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Mr. Nicholls: I am sure that the public will be greatly reassured by the way in which the Minister has handled this. He has given a painstaking explanation, and I am very grateful to him for it. However, I ask him to clarify one thing.
Is he saying that some of the information in documents that have yet to be released is still so sensitive that it will be exempt from the 30-year disclosure? If the information is sensitive today but is releasable in a year, 18 months or two years' time, the case for its release may not be very attractive to civil servants, but, from a political perspective, which the Minister will understand completely, there could be a very good reason indeed for releasing it now. Which of those two categories does the information fall into?
Dr. Reid:
I cannot tell the hon. Gentleman that I have read the other 27 documents--I have not. However, I shall look at this and review the risk, in my view, of releasing information, which on its own is sometimes not dangerous but which, when added incrementally to other information in the public sphere, can be of great use to a potential enemy. I will balance that against the political requirements. I will be as open and honest as I can. I will have two caveats, because this is not completely in my power to handle.
Dr. Reid:
I shall give way briefly to the hon. Gentleman, but I really must finish now.
Mr. Key:
I shall be brief. I am very grateful to the Minister for the way in which he has conducted the debate. He is not a scientist, and nor am I, but we are both concerned for constituents who are genuinely worried about any ill health that they may feel goes from generation to generation. Is it the Minister's understanding, as it is mine, that, even though no dangerous pathogens were released, if chemical or biological agents which were real had been released, their effects would have taken place within minutes or hours, and we would not be talking about something happening 30 years later?
Dr. Reid:
That depends on which bacteria were released, but, yes, in most cases, that certainly would have been the case. I understand that, because, for very good reasons, many of these matters had to be kept secret at the time--some of them, perhaps, even now--people's suspicions are naturally heightened. That is not automatically the case. There are very good reasons for
In the meantime, some of the formal scientific reports relating to these trials have already been routinely released--in the normal way--into the Public Record Office at Kew. The remainder are in the process of being so released.
I have no unconstrained power in my office to order release. There is the 30-year rule. Other Departments are involved in this. It is not entirely within my gift. There may, of course, be matters that relate specifically to future security.
However, I can tell the House that, in discussions with Porton Down, I have made my own view known, and have asked that whatever steps can be taken by my office to assist the processes being accelerated should be taken. I have also ordered that copies of reports so far published, and any others that are published, are placed in the Library of the House to make it easier for hon. Members to access them rather than having to send to Porton Down or anywhere else. I hope that that is of some assistance.
I hope that my commitment to be open and honest in dealing with the public on these issues, and to offer assistance to the local authorities where we sensibly can, together with the facts that I have set out this morning, will offer some reassurance to those living in the localities in which the tests took place.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Teignbridge for bringing these issues to my attention, and for providing me with the opportunity publicly to respond to the points that he made; and to assure him and his colleagues that, as far as the Ministry of Defence is concerned, we will do whatever we can to reassure the public and address his constituents' anxiety.
Mr. David Drew (Stroud):
I am grateful for the opportunity to debate one of the biggest issues that face us as we enter the next millennium: where people are going to live. I do not intend to speak for long, because I know how many other hon. Members wish to speak.
On entering the House, I was somewhat surprised to find how little national debate there had been about this subject, despite the last Government's paper entitled "Household growth: where shall we live?" and a report on housing need by the Environment Select Committee. Given its importance and relevance to every constituency, and therefore to every Member of Parliament, it is surprising what a low public profile the issue has had. Many of us have had to deal with housing development in our own localities.
Housing has slipped down the public agenda, despite fulfilling a basic human need, and is frequently perceived as a purely local and technical matter. Because of that, housing development figures are seen to be irrefutable and handed down from above, although they should be a key element in debate with the public. We all know that housing is one of the issues that should gain resonance during general elections, but recently it has failed to feature.
The Department of the Environment published the latest set of household projections in 1995. The figures predicted a 4.4 million, or 23 per cent., increase in the number of households in England between 1991 and 2016, and have been used to determine the level and location of new housing development across the country. What is emerging is the existence of localised planning disputes focusing on the specifics of individual sites and the question of where the housing should go. What is being missed is the bigger picture, and questions about whether the housing figures are valid or indeed desirable, whether their impact is acceptable in economic, social and environmental terms and whether they amount to a coherent strategy.
In my constituency, there is growing resentment about plans for thousands of extra houses, which has resulted in many letters in my postbag. For much of my time as a local councillor, I have been personally involved with development and planning, and I understand the frustration felt by many local residents. I believe that the time has come when we must be prepared to question the basis of the housing projections, particularly if we want to be a listening Government.
I want to raise three specific concerns: the validity and repercussions of the housing figures, the issue of sustainability and the role of public policy in housing. The current projection of 4.4 million additional households is based on the assumption that the future is simply a continuation of past trends, and, in particular, that demographic changes, migration patterns and social behaviour will continue much as before. That is admitted in the last Government's paper on household growth, although in other areas of policy such as road building the "predict and provide" approach is now being seriously questioned, primarily on grounds of environmental impact.
Research by Professor Glen Bramley of Heriot-Watt university has highlighted the circularity of the relationship between household projections and economic
and housing market factors--the influence of the supply of housing on demand, and vice versa. That has much in common with the road-building and traffic debate.
Let me now deal with some of the specific factors that generate housing numbers: an aging population, the fact that younger people are leaving home earlier, the growing divorce and separation rate, the existence of more single-person households and migration flows across the country, essentially from urban to rural areas and from north to south. I am particularly interested in that last feature, because of the dynamic that migration causes in parts of the country. In the south-west, it generates development as much as indigenous growth. We must therefore subject the figures to thorough scrutiny.
Research carried out over the past two years by John Allinson of the University of the West of England on net migration into Gloucestershire raises serious doubts about the robustness of the net in-migration figures being used to determine the massive house-building programme, and an approach based entirely on past trends rather than public policy. In its structure plan, Gloucestershire county council assumes a net annual in-migration of 2,700 people, but Allinson demonstrates that the true figure is much lower. In his view, that is due to emerging societal sea changes relating principally to labour and housing markets.
The real significance of John Allinson's research, however, lies in what he has to say about migration patterns beyond Gloucestershire at regional and national levels. The overall implications are simple but dramatic. In Gloucestershire, planners are about to make provision for some 6,000 more houses than are required, thereby needlessly and irreversibly destroying hundreds of acres of green-field land. The reduction in net migration flows that is increasingly evident in Gloucestershire is being replicated in the other counties in the south-west and in other regions, and is part of a wider national trend. Moreover, public policy can have an impact on migration between areas of the country, and, in particular, out of our cities.
Although the research only examines the migration element of the household projections, that element accounts for more than half the predicted growth in Gloucestershire, and is therefore significant. However, there are other aspects of the key assumption that raise doubts about the overall soundness of the projections and the methodology employed. For example, the figures assume virtually no increase in the proportion of households in which people are cohabiting, which rose from 2.9 per cent. to 6.4 per cent. between 1981 and 1991. It is projected to have risen by only 0.3 per cent. between 1991 and 2016, which reinforces the thesis of a massive growth in single-person households.
The figures do not appear to have been adjusted for the estimated missing million people who failed to complete the 1991 census, thereby reducing the average household size and, again, reinforcing the thesis of a smaller household--a case of "Honey, I shrunk the household". That provides strong evidence that the household figures are open to challenge, are likely to be a significant overestimate and therefore need to be reviewed as part of a reappraisal of housing requirements.
Given the consequences for local economies, communities and the environment, the accumulated data must be acted on. The numbers will be affected, directly and indirectly, by policy decisions. For example, a substantial regional investment creating jobs eventually affects migration from, for instance, the north to the south. Social, affordable housing provision designed to meet the local needs of those on low incomes--the homeless and young indigenous people--is more effective than massive increases in housing supply at lower prices.
Similarly, changing patterns of student study may encourage students to stay in their home environment, and improvements in standards in urban schools may persuade families to stay in the cities. We therefore have serious doubts about trend-based forecasts that take the last 20 years, and roll the findings forward into the next 20 and make the result the main presumption behind housing needs.
Next, let me deal with sustainability. Notwithstanding the arguments, we must consider how the housing debate can be advanced. The concept of sustainability needs to be central. More clarity and a higher priority are required before its implications for economies, communities and the environment can be properly weighed within a modernised planning system. Associated issues of capacity and environmental impact assessment are also essential if we are to have more integrated evolutionary planning.
One way in which we could reduce development pressures without absolving ourselves of responsibility for unforeseen changes, while maintaining a coherent planning strategy, would be to introduce the phasing of land allocation for development. Programmed reviews of need would be built in, and, perhaps, land would be released on a sequential basis designed to enhance sustainability and the regeneration of local economies and communities, and to discourage cherry-picking of the best green-field sites.
10.59 am
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