Whitsun Adjournment

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay). When he stood up with the back of an envelope in his hand, I thought we would have a short speech. I was disappointed in that sense, but he has injected more passion and—with all due respect to other speakers—more interest in the debate that we might have had otherwise. I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman on everything, but I have great sympathy with what he says about not trusting the opinion of experts, be they Sir Ian Blair or the spooks, as he calls them, or anyone else. I think the job of Ministers, whom I view as the elected Government, is to make sure that they keep a clamp on the security services and do not take everything they say as the gospel truth. The hon. Gentleman and I are of not dissimilar ages, so perhaps he was brought up on too many of those 1960s programmes in which there was some conspiracy in the security services to overthrow the elected Government of the country—almost invariably a left-wing Government. I do not distrust the security services, but it is our job and that of Governments to maintain freedom and freedom of information, and to make sure that paid agents of the state, of whatever sort, do as they are told and do not tell the Government what to do. Having said that, I hope the hon. Gentleman will not think me weak or craven, which he suggested one or two Ministers might be. I hope not to detain the House too long, but there are issues of great concern to my constituents. The first is the eco-town controversy. An eco-town is proposed for a place called Pennbury, which does not exist, in the district of Harborough. I represent about a third of that district. Pennbury is entirely open fields. It is owned largely by the Co-operative and Labour society of the midlands, usually called the Co-op, and partly by English Partnerships, which is a creature of the Government. That is relevant. Should this town of many thousands of houses be built on a totally greenfield site, contrary to all public policy over a number of years, it will necessitate at the very least a new road between the area and the M1. Although we do not know much about it, that will almost certainly go through the virgin countryside of my constituency. The idea that it is an eco-town is ludicrous. There is nothing ecological about it at all. It is just a town which, I hope, will employ the latest energy-efficient designs. We need to deal with the demand for housing, which was partly revealed in The Times yesterday by reference to the 1.2 million new citizens of this country in the past 10 years. I am sure they are all excellent people who have come here for understandable reasons, but such an influx is, of course, creating demand. However, the Government have yet to produce any real evidence of need for new housing, apart from the fact that there is bound to be some need. I am sure there will be a need for housing, but it should be properly examined. If the Government proceed with eco-towns, particularly the one that impinges on my constituency, they will encounter enormous opposition and they will have to answer the questions that they have so far not answered at all. The second issue that bothers my constituents in Harborough district is the future of Lutterworth hospital. That should be of interest to the Government who have said, rightly, that people should be treated closer to home. Yet the agent—albeit at arm's length—of the Government, the primary care trust in Leicestershire, is consulting, which I think is a euphemism for ““planning””, to close the residential beds in Lutterworth hospital. Those beds are used for therapeutic treatment to enable elderly people, typically, to go back to their own homes. If the beds are closed, visitors will have to travel to Rugby, which is at least 8 miles from Lutterworth, or to Leicester, which is 20-plus miles from Lutterworth. Leicester is perpetually snarled up. There is talk of a congestion charge, although I do not believe that that will materialise. By some delicious irony, when I met the chief executive of the PCT, Catherine Griffiths, at Lutterworth hospital a couple of weeks ago, she was 25 minutes late. The reason was that she had taken an unusual route through Rugby to get to the meeting, and she had met the traffic in Rugby. I want people to be treated close to home, and I want them to be able to visit their relatives in hospital close to home, and not to have to travel miles, be unable to park, and to get stuck in traffic jams. There is a good hospital in Lutterworth. It may be a little outdated, but as the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow) said, just because a hospital has red bricks and a Victorian date on the front does not mean it is incapable of being used today. I have been treated in Lutterworth hospital—treated well—and I want to ensure that Lutterworth hospital's services are not downgraded in any way. I shall fight for my constituents in Lutterworth to prevent that. Thirdly, in the other part of my constituency, which is in Blaby district, a bypass is being built in Earl Shilton, between my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (David Tredinnick). There, a report of great crested newts had to be investigated. I happen to like newts. When I was a child I used to catch them, look at them and put them back in ponds, as I am sure we all did. Now, with the ludicrous bureaucratic nonsense that we have, one needs a licence to handle newts. Did hon. Members know that? A licence to pick up a newt, for heaven's sake.