I wish to take this opportunity to thank some people in my constituency. I thank Newbury Racecourse, which in January this year threw open its doors and saw 33,000 people troop through them—twice—to get their vaccination. I thank Dr James Cave and Dr Ellora Evans, who led the eight GP surgeries that participated, and I thank Beverley Sunderland, John Cross, Tim Marston, Graham Stanley and Mike Howie, who led the volunteers—people from every walk of life and every corner of my constituency who gave up their time to make things work like clockwork. I put on the record my thanks to them.
I also pay tribute to Ruth Saunders, who is not well known but at the tender age of 104 walked a marathon over consecutive days around the streets of Newbury, inspired, of course, by Captain Tom. She raised £50,000 for the Thames Valley air ambulance. She is now 105, and next week I will be presenting her with a Points of Light award from the Prime Minister.
In the limited time that I have remaining, I wish to talk about two environmental issues that affect my constituency. The first concerns public transport. It is my ambition to secure a bus route that will link Newbury and Oxford, stopping at the Harwell science park, the Milton business park and many other significant employers along the route. One of my favourite local anecdotes is about a farmer who many years ago used to have the brass neck to put a couple of his cows on the train at Didcot and take them off at Newbury. The sad thing about that story is that that train line is long gone—and so is the bus route that replaced it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (David Johnston) will correct me if I am wrong, but at the Harwell science park some 10,000 jobs are coming in the next few years. Talented apprentices from Newbury College are increasingly getting jobs there, but their only way of getting to work is to get two trains and a bus that takes more than an hour to go a distance of 14 miles—of course, they can get there in their cars. In the next year, I would like to see a bus route, preferably hydrogen, that is cheap, practical and environmentally friendly for Newbury’s workers.
Finally, I have been working with my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) on chalk streams, and particularly the River Kennet, which flows between our constituencies. It is so alarming to see the state they are in and the effect of sewage, pollution and water extraction. The damage that is being done to them now puts those
precious streams and the habitats they support at serious risk. In the coming months I will work closely with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, ahead of the Environment Bill’s return to this House, to seek to resolve that.
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