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11.33 am
Mr. David Nicholson (Taunton): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) on raising an important subject that deserves more attention and more far-sighted debate in the House. He is building on his excellent work as a Minister in the Department of the Environment, and I am glad to see that his interest in such matters has not abated since his return to the Back Benches.
The most urgent problem facing our communities in the next few months is the housing requirements that are being directed at counties throughout southern England, but before dealing with that I want to touch on transport and energy conservation, which were mentioned by both my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk and by the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. Taylor).
The only dissenting letters about the Budget that I have received in the past week were from pensioners on fixed incomes, living in the countryside and dependent on their cars, who objected to the rise in petrol prices. I have had a good half dozen such letters. I had to explain that we and the Opposition parties are committed to raising the price of petrol continually through taxation.
The hon. Member for Truro and I have had some discussion in the past about the Liberal proposals for counterbalancing tax on petrol. I face a dilemma, and the hon. Gentleman faces a practical problem, because single people or pensioner couples on limited incomes in the countryside will tend to have older cars, which unfortunately, whether small or large--and they are often small--are pretty environmentally unfriendly; that is a shame in itself, but it also means that those people cannot benefit from the discrimination in favour of unleaded petrol.
The other dilemma arises because people in the countryside who have children will almost certainly need a rather larger than average car, especially if they give lifts to their children, to other people's children or to their neighbours. I would like more to be done to help communications in the countryside by encouraging neighbours to help each other by giving lifts. The idea that everyone can be encouraged through tax measures to have small and environmentally friendly cars is therefor subject to these practical difficulties.
I entirely support the encouragement of bicycle use. Taunton, the main town in my constituency, is ideally suited for more use of bicycles, and the Liberal council, with my full support, has done a great deal to encourage it in recent years. There is all-party support in my constituency for the development of cycle tracks and I am delighted to say that we have had considerable financial help from the Government.
On energy conservation, I do not want the Government--any Government--to levy different rates of VAT on different goods and services, as we got away from that in 1979, much to the benefit of small businesses. I therefore do not support the idea of reducing VAT on energy conservation materials to 8 per cent. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk,
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The most important issue for my constituents and for most people in southern England is new housing development. Through a conjunction of population planners in London, the South West regional planning conference and others, Somerset was originally threatened with 50,000 new houses over the next decade or decade and a half. Pressures and negotiations may bring that down to about 45,000, but it is still too many. Such development on green-field sites would have implications for the water table and water conservation.
In and near my constituency, it is feared that the sort of development that we face over the next decade will cause the town of Taunton to spill across the M5, swamping the villages of Henlade, Ruishton and even Creech St. Michael, and bringing them into a Greater Taunton. I would greatly regret that. Just over my constituency border, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) has referred to the danger that Bridgwater and North Petherton will join to create a Greater Bridgwater. Few people in the local communities want such development.
We have run up against difficulties with the Ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food because sites such as Longforth farm to the north-east of Wellington and Monkton Heathfield between the village of that name and the M5 are grade 1 or 2A agricultural land. MAFF has objected to development on such sites even though they would be less intrusive green-field sites and probably appropriate for development in terms of communication and in every other regard. We have a dilemma, although I think that we may be making progress with MAFF.
There is better scope for the sensible development of villages. That would help the village services such as the garage, the post office, the pub and the school which the excellent Local Government and Rating Bill that we are putting through the House is trying to sustain. But there is no point in developers building 1960s or 1970s style large family houses on the edge of villages that have entirely different traditional architecture. The Prince of Wales has taken important initiatives on that. I hope that planning guidance will emphasise that we must develop more sensitive architecture for new village developments.
In my part of England, there are a number of disused airfields dating back to the second world war, some of which may be suitable sites for new villages. There may be scope for closing some of the military bases, where the ground is already developed, on Salisbury plain and turning them into villages. We can show some imagination and initiative to avoid intruding on the green-field sites that we and our constituents are anxious to conserve.
I want to spell out some shorter-term and some longer-term proposals to tackle the problem. They may go against several of the rhetorical and philosophical assumptions that Conservative Members have previously accepted--or at least espoused over the past 20 years. If we do nothing to curb demand for new housing and curb
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We must consider greater use of empty properties, but they tend to be in urban areas and large conurbations. There must be greater use of brown-field sites but as I pointed out to my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk, that is less help to those of us with rural or semi-rural counties to look after.
I want no more intrusion on school playgrounds. We debate the resource problems of schools, but I am glad that even the urban schools in my constituency retain excellent playgrounds, usually right next to the school, which is a great benefit. When I was at a good grammar school in Lancashire, it was a mile and a half walk up the hill and down the other side to the playing fields.
I am sure that we can have sensible development, especially if emphasis is given to smaller-scale development. If we are moving towards a society in which more people live alone, we must consider the greater development of flats rather than large family houses.
Some of my other points are for the longer term but they must be considered. First, we must discover what we can learn from other countries, especially the Netherlands. My sister has lived there for 20 years. It has restrictions on to whom people can resell their houses, which must be offered first to people in the local community. The Netherlands, more than any other country in Europe, needs to use every acre of its land effectively because the supply of land is so limited. In the long term, the free market in the sale and resale of housing may have to be considered.
A perverse benefit of the recent recession was that the boom in the south-west has been curbed while the north of the country, for the first time in 100 years, has excellent economic development prospects. That may reverse the process of the past century whereby people have come from the north to seek employment and set up businesses in the south. However, the south-west has been the traditional target for people seeking to retire from the midlands, London and, indeed, all over the country. So, secondly, we may have to consider restricting the right of people to move from one part of the country to others when they retire. I might say to the hon. Member for Ceredigion and Pembroke, North (Mr. Dafis) that I know about that issue only too well because my mother lives in north Wales. Sooner or later, we may destroy the very facilities that attract people to the south-west in their retirement.
Mr. Matthew Taylor:
A less draconian but more immediate measure would be to allow local authorities to require planning permission when a home is changed to a second or holiday home. That forces families to find other accommodation, possibly new-build accommodation, elsewhere quite unnecessarily. Such a measure would not stop such sales altogether but it would mean that the same planning requirements were necessary as for changing a home to a business.
Mr. Nicholson:
I agree that that should be considered. All those matters, although they go against the philosophy of free markets and individual freedom that the Conservative party in particular has, for the past 20 years,
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Thirdly, we may have to consider curbing commuting by people who live 100 miles from where they work. That process causes constant building on green-field sites and adds to transport pollution. One way to start curbing it would be by substantially restricting all-day parking in cities and conurbations so that parking facilities are for local people who come to shop, not for those who commute from 100 or 150 miles away. That objective would have implications for rail travel which the House should consider further.
Fourthly, measures to counterbalance the break-up of families have been mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment. The segments of sundered families are requiring facilities for visiting children. Grandparents get sundered from families, live elsewhere and do not get support from them. It is not for politicians to preach, but I regret that we have not done more in recent years through fiscal, legal and social measures to try to halt that distressing process.
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