It s time to admit that wholesale de-regulation of buses has failed. When local transport authorities can do little more than use subsidy to plug a few gaps in commercial routes, how can we deliver a high-quality service in which bus services integrate effectively with rail and other forms of transport?
If we are to join up the dots , local transport authorities could be empowered to bring together public transport providers to agree specified levels of service for local communities, recognising public as well as commercial considerations. Pilot schemes could allow areas like the West Midlands to take up this challenge to produce the truly effective bus network the public demand.
Richard Burden is MP for Birmingham Northfield
A bill to enable schools to give children with special needs the education they deserve. Children with special needs must also have special teachers and special resources on a regular basis. At present they are not getting them. That is why one in every five adults in this country is illiterate. It is also why nearly half of our prisoners cannot write and nearly a third cannot read. It is, perhaps, why we have so many prisoners in the first place. If you are illiterate, you are far more likely to become sufficiently marginalised and disaffected to get into trouble in the first place.
Barbara Follett is MP for Stevenage
Pensions policy is a dog s breakfast. To sort it out, we need a Pensions (Simplification and Long-term Settlement) Act. This would increase the basic state pension to the level of the minimum income guarantee and index both to the higher of either earnings or prices. Free long-term personal care would be provided by the state. To keep costs within planned expenditure, the state retirement age would increase to 67 in 2030. As a result of these changes, both the pensions savings credit and the state second pension are rendered obsolete, as everyone will be able to plan for their retirement confident in the knowledge that the state will provide a basic but adequate income and there will be no penalty for those who save for a more comfortable life.
Lynne Jones is MP for Birmingham Selly Oak
My vote goes to the Nuclear Reprocessing (Termination of Contracts) Bill , which would stop, once and for all, the dangerous international plutonium trade.
After 9/11 the world woke up to the reality of nuclear terrorism. It came one step nearer in the Gulf last month. Why, then, do we continue to extract plutonium from spent nuclear fuel and then ship it half way round the world?
This bill would make the world a safer place, end the radioactive discharges into our coastal waters and switch public subsidy from the black hole of nuclear power to the new renewable technologies of the 21st century.
David Chaytor is MP for Bury North
The chances of being a victim of crime may be lower than at any time for two decades but the consequences are as great as ever: ill health, attempted suicide, alcoholism, family breakdown, loss of a home. One rape victim recently took her own life after the court experience.
Victim s Voice, set up by the Marchioness families, has campaigned for urgent reform of the criminal justice system in favour of victims and witnesses, including a victims commissioner. Despite huge investment in policing, the public s fear of crime will persist until victims and witnesses get the support and protection they need.
Chris Pond is MP for Gravesham
If I could add any piece of legislation of my choice to the Queen s Speech, I d find a way of incorporating my private members bill (Prohibition of Sale of Criminal Evidence). We have seen a spate of salacious TV documentaries about the lives of serial killers like Dr Harold Shipman and Fred West. Many of West s victims are my constituents. A bill that prevents the sale of evidence, such as police interviews, to the media without the express agreement of the victims families would save a lot of heartache.
Parmjit Dhanda is MP for Gloucester
Religious discrimination, which too often serves as a proxy for racial discrimination, is lawful in 21st century Britain. It shouldn t be. The imminent creation of a new human rights commission encompassing gender, disability and race makes this year s Queen s Speech the right time for the UK government to put on the statute books a new law outlawing religious discrimination in employment and service provision.
Eric Joyce is MP for Falkirk West