Summer Adjournment

Part of Royal Assent – in the House of Commons at 5:43 pm on 27 July 2010.

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Photo of Neil Parish Neil Parish Conservative, Tiverton and Honiton 5:43, 27 July 2010

It is a great honour to make a few points in the summer Adjournment debate. I begin by suggesting to Chris Bryant that perhaps there should be a small redistribution of wealth from the BBC to ITV. We should remember that it also does a good job.

Let me move quickly on to the subject of South West Water charges. In my constituency-in my view, it is as beautiful as that of my hon. Friend Dr Wollaston-the charges are significantly higher, because we have 30% of the beaches and only 3% of the population to pay the extra charges. I should like the Government to consider some form of national levy requiring people from all over the country to pay for the beaches that they come to enjoy. We welcome them when they come to enjoy those beaches, but we do not think that the retired people of the South West Water area should pay the extra charges. It would mean bills in the South West Water area falling by about £65 to £75, yet the national levy would be in the region of £1.50. I ask the Government to look at this sympathetically.

On Tiverton high school, let me first say that I understand that the coalition Government have of course had to cut back on the Building Schools for the Future programme because there was no money left. We know that that is the case, and I shall not repeat it too often. We need to be sure that we can build schools in the future, and that the money we put into capital spending actually goes into building schools and not on administration, as 20% to 30% did under BSF. I ask Ministers that when money becomes available, Tiverton high school is not forgotten, because that would be good not only for the high school, but for a part of Tiverton that needs regeneration.

I want now to talk about the A303/A30.