Pippa Heylings

No, I will continue, if that is all right. Across Cambridgeshire almost 50,000 additional homes are forecast by 2041. The reason for this growth is that greater Cambridge, which constitutes the constituency of the hon. Member for Cambridge and mine of South Cambridgeshire, is one of the most economically dynamic regions of the country, with an annual turnover of £30 billion, employing more than 110,000 people. Although Cambridge is the brand, my constituency includes the largest biomedical campus in Europe. It is home to the global headquarters for AstraZeneca, the Addenbrooke’s, Rosie and Royal Papworth hospitals, and the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, whose researchers have won 12 Nobel prizes. We have the Wellcome Genome Campus, one of the world’s largest concentrations of genomics and biodata, and the Babraham Institute and Granta Park, home to the European headquarters of Illumina—I am just saying that a very small rural constituency is a great partner within the corridor. But with that, as we have heard, comes chronic underfunding, and under successive Governments growth has not kept pace with infrastructure. Take healthcare: the A&E department of Addenbrooke’s hospital was built to serve only a quarter of the patients it now sees, and the Cambridge University hospitals trust operates with a deficit of around 162 acute beds. The new acute strategy has been developed as a design, but there has not yet been any decision on a new A&E hospital. Transport tells the same story, as Members from across the Chamber have said. The appalling public transport options currently available and the commuting gridlock damages the quality of life of all residents. I join the east of England all-party parliamentary group and my hon. Friend the Member for Ely and East Cambridgeshire (Charlotte Cane) in calling for the Ely and Haughley junction to be improved to manage freight, to get lorries off the road and to enable more passenger trains. East West Rail purports to have resolved some of the transport connectivity issues across the corridor, but in my constituency it has been dogged by problems from the very start. There has been really poor community engagement, and nothing has been offered except huge infrastructure going through it. I repeat my invitation to the Rail Minister to come to my constituency to answer the questions of my constituents. The proposed Cambridge east station is in my constituency, not in Cambridge, so it would be very good to have the Minister there. This cannot just be about house building. The Greater Cambridge shared planning service has just won an award for being one of the best planning authorities in the country, because it does strategic planning and community engagement. Let us keep water and nature—the deal breakers in this—sustainable. Would the Minister convene with Lord Vallance to deliver joined-up infrastructure, together with all the relevant authorities?