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Mr. Adrian Sanders (Torbay): Before the hon. Gentleman moves on, I have read his booklet, "PLUMS". What he suggests is very close to the idea of site value rating. Does he consider that the taxation of the value of sites in a number of cities overseas ensures that
brown-field sites are developed? Will he also congratulate the local authority, a quarter of which is in his constituency, on achieving well over 60 per cent. of new house building on brown-field sites?
Mr. Steen: The hon. Gentleman always has a little dig. It is clear that he would like me to congratulate the Liberal local authority on achieving 60 per cent. brown-field site development. Whatever the political complexion of a local authority, if it achieves 60 per cent. it has done very well. However, local authorities must do a little better. I hope that with the hon. Gentleman's help--and a quarter of mine--we might be able to get the Torbay unitary authority up beyond 60 per cent.
A problem with site valuation that is tied up with all the rules and regulations is historical value. A great deal of land has a value on it which it cannot command. If the Government and local authorities remain committed to historical value, they will not be able to get rid of it. I have a feeling that it is not possible to write down values at local authority level if they have reached an astronomically high level as a result of historical increment. That may need to be considered in the context of brown-field site development. Is that what the hon. Gentleman was considering?
Mr. Sanders:
No. This is becoming quite an interesting debate--certainly between the hon. Gentleman and me. Putting a tax on the value of land to ensure that it is properly developed is a way of reducing the number of derelict sites in inner cities. I have in mind particularly taxing boarded-up shops, which are subject to a council tax reduction. Yet that reduction in footfall affects neighbouring businesses. That seems unfair to businesses that are still trading.
Mr. Steen:
On this occasion, the hon. Gentleman has made rather a good point. All devices need to be considered to ensure that urban regeneration is occurring in the round and not only where there are individual Government projects. I welcome the hon. Gentleman's intervention in this instance and I hope that the Minister may be able to throw some light on the point that he has made.
I have mentioned the need for 60 per cent. of new developments to be on brown-field sites. I move on to the Government's consultation paper, planning policy guidance note 3. The new word is PPG3. As I walk down the Corridors in this place I hear colleagues asking, "What is going on with PPG3?" I hope that the Minister will tell us what is going on with it. There is a high level of expectation that any day now--I hope that it will be today--he will say something meaningful about the implementation of PPG3. I think that it is an excellent document. It was discussed widely throughout the country by interest groups, forums and focus groups. Many groups throughout the country were concerned that the Government should get PPG3 right.
The document contains a rather unusual idea--a sequential approach to building. I have never seen it before and it is extremely interesting. If the Government pull it off, it could be the beginning of a 20th-century urban renaissance. The idea is that green-field development would be halted until city sites had been used up. That would force developers to fill unused,
under-used, vacant, dormant and derelict land in both the public and private sectors. If that was accompanied by tax incentives, urban regeneration would really take off.
If anyone doubts that successive Governments have failed, they should study the population shifts in our major cities. In the 1950s, Liverpool and Manchester were each represented by 11 Members. At the 1997 general election, that number had declined to five. The populations of Manchester and Liverpool declined by more than 50 per cent. between 1950 and 1997. Other principal cities throughout the country showed similar trends.
Developers need to be directed both to the inner city and the outer city. Some of the worst conditions remain in the outer city. There needs to be a central Government commitment to renew antiquated infrastructure. Rail links are only just able to cope and they are often unreliable. Main downtown stations are not properly served. If people are to flood back to the cities, the public sector must dovetail with private enterprise to provide the necessary schools, hospitals and recreational facilities. I am at a loss to understand why the Government have gone on talking--perhaps they have not, but we have--about road building. Why do we not have new rails? Instead of having new roads planned, why do we not ensure that in the next 10 years new railways appear throughout Britain? That is what I would like to see.
Mr. David Drew (Stroud):
Is that the new deal for the motorist?
Mr. Steen:
Let us not worry about that. Let us worry about a new deal for the railways.
There is no point in building in the inner city if people have to commute to the outer city, to motorway intersections where many of the new business parks are located. The mismatch is a national problem. People criss-cross cities throughout the country and beyond, spending hours travelling in opposite directions, when the job could be just down the road. Jobs should be closer to home or people should be working at home.
Some say that high-rise flats are things of the past. However, high-rise, high-density housing can be beautiful and can provide alternative high-quality living. It is to be found throughout Europe and in the capital cities of the world. Middle-income earners will buy such properties, even on the 18th floor, if the flats are properly managed and there is a swimming pool and, particularly, a gym. Such housing needs to be well designed and made of high-quality materials and located in a community that is vibrant, exciting and safe.
Every Government, from Wilson's to Thatcher's, and including the new Labour Government, have initiated an urban inner-city strategy. However, they have been piecemeal and have succeeded only spasmodically because they have been based on small projects rather than on the social and economic regeneration of our cities. The best way of regenerating run-down cities is to offer special incentives to developers as well as additional financial incentives to those who choose to live in areas such as Brixton in London, Toxteth in Liverpool and Moss Side in Manchester.
There are fairly radical views that could be laughed at, but I do not see why. For example, what I said in the 1980s about selling off derelict land was laughed at. I wrote my book "New Life for Old Cities" 17 years ago.
People said that what I advocated could not be done. Seventeen years later, however, people are now asking, "Why cannot we give tax incentives to those people who live in the poorest parts of a city?" Instead of paying 20 per cent. tax, they would pay 10 per cent. There would be an incentive for them to make money. There might be the problem of the yuppies returning, and so on, but we would be regenerating the areas about which we are all complaining.
Planning policy guidance note 3 could provide the rocket fuel by changing priorities and refocusing development from the countryside to the cities. I accept that there are problems. We have a problem with structure plans, which are fixed and are the basis for local authority local plans. I invite the Minister to advise district councils that, in preparing their local plans, they should be calculating the figures for new house build on the basis not of 4.4 million units but of 3.8 million. He has got himself in a bit of a fix. He has reduced the national figure from 4.4 million to 3.8 million, but county structure plans have already been fixed on the basis of 4.4 million. Local authorities are making local plans on the false original figure. The Minister should make a little adjustment so that local authorities do not continue planning for a figure which the Minister says is unsustainable nationally.
Unless PPG3 forces county councils to reduce the present projections in line with the Government's new target, we shall not even start to change thinking on numbers. We need to find the political will, which must go beyond one Minister and one Department--however good their work may be.
The vision of urban regeneration which Lord Rogers's report favours should herald a Cabinet commitment to a city pincer movement to squeeze out poverty and bad housing from down-town areas and out-of-city council estates, and replace them with new modern buildings for upwardly mobile young people, who can resettle in the area with their families--rather like settlers in the holy land in the 1950s and 1960s--as part of the urban regeneration dream.
This country has produced fine reports over the past 30 years, but little has changed. When I spoke in successive debates in the 1980s on these matters it was like preaching in the wilderness. When I suggested the privatisation of public land, everybody thought that I was mad. But they were wrong. When I suggest the privatisation of public land now, everyone thinks that it is a jolly good idea. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Henley who had the vision of urban regeneration necessary to take it forward, and to my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire(Sir M. Spicer), who was on the verge of implementing my proposals on the auctioning of public vacant land when he was promoted.
Cities remain sad places. In her book "The Life and Death of a Great American City", June Jacobs focused on how America has reformed its ailing north-eastern cities, rebuilding them as places where people where people want to live and work. Professor Alice Coleman of King's college has done amazing work in this country on how to rebuild safe inner-city council estates. I pay tribute to both of them, and I warmly welcome Lord Rogers's report.
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