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Christmas Adjournment

I shall wish everyone a happy Christmas and new year now, because I shall end my speech by talking about the Iraq war, and that may not be the best context in which to wish people a happy Christmas. A Member who spoke earlier issued an annual invitation to Members to visit her wonderful constituency in Devon. That is a county that I know well and love, but may I invite Members to take a Christmas and new year break in my constituency? If they want outdoor activity, Chesterfield is a great base. Two or three miles down the road is the fantastic Derbyshire Peak district. People can walk on the moors, uplands and lowlands, where the scenery is absolutely beautiful. They can visit Chatsworth house, or, a couple of miles in the other direction, Bolsover castle, Hardwick hall and the National Trust's Clumber park. Those are wonderful attractions, but there is also a great deal to be seen in Chesterfield itself. People can enjoy themselves and work off the Christmas pudding and the mince pies. When I first lived in Chesterfield in 1979, the Chesterfield canal was a stagnant, overgrown ditch, but volunteers have renovated it, and it is now a linear green lung. It is possible to follow it from the centre of Chesterfield into the countryside. It is widely used by birdwatchers, fishers, walkers, cyclists and canal enthusiasts. The Barrow Hill engine shed is not technically in my constituency, being just over the border in the constituency of North-East Derbyshire, but it is effectively part of Chesterfield. It is one of the few working roundhouses that survive from the great steam train age, and is a very popular tourist attraction. In 1688, the Revolution House at Old Whittington was a small pub at the edge of a little hamlet up on the moors. That is why the Duke of Devonshire and others from across Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire who were plotting a treasonable act—the overthrow of the King in the glorious revolution of 1688—met there to plot in secret, away from prying eyes. Chesterfield has a wonderful old town centre with a large open-air market, which is the focal point of the town and brings in a large number of shoppers, tourists and other visitors. At one end is the parish church, the ““Crooked Spire””. Many Members will have seen it when travelling from one end of England to the other on the midland main line. It has a crooked corkscrew spire which both twists and leans to one side. There are seven such spires in Europe, but Chesterfield's is the one that twists and leans the most. It is a great tourist attraction: people come from throughout Europe, and even from America, specifically to see the church and the spire. One of the advantages of visiting Chesterfield at Christmas is the opportunity to see the Christmas lights. That brings me to a key point. Year after year, the borough council invests more money in expanding and improving the lights. Apart from putting out the Christmas message, brightening up the midwinter scene and helping people to enjoy themselves, they attract visitors to Chesterfield's wonderful town centre with its large open-air market. That brings in people who spend money and create jobs in the shops and on the market stalls. Unfortunately, the Labour councillors—there are a few left in Chesterfield—do not understand. They consider investing money in Christmas lights to be a strange thing to do, although it creates jobs and brings in visitors. When the Liberal Democrats took over the council in 2003, they built a new coach station which the previous council had refused point-blank even to consider. That bus station was absolutely dire. At one stage, it featured in the national press as the worst in the United Kingdom. It was such an eyesore. The Liberal Democrats built a new station, and now there are coaches. When the Christmas lights were switched on one Sunday a few weeks ago, coaches came from places as far away and as varied as Walsall and Lowestoft, each of them bringing 40 or 45 visitors to spend the day, see the lights turned on, and spend money at the market and in the pubs and restaurants in the town centre. It is all part of job creation and making the town vibrant. The number of lettings at the market has increased this year, while most open-air markets around the country are suffering badly. As a member of the all-party parliamentary group on markets, I hear from people all over the country that open-air markets are suffering as a result of competition from shops, stores such as Primark, out-of-town shopping centres and massive car boot sales. For the first time in some years, however, the number of stall lettings at Chesterfield market has increased. The shops in Chesterfield have a 4 per cent. vacancy rate, compared to the English average of 10 per cent. They are doing very well. A recent university survey marked out Chesterfield as one of the fastest growing and improving economies in England. All of this brings me on to the problems local councils face when trying to invigorate and renovate their economies. They know what is most needed and wanted locally, and they are best placed to take that action, but they are often handicapped by the Government and the funding streams that the Government control. At yesterday's Prime Minister's Question Time there was a question about a council that had turned down an offer of free swimming for under-16s and pensioners. How could it be so callous as to turn down this free offer from the Government? Many councils have done that—although not Chesterfield—because the Government have, of course, not funded it. They have given out this wonderful initiative, but they have not provided all the money. Chesterfield is providing that free swimming, but it is costing us £50,000 of council tax payers' money to cover the shortfall in Government funding. That is 1.2 per cent. on council tax for Chesterfield, which is a small council. Also, this year and next year there will be the 3 per cent. Gershon efficiency savings, and next year—2009-10—there will be a 0.6 per cent. grant settlement from the Government, who provide 75 per cent. of council money; that is well below the inflation rate. Therefore, there will be more cuts. The year after that, the settlement will be 0.2 per cent. so there will be more cuts again. The council has to meet those settlements, but Chesterfield does so very well, as it is a well-run council. It was, in fact, on course to start expanding some services next year with the money it had set aside, but then we got the concessionary bus fares fiasco. At the start of this year, councils across the country said, ““The Government are not providing enough money for this wonderful new national scheme.”” In Chesterfield, the guesstimate was that it would be down by about £300,000. The figures have now come in from Derbyshire county council, which is administering the scheme, and Chesterfield is expected to put in about £1.8 million to bail out the Government's scheme. As I have said, Chesterfield is a small council, and that sum amounts to 11 per cent. of its average revenue budget. It cannot afford that; it is impossible. That will devastate the council's finances. The options are to either put 36 per cent. on council tax or slash services by 11 per cent. This is happening all over the country, but according to Local Government Association figures, Chesterfield is the worst hit council in the country; Exeter and Cambridge, with a proportion of 8 per cent. of annual revenue, are the next two worst hit. The Government must backtrack on this and provide the proper funding for their scheme, as they introduced it. I became increasingly angry while listening to the contributions on the statement on Iraq earlier this afternoon, because Members seemed to be reinventing history. Both Labour and Conservative Members said we could forget the illegal invasion, the 300,000 civilian deaths, the breeding ground for terrorism that has been created when terrorists were not operating in Iraq before, the wrecked economy over the past five years in Iraq and the destabilisation of the Arab world, because we had had regime change, which made it okay. Iraq was never about regime change, however; that was explicitly stated by the then Prime Minister. For example, on the radio on 18 November 2002, the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said:"““I have got no doubt that the purpose of our challenge…is disarmament of weapons of mass destruction. It is not regime change””." On 30 November, he made the same basic point:"““It is solely because of the threat””" from weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein poses,"““and for this reason alone””," not regime change. On 25 February 2003, the then Prime Minister said in this Chamber:"““I detest his regime…but even now, he could save it by complying””—[Official Report, 25 February 2003; Vol. 400, c. 124]—" with the demand for disarmament of weapons of mass destruction, which did not exist, as we all know, and as some of us could see was the case even before the illegal invasion. The then Prime Minister said on three occasions that it was not about regime change. Regime change is illegal under international law. If we have really adopted this policy of regime change, when are we invading Zimbabwe or Burma, or China to get it out of Tibet? This is nonsense; the Government know it is not a policy. It was just a fig leaf to disguise the fact that we were taken into an illegal war under totally false pretences and pretexts. As a citizen, I joined the 1 million other citizens, along with my youngest daughter, who was 10, to walk past the Palace of Westminster in protest at the illegal invasion that everyone could see was coming. As an MP, I took part in our process and voted against that war. One or two Conservative MPs have said, both following the statement and during this debate, that we should not be criticising what happened and that we should forget all that. I remember the wall of sound that came across from the Government Benches attacking us because we were opposed to the war, but I remember even more the comments that came from some Members on the Conservative Benches to my right; they were shouting about cowardice, offering white feathers, and displaying jingoism and bombast of the worst kind. As a citizen who took part in that million-person march and who voted against the war in this Chamber, I think it is unacceptable that in this afternoon's statement about pulling out British troops we did get a statement about an open inquiry into the disastrous illegal decision to invade Iraq.