Hertfordshire Housing Target

If that were so—and I do not know that it is—I should disagree with it. I believe that it refers to land that is fairly close, and I shall allow my hon. Friend the Minister, who I see is nodding, to fill in the details about that. I shall concentrate on Stevenage. Yes, Mr. Olner; women do wear trousers. When things need loosening women tend to wear voluminous tent-like tops like the one I am wearing, to hide the increase. In Stevenage the problem has become a huge one, for me and my constituents. There have been many inquiries in public, which the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden and I both attended, and where we were both, I think, amazed by the number of barristers retained by both sides, and the money that we saw thus flowing out of Hertfordshire. There have been inquiries in public into the development to the west of Stevenage in some fields along the A1(M). It is a very pretty area but I welcome the 3,600—and by 2025 it may possibly be 10,000—houses that will go into that area. There will also be schools, medical and sports facilities, and a cemetery—I shall probably be heading for the grave by that time, so I welcome that too. I think that we could build a very sustainable community there, along the lines of Poundbury. I understand the worries about water. We have that worry throughout the country, not just in Hertfordshire, although, having been born in the Caribbean and raised in Africa I find our way of managing that concern risible, to say the least. In the Caribbean and Africa every house that is built must have a cistern underneath it, of the same volume as the house, to catch rainwater, or greywater, as it is called, to be used for baths, cisterns and gardens. We could easily do that here. We could easily manage the drainage systems if it were not for an argument between various Government agencies about who should have the ultimate responsibility to maintain them. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to look into that, because it obstructs our conservation of water. As to hospitals I must once again disagree with the hon. Members for Hertford and Stortford and for St. Albans and the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden. I do not think that the proposal is to close hospitals; but it is certainly proposed to downgrade accident and emergency departments. We shall have two accident and emergency departments in Hertfordshire that will be trauma centres. Someone whose arm is broken in a car crash will go to one of the four centres; someone whose arm needs sewing back on again will go to one of the two trauma centres. The fight at the minute is about which two. Health care is rightly being moved out into the community at the moment and some of the new communities that are being proposed would allow that to happen better than it does now. I see what is proposed as a challenge for Hertfordshire, not something to be feared. I should like to work more with members of other parties, to try to preserve what is good in Hertfordshire and to give the young people of Hertfordshire the hope—and the affordable housing—that they need. In the west of Stevenage development there are 900 affordable homes. We need more of those in Hertfordshire, which is why I am taking part in the debate today.