Debate on the Address

If I try to do so to obey the law—and I am certainly not an anorak—no wonder thousands of my constituents give up, save it all up, stick it in the back of their estate car and dump it in the commercial refuse site, instead of going through the hassle of recycling. If the Government want to meet their Kyoto targets, they should make it simple for consumers to recycle. I may introduce a Bill myself to do so. I believe in recycling and in reducing the amount of power that we consume. We must have better home insulation. I believe in renewables, but I believe, too, that it is time to push the nuclear button—as far as domestic energy consumption is concerned. That is the view of people in Cumbria, where we are rather good at the nuclear industry. I accept my party's view that nuclear must be the last resort, but I believe that we are at that stage. If my constituents and I thought that by sticking giant wind turbines on every beautiful hill in the Lake district we could solve our energy crisis and save the planet then, God help us, we would do so. However, if we stuck 50,000 of those 300 ft-high giant steel tubes on the finest landscape in the country, comparable to the Scottish highlands, we would still not close a single power station. We would still need 10 nuclear power stations, or the lights would go out. I am glad that the Prime Minister could boast that today he was giving the go-ahead to a 300 MW or GW—whatever it is—thing in the Irish sea. Good: I am happy to have some more turbines in the Irish sea, and I am happy for the Severn barrage to be exploited. However, I caution the Government against meeting their renewables targets by destroying England's backyard by sticking those turbines on the Lake district hills or any other hills and mountains where it is scenically inappropriate to do so. As for the housing and planning Bill, we have been gagging for housing in Carlisle, in Penrith, and in the Eden area in Cumbria for the past five, six, seven or eight years. We are constrained by the policy invented by the previous deputy leader of the Labour party, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott), who decided that no new houses should be built in Cumbria until the north-west region had disposed of the 10,000 surplus houses which, apparently, are to be found in Manchester and Liverpool. I know that there are big arguments about whether some of those wonderful terraced houses should be destroyed, but in the name of God we cannot say that we should not build houses 150 miles away in Carlisle because there are surplus homes in Manchester and Liverpool. That is the policy that we have had. In Penrith, in the Eden valley, we are allowed 100 homes per annum. I have been told that that may be increased to 200, and we may even be allowed 300 per annum in future. That is nonsense: I do not know how many we need, the planners do not know and the councillors do not know. It is probably 400 or 500 per annum, but the market should decide. House prices have gone through the roof in my area, and we have a huge problem with first-time buyers who cannot afford housing. We do not need Government controls to try to release Government land so that we can try to build a so-called affordable house—we just need to free up all the possible land on which housing can be built. We should not build giant estates in my constituency but a house here and there. Two houses could be built in one village, five in another, and 50 in Penrith. We can solve the housing problems in my constituency by letting district councillors, whether Tory, Liberal Democrat or independent, decide the issue for themselves.