Orders of the Day — Prevention of Terrorism Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at
17:45 on 23rd February 2005

Barbara Follett MP for Stevenage, Labour:

 

I wish that I did not have to agree with my hon. and learned Friend, but the provisions do bear an extraordinary resemblance to those laws. We must beware of going down that road. Again, I say that this country is not South Africa, but we have an example to set.

 

My first husband was put under house arrest because the apartheid state believed that he was a threat to its security. He probably was; he was campaigning to give black people the right to vote and join trade unions. Given the structure of the South African state, he probably was threatening it because it believed that only whites could vote and join trade unions. House arrest hampered him, but did not stop him, which was probably why, just before his five-year order was due to expire, he was shot dead in front of our two young daughters in their bedroom. I tried to comfort them in the days that followed by telling them that we were going to go to Britain, where people were not detained without trial or put under house arrest. When one tries to tell a 13-year-old and a nine-year-old that not all parts of the world are as bad as others, one looks for examples, and we in Britain were that example. I am glad that I am here today so that my now 40-year-old and 36-year-old daughters can hear that we are still fighting to uphold that.

 

I understand that control orders are necessary in some circumstances, which is why, like my right hon. Friend Mr. Dobson, I supported the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. However, that Act was a stop-gap measure. It is due to be reviewed in five years and is subject to continual review. The Bill, however, is not a stop-gap measure. It will embed an undemocratic principle in our law. It will remove rights that are guaranteed under the Magna Carta, which says that no free man—I add the word "woman" to that—shall be arrested or detained except by the lawful judgment of his or her peers. If that was good enough for 1215, surely it is good enough for 2005.

 

I ask the Home Secretary to think again, please. He should get a judge to implement the orders and consider how to use intelligence evidence in court. He should consider putting a time period on the Bill and review it in five years, rather than committing us to it for ever. Above all, he should take time and care. These principles are the very basis of our democracy and our party. If we destroy them, it destroys us.

 

See this speech in context

 (Citation: HC Deb, 23 February 2005, c401)

 

 

I congratulate the hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Syms) on his speech and on his stamina. Like me, he has been in his place for the past five hours and 15 minutes. I can assure hon. Members that I am conscious of the fact that mine is the 18th maiden speech of the day and, despite anything that my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mrs. Organ) may say, one can have too much of a good thing, particularly at a quarter to 9 in the evening, even if it is a June evening. I shall therefore be brief.

 

First, I thank the people of Stevenage for electing me as their Member of Parliament. I am honoured to represent them, and promise to do my best to serve them in the future. Coincidentally, my predecessor, Tim Wood, also made his maiden speech during an education debate. Although I disagreed with most of what he said, I know that he was a hard-working and popular Member of the House, despite the fact that, for many years, he was a Whip. He fought the general election campaign honestly and fairly, concentrating on the issues and avoiding personalities. I salute him for that and wish him well.

 

Education also played a large part in the life of another of my predecessors, Shirley Williams, now Baroness Williams of Crosby, and in another place. However, she is still fondly referred to as “our Shirl” or “Shirl the girl” by many of her former constituents.
I am glad that Stevenage is once more represented by a woman, even though as a grandmother I can hardly be called a girl any more.

 

I am ever more glad that the election doubled the number of women in the House. That would have given Constance Lytton, an earlier resident of my constituency, a great deal of pleasure. She was a prominent suffragette and spent most of her life in the village of Knebworth, where, I am glad to say, she did not set fire to the local church. One of the first hunger strikers, she was force-fed in prison, which almost certainly led to her untimely death. Her family has given its name to one of Stevenage’s main roads, but I believe she deserves a more personal commemoration of her courage and commitment.

 

The constituency of Stevenage, which Shirley Williams described 33 years ago, in her maiden speech as a ‘microcosm of the new Britain’, covers the town of the same name, as well as the villages of Aston, Benington, Codicote, Knebworth and Walkern. The town of Stevenage grew out of a small Anglo-Saxon settlement known as Stithenaece, which means strong oak, and over the centuries it has proved an apt name for a place that has constantly had to adapt to change.

 

One of the greatest changes came in 1946, when the Labour Government – like this one – fresh from their landslide victory, decided to tackle the chronic housing shortage in the overcrowded and bomb-damaged east end of London by building 11 new towns. Stevenage, with its population of 6,000 was the first. There was resistance, of course – most notably from a local novelist, named E. M. Forster, who has lived in Stevenage as a child and whose most famous work, “Howard’s End”, was based on Rook’s Nest Farm, in the old town.

 

Modern Stevenage has a population of more than 76,000. People came to the town to escape from the poverty and slums of the past. They found secure jobs, decent homes and a clean environment in which to raise their children. That was 50 years ago. Now that dream, like the town centre, is threadbare and worn. Hope has been replaced by insecurity, and the valiant efforts of local councillors have proved ineffectual in the face of economic recession and central Government neglect.

 

Nowhere is that neglect more obvious than in our schools. All the hard work in world cannot hide tatty buildings and tired teachers. Nothing can hide demoralised children. Some of the older children in Stevenage, most especially the older boys, seem to have given up. That is scarcely surprising in a town that has suffered the equivalent of five pit closures -worth of job losses in the past 11 years, with the downsizing of its largest employer, British Aerospace. It is even less surprising in a constituency that has the highest number of unemployed young men in the county.

 

There are jobs available, but, as local employers such as Glaxo Wellcome constantly tell me, most of our young men are simply not equipped to fill them. That is why this debate is so important, because it is about raising education standards. If we want to raise education standards, we have to start early in our children’s lives.

 

Many of the young men and boys in my constituency started their school lives in large classes. Nineteen out of the 30 primary and infant schools in my constituency have classes of more than 30 for their five, six and seven-year-old pupils. Research in Britain and overseas overwhelmingly demonstrates the value of smaller class sizes to that group of children. If we are to fit our children for the jobs of the 21st century, we must give them quality nursery education, guaranteed literacy and numeracy standards, after-school clubs, holiday catch-up teams and, of course, good teachers.

 

That is the programme for which the people of this country voted overwhelmingly last month. It is the programme that we propose to deliver. The good people of Stevenage know that, if it is delivered, their children will have a good chance of reading to their actual age or above by the time that they are 11. They also know that, if it is not delivered, their children will find it very hard, if not impossible, to catch up when they enter secondary school; indeed, many of them never will.

 

Assisted places do deliver excellence, but they deliver excellence for the few, not the many. One of the reasons why they deliver excellence is that- as so many of my hon. Friends have said time after time today – children in private schools are taught in smaller classes. Assisted places deliver excellence, at a price. In 1995-96, the taxpayers of Hertfordshire spent £2,403,000 on assisted places. Most of my constituents would have preferred that money to be spent on employing more teachers – 120 teachers, in fact.

On 1 May, the people of Stevenage voted for a change. This time there will be no resistance to that change, not even from the novelist whom I know who lives in Stevenage old town. That is because, this time, the change will change for the better.

 

I welcome it.