Debate on the Address

My hon. Friend is right. I will give him the other side of that equation. In the town of Penrith, we are allowed to build about 100 homes per annum. That was set by the Deputy Prime Minister and his Department a few years ago. We need about 400. The Carlisle area is allowed to build about 200 to 300 homes. It needs 1,000 per annum. We are desperately short of housing at all levels in my constituency and in Cumbria. There is the myth of starter homes. The average salary is £15,000. A starter home is £120,000. It is nonsense to talk about starter homes. We are short of houses at the £200,000 level. Two-bedroom bungalows are selling at £300,000 in my constituency, and they are not in the heart of the Lake district or the plush areas. Why are we in that situation? The Deputy Prime Minister concluded in his wisdom that Cumbria is part of the north-west. Apparently, somewhere in the north-west—is it in Manchester or Liverpool?—thousands of houses are surplus to requirements and must be demolished. The Deputy Prime Minister will not allow us to build houses 120 miles to the north of Manchester and Liverpool until their homes are demolished and the surplus is balanced. It is nonsense, it is madness. Some of my constituents in rural areas do not have the capacity to travel five miles to work, let alone commute from Manchester and Liverpool to Cumbria. However, I do not want to be led down that route because I want to concentrate on measures that are in the Queen's Speech and on some that are not in the speech. The right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) mentioned the lack of a coroners Bill. I, too, would like to see a coroners Bill because I would be able to make the point that, despite the fact that Cumbria is a big rural county, the Government have ordered our county council to get rid of one of our three coroners, with a huge loss of services. They have also decided that we have too many registration offices and that some of my rural constituents in Kirkby Stephen and Appleby should now be registering online on the website. That is all right for some, but 50 per cent. of my constituents are not online and they cannot access the website. That is why I say that a Bill to outlaw that sort of discrimination is long overdue. I support what the Government are aiming to do on climate change. I was pleased to hear the Prime Minister say today that, if we closed the whole of British industry, it would make no difference to the expansion of China and, indeed, of the United States. Therefore, although I look forward to this country setting an example, it must not be an example that destroys our business and does not make the slightest difference to climate change in the world. I agree with the Prime Minister; we must have an international treaty to make sure that the biggest polluters in the world do their fair share.