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Mr. Christopher Gill (Ludlow): My hon. Friend the Minister will appreciate that Ludlow is a very rural constituency. I endorse the remarks made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Jopling), who has put the case for beefing up this legislation, so that all those who have entered into the spirit of providing social housing in the countryside since the change in the legislation some years ago will not feel that they have been let down, but believe that there is some certainty about the future.

Before I say any more, I should emphasise that I believe in the right-to-buy policy. It has been one of the most successful political policies of all time, and enabled thousands of people to achieve their lifelong ambition--to live in the property they own--which is entirely consistent with the policies of a Conservative Government. Having said that, I trust that the Minister will appreciate that it is very much a question of horses for courses.

Rural housing was one of the first matters that I became aware of as a problem in my constituency after I was elected as a Member of Parliament in 1987. The Minister will be able to understand why it is a problem. A brief explanation is that every property in my constituency is regarded as desirable, and that it is regarded as doubly desirable by those who do not currently live in my constituency but who would like to live there.

People move into my constituency from more affluent areas. They have a bigger purse and deeper pockets than the indigenous population, and they are therefore able to buy up every property, no matter what its condition or size.

Therefore, I hope that the Minister, who I am sure is paying close attention to this debate, will recognise that there is a world of difference between introducing a right-to-buy policy in an urban area, where it is entirely appropriate, and introducing it in a rural area, where, in my submission and that of many of my constituents, it is entirely inappropriate because of the circumstances I have described.

We have already altered the law to enable social housing to be provided in rural areas, and everyone in the jigsaw supports our policy. It is therefore important that we give those people a sense of stability, and a guarantee

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that they continue to operate the current system. I am talking about the landowners who have made land available at less than the commercial price, the housing associations that are involved, and, not least, the planners who grant planning permission outside the village enclave.

It would be a mistake if we missed the opportunity to reassure those people that the current regime will continue to operate. For that reason, I seek a specific assurance from the Minister that he will accept the terms of the amendment.

Sir Roger Moate (Faversham): I must apologise to the House for participating rather late in the debate, but I am glad that I had the chance to hear the hon. Member for Normanton (Mr. O'Brien) speak in favour of amendment No. 10, which I too support. I should like to inquire of my hon. Friend the Minister about certain issues.

In common with my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill), I enthusiastically support the right-to-buy policy. I regard it as one of the great achievements of successive Conservative Governments. I also regard the creation of the housing association movement as one of the jewels in our crown.

This morning, I received a letter from the chief executive of the Swale housing association, which has been immensely successful. I take its representations seriously. That housing association in my constituency has control of between 6,000 and 7,000 houses under a total transfer scheme from the public sector. Its successful operation makes it an example that should be emulated right across the country.

The chief executive stresses that the housing association supports

"right to buy and other purchase initiatives"

and that it

"shall operate fully the purchase grant scheme which extends the right to buy scheme to new tenants not just those who transferred from Swale Borough Council".

Given that support, when he went on to suggest that amendments Nos. 10 and 36 should be considered seriously, I therefore wanted to make representations to the Minister to find out how the Government propose to deal with houses that have been built under section 106 agreements.

I will not labour the point, which has already been well made, and I am sure that my hon. Friend is well seized of it, but an element of contradiction seems apparent. If we encourage, and rightly so, local authorities to make section 106 agreements to deal specifically with the problems of housing need and affordable housing in certain areas, it is inconsistent to say that those self-same houses can be sold.

It is my understanding that this specific problem is not a great one--I am taking that information from the briefing of the National Federation of Housing Associations, and I apologise if those points have already been made. None the less, I note that Department of the Environment research suggests that 11,000 such homes have been built since the late 1980s, mainly in the south-east and in south Wales.

According to that briefing:

"Of three large associations, one had 10 dwellings out of 400 that would be affected, one had only 2 schemes and the other just 1 scheme."

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I have no wish to undermine the general concept of the proposal, and I am not calling for large-scale exemptions. An argument has been responsibly made, however, about a specific number of section 106 agreements in areas such as mine, where a small number of houses meet a specific need. I would welcome the Minister's comments on that. I have no idea whether the amendments are sensible or right, but I would welcome some words of assistance from my hon. Friend to meet my philosophical argument.

Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cirencester and Tewkesbury): I should like to echo what my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill) has said.

I welcome the Government's initiative to exempt those communities of fewer than 3,000 people, but I too represent a rural constituency, 80 per cent. of which is designated for planning purposes of one sort or another.

If the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow is desirable, my constituency in the Cotswolds is equally, if not more, so. Houses there are even more expensive than in my hon. Friend's constituency. The incentive for people to try to get on the ladder for low-cost housing and then try to get the right to buy that property is all the greater in my constituency. My fear is that, when the low-cost housing that has been provided is whittled away by the right to buy, there will be ever more pressure for even more land to be provided at a low cost.

Although a section 106 agreement may be entered into when an estate is built, the pressure will grow for even more low-cost estates. That would have two consequences. First, ever more land would be used up in a rural area. Secondly, and perhaps a more important consequence, a landlord who is offered a mere glimmer of the possibility of obtaining full planning permission might not even want to sell or give that land at low cost.

In my constituency, the building land for which full planning permission for residential dwellings is available costs between £100,000 and £200,000 per acre. There is therefore a great incentive for a landlord to hold out in case he might get full planning permission. Where an area is designated for low-cost housing, and is subject to the exemption, the relevant criteria should be altered only in exceptional circumstances; otherwise, we will be in deep trouble in rural areas.

4.45 pm

Mr. Curry: The debate has ranged from the furthest flung rural communities to the inner-city bailiwick of my right hon. Friend the Member for City of London and Westminster, South (Mr. Brooke). I should declare an interest as my constituency is the fifth most scattered one in the country, where anything that is not national park is an area of outstanding natural beauty. The problems that my right hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Jopling) has highlighted--his constituency matches mine--and those outlined by my hon. Friends the Members for Ludlow (Mr. Gill) and for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Clifton-Brown) are all writ large in my constituency. They would therefore expect me to be particularly sensitive to the problems of housing in rural areas.

When we drew up the policy for the new purchase grant scheme we had two things in mind. First, we wished to extend home ownership so that people living in housing association property were put on a more equal basis with

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people living in local authority property under secure tenure. The basis of the scheme is the equivalence of status of those two sets of tenants. Secondly, we wanted to recognise that certain rural areas present particular problems, where it would not be sensible to permit a right to buy.

The question then arose about how to define such a scheme. I wanted a scheme that was easy to define, clear cut, not bureaucratic and complex and which did not allow properties to float in and out of designation. That is why we chose the concept of rural settlements of 3,000 people. We did so partly because the definition of rurality by the Rural Development Commission, which we are building upon, is fairly well understood. We chose carefully the idea of settlement as opposed to village or parish because it gave us more flexibility. One could have a parish which included some large places, as well as some small areas. Designating settlements enables us to propose more embracing exclusions. Making sure that people know what those exclusions are is of course important. That is why we propose carefully to list the settlements' locations, and we shall also issue maps carefully defining them.

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