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Christmas Adjournment

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will now be invited to interact with the people there. Who knows? There may be package on its way to him at this moment. In the field of biotechnology, many exciting things are happening in Norwich, as they are across the country. It is the coming science. As the Minister for Science and Innovation in the other place, who made his name in biotechnology, has said, this part of the world, and the United Kingdom in general, is the arena where things are really going to happen. Another example is broccoli, which has chemicals called sulforophane. Using conventional plant-breeding methods, broccoli can be increased to super-broccoli status by having more of those chemicals. That has been shown in many cases to reduce rates of cancer. As Members will know, we have here a very successful and powerful all-party cancer group. Ministers come to see us, and we have a day called ““Britain Against Cancer””. That is now reflected in Norfolk. Patient groups attended, and we had tremendous support from right across the county. The interesting thing was that no more money was needed. We discussed the interactions between people and the innovatory ways in which they were going to deliver the services—and blow me, one week later the local hospital delivered some of them. That may have been going to happen anyway, as these things do. However, things are increasingly moving back to the localities, and we should try to reflect some of the activities that we have learned about in this place down at the local level. The university of East Anglia is famous for its creative writing department, with Malcolm Bradbury, Ian McEwan—the names go on and on. It has the Tyndall centre for climate change research, which is a world leader in that field. An organisation called Carbon Reduction, or C-Red, is interacting with industry to help and advise it. The university interacts with local industry in advising people about their energy needs and so on. It has helped Adnams, the great brewery. My hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) has left the Chamber now, but we are trying to get Adnams beer into the House, but that is difficult because it is a big name. Adnams has created the world's first carbon-neutral beer. I do not know what it does for hangovers, but the fact that it is carbon neutral is quite a success. As for an engineering school, UAE does not have one. About two miles down the road, there is a Lotus factory that gets involved in making cars, engineers work there, and there is Formula 1 and Snetterton race track. Young people could be stimulated to take an interest in engineering at a time when this country is crying out for engineers. We need to interact at that level with universities. If we can get that interaction with research institutes, communities and the health service, we can get it right across the board. Part of the problem with universities is that they are hooked into the research assessment exercise, the results of which come out today. Their whole lives are taken up with trying to survive a rigorous assessment system. We have all this biotechnological development going on in that part of the world. We have low-carbon technologies coming along, and health care products. With some initiative, we could ensure that travel, the railways and tourism expand at the same time and we become the regional hub. The social issues are part and parcel of that, and many initiatives are going on. There are groups such as Transition Norwich, where 500 people will come along to a meeting in a big hall on a Wednesday night to discuss how they can get involved with their environment and their community by having their own allotments or keeping bees. So there is a grass-roots feeling that can be tapped and I believe that that sort of community spirit—with people interacting and creating things—can sort out many problems. The local food produce schemes will be a big thing. Let us get the railways right and get green technology going. Broadband access has been mentioned—we still do not have a national fibre-optic cable network, and that needs to be achieved. We need a human capital strategy, whereby we work with young people, who perhaps do not go to university for three or four years, and enable them to duck out of education and come back into it. All those novel ideas exist, and we need a regional innovation strategy. However, I do not know who will deliver it. Norfolk is by the sea and it is blowy, but there is, as yet, no wave energy of which I am aware. There is some wind energy, and talk of turbines in the North sea and so on, but we need to get going and get zippy, and interact with firms that can build such things, as well as with other countries. A co-ordinated approach is the way forward. We need it for the many young people who want to set up businesses. The document that I mentioned at the outset is all about building on the strength of the creativity of our young people. Some will be writers, some will be engineers, some will be scientists and others—very few—will be politicians. However, at the end of the day, we must get resources from the organisations that work in the relevant parts of the country to push the creativity that exists. It is our strength and will be a major feature of getting out of the recession.