---

Christmas Adjournment

Like other hon. Members, I wish to raise local issues, but first I want to talk about an international issue. In 2003, this Parliament voted to invade Iraq. That was an illegal invasion and a disastrous decision. In 2003, I was one of the MPs—as were all of my colleagues—who voted against that invasion. I also came down to London one Sunday shortly before the vote, with my then nine-year-old daughter and 1 million other people, to march outside this building to protest what was clearly about to happen. Hans Blix and his team of UN weapons inspectors had spent some months going to more than half—some 60 per cent.—of the sites that the British and US intelligence services had identified as possible sites for WMD, and they had found nothing. Hans Blix reported that openly and publicly, and he said that if he had another three months, they could finish going to all the sites, but that they expected to find nothing. Instead, of course, we took a different course of action. Already we are seeing, in the early days of the Chilcot inquiry, evidence confirming the view that many of us had back in 2003 that the flimsy evidence of an Iraqi taxi driver and an online student dissertation was sexed up to make a false case for war. We now have the vision of the Prime Minister at the time, Tony Blair, appearing on television and admitting openly that he would have taken this country to war anyway, regardless of what case could or could not be made on WMD. But only days before the vote that took us into Iraq, he stood at the Dispatch Box and told this House that if Saddam Hussein and his sons were willing to give up their weapons of mass destruction, they could stay in power. Tony Blair categorically stated that it was not about regime change, but about WMD. How can someone give up WMD that they do not possess because they do not exist? The Iraq war—a wrong and illegal war—went ahead. It alienated the Muslim world which, only 18 months earlier, had largely rallied around the US after the disgraceful 9/11 attacks. It led to 500,000 to 600,000 people in Iraq dying by UN estimates and up to 1 million dying by other estimates. Bombings continue to wreak havoc in Baghdad and across Iraq, as we saw tragically only a few days ago. Iraq became a recruiting sergeant for international terrorism. On the other hand, the Afghan war in 2001 was different. The Afghanistan invasion was justified and legal, and as a newly elected MP at the time I argued that case against the Stop the War coalition at a public meeting in Chesterfield. Eighteen months later, I argued at a similar public meeting that the Iraq war was wrong. Afghanistan was justified because 9/11 had been planned and executed from safe bases there, and of course there had been attacks around the world before 9/11, most notably on the US embassy in Kenya where the American targets were missed and 60 Africans, who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, were cold-bloodedly slaughtered. The great majority of the Muslim world rallied around and supported the USA after the disgraceful 9/11 attack, and supported the invasion of Afghanistan. In general, the coalition troops who went into Afghanistan were welcomed in much of the country as liberators, not just by the Kurds and the Northern Alliance, but in many other parts of the country. But then all attention was taken away from that country and disastrously diverted to the illegal invasion of Iraq—the eye was taken off the ball. Eight years later—almost as long as world war one and world war two put together—the Government say that they will provide enough helicopters and armoured patrol vehicles by next year and train up the Afghan forces to take over from western troops some time in the future. What on earth have the Government been doing for the past eight years? Why did they not provide enough helicopters at some point over the past eight years? Why did they not provide suitable armoured patrol vehicles over the past eight years? Why did they not embark on a serious, large-scale programme of training up Afghan security forces so that they could do the jobs currently done by western troops over the past eight years? Why have they waited until now to say, "We'll do it for next year"? It is too late. It is eight years too late. If we send our servicemen and women out to risk their lives, they should be properly equipped from the start, not eight or nine years in. Chesterfield has been relatively lucky so far in that, as far as I know, we have only had one death in the armed forces in Afghanistan. However, others have been injured, some of them disabled for life. The young man who died, Ben Ford, was 19. I was about to call him a young boy because he was exactly the same age as my son. They were in the same year group at the same school, and when my son was 19, I still thought of him—wrongly, I suppose—as a boy. Ben Ford died because his Snatch Land Rover was blown up by an improvised explosive device. Had it been a properly armoured patrol vehicle, he might have survived. Neither did the vehicle have any electronic warfare counter measures—the sort of measures that can intercept the radio signals that set off IEDs from a distance via remote control. Had it been properly equipped, he might have survived. Military personnel know, when they join the armed forces, that they risk their lives—that is part of the job—but they should be entitled to know that they are being sent with the best equipment possible and for a clearly defined and legal purpose and objective, and that the politicians in charge are fully focused on the endgame that will end the conflict, not that after eight years the Government will suddenly wake up to the drift that has characterised this country's presence in Afghanistan since 2001. It is a drift that has led to unnecessary deaths. On more local issues, last Wednesday, I and other Derbyshire MPs met a wide-ranging delegation that included the police and fire authorities, and various councils, including Chesterfield borough council and North East Derbyshire, Bolsover and South Derbyshire district councils. They came to lobby us on various issues. Also, this morning, I met the Minister of State, Department for Transport, the right hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Khan) to discuss the chronic underfunding of Chesterfield borough council as a result of the Government's bus fare scheme. What was the common thread between those two meetings, two weeks apart and covering a range of councils, police and fire authorities, and bus fares? It was that none of that lobbying involved any special pleading. Nobody was asking for something extra or for what other people did not have. Nobody was saying, "Give us something new. Give us more on top." Each lobbying group—whether a council, fire brigade, police authority, Chesterfield borough council or with an interest in bus fares—was saying, "Give us the money that you as a Government say that we should have but will not give to us." I will provide an explanation, although hon. Members will be familiar with the details. Derbyshire police are underfunded by £5 million a year. It is not the police saying that; it is the Government. However, the Government will not give the police that £5 million a year. The fire service in Derbyshire is less badly affected than the police are, but it is also underfunded. All the councils in Derbyshire, from the district and borough councils up to the county council, are also underfunded, according to the Government's own figures. Many hon. Members will be familiar with the f40 campaign, which I was part of as a councillor, long before I was elected as an MP. When the Government were first elected in 1997, the f40 campaign was promised that the problem of shire counties in particular being badly underfunded by the complex formula used to devise central Government funding would be resolved. In 2006, the Government finally revised the funding formula. From 2006, they said, "Yes, you should have more money"—you being the police authority, the fire service or the council—"but you can't have it, because of the floors and ceilings in operation." Derbyshire police, which is the fifth worst funded police force in the country and has hundreds fewer police officers than equivalent shire counties such as Nottinghamshire or Durham, therefore continues to suffer. In 2008, the Government introduced an excellent national bus fare scheme, which is of great value in enhancing older people's lives, but they failed to fund it properly for around 30 of the 263 authorities that were involved. At first the Government just denied that there was a problem, although I am pleased to say that the meeting that I had this morning with the Transport Minister was much more positive than the one that I had last year with his predecessor. Last year the Government denied that there was a problem; this year they have accepted that there is one. They are proposing to give Chesterfield borough council and the other 30 authorities that have been badly hit their money for next year, from 1 April 2010, although that is not a guarantee, because other councils that were given too much money are complaining bitterly that they do not want that money taken away from them. How do councils deal with that general situation, involving the police, the fire service, bus fares, council funding and so on, when 75 per cent. of funding for local authorities basically comes from the Government grant, not the local council tax? Most local voters simply do not understand that. How do local authorities deal with things when the direction on how to spend most of that money comes from central Government, rather than from local decision taking? Local voters just do not understand that. If the Government refuse to pay up, as they have in all the cases that I have mentioned, what can the local authority do? In Surrey, where the police force was in the same situation with its funding, the decision was made to increase the council tax by more than the recommended level. There was a wide consultation with the public and businesses, who said, "Yes, we'd rather increase the council tax than have fewer police on the beat," and as a result a cap was introduced. Derbyshire police force has gone down the same route, consulting widely and receiving overwhelming feedback from across Derbyshire saying, "Yes, we'd rather pay more council tax than cut our police force," which is already the fifth worst funded in the country. However, the Government have said, "No, you can't take that decision. We don't care what local people, local councils or the police force say in Derbyshire; we're going to underfund you. And, to rub your nose in it, we're going to cap you." That means that Derbyshire is facing the loss of front-line police officers next year, when it is already one of the lowest staffed forces in the country, albeit a very efficient one. In the short term, the Government should solve the problem by providing the money that they say those councils should have for those services, but which they will not provide them with. In the longer term, but not after too long—this should happen as soon as the next general election is over—the next Government should reverse the whole system. We are so centralised that 90 per cent. of the taxation raised is taken to London and then handed out with strings attached. The Government in London try to micro-manage everything that councils do and everything that schools do, through Ofsted, league tables and the national curriculum. That should be reversed, and it is not what happens in the rest of the western world. It does not happen anywhere else in Europe, apart from Malta, which is a small island and can be excused, nor does it happen in Canada, the USA or Australia. As with proportional representation, we are the odd ones out. So the rest of the world has got it wrong and we have got it right? I do not think so. The Government should change the system to the benefit of democracy in this country—and, for that matter, for more efficient local government. The hon. Member for Leicester, South (Sir Peter Soulsby) mentioned the Oneplace reports that are online. From the sounds of it, the report for Chesterfield was much more optimistic than the one for Leicester, but two things in it stood out. The first was that, in talking about the problems facing Chesterfield borough council, which was praised for its work on boosting the open-air market, attracting employers, bucking the recession to some extent and doing a grand job in all sorts of ways, the report pointed out—over and over, on the first five of the nine pages in the report—that the council faces a huge problem because of the underfunding of bus fares. Last year and this year, 11 per cent. of the council's budget was diverted not into anything to do with the borough council, but into paying for the Government's underfunded scheme. I hope that the Government will rectify that next year, but there is no mention at all of paying back the £3.5 million that has been taken away in the past two years, much to the detriment of Chesterfield services. The report states:""Councillors must decide soon where to get the necessary investment of around £43.8 million to bring its council houses up to the required standard"." Where indeed? The Government will not provide that money. They will not give back the rent, the right-to-buy money or the money that they have taken away from Chesterfield over the years to pay housing benefits and to build the Olympic infrastructure in London. They are not going to give any of that back, so where is the money to come from? The council could go to an arm's-length management organisation, which is one of the Government's options, but the ALMOs are now being told that they cannot have any money either. The only option is complete privatisation, by handing housing over to the housing associations. As with nearly half the councils around the country, however, 70 per cent. of the people of Chesterfield have said no to privatisation. What is the council to do in the face of policies from a Government who say, "If you don't privatise and transfer out, we will effectively starve you out by taking money away from your council rents and not allowing you to maintain your stock in the way that the people of Chesterfield want"?