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We now come to a Maiden Speech
Sandy Martin
Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker
and I need to declare an interest as a
Suffolk County Councillor
Like many towns of its size,
Ipswich would be seriously improved by
a more effective way for society to deal
with the scourge of hard drugs
Ipswich has a low level
of crime for its size,
but there is too much violent crime,
and that crime is rising.
Much of the violence in our town
has been carried out by drug dealers,
or targeted against drug dealers,
or motivated by arguments over drugs,
or fuelled by drugs or,
in the case of the murders
of the women in London Road in 2006,
targeting young people whose lives
have been dominated by their
need to get the money to pay for drugs.
One of my most passionate ambitions
is to find ways
to bring the marginalised in our town
back into some sort of social life,
to help them end their addictions,
to support them
to find housing and employment,
and ultimately to give them
the greatest gift of all -
self-respect - so that they
no longer need to feel dependent
but can hold their heads up and say
proudly that they are contributing
to our town.
I am immensely proud
to have been chosen by the
people of Ipswich to represent
them in this House
and, at the same time, humbled
by the responsibility that places upon me.
Ipswich is an exciting,
vibrant yet unpretentious town.
Although there was a pre-Roman
settlement on the site and
it became a substantial town
during the Saxon period,
winning its royal charter in 1200,
we do not dwell on our history.
Ipswich is what it is and where
it is because it was the borough
that served the rural county around it.
It started as a port,
exporting agricultural produce.
It grew rapidly in the 19th century
building the ploughs,
and seed drills, and reapers
and other modern agricultural machinery
of the time that transformed
the productivity of our farms,
not just in Suffolk,
but throughout the UK
and indeed the empire.
We developed artificial
fertiliser on the back of our
initial base as the centre of
the coprolite industry,
making a good living
out of a load of old squit!
In the late 19th century,
Ipswich's heavy engineering grew,
almost all of which is now gone.
The world's first lawnmower
was built in Ipswich in 1832,
and Ransomes Jacobsen
still build lawnmowers in Ipswich today
But we've not hung around
or tried to revive dead businesses.
In the 60s and 70s, roads were reconfigured
and areas cleared to enable
the building of large office blocks
to house the insurance industry
and that industry is still
one of the major employers in our town.
The BT research and
development headquarters
just down the road is one of the most
important local employers,
and the East of England Development Agency
invested significant sums
in the first decade of this century
providing the accommodation
needed for the IT spin-off companies
that have grown out of BT.
Ipswich has immense potential.
To his credit, I believe my predecessor,
Ben Gummer, could see that.
We have higher unemployment
than the rest of Suffolk
but many people with skills
just waiting to be called upon.
We have the space to expand and adapt,
even in the very heart of the town.
We have a beautiful and sophisticated
focus on the waterfront,
and the affordable housing
and commercial space
for new people and businesses to move in.
We are only just over an hour from
the City of London by train,
yet very much not just
simply a commuter town.
Ben Gummer a lot of effort into trying
to improve the rail link with London
and also into the regeneration
of the waterfront,
and I certainly intend
to continue that work.
I also want to pay credit
to the previous MP for Ipswich,
Chris Mole, and all that he
achieved for Ipswich.
Chris has been a good friend of mine
for over 20 years, and I was
delighted when he was elected
to represent Ipswich in a
by-election in 2001.
Much was built or started in Ipswich
during his time as MP, and I know
a lot of that was due to
his championing of our town:
a new A&E department at the hospital;
a new sixth-form college
on the outskirts of the town;
a completely new set of buildings
for the further education college;
and a commitment from the Government
to build a complete flood defence system
including a tidal barrier
to protect the town from sea level rise -
a commitment which I am glad to say
is now reaching its fulfilment.
When he was leader of the County Council,
he told me that his number one ambition
was to achieve a university for Suffolk,
and he had already put in place
the commitment from the pre-existing
further education college,
the County Council and the
Borough Council necessary to achieve a
united bid for a new university.
As MP for Ipswich,
he was able to steer that to completion,
and I don't believe he has
ever had the full credit he
deserves for that achievement.
As a town with a brand new university
as the fulcrum
around which our waterfront turns,
Ipswich is, I believe, undergoing a change
every bit as radical as the time
in the 19th century when we
started building machinery.
We are entering a new and exciting
phase of our development,
where the imagination and intellectual
skills of our young people will be
the building blocks of our prosperity.
Thank you, Chris.
Mr Speaker, Ipswich is of course
Mr Deputy Speaker,
Ipswich is, of course,
a unique town, but many of the
problems our residents have are
national problems, shared with the
citizens across the United Kingdom.
I have contributed in my own small way
to helping with the governance
and the funding of voluntary organisations
in Ipswich which work with people
to help them to avoid marginalisation.
Organisations such as
the Citizens Advice Bureau
the Disabled Advice Bureau;
the Council for Racial Equality,
which is now also bidding to set up
a law centre; and, recently, The Oak,
an independent drug and alcohol
rehabilitation centre,
which is taking people on that final step
between renouncing an
addiction and actually gaining
the personal self-confidence and
self-worth that is needed
to want not to relapse.
All these organisations
are struggling financially
Mr Deputy Speaker
because of reductions in local
authority funding.
We need to decide what sort of society
we want to live in.
What possible sense can it make to
increase the availability of
prison places at enormous cost
but not to reduce re-offending rates
not to support preventive
measures such as personalised
job seeking for people at risk,
not to fully fund
drug rehabilitation programmes,
and alcohol dependency programmes
and hostel provision?
How can we expect people to take care of
what they are doing to themselves
if they are unable to get a job,
or to feed themselves properly,
or to get the psychiatric help
or counselling they need
or even have somewhere safe and private
to sleep the night?
It is shocking to see increasing numbers
of people - women as well as men,
young as well as old -
sleeping in shop doorways,
or in underpasses
or in cemeteries in what is
still the fifth largest economy
in the world.
How can society say to these people
with a straight face,
"You must not take hard drugs"?
when we are not offering them any way
to escape from the half-life
they are leading?
Mr Deputy Speaker, We do
need to clamp down on drug dealers,
we do need to ensure that the supply
of hard drugs is curtailed,
but, ultimately, we are not
going to build a better society,
free from the scourge of hard drugs,
unless we can build a society
where everyone feels valued
and able to contribute.
Let's make sure all our citizens can
have the education they deserve,
the counselling and
the psychiatric help they need
when they need it,
the employment which makes the best
use of their talents,
access to a full and vibrant social life,
safe, adequate and affordable housing
and a healthy environment.
And then,
people will have lives that they value,
and that they know others value,
and then they will not want
to turn to hard drugs
in order to escape from their lives.
