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11.43 am
Mr. Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham): In the interests of brevity, I shall not repeat the globetrotting account of my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess). I shall limit myself to the problems of West Sussex, which includes my constituency, and consider the Government's effect on it. There is a growing feeling that we are being victimised to the benefit of new Labour's friends in the northern metropolitan boroughs and, in particular, those with distinctly old Labour profligate spending habits.
First, I shall discuss last week's shocking announcement by the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions that West Sussex is to be singled out. An additional 12,800 homes are to be built in our county by 2011, on top of the 37,900 already agreed in the county structure plan. It is ironic that while the Government were talking up their credentials on greenhouse gases, the Secretary of State was busy putting another nail in the coffin of the West Sussex green belt, a most un-environmentally friendly gesture from an apparently environmentally friendly Deputy Prime Minister.
Earlier this year, an independent panel concluded that there was no case for increasing the housing allocation figures for West Sussex. It was an independent panel, and a fair and square decision. The Secretary of State was represented on the panel and made no objection then. Now, in a fit of pique, he has decided to kick over the table, take home his toys and object. The inquiry recognised that West Sussex had few brown-field sites left on which to allocate additional housing. It recognised that large parts of the county are taken up by the downs, which are dominated by areas of outstanding natural beauty. It recognised that West Sussex lacked the infrastructure, especially roads, to deal with the extra pressures that a further 30,000 people would bring as a result of the extra allocation of houses, let alone the effects of extra traffic on the CO 2 emissions with which the Kyoto conference was so taken up.
The inquiry, with its independent judgment, also recognised the impact that the additional houses would have on the delicate balance between jobs and homes, especially in my densely populated patch of West Sussex on the coastal strip, where unemployment is already well above average. We are certainly not enjoying the image of the cosy south that is often portrayed. The extra homes allocation is the equivalent of adding a new Basingstoke to our county. West Sussex is in danger of becoming a massive semi-rural suburbia circling the downs.
The decision met widespread opposition. The county council and the three leaders of the political parties on it were united in their opposition and have called for a
judicial review, which I support. The decision is opposed by the seven Conservative Members in West Sussex. It was also opposed by the Council for the Protection of Rural England, whose press release stated:
We are being forced to have the extra houses despite the fact that the basis of the house building allocation figures is being called into question. Dubious, trend-based household projections are too inflexible. We want figures based on housing need, not projected demand. If some Labour councillors in the north of England got their act together on renting out empty council houses that lie idle for months at a time, and used the brown-field sites in their cities better, we would not have these problems foisted upon us in the south of England.
The decision is an attack on local democracy, particularly against Conservative West Sussex county council. A plank of the policy on which it was elected was protecting the strategic green gaps, which are all too few, especially along the coastal strip.
It is difficult to see how the people of West Sussex have derived any benefit from the Government. Instead, we appear to be the major victims of a series of often dogmatic and ill-thought-out measures which disadvantage my constituents more than most. What have the Government got against Sussex? It started at the beginning of the Session with the abolition of the assisted places scheme. We have many fine schools in Sussex which have benefited many pupils from less well-off backgrounds, but that opportunity will now be lost.
The Budget in July included the abolition of tax relief for pensioner medical insurance policies. As I have mentioned time and again, Worthing has the highest proportion of pensioners in the country. It is no surprise, therefore, to learn that we have the highest proportion of pensioners with such medical insurance policies. We also have one of worst problems in the country in terms of waiting lists for treatment at our local hospitals. Given that more than 100,000 of those policies have already not been renewed, the impact on my part of West Sussex will be dramatic.
Recently, we have had the latest complete horlicks on beef, which affects many Sussex farmers--I will leave it to my colleagues to go into detail about that. Most recently, the proposals for the individual savings account are shambolic and will work particularly to the detriment of the older, prudent savers nearing retirement, of whom there are many in Sussex and in my constituency. Those proposals threaten to be a breach of trust and harsh retrospective tax legislation. They are seriously flawed and I hope that the Government will take full account of the many voices of opposition expressed in what I hope will be a genuine consultation process.
Finally, let us consider the council finance allocations, which were announced just the other day. The extra £16 million allocated to West Sussex will not even cover the inflation element. It will not cover the extra pupil spend in West Sussex and the extra costs that will be associated with the development of special educational needs as proposed in the Green Paper. That allocation will not cover the £3.4 million hole that has been knocked in the West Sussex pension scheme because of the pension tax announced in the July Budget. That allocation is equivalent to another backdoor tax, which is likely to be imposed to the detriment of my constituents because council tax bills are set to increase by between 10 and 12 per cent. Again, that is the result of standard spending assessment changes that favour Labour's northern friends.
Mr. Patrick Nicholls (Teignbridge):
I shall be brief because I know that the House also wants to hear the hon. Member for Belfast South (Rev. Martin Smyth), should he catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
I had intended to raise two matters in some detail. The first relates to the concerns expressed by former prisoners of war about the continuing failure of the Government to meet their justifiable request that their salary deductions, taken from them during the war, should be restored to them. I hope to return to that matter on another occasion.
On occasions such as this there is a certain element of ritual. We are apparently arguing seriously that we do not want the House of Commons to rise for Christmas until it has debated particular subjects. Normally, if hon. Members thought that there was any risk that they might not get away in time for Christmas, they would not be seen in the Chamber for this debate. There is, however, a subject that I think should be debated, and time should be made available for it on Monday or Tuesday of next week.
I am sure that I am not alone when I say that I would gladly give up the opportunity to spend more time with my family to come to the House to debate something that desperately needs to be discussed--the order implementing the beef on the bone ban.
That order automatically came into effect last night, but we have not even debated it. Its consequences for the rural community, and that far beyond it, could scarcely be more extreme. Last week, I went to my local market at Newton Abbott; at the weekend, I spoke to farmers; and I was present at a National Farmers Union rally that was held in the Grand Committee Room 48 hours ago. On each occasion, I met people who are concerned not only that their income might go down, but that their entire way of life will be devastated. Those people are looking into the abyss, and see that they might lose not just their business, farms, homes and the rest, but the way of life that they and their fathers before them have always followed. And why? It is due, latterly, to the implementation of a ban that was not even necessary. It would have been quite possible to give the public a warning so that they could make up their minds, but the Government chose not to do that. There may be reasons--ones which I might find incomprehensible--why the Government, when faced with the option to issue an warning, decided to impose a ban. Surely such a ban, whose impact is so crucial and critical, is something which we should have the opportunity to debate.
That ban is bad law, because, as one butcher asked recently, "How am I supposed to tell the precise age of an oxtail?" It is not good enough for the Government simply to say," It matters not. We have carried out our parliamentary duty. We have laid the order and we do not need to debate it." That is not the right and proper way to proceed.
"The draft West Sussex Structure Plan had been agreed by a careful analysis of housing and environmental needs in the county. It stood as a beacon of a more common sense approach to planning new housing development and its housebuilding levels, significantly below those set out in Government planning guidance, received independent official support . . . The new Government has made an appalling start to meeting the challenge of providing new homes in ways that renew our towns instead of concreting the countryside. This decision is both undemocratic and environmentally damaging. What is the point of giving local authorities flexibility in planning future housebuilding levels if politicians simply reinstate their own inflexible figures?"
The Sussex Wildlife Trust stated:
"This makes a mockery of the enormous amount of work done to establish a sustainable level of housing development in West Sussex."
More houses
Those are environmentally independent commentators on this shambolic decision. Only the House-Builders Federation has said anything supportive about the Secretary of State's decision. That speaks for itself.
"would cause ongoing environmental damage . . . This 'Environmental capacity' argument was accepted by the independent inspector at the Examination in Public . . . The news is a severe blow against local democracy. The EIP process appears to have been a waste of time and resources. The month of eloquent discussion and the winning of the argument count for nothing against an ill-judged government direction."
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