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12.2 pm
Mr. Christopher Chope (Christchurch): The debate has been a partial re-run of the debate initiated by the Conservatives last week to express concern on behalf of our constituents. In that debate, as today, the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) questioned the figures for household projections. He was joined in that today by the hon. Member for North Swindon (Mr. Wills). They are both issuing a serious challenge to their Government.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) asked whether the Government accepted the projected figures. That was answered in last week's debate by the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, the hon. Member for Wallasey (Angela Eagle), who said:
My hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere issued a plea on behalf of the green belt. Today we have the advantage that the Minister against whom the charges on the green belt are being made will come to the Dispatch Box to answer the debate. I shall not detain the House too long, because we are eager to hear what he has to say about the green belt, and his answer to the charge that he has been playing fast and loose with it.
Our suspicions were increased in last week's debate, because our motion included a charge against the Government of weakening planning controls designed to protect the green belt. That point was not answered in the Government amendment or in the debate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere has said, the Minister's words on the "Today" programme on 30 October have caused considerable suspicion. During that interview he repeatedly and pointedly failed to confirm the strong presumption against building on the green belt, which was the cornerstone of policy under the Conservative Government, who doubled the amount of green belt and dramatically increased its protection.
Recent Government actions have also given rise to concern. The Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions decided arbitrarily to overturn the recommendation of his independent inspector following a public inquiry on the development of 140 acres of green belt land in Birmingham, near Sutton Coldfield.
The Minister for the Regions, Regeneration and Planning (Mr. Richard Caborn):
That is not for housing.
Mr. Chope:
Under the Conservative Government, the green belt was sacrosanct, both in respect of housing and
Mr. Hilton Dawson (Lancaster and Wyre)
rose--
Mr. Chope:
I am not going to give way, because I hope that the Minister will have a chance to respond to the debate and will take some interventions from Conservative Members, if, as we fear, his responses are not satisfactory.
We are told that the Government are considering the 700 responses to the Green Paper, "Where shall we live?", Perhaps it would have been better titled, "Where will you live?", because most of us know where we wish to live, and we choose to live where we want to live. Some of the comments from Labour Members have shown that there is a danger of telling people what to do. I have chosen to live in the countryside, in a semi-rural area. I do not wish to deprive other people of the chance to do that, but I recognise that we should be concerned about the destruction of the existing environment.
One of the concerns in East Dorset at the moment is that the Government's response to the East Dorset draft plan said that the proposed densities were not high enough. Coupled with the rather vague definition of brown land, that means that people who live in houses with gardens are threatened by substantial infill development that would dramatically alter the character of those areas and would, ironically, increase the pressure for more people to live in the countryside.
The Minister for the Regions, Regeneration and Planning (Mr. Richard Caborn):
I wish to thank most of the hon. Members who have contributed to the debate, because it has been very constructive. I shall set out the base line for the debate--the Conservatives' best record, in 18 years, for building on brown-field sites was 40 per cent. Miraculously, within six months of leaving office, they have improved that to 75 per cent. That is definitely gilding the lily.
Mr. McWalter:
Will my hon. Friend note that the previous junior Minister at the Department of the Environment, who lost Hemel Hempstead--the area that I now represent--at the election, is now employed by a construction company? Will he also note that intensive research to try to identify brown-field sites in Hertfordshire has proved unavailing?
Mr. Caborn:
My hon. Friend's comments have been noted by the House and will appear in Hansard.
I first wish to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) on initiating the debate today. As has been mentioned, it was covered in part in the Opposition day debate on rural life.
The housing problem is a major issue facing society today. I would love to come to the Dispatch Box and say that no new houses need to be built, but that is not the
reality. It is not the Government who are changing social patterns--that is happening out there in the real world. The Government have to accept that and respond to it. Many opportunities will arise from the growth in the number of households, and some have been mentioned this morning. Mixed development is an exciting prospect, and I have visited imaginative mixed development schemes in Liverpool and Manchester. The Government will encourage those.
I hope that the White Paper will be supportive of regional development agencies and will address the need to improve economic growth and tackle underperformance in the English regions. I hope that it will also suggest ways to relieve those areas in which economic development is overheating and to bring areas that are under-utilised closer to the average. I hope that the Government will be positive and constructive in the White Paper and the Bill that will be introduced later in the year.
I also hope that hon. Members will contribute to the White Paper on an integrated transport system, which will be important for the environment and for the issues that we are discussing today. While we accept that the market has a role to play in housing, we believe that the Government also have a role to play. Unfortunately, the previous Administration abdicated many of their responsibilities.
The main concerns for my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud are whether we believe the household projections and, more particularly, whether we need to plan for the number of households that they suggest will be formed. He has also, rightly, raised the special concerns of his constituency, where the projections require decisions to identify how and where housing should be provided, not just how much. I will try to address each of those issues in turn.
It will be useful for the House--because there seems to be some misunderstanding--if I explain what the household projections are, how they are arrived at, what they say, and how they are translated into development plans. In many areas of government, we do not have the luxury of looking a long way into the future and trying to plan for the changes that we expect will happen. The household projections do just that. They enable local authorities to estimate in their development plans the additional housing that they should provide in the next 10 years or so.
The first stage in the process involves assessing the population of the country using the census and the regular sub-national population projections, which are updated every two to three years. Migration trends, which have been mentioned by several hon. Members, are taken into account in that assessment, and local authorities are consulted about the accuracy of the trends. The evaluation is a rolling programme that is updated every three to four years. The result is a demographic picture of the country for up to 25 years into the future.
The second stage involves turning the population projections into household projections. That is done by dividing the population into five types of household, and projecting the trends in their formation rates into the future. Figures are available for every county and metropolitan area in the country.
Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome):
I hope that the Minister will recognise that the problem is not with
"We do not dispute the figures."--[Official Report, 4 November 1997; Vol. 300, c. 211.]
Extraordinarily, there seems to be an orchestrated campaign by some Labour Members to undermine those figures. Perhaps the Minister will take a different line from that taken by his Under-Secretary last week.
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