Energy Efficiency

Baroness Fullbrook Excerpts

Wednesday 30th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Lorraine Fullbrook (South Ribble) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to make my maiden speech today. I congratulate you on your new role. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) and the hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon) on their fascinating and excellent maiden speeches.

It is a great honour to be in this Chamber representing the people of the South Ribble constituency, and I wish to pay tribute to my predecessor, David Borrow. For 13 years, he worked hard for his constituents and he was renowned for his support of many local charities and organisations, particularly those involved in the developing world helping those suffering from HIV and AIDS.

I feel very proud in being the first woman Member of Parliament for South Ribble, but I follow in the illustrious footsteps of Edith Rigby from Penwortham in my constituency, who was a founding member of the Hutton and Howick women’s institute. In 1904, she joined the Women’s Social and Political Union, popularly known as the suffragettes. She was arrested and sentenced to a month in prison for taking part in a march to the Houses of Parliament. She went on to serve a total of seven prison sentences, and her activities culminated in her planting a bomb in the Liverpool cotton exchange.

South Ribble can be divided into four distinctive areas and locations, each with its own beauty and rich history and, under this new Government, a better future ahead. Leyland, of Leyland Motors fame, is the main town of South Ribble and has its past in both the cotton and engineering industries. The Cromwell tank was built in Leyland in 1943 by Leyland Motors, which was a world-beating engineering firm of its time, exporting lorries and buses around the world, including to Cuba. The Leyland cotton mills wove fine cambrics and fancies for many fashion houses of the day, in addition to cotton bandages, woven and bleached in Leyland to supply the military front lines of British campaigns around the globe.

Although the heavy engineering and cotton mills of the past have long ceased, these industries have been replaced by highly skilled, technical engineering companies such as Clean Air Power and Torotrak, providing hi-tech solutions for the reduction of CO₂ emissions from large haulage vehicles and articulated lorries. In the case of Clean Air Power, CO₂ reductions of 50% to 60% are the norm. Leyland is also the home to Schwans, which makes the famous Chicago town pizza.

The people of Leyland and I strongly agree that regeneration is the key to the future success of local business, along with improved infrastructure and leisure facilities. I am delighted that, under the leadership of Councillor Margaret Smith, the leader of the Conservative South Ribble borough council, the Leyland regeneration board has been formed. The board is made up of prominent local businessmen and women with a wealth of local expertise, but more importantly, this is being carried out through the private sector and is not hamstrung by the red tape and bureaucracy of the public sector. All in all, the future for Leyland is a million miles from humdrum.

The villages of Tarleton—where I live—Hesketh Bank and Banks were where the Normans “harried” the north in 1069 and they were allowed, under law, to continue their recreational violence of slaughtering any Saxons whom they came across in the “freelands”. The fenlands, or marshes, surrounding the villages are now home to a 2,000 acre bird sanctuary and conservation area in the Ribble marsh estuary.

Fortunately, the “freelands” are now some of the richest agricultural land in the country, which supports the horticulture, or growing, industry, producing crops that are an important source of the nation’s food. That is one of our largest industries, with the growers supplying the major multiple retailers in both the UK and other parts of Europe. However, these companies, both large and small and employing large numbers of local people, feel weighed down and burdened by the rules, regulations and taxes imposed on them by the previous Administration. They, like many other businesses, feel pummelled by ever increasing business taxes, vehicle excise duties and fuel duties, and I welcome this Government’s measures to help private business and enterprise flourish. The growers are desperate for new infrastructure to enable them to get their food crops from the growing fields to the main road network. In the bonfire of the quangos, the horticultural industry is looking to this Government to set fire to one of the last remaining dinosaurs of its type—the Agricultural Wages Board.

Other villages of South Ribble are famous for many past and varied pursuits by the locals. Albert Pierrepoint, Britain’s last official executioner, after his retirement owned the Rose and Crown public house in Much Hoole, the pub being affectionately known by its patrons as “the drop in”. Jeremiah Horrocks, the curate of St Michael’s church in Little Hoole, accurately predicted and witnessed the transit of Venus, last seen—after 121 years—in 2004. Mawdesley was the centre of basket-making in Lancashire, thanks to the fine willow grown on the banks of the River Yarrow. The village of Eccleston was once famous for growing more than 200 varieties of apples, and I am delighted that the community has recently come together to replant apple trees in gardens, on the green and in other public spaces.

Small and medium-sized businesses are the mainstay of employment in South Ribble and the risk takers and innovators of our economy. These business people will certainly benefit from the measures outlined last week by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and fellow north-west MP, through his freedom, growth and enterprise agenda, and thanks to the new Government’s regional growth fund, I am delighted that businesses in South Ribble will benefit to the tune of up to £5,000 per employee in national insurance contributions for the first 10 new employees.

My constituency is home to many highly skilled and specialist employees in the defence industry in the north-west—one of the UK’s pre-eminent defence industrial areas. BAE Systems, Europe’s largest defence contractor, has a strong presence in my constituency, with many constituents having a deep-rooted and strong interest in the future of the Typhoon fighter aircraft and tranche 3B of the programme; in the Mantis, one of the world’s leading unmanned air vehicles; and, of course, in the F-35 joint strike fighter aircraft, which is a Lockheed Martin programme with BAE Systems as its main partner. No one can pre-judge the outcome of the strategic defence and security review, but it will come as no surprise to the Front-Bench Defence team that I will be campaigning hard and fighting for my constituents for the Typhoon tranche 3B project to go ahead.

I am very pleased to be making my maiden speech in this important debate on the progress and prospects in energy efficiency. It is with great regret, however, that the previous Government’s Warm Front initiative has not been the success that was envisaged. Indeed, a number of my constituents, including a wheelchair-bound, 81-year-old gentleman, have come to me for help, following both initial consultations and installations by Warm Front agents in the north-west. They all have a sorry tale to tell—from being without hot water and heating for months on end after Warm Front carried out work on their properties, to vastly excessive charges over and above the £3,500 grant, appalling and shoddy workmanship and faulty equipment installed with no further responsibility from the companies involved.

After a particular constituent was advised that he would be required to stump up an additional £8,000 to replace a boiler and central heating system in a two-bedroom bungalow, I contacted a local and well respected Corgi-approved heating engineer to give me a quote. That came in at a total cost of £2,800—£700 less than the grant of £3,500—for the same specification as Warm Front’s agents. I implore the Minister to review the Warm Front scheme urgently, as I believe there to be unscrupulous companies exploiting both the taxpayer, who is certainly not getting value for money, and my constituents, who in many cases are families with young children and elderly and vulnerable individuals. I respectfully request that the Minister ensure that the Government’s excellent green deal programme does not go the same way.

Above all, the people of South Ribble wanted the Government off their backs and on their side. They believe that they know how to spend their hard-earned money better than any Government, and they voted for power to be handed back to the people. It is with great pride that I am in the House representing the people of South Ribble. I have vowed to put it on the map and to be South Ribble’s voice in Westminster, and not the Westminster voice in South Ribble.