Mike Hall MP

Labour Party | Weaver Vale

Summer Recess Adjournment Debate

Mr. Mike Hall (Weaver Vale) (Lab): I join others in congratulating our new hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr. Byrne). He spoke extremely warmly about his predecessor, our right hon. Friend Terry Davis, who has left Parliament to become Secretary General of the Council of Europe. I served with Terry Davis for five years on the Public Accounts Committee; even though we were Opposition Members then, Terry was a master of holding the Government's senior accounting officers to account for the projects that the Committee examined. We shall miss Terry, but he has been replaced by an hon. Friend who, judging by his maiden speech, will make an excellent contribution to Parliament.

My hon. Friend told us about his constituency, but most of us know it from the time that we spent there during the run-up to the by-election. I spent a couple of afternoons delivering leaflets on his behalf, and I am delighted that my efforts contributed to his success. He also spoke eloquently about the history of his fascinating constituency and the illustrious people who have preceded him as MP for that part of Birmingham. He has a tough act to follow, but the challenges that he has set for himself in representing the people of Hodge Hill are entirely right and I am sure that he will meet them extremely well. I look forward to many more speeches from my new hon. Friend.

I have four local issues to raise, but may I first ask my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House to find out, perhaps through the Modernisation Committee, whether it is necessary for the Liberal Democrat spokesman to join in debates such as this one by commenting on all the speeches made before his? I am only glad that the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) spoke before I did.

As I said, the issues I wish to speak about are local, but they have a bearing on national Government policy. The first is a recent decision by one of my local authorities, Vale Royal borough council, which is Tory and Liberal Democrat- controlled, to introduce changes to its refuse collection service under the guise of meeting Government recycling targets. The local authority rightly conducted a vigorous consultation exercise asking people whether they would be willing to participate in a system that recycled more rubbish from the domestic waste stream via kerbside collections. Of course, the response was an overwhelming "Yes". However, the local authority did not clearly spell out—it was mentioned only in the small print—that the ordinary domestic refuse collection service would be reduced from a weekly collection to a fortnightly one.

There is uproar in my constituency about the decision. Concerns have been voiced about health and safety. We are beginning to experience problems associated with the summer months, such as the smell from bins, and there have been reports of infestations of maggots and flies in bins. My constituents have raised their concerns with the local authority, but the authority says that it will not respond to letters of complaint or register phone calls as complaints because my constituents are raising nothing new. That is the wrong way for the local authority to approach the problem: instead, it should try to explain to the people living in Weaver Vale and the Vale Royal borough council area why the new system will be put in place. However, its explanations so far have been confusing and, in some ways, downright dishonest.

First, the local authority said that the Government are demanding that by 2007 the authority must meet stringent recycling targets. That is true. Secondly, it says that if the local authority does not meet the targets it will face a fine of £120,000 a day or £44 million a year. That is abject nonsense: no fines are imposed under the scheme. The Government have said that if recycling does not remove the amount of material going to landfill, the price of landfill may increase, and if a local authority overtips its quota, it may have to pay more money. By no stretch of the imagination will that result in a fine of £120,000 a day.

When those explanations were challenged, the local authority said, "We have to do this, otherwise we will have to go back to a weekly refuse collection, which will cost us an extra £1 million." Therein lies the answer to the problem: the authority has cut the domestic refuse collection to save money. It now says that if it returns to a weekly service, people will not recycle. What nonsense! The local authority should say that it will look again at the issue.

When a bin is put out, the authority will not collect any surplus rubbish that is placed in black bin bags, which is termed "side rubbish". Section 45 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 requires a local authority to collect domestic waste without charge. Will the Minister explore with his colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs whether there is an obligation on a local authority to collect side rubbish—domestic rubbish placed at the side of a wheelie bin. When it is left, it attracts vermin and it is spread across the neighbourhood. That leads to a greater incidence of fly-tipping, and we have an unsatisfactory state of affairs.

I shall move on to another issue that I have raised with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of Transport. For the past two years, in the Northwich part of my constituency we have held an event called the Thundersprint, which is a motor cycle extravaganza. Motor cyclists from throughout the country arrive at a car park in Northwich to demonstrate their motor cycles, which can be vintage all the way through to formula one. There is a great carnival. This year the two-day event attracted about 70,000 visitors and brought a huge sum of money into the local economy. It is a fantastic event. No incidents were reported to the police and there were no health-and-safety issues.

The event has to take place on a car park because even if we closed a section of the highway to demonstrate the motor cycles, they would not be allowed on it because they do not comply with current road traffic Acts. I have been pressing the Department of Transport to see whether a way can be found round that problem, so that next year's event can take place on the public highway, which would be closed to other traffic. So far, that has proved difficult.

We cannot use the car park at Northwich for the next five years because the Government, following my insistence, have provided £28 million to stabilise the town centre because of problems that we have with salt mines. I hope that the Minister, on my behalf, will press the Department of Transport with a view to resolving the problem.

I wish to take up an issue that I have raised already in an Adjournment debate in Westminster Hall—I raised it directly with the Minister of State for Transport. It concerns a section of railway line that is commonly known as the Halton curve, which, though not disused, is used only once or twice a year. The reason for that is that to close a railway line it is necessary to go through a rigorous public inquiry procedure. It may even be necessary for legislation to be discussed on the Floor of the House. Over the past few years, the line has had one or two services a year. They run on a Saturday morning and no passengers are picked up. The service goes along the line so that it stays open. It is known as the parliamentary train. This year, the Strategic Rail Authority decided, in its wisdom, to do a head count on this strange service to see whether it is being used. Strangely enough, it found that the answer is no.

The SRA has written to me to say that it is thinking of closing the Halton curve. If it does so, it will be a passive closure. I have yet to find out what that means, but I have asked. This is nonsensical. If the line were resignalled and some investment were made in it, trains could travel in both directions and it would be the final piece in the north-west railway jigsaw. It would link north Wales to Liverpool without people having to use the west coast main line, and would allow north Walian traffic to go through Liverpool and on to the north-west and the Lake district. It would connect with the Allerton interchange on the Merseyside light railway, thus completing the circular network, and it would link that network to Liverpool John Lennon airport. Stakeholders across the north-west are all in favour of the development, and I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to tell our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport that we ought to look at ways of keeping the line open instead of closing it and ending the potential for future developments.

I shall conclude with something that I raised in last year's summer Adjournment debate—the merger of Halton and Warrington hospitals. When my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) and I agreed to that merger, we did so on the grounds that there would be no reduction in services at our hospital. The clinical director of North Cheshire Hospitals NHS Trust took unilateral action more than 12 months ago and, without consulting clinicians or senior management at either hospital, decided to close the intensive care unit. It remains closed following that decision by Dr. Mwanji. Mr. McMillan of Whiston hospital produced an independent report, and the Bishop Auckland report says that the beds should remain open. The Commission for Health Improvement said that there was no threat to health services. The only person standing in the way of the unit reopening is Dr. Mwanji, the clinical director. Even the chairman of the British Medical Association said that those beds should be reinstated, so I advise my hon. Friend the Minister that the clinical director of North Cheshire Hospitals NHS Trust should be sacked.