Finance Bill

Lord Evans of Rainow Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)]

I am grateful for this opportunity to make my maiden speech, and I offer you my belated congratulations on your new appointment, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Despite not being the first Member to represent Weaver Vale, I am the first ever to give a maiden speech. My predecessor, Mike Hall, had already given his maiden speech as the Member for Warrington, South five years before this constituency was created in 1997. Although it is conventional to pay tribute to one’s predecessor in a maiden speech, Mike, who was never one for convention, said of his Conservative predecessor for Warrington South, Chris Butler, after what must have been a particularly bitterly fought contest, that

“it would be hypocritical of me to pass favourable comments on Mr. Butler.”—[Official Report, 6 May 1992; Vol. 207, c. 123.]

However, during my three years as a candidate trying my best to unseat Mike Hall, he was always extremely courteous to me, and I do not believe it would be hypocritical of me to pay tribute to the work that he did for the constituency. Although perhaps not the most high-profile of Members here in Westminster, he was highly regarded as a hard-working constituency MP for Weaver Vale. We shared similar interests in football and military history. Despite the views of his Labour colleagues on Halton council, we were in wholehearted agreement in our opposition to wind turbines being built on Frodsham marshes, as well as to the numerous incinerator applications across Cheshire. I was sorry to learn that Mike was forced to stand down owing to ill health and I wish him and his wife Lesley a long and happy retirement.

Weaver Vale is a rather unusual constituency in both its shape and character. Thanks to its ambiguous name, many Members have expressed a little confusion as to its whereabouts. The seat is located in the heart of Cheshire, focused around the River Weaver, a tributary of the River Mersey. It stretches from Northwich in the south-east to Runcorn in the north-west. It is a source of considerable pride that, on this side of the House, I am the sole representative on the Mersey estuary, although I am delighted that the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) is to be working with the coalition.

Weaver Vale has an impressive and proud industrial history. Northwich, the largest town, is based on salt mining, which started in pre-Roman times. Imperial Chemical Industries was started in Northwich and one of its founders, Sir John Brunner, was a former Member of Parliament for the area. While ICI may be no more, Brunner Mond is still based in Northwich, and the chemical industry is still going strong in Runcorn, as well.

While traditional heavy industry is very much part of the landscape in the constituency, we have the added benefit of a wide range of high-tech industries at Daresbury, including robotics and nanotechnology. Indeed, Global BioDiagnostics has just announced that it will be moving its research and development to Daresbury, making it the home of the global fight against tuberculosis. The laboratory and the science and innovation campus are at the cutting-edge of science, as well as an essential provider of local jobs.

I firmly believe that these genuinely wealth-creating industries, both old and new, are going to be instrumental in leading the recovery. With this in mind, I am delighted to be giving my maiden speech in this debate on the Finance Bill, following the emergency Budget which has already helped to restore considerable market confidence with the message that Britain is open for business again. In particular, the plans for a regional growth fund and the substantial reduction in employer national insurance contributions in targeted areas demonstrate that this Bill is good news for industry and for the north of England.

Besides its industry, Weaver Vale has some of the most beautiful countryside and picturesque villages anywhere in the country—villages such as Crowton, Acton Bridge, Kingsley, Norley and Manley. Most distinctive of all is Helsby Hill and the surrounding settlements of Helsby and Frodsham. However, Weaver Vale is also a seat of sharp contrasts. Besides vibrant enterprise and leafy villages, there are areas of severe deprivation. Within Runcorn alone, the disparity is breathtaking. In the Windmill Hill area, only 8.1% of pupils achieve 5 GCSEs including maths and English. Those pupils can expect to live for nearly 10 years less and to earn an average of £30,000 a year less than my constituents who live in the more prosperous parts of Runcorn.

The gap would be even wider if Windmill Hill were compared with some of the prosperous commuter villages such as Hartford or Kingsmead. After 13 years of a Labour Government, this is quite simply a disgrace and should act as a constant reminder to those on the Labour Benches, who have already begun looking back on their time in government as some sort of golden age in which poverty and inequality were abolished. Sadly, the truth is that, under Labour, the poor got poorer while the debt grew bigger. Labour Members will almost certainly be spending the next few years in hysterical opposition, attacking the Government for fixing the mess they created, completely oblivious to the reality that we cannot help the most vulnerable in society by basing the economy on debt. Without wealth creation, we cannot achieve the social justice that we all want.

Before I finish, I would like briefly to express my thanks to my constituents, who have sent me here to represent them. It is the greatest honour and privilege of my life to serve the people of Cheshire. It has been quite a long and personal journey here, as well. I was born on a council estate in Cheshire, as the youngest of four children. My father was a wages clerk, but he died when I was young, and my mother worked in a series of local shops and pubs to make ends meet. I left my local comprehensive school with few qualifications and got a job stacking shelves at the local supermarket, but I was fortunate to have the chance to study business at night school, and went on to have a successful manufacturing career working in sales. I should like to think that I was one of those slick salesmen whom the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) liked to attack on such a regular basis in the last Parliament.

I have always enjoyed serving my local community, spending four years as a special constable in the Cheshire police and 10 years as a local councillor. I have no idea how long I will serve in the House—that will be up to the people of Weaver Vale—but I hope that if I am to leave this place sooner rather than later, I will be able to help, in a small way, to put the “great” back into Great Britain. In that vein, I commend the Bill to the House.