Debate on the Address

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for pointing that out, but we have already had a debate, and the Government lost. A sizeable number of Members from his party voted against the Government. Nothing significant has changed since then. The county of Lancashire, which I represent, has a very high proportion of terrorist suspects and terrorist-traced individuals, but there is no evidence that the way to solve that problem in the long term, or even the medium term, is to start sweeping people into jail. I would be amazed to see a jury convict anyone on the strength of a confession or statement made after 90 days' detention without trial. I can just imagine a judge being told, ““Well, your honour, after three months, he admitted it.”” I cannot see any jury convicting on that basis. I will be interested to see the result of the Government's review of the admissibility of wire-taps as evidence. I know that there has also been a review of special branch, and of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, which could certainly do with some fine-tuning. The Government are proposing a Bill on the EU treaty. I am a European; I am pro-European Union. I was not old enough to vote on the issue the first time round—I was three, I think—but I certainly feel that we have now been promised a referendum. I remember attending the European convention on the treaty. I was a member of the Scottish Parliament's European Select Committee at the time. When the Labour Member who was on that convention says that she feels strongly that there should be a referendum, and that this is the same treaty by another name, it is important that the Government should honour that manifesto commitment. What I find disingenuous is the nuclear option. The one thing that makes me a Eurosceptic is when people say, ““Well, if you don't like it, you'll have to leave.”” We do not have to leave. We do not have to take what is on the table from the European Union. We can tell it to go back and think again, as the French and the Dutch did. If the treaty does not provide the policy solution that is right for the United Kingdom, we do not have to leave the European Union. We do not walk out of Parliament if we lose a vote on a Bill, saying that we are not coming back into the House of Commons again. The European Union is a forum in which member states should come together and agree on what they can agree on. It is trickery to treat the people of this country like fools and to say that it is all or nothing. It is not. The French and the Dutch knew that, and I am sure that the Irish and the Danish know it, because they often decide to send provisions back. We should ensure that the Government honour their manifesto commitment. They made a promise to the people, which is important. I am a supporter of the European Union, so please do not insult my intelligence by making it the ““all or nothing”” option. My electorate will spot that; they will know that that is an insult; they already know that this is the same treaty. The only people who pretend that it is not are members of the Government. Let me deal with something closer to home, which remains important. I hope that appropriate legislation will include measures to deal with it. I represent Lancaster and Wyre, which has the biggest concentration of residential park homes and holiday residences in the country. To give credit to the Government, they have been very supportive through their officials of my efforts to get at these rogue traders who run some of the parks. I have some excellent park homes in my constituency, but there are also some appalling ones. We need a licensing regime that is enforceable and can deal with the real crooks throughout the country who exploit vulnerable people by making them buy without proper contracts or by threatening to tow them off parks and so forth. Local authorities can be faced with one option: withdraw the licence and end up with 300 homeless people from those sites. Some of these individuals are real rogues and we need to deal with them. I had a summit, which Government officials attended, at Wyre borough council, but the gap in legislation is the problem. I hope that any Bill will include measures to say that this is an enforceable regime and that if rogue operators do not comply with it, their licences or livelihoods will be taken away. Other manifesto commitments have still not been met. Generally, many speakers this evening have said that there is nothing new in the Queen's Speech. There is nothing exciting about it. For a Prime Minister who has spent 10, 12 or 15 years waiting for the day, it seems a rather boring programme. It is a programme brought to us by the Government's backroom boys, because the backroom boys of the past have now become the front-room boys: the Foreign Secretary, the Education Secretary and the Secretary of State for International Development. They are married to the soundbite and the headline; they are not married to the delivery of policies. So much of what we have seen today is either a copy of other parties' policies or an attempt to put right their own policies without taking any of the bold steps that could or should be taken. There is not much new in any of this. If this is what the new Prime Minister bases his credibility on, I am afraid that it will be a pretty disappointing year for him—and even more disappointing at the polls. Debate adjourned.—[Tony Cunningham.] Debate to be resumed tomorrow.