Health and Social Care

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

I am grateful, Mr Deputy Speaker, for this opportunity to make my maiden speech, particularly during a debate of such high quality. I congratulate those Members who have made their maiden speeches today, and I am particularly pleased to follow my Hampshire colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Mims Davies), thanks to whom I made quite a lot of money at Ladbrokes.

The wonder of modern technology and the labours of our friends from Hansard mean that I have read, listened to and watched a number of speeches over the past few days, and I have been impressed by many. For instance, thoughtful speeches from my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) and my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) on the opening night illustrated the high quality of thinking in the Chamber, and I am pleased to be able to participate.

I am relieved that you, Mr Deputy Speaker, are in the Chair for my speech, because it is a tradition in a maiden speech for a Member to panegyrise their constituency, but 20 years ago the jewel—the glowing green emerald—that is North West Hampshire slipped through the otherwise deft fingers of the Speaker when he was the very young candidate for the candidacy there and was the runner-up to my predecessor. He will know from that experience that there can be few slices of England as fair as North West Hampshire. It has the world’s most important chalk stream, the River Test, rising and gurgling through it; it has “Watership Down” at its very heart and 60 largely thatched villages and hamlets dotted among its verdant hills. It is no surprise, therefore, that much of the constituency is designated an area of outstanding natural beauty.

In the north of the constituency lies the industrious town of Tadley—hard up against the fence of the Atomic Weapons Establishment in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon)—with its famous treacle fair, held just this last Sunday. In the south there is the ancient market town of Andover, made modern in the 1960s by a deal with the Greater London Council to become a London overspill town, greatly increasing the population—and, I am afraid to say, the number of Arsenal supporters.

North West Hampshire is a hard-working place with very high employment levels underpinned by a thriving small business community, but it is not without its problems. I have pledged to put my shoulder to the wheel to try and help, starting with schools, where performance is not universally brilliant. A successful future for the town will be built on the foundation of great schools, so our work must begin there. I look forward to working with the Secretary of State for Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), in her vital campaign to drive up standards and ambition.

Like much of Hampshire, my constituency has strong links with the armed forces. The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), whom I congratulate on his appointment to the Cabinet —we were councillors together at Westminster city council—may boast that his constituency is the ancient home of the lieutenant colonel, but I believe that I might have a stronger claim. With army headquarters sited just outside Andover and the plethora of bases and garrison towns in the area, many serving and retired services personnel have settled there, giving a military flavour to much of life in the constituency. I thank them for their service to our country.

The House has not heard a maiden speech from a Member for North West Hampshire for more than 50 years. The last one, in 1964, was given by the late Sir David Mitchell, father of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), who sadly died last year after a distinguished life of public service. He was succeeded in 1997 by my predecessor, Sir George Young, the “Bicycling Baronet”, who was an MP already but whose Ealing Acton constituency had been abolished. Like me, Sir George had been a local councillor in London, with a young John Major, and then a member of the GLC, before entering Parliament and embarking on a glittering 42-year-long career on these Benches. I am told that he is the only Member to be hired, fired and rehired by three Prime Ministers.

Sir George’s time here was garlanded with many laurels, but it was at the constituency level that his true character shone through. His work over the past two decades has impacted on thousands of constituents. At every door I knocked on during the campaign, his industry and care were remarked upon. He has set the bar very high indeed. It has sometimes felt as if North West Hampshire had the Queen Mother as its MP, such was the regard in which he was held. He did not do it alone, of course. His wife, Lady Aurelia Young, whose father, Oscar Nemon, sculpted the magnificent statue of Churchill that stands in Members’ Lobby, has been very much a part of the team. The constituency and the country owe them a great deal.

I have tried to absorb as much of this debate as possible over the last few days, and there have been many notable and interesting speeches, but one in particular has stuck in my mind. It was given by the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) on the opening night. In it, he said that the scandal of historical child abuse will be one of the defining issues of the next five years. He said that it would haunt the Parliament, and I agree with him.

During my many years in local and regional government in London, I have become increasingly alarmed at the social and cultural architecture in which our children live. I have tried to do my bit for them—for children in the care system, in prison or in gangs, and for children trafficked, mutilated, beaten, abused and too often killed. There are many politicians who have made a greater impact than me—not least the Minister for Children and Families, my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Edward Timpson) and the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), whose experience and work in this area over the last five years has been exemplary. I welcome the measures in the education and adoption Bill signalled in the Gracious Speech this week.

But we have done our work in the face of profound and rapid social change in the way our children live. Their exposure and the exposure of those who have care of them to sex, violence and commercialisation is changing the way children interact with each other and with adults. The Prime Minister, I sense, feels the same, and has expressed alarm on a number of occasions. His very welcome troubled families programme, now expanded to include over 500,000 families, gives a sense of the scale of the issue. I see from the Order Paper that tonight’s Adjournment debate, called by the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), gives expression to a similar alarm in calling for the establishment of an institute for the study of the sexual abuse of children.

There has been much talk of this Parliament being consumed by questions of foxhunting, Europe, human rights and the Union. Even in the context of those important debates, I am with the hon. Member for Bassetlaw in believing that the horrific stories of child abuse from the past will dominate our public discourse. This House must respond by putting the future of our children, and in particular the care of our most disadvantaged and defenceless children, in front and at the centre of our considerations.

The good people of North West Hampshire have sent me here as their champion, and I intend to strain every sinew in their interests for as long as they will have me. During the time I am allowed in this House, I hope to be a champion for children, too. It was Nelson Mandela who said:

“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”

I am sure you will agree with me, Mr Deputy Speaker, that he was right.