  We show that twisting of an infinite straight three-dimensional tube with
non-circular cross-section gives rise to a Hardy-type inequality for the
associated Dirichlet Laplacian. As an application we prove certain stability of
the spectrum of the Dirichlet Laplacian in locally and mildly bent tubes.
Namely, it is known that any local bending, no matter how small, generates
eigenvalues below the essential spectrum of the Laplacian in the tubes with
arbitrary cross-sections rotated along a reference curve in an appropriate way.
In the present paper we show that for any other rotation some critical strength
of the bending is needed in order to induce a non-empty discrete spectrum.
