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Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin): Order. We now come to the debate in the name of the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen).
Government Housing Projections
11 am
Mr. Anthony Steen (Totnes): I am grateful for the opportunity to raise a matter that is of great importance, especially to my hon. Friends, although there do not appear to be many Labour Members present. I can see the odd Liberal.
Mr. John Burnett (Torridge and West Devon): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Steen: I have not yet started and there is no way that I will give way to the hon. Gentleman now. If he sits still for half an hour, I shall give way to him.
Last December, I was fortunate enough to obtain a half-hour Adjournment debate on the housing projections and the 4.4 million new units that will have to be built by 2011. The Minister explained that the whole thrust of the previous Government's policy of predict and provide was to be replaced by a new and radical planning model, based on the principle of plan and manage--the new buzz words. I have been fortunate enough to obtain an hour and a half debate some three months later and the same Minister is here to reply on behalf of the Government.
I do not know why the Government wheel in their Jeremiahs on such occasions. On 9 December, instead of making an optimistic and constructive contribution, the Minister said that it was all too late, and that new Labour's new solutions would not come into play until the 4.4 million homes in the 1991 housing projections had been built. That is probably why he has been wheeled in by the Government. His sole role is to say, "Too bad. All those houses will have to be built. We will build them in the towns and in the villages. We will build them all over the countryside, wherever we can squeeze them in." That is probably why the Minister is before us today, and he will probably say the same thing again. I hope not.
The Government have been assisted by the Liberal Democrats on Devon county council who have just approved the Devon county structure plan, which gives the go-ahead for the building of 70,000 new housing units for the county between 1995 and 2011. If that plan is carried out, 90,000 new housing units in total will have to be built in one of the most beautiful counties in Britain. That will increase the population from 1 million to nearly 1.25 million, or by some 20 per cent. On 15 December, the Herald Express, the local newspaper in Torbay, claimed that the number of people living in Torbay is set to rise to 133,600 by 2021, an increase of more than 10,000. I am pleased to see that my hon. Friend the Member for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls) is in his place, as one would expect, because the paper also pointed out that the population of Teignbridge is expected to expand from 116,700 in 1996 to 135,000 in 2021, an increase of15.6 per cent. South Hams, a large chunk of which is in my constituency, faces a 17.2 per cent. increase, rising from 79,300 to 93,000. It is not surprising that the population of Devon will increase to 1.25 million. We are talking not about redistribution of the existing population but about a net increase.
Formal approval of the county structure plan and the Secretary of State's confirmation of the figures means that it will be difficult to change them. However, it is not too late to decide where the houses will go and at what speed
they will be built. That is why the Government's plan and manage policy is critical. If it were applied, it would ensure that priority was given to building on brown-field sites. As things stand, there is little planning policy guidance and no attempt to ensure that developers are directed to build first in urban areas.
Mr. Patrick Nicholls (Teignbridge):
The logic of my hon. Friend's point is that, if the Government are content to say that the previous basis for planning was wrong and that plan and manage is the way forward, they cannot refuse to impose their policy change on the present figures. The Government can take one position or the other, but the current situation is untenable.
Mr. Steen:
I hope that the Minister heard that point, because he was engaged in a conversation. If he does not answer that point when he winds up, I hope that my hon. Friend will remind him of it.
As matters stand, the 4.4 million homes will be built under the housing projection. The structure plans have been completed in Devon, and the district councils now have to formulate local plans for the placement of those houses, paying regard to environmental sustainability--again, the new buzz words. I am glad that a few Liberal Democrats are present, because those are their buzz words, albeit they mean as little in reality as new Labour's buzz words, plan and manage.
The Government have a 60 per cent. brown-field recycling target. We accept that figure, although we would increase it slightly. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has said that if we were in office, the figure would be nearer 65 per cent.
Mr. Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale, West):
Would my hon. Friend care to comment on the fact that the term "brown-field" can mean different things to different people? As the Minister is well aware, the Labour council in the borough of Trafford is seeking to build houses on playing fields, which count as brown-field sites for the Government's purposes.
Mr. Steen:
That is news to me, and I hope that it is news to the Minister. I hope that he will ensure that the council does not build houses on playing fields, but I fear that he will squeeze them wherever he can fit them in, including on playing fields. I hope that he will deny that and issue a PPG note on the issue. I am prepared to give way to him now if he would like to deal with that point.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Mr. Nick Raynsford):
Following the convention of our Wednesday morning debates, I suggest that the hon. Gentleman focuses intelligently on the issues, instead of bandying abuse across the Chamber, which does not ensure a sensible debate on serious issues about how genuine housing need is met in a way that is sustainable and does not damage the countryside.
Mr. Steen:
I would not have given way if I had known what the Minister was going to say. It was very unhelpful. I wanted him to deal with playing fields, but he clearly does not wish to do so yet.
The Government's 60 per cent. brown-field target is an admission of the fact that building in the countryside cannot continue at the rate that it has in the past. The aim is to recycle vacant, derelict, dormant, unused and brown-field land in our cities. That is nothing new, however: it was the aim from the 1970s onwards. In the 1980s, the Conservative Government set up a register of dormant, derelict, vacant, unused and under-utilised public land. I was much involved with that register and with what should be done with the 200,000 acres of unused vacant land that was then in public ownership.
In my excellent book "Plums", which I know many of my colleagues have read, I suggested that public vacant land should be auctioned off, with a covenant to ensure that it would be developed within five years. I proposed private regional development corporations, listed on the stock market and with the task of developing vacant land and public ownership profitably. The Minister for Housing and Planning at the time, my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Sir M. Spicer), was on the point of acting to implement my proposals when, unfortunately, he was promoted. The privatisation of rail, water, gas and electricity all followed, and that switched much of the vacant land from public to private hands. Public vacant land became private vacant land and, as a result, the number of acres of public vacant land has dropped dramatically. However, the utilities still own much private vacant land that could be developed.
The brown-field recycling target is nothing new, only a variation on an established Conservative theme. The Western Morning News reported on 20 February 1999 that 58,000 of the new housing units planned for the west country could easily be built on brown-field sites in the west country. As a result, the figure for green-field building could be reduced and the figure for Devon could be reduced pro rata.
Mrs. Angela Browning (Tiverton and Honiton):
I apologise to my hon. Friend for missing the first few minutes of his speech.
The point from the Western Morning News about the availability of brown-field sites was taken from a report that has only recently been published by the south-west regional planning conference--the body that made the recommendation about the county structure plan numbers to Devon county council in the first place. Does my hon. Friend agree that, valuable as the report is, it would have been much more helpful if we had had such a report two and a half years ago when we began work on the country structure plan, rather than receiving it at the tail-end of the process, after the Prime Minister had issued a diktat to East Devon district council that it must now get on and plan those houses?
Mr. Steen:
As always, my hon. Friend makes a telling and important point. One cannot deal with housing allocation if one does not have the information necessary to put houses in sensible, wise and productive places. I hope that the Minister will take that point seriously because it is a grave and important one that will add to this debate.
I have mentioned the problem of brown-field sites. Another problem stems from the failure to provide an arrangement by which local authorities can trade housing allocations. Districts cannot swap with districts, nor can
counties with counties or regions with regions. North Devon might want to trade with the Torbay area--after all, both their councils are Liberal Democrat run--with the result that the houses planned for a highly congested and overbuilt area could be moved to one where there is more space.
The Minister is bound to say that that is not his fault, because those figures originated from the Office for National Statistics in the late 1980s and the then Secretary of State for the Environment, my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), handed them down to the regions. At this stage, I shall not argue with the Minister about the figures--we have already gone around that course--although, as I have said, I think that they are suspect and are based on the predict-and-provide philosophy. They are treated as though they are divine guidance. My criticism is of the way in which the figures are handed down vertically: Government, regions, county, district, parish. There is no lateral integration and no way in which local authorities can deal with each other and trade in housing figures.
The ONS figures are merely a repetition of past trends. Past performance is not a guide for future demographic trends. The current structure plan is formulated on the basis of what has happened in the past. Can that make sense for the future? Surely, such calculations must be unreliable. For example, in the 1980s we believed that the economy would continue to grow and that that trend would never stop. Banks lent more and more money so that people could buy land and houses, and prices went up. However, it all went terribly wrong and many people burned their fingers; millions ended up with negative equity and debts.
The housing forecasts are based on exactly the same flawed assumption: that whatever happened in the past is bound to repeat itself in the future. Predict and provide--the basis for those housing forecasts--has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and I pointed that out to the Minister last December. The buzz phrase is no longer predict and provide, but plan and manage. At the moment, it is merely a buzz phrase; the predict and provide approach continues to hold sway in planning credence. What is the point of changing the whole basis for housing number predictions, if there will be no effect until the date of the next structure plan? The Minister protests that the Government are doing something, but what is it please?
The figure of 4.4 million new homes for the United Kingdom--and 438,000 new homes for the south-west and 90,000 in Devon--should not be considered as a target that must be reached, but that is how planners and local politicians continue to regard it. The truth is that those figures are not targets, but merely projections--an informed guess or an estimate of what might be needed. The use of those housing figures as targets is the reason why councils and developers struggle to build houses, so that the targets are fulfilled at any cost.
It is just like the building of the M25; that, too, became a self-fulfilling prophecy. We thought that building a huge road around London would put a stop to gridlock and end traffic problems, but more and more cars used the road and the traffic jams are legendary. It is the same with house building; the more houses are built in an area, the more people come from outside to live in them and the more the demand increases.
Does the Minister agree that the figure of 4.4 million is not a target, but a projection; and that such projections forecast the maximum number of housing units that can be built if all the conditions are right? Why was there nothing in yesterday's Budget to give incentives for developers to build in towns and disincentives to them to build in rural areas? Furthermore, if that was a recognised aim of the Government, planning appeal inspectors could refuse permission to build on green-field sites by arguing at the appeal stage that there were plenty of brown-field sites left for development in neighbouring towns and cities. That would discourage developers from using the appeal process as a form of blackmail against councils that are afraid of spending council tax payers' money to defend such appeals.
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