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Christmas Adjournment

I shall not talk about the trains because I want to talk about a problem we have with the M5, which goes through the middle of my constituency. Junction 28, at the small town of Cullompton, was part of the original motorway, but over the years services have been developed on the eastbound carriageway and it is now an official motorway services area. Unfortunately, the infrastructure of the motorway exit does not match up to what one would normally expect to find on the exit to a services area. There is a small mini-roundabout at the top of the slip road and when articulated lorries in particular come off the motorway at that point, they swing across to the other lane—I hope I am not putting people off coming to Devon—to such an extent that one lane of the slip road has had to be closed. I have held two meetings with Mid Devon district council, the Highways Agency and Devon county council and, more recently, on 1 December we met the regional development agency. It is obvious to anybody who uses that exit and that junction that its development over the years has outstripped the original infrastructure. Something significant needs to be done, not only to make the junction safer but to cope with the traffic. There is obviously an impact on the town of Cullompton, which is right on the junction. It is not one of those towns that is miles from the motorway. As motorists leave the junction, they go straight on to Station road and are in the heart of the town within a minute. The development of the town and the growth of its facilities are being seriously restricted, because the motorway junction is significant for access to the town centre and also because there is a problem with traffic leaving the motorway to access the services. I am concerned that, in discussions with the various agencies, we have had great difficulty in persuading them, not that they should do something about the problem tomorrow but that they should plan and factor into the development of the motorway structure a radically different system to accommodate the changing needs. However, we have been met with opposition. It is true that the Highways Agency may consider some minor changes, because it realises that there is an immediate problem, but we were told that one of the reasons why nothing significant could be done was that the junction was at a small Devon town. If we were adjacent to a large city, we would probably have funding for the changes. It is particularly galling that decisions about important motorway junctions are based not on need but on something called a spatial strategy—a plan not drawn up by the local people who use the junction and understand the priorities of the town or that part of the motorway, but by the regional development agency and, in particular, the regional assembly. Those bodies are unelected and unaccountable, yet they seem to have all the say about how money is spent and where the priorities for development and growth should be. It is yet another example of how rural areas—even a motorway junction in the middle of a rural area—and small towns lose out, because third parties, miles away from where we live, take significant decisions about what should or should not happen. If the decisions had been left to Cullompton town council, Mid Devon district council and local people and they could have had a say in what happened in their area, it would be a different matter. I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will take on board what I am saying. Quite frankly, we must ask whether those bodies—the RDAs and regional assemblies—are really serving all the community that they have been given power over, or whether they are just selective about those interests that they think are more important. We talk about local decision making, but they do not think locally; they do not act locally. I shall move on to issues that affect elderly people—I declare an interest. [Hon. Members: ““No.””] We have already heard that there was general disappointment in the House about the reply that the Leader of the House gave yesterday to the question on the 10 per cent. interest on savings that is deemed to apply to benefits. That particularly affects elderly people who want to obtain pension credit and other important benefits that affect people who are at the margins of being eligible to apply for benefits. There is a significant change of circumstances, with interest rates dropping. I should like to add my support to those Members who have already said that the Government should urgently consider this matter. As has been said, people who have saved and people who rely on sometimes quite small amounts of investment income from their building society and bank accounts that are really important to their general well-being and their household budgets now find that that money is not there. I am really quite worried when people laughingly say, ““Oh well, the only place to keep your money these days is under the bed.”” Frankly, that is very worrying, but it is something that we shall face, particularly if interest rates go down to zero, which is not impossible. I hope that the Government will think again about that. I should also like to refer to the help that the Government are giving to people who qualify for help with insulation. I have heard the Prime Minister talk about helping elderly people with money to help not just with fuel, but with insulating and improving their homes. I got an e-mail this week from a constituent who wrote:"““My 'free' home insulation—cavity walls and loft—was arranged for 11th December but postponed indefinitely, at two days' notice, due to lack of funding. Is this yet another example of a splendid initiative by HMG that has been inadequately implemented and funded? At the age of 76, this sort of disappointment is very difficult to take, without getting depressed.””" I am pleased to report to the House that it looks as though that situation will be resolved for that gentleman, but what is the problem with that policy, which has been spoken about frequently by the Prime Minister personally? We are now in December, before we have even reached the hardest months of the winter, and contracts that were being implemented are suddenly stopped in their tracks at two days' notice. I really do not understand why that should be, and I wonder whether the Deputy Leader of the House would be good enough to look at that and get back to me. I should also like the Deputy Leader of the House to take up another issue with the appropriate Minister. I have tried to raise it with the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change. I raised it with the former Energy Minister earlier in the year, and it took eight months to get a reply, despite several promptings. I am still waiting for a reply to a request that I made in November to the current Energy Minister. There is something called the Gas Act 1986, in which protection was given to people who had to buy their gas from their landlords. That protection was put in place so that landlords could not exploit their tenants. Several people in my constituency live in park homes, and some of them have to buy their gas through their landlords. They also buy liquefied petroleum gas. I understand that the protection given to people who buy gas does not cover such fuel, which has been provided by landlords more recently, as it was not included in the Gas Act 1986, because it is an oil-based product. Unless we can assist people who have to buy their fuel through third parties—and I do mean ““have to””—and cannot shop around in the marketplace to get the best deal, they will be sitting ducks if landlords wish to exploit them. Measures should be introduced; the Government could either identify an existing Bill to which they could be added, or could add them to an appropriate Bill in the next couple of months. It is wrong that landlords can exploit people through the resale of fuel, which is so important to people. There are some very nice park homes in my constituency, but people who live in park homes are, almost by definition, not the wealthiest people. They are predominantly older people from an older generation. I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will give the issue serious consideration.