lost their livelihoods after the cod wars. The Government introduced a compensation scheme in 2000, but a serious loophole in the rules meant that thousands of men did not receive any money—they may have had a break in service of more than 12 weeks that rendered them ineligible to receive compensation. I thank the Minister for Employment Relations and Postal Affairs, who on Thursday last week announced that a new scheme will be devised in the new year that does not include that serious loophole. As a result, many of my constituents who were never compensated following the loss of their livelihood will receive compensation. It has taken a long time to get to this stage, and talking about former distant-water trawlermen is very much a minority sport in this House. In debates such as this, we can raise important issues for our constituents, which has enabled me to raise this issue and finally have it resolved. The Secretary of State made an announcement yesterday about some of the measures being introduced following the serious floods. Hull, which is across the River Humber from my constituency, always gets the most attention when we talk about the floods, but that rain that fell on Hull fell just as heavily on the other side of the river, and many hundreds of my constituents were affected. I hope that we can move swiftly to implement some of the measures that my right hon. Friend mentioned yesterday, such as enabling individual householders to obtain grants for flood boards, for example, or special devices that can cover air bricks to stop water entering properties. My constituents are already inquiring about that, and I hope that we get the details of those grant schemes very soon. The final issue that I want to bring before the House is one of those ““You couldn't make it up”” issues. It relates to rubbish collection in North East Lincolnshire and North Lincolnshire, two neighbouring authorities across which my constituency happens to cut. In its eagerness to tell residents when their Christmas refuse would be collected, North East Lincolnshire decided to go on a sort of land grab and delivered its leaflets in the neighbouring authority. About 1,000 homes in North Lincolnshire were kindly given the refuse collection dates for the neighbouring authority. As hon. Members can imagine, the phones were red hot. People wondered why on earth their refuse collections were being completely and utterly changed. Finally, I had to ask one person who the letter was from. They said, ““Well, it is from the council—North East Lincolnshire council.”” I said, ““You live in North Lincolnshire council.”” Now North Lincolnshire is having to re-leaflet the households to tell them that the arrangements have not totally changed. A cost has been put on one authority by another authority. I hope that North East Lincolnshire council will do the decent thing, put its hands up, say sorry and at least pay the cost of rectifying its mistake. Finally—before Opposition Members leap up to take part in the debate—I wish every Member of the House a restful Christmas. We do not usually get many days off to rest. I also hope that everyone who works for us, all the people who work in the House and all our constituents have a restful Christmas.