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Christmas Adjournment

I am sure that that is so, because this week at Daresbury we have had a European first. There is a prototype machine there called ALICE—accelerators and lasers in combined experiments. Alice is of course part of the ““Alice in Wonderland”” story, and Daresbury is where the Rev. Dodgson lived and wrote the stories, so that is a nice connection. The people there have accelerated electrons to 99.9 per cent. of the speed of light and minus 271° C, which is as close as possible to absolute zero. They have demonstrated that we can now look at chemical experiments as if we were making movies or videos in real time. That will take science on to the next level—it is a major breakthrough. It is even better than that, though. By generating the energy that is needed to accelerate the electrons as closely as possible to the speed of light so that they can be peeled off in straight lines through X-ray machines, they have demonstrated energy recovery, so all the energy that is put into accelerating the electrons can go back to the start, and we can start all over again at a reduced cost. Those electrons are going to be accelerated at about 11 million V. It is absolutely dynamic science. That is not the end of the project, as some people might think. Now that we have proved that the experiment works, the scientific possibilities are endless. The new light source, which I hope that the British scientific community will take on, has been proven at Daresbury, and the intellectual possibilities of the prototype should be exploited to the full. I want to finish on an unusual note. Last Friday—this is most unusual for most Members of Parliament—I opened a post office, which is in the Northwich part of my constituency, where Mr. and Mrs. Asif have opened a post office in the high street. They invited me along to do the opening, and the shop was absolutely full of customers taking advantage not only of the services provided by the post office but of other services. They have innovative ideas about how they are going to make this post office succeed, and I was delighted to be part of that opening. I hope that the venture is a huge success and that my constituents have a fantastic benefit from it. Finally, I wish to refer to my constituent, Mr. Bert Dyson, Member of Parliament—[Interruption.] I am sorry—Member of the Order of the British Empire. However, Bert would make a very good MP. In the past 25 years, Bert has been behind a project with Helsby golf club to raise money to purchase powered wheelchairs for severely disabled children. In the years that Bert has been doing that work, enough money has been raised to purchase 259 powered wheelchairs, which have transformed the lives of the children who have had them. Bert has had to retire because of ill health and has passed the reins on to another member of the committee, although he will still be involved in fundraising. I thought it appropriate to mark the occasion of Bert's retirement by mentioning him in my speech and congratulating him on the excellent work that he has done to improve the quality of life of young children with severe disabilities in my constituency.