| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Gray: I am concerned that, if I take many more interventions, I may overstay my welcome.
My third general point was also touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames). We take a curious approach to town planning in this nation. We presume that everyone wants to live on the outskirts of town--the outskirts of Cambridge, for example, as the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mrs. Campbell) has suggested--and in cul-de-sacs, which, for some reason we all love. We also presume that everyone wants to live in two or three-bedroom semi-detached houses with two bathrooms and preferably two garages, but a large number of those 4.4 million households are single-parent families that might well prefer to live in the centre of town and in more densely populated areas, for example in the centre of Swindon, near the railway station, buses and shops.
The presumption that we all want to live in suburban England, down a cul-de-sac, has been challenged most noticeably--as my hon. Friend the Member forMid-Sussex correctly said--by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales in his ground-breaking development in Poundbury, which the Select Committee so much enjoyed visiting. That is a truly sustainable development: he has shops, houses and factories, all within walking distance of each other.
That is what town planning ought to be about. It should not necessarily be about huge, useless cul-de-sacs where people need a car to get to the shops, to school or to work. Poundbury gives us some messages and the report goes some length towards saying that we ought to consider carefully some of the lessons to be learned from it.
I hope that it does not take another 12 months for the Secretary of State to make some useful moves forward. As in so many other policy areas, he keeps telling us what he will do, he keeps setting up new bodies and he appoints yet another noble Lord to write a report about something, perhaps a working party or a committee.
I very much hope that it does not take the right hon. Gentleman another 12 months to drop some of that useless rhetoric and start living up to what he has been saying all this time. He should start helping out the people of Devon and the people of Swindon, who are so threatened, as well as the people in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex and the people of Stevenage. All those people are so threatened by the development that the Secretary of State is allowing to happen.
Mr. Bob Blizzard (Waveney):
I am pleased that the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) is keen on the dispersal of industrial development and prosperity from the wealthier areas to the less prosperous parts of the country, such as my constituency, but I am not convinced that his methods would necessarily work.
At the end of his speech, the hon. Gentleman spoke about rhetoric. The rhetoric that we heard at the beginning of the debate only confirmed my belief that what happened after May 1997 was that the Conservatives woke up. When they had surveyed the wreckage, they realised that virtually all that they had left were their shire heartlands. They thought that they would work on the principle of consolidating what they had and therefore tried to present their party as the party of rural England, and they could only say England.
The Conservatives neglected to notice that there are 175 rural and semi-rural Labour Members of Parliament, which is more than the number of Conservative Members. Since May 1997, our Government have been presented in a series of attacks as the destroyers of the green belt and the despoilers of the countryside. The Conservatives have thrown in a bit about beef on the bone and a bit about fox hunting and have tried to present that as the end of rural life as we know it. That has left the ordinary people who live in the rural areas very cold. Nearly two years on, we can see that those attacks are completely without foundation and that there is no truth in what they allege about the Government.
Those attacks seem to be based on the proposition that the green belt has to be some absolute and that the best way to protect the countryside is to freeze it in time: "Thou shalt not ever build in the countryside." Thus, a hollow argument that is no use at all to those involved in the serious business of trying to plan at local level has developed. I want to show how that highly simplistic approach is pointless and not in the best interests of the countryside and rural people.
I share what I am sure is the view of most hon. Members who are in the Chamber--that it is important to protect the countryside and green belt--but I want to show that real situations are far more complicated than the Opposition have described, by presenting a few examples from my constituency. We all want a sustainable countryside. To achieve that, we must sustain village life. People in my constituency who have lived in villages all their lives tell me that they want some homes in their villages so that their grown-up children can remain there instead of having to move away. There must be some scope for well-thought-out growth in villages to accommodate those people.
Everyone wants to keep village schools, which tie rural communities together. If young people have to move out of villages to towns to find somewhere to live, there will be no children to fill the village schools and they will have to close. It is the same with shops and other services.
Village life needs transport, and the Government are giving many villages a lifeline for the first time. The county of Suffolk, which contains my constituency, has had well over £1 million, and many villages have a bus service for the first time.
If we want a sustainable countryside, we must sustain farming as an industry. Our farmers are challenged by world movements, reform of the common agricultural policy and many other changes. We agree that farmers will have to diversify into other commercial activities, but to do so they may need planning permission, and all too often planning applications are given a blanket refusal. Farmers and country landowners have told me that they want flexibility in the planning system to enable them to continue farming and to operate commercially in the countryside.
We also need to sustain a rural economy and ensure that there is work in the countryside for the people who live there, so that they do not all pile into the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Mrs. Campbell). A classic example in my constituency a few years ago was a proposal to turn an old country hall into a brewery. Thankfully, St. Peter's brewery is now a successful, small company--people may have seen its beer in the supermarkets. It had a tremendous planning battle. It was thought that there would be noise, disturbance, smell and light, but in fact it is a good example of a rural enterprise. We need to encourage such ventures, and not require people to overcome so many obstacles.
My constituency is a mixture of urban and rural areas, so we must think of the quality of life in our towns and not just in the countryside. Even with a bottom-up approach, as favoured by the Government, and with brown-field development taking priority, there will have to be some expansion. If we allocate only the minimum amount of land, we get the cramped estates of the past that offer poor living conditions without facilities for the people who live in them. They have only the obligatory little rectangle of grass with a swing in the corner to satisfy planning conditions.
In the recent round of allocations in the local plan, my authority decided that it wanted quality. We allocated more land than was necessary, so the developer was able to acquire and hand over to the public new, large parks and new playing fields. With a little imagination in the planning process, green space is protected for the people.
Government policy on playing fields and open spaces is very strong. Only a few weeks ago, new guidance was issued ensuring that all applications to convert an open space or playing field have to be called in. I know how strict that policy is, because in Bungay in my constituency, the community wants part of a site for a doctor's surgery to serve a vital need. The site is not used as a playing field. People would have liked that planning decision to be made locally, but there has had to be an inquiry. I give that example to show the Government's commitment to protecting open space, and to make a plea for flexibility when doctors' surgeries are at stake.
Some developments are essential, but it is rather unpleasant to live next door to them. For example, we need a sewage disposal plant in my constituency to ensure the bathing quality of our coastal areas, but who wants to live next to a sewage works? Surely the best place for a sewage works is in the countryside, but that counts as development. People who are against all development in the countryside say that such plants cannot be built there, but where do we put them? Anglian Water want to put a plant right next to a village.
All the people in the village of Corton are, rightly, up in arms at the thought of having a sewage works on their doorstep. The place for a sewage works is further out in the countryside where it can be landscaped. In fact, sewage works in the countryside protect it, because nobody would seek to build housing estates in the area.
In East Anglia, the same thing happens with turkey farms. Bernard Matthews has to raise turkeys before he can employ people to turn the turkeys into food. The company adds huge value to the East Anglian economy,
but every time it wants to erect large sheds for the turkeys--they are not battery turkeys, because they can run around--it faces huge opposition because of the smell. However, those sheds are very important for the local economy, so some development in the countryside must be allowed.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |