Ladies and Gentlemen, I came here because I have great admiration for the work you do, for the way in which you do it, and because I think the work is supremely important.
I have been an ordinary Member of Parliament now for nearly thirty years. I know full well that many women need your care and attention and find it very much better to go outside the area in which they live, for the advice which they seek and the advice which they need.
I notice that one of your problems has been that your help has been reduced because so many people come to you from outside this Bloomsbury area. It occured to me that some of them might come from my constituency, and many others, and hence I am here.
It's very important that in these problems women know there is somewhere they can go to get highly professional advice, not only professional advice but sympathetic advice, which will actually tackle their problems.
In the wider world, one of our problems is the rate at which the world population is growing. In my lifetime it has doubled and the increase is going to go on. This makes tremendous problems for the world's atmosphere and life support systems. For generation, after generation life had gone on in the same way. Then in the last few hundred years the population increased from about one billion to five billion and it is still increasing. This enormous increase requires more agriculture, more technology and research from which we all profit. But the increased prosperity in the West is having a fundamental effect on the planet. We had assumed that it would automatically balance its own systems. Now we know that it won't; fundamental things are happening and we can't let them continue. Whatever we can do in research and we must do it, on the greenhouse effect or the ozone layer or pollution, is not enough unless we tackle the population problem.
There is not only the population problem but the fact that each little individual who comes into this world has a fundamental right to attention from its parents; a fundamental right to feel that it really matters: we must try to give opportunities to whatever talents and abilities each child has. Because in a world in which we have enormous technology, in which we have enormous increased prosperity, what matters more than anything else is our being able to communicate to each person that they matter, then efforts matter, and we need your efforts. You may need help but we need your efforts because you will have a contribution to make.
We are no longer tackling basic problems. I used to think when I first came into politics, that if we get reasonable housing, a reasonably good standard of living, reasonable health and reasonable education all our problems would be over. Now we have reasonable education, reasonable standards of living, reasonable standards of housing and we're left with the most difficult problem of all—the behavioural problems of human nature. You deal with some of them and you deal with many of the consequences [end p1] of others and so it is very, very important that the work of the Margaret Pyke Trust goes on. Extremely important.
I was brought up, not in a wealthy family, very very far from it, but the richness I had from a marvellous family life and the care and attention I had was worth more than all of the material things in the world and that is what one would like to bring to others when they are in need. We can't always do it, but a lot of women will find the help they need here.
I know full well the difficulties of Health Authorities in budgeting. I also believe that we can tap a tremendous spirit of generosity and fellow feeling from people who now have more resources—the prosperous society should become the generous society. Many of us, knowing that we perhaps haven't the time ourselves to give to these individual problems, feel that if we haven't the time we must give money—sometimes we can give both, but we must try to see that the facilities are there for people who have been less fortunate than we have.
I thank you for the work you're doing. It is very important and it must give you great satisfaction. I've just come along to applaud your efforts, to say a very big thank you and to urge others to help you to continue your supremely important role.
Thank you very much.