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Mr. Jonathan Shaw (Chatham and Aylesford): Does the hon. Gentleman's party's policy extend to allowing local councils to determine planning applications for out-of-town supermarkets?
Mr. Green: We do believe in greater local powers across the planning system. We are consistent in that. I should be interested to know the Government's view on that.
Dr. Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) rose--
Mr. Green: It is clear that the Deputy Prime Minister is not going to consult. He has already decided. There is further dishonesty. He has clearly decided that part of the Crow report will be implemented, yet his spin to the press yesterday, as quoted in the Evening Standard, was "Prescott shuts door on homes boom".
Dr. Whitehead: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Green: No doubt the Government wanted to reassure everyone in the south-east, but one has only to read the story to discover that, after all his months of dithering, the Deputy Prime Minister has not rejected Crow. He has looked at the Serplan figure, which is 750,000, and the Crow figure of 1.1 million, and he has split the difference.
The Deputy Prime Minister's figure will still mean that large swathes of the green land that people in England value will be gone. He knows, as do those on the Government Front Bench, that once it has gone, it is gone for ever. He will have written on his political tombstone, "The man who ripped up the green fields of England."
Mr. Green:
Hon. Members from other regions--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. The hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) must not remain standing if the hon. Gentleman who is addressing the House is clearly not giving way.
Mr. Green:
Hon. Members from other regions need not think that this is just a south-eastern problem. There are already murmurings of hundreds of thousands of extra homes needed in the south-west of England.
I suggest to the Prime Minister that before he takes his annual day trip to the countryside tomorrow, where he will lecture people on how they should stop moaning about the lack of rural services, the destruction of British agriculture, the closure of their post offices, and the extra
petrol taxes levied by the Government, and start learning to love him as they have been told, perhaps he should be aware that he will face one more legitimate grievance.
As well as farmers, drivers, shoppers, postal workers and fishermen, the Prime Minister will have environmentalists after him. They will be telling him that life in the countryside is not the idyllic vision painted by the Cabinet Office report that we will see tomorrow, but a struggle against an uncaring and ignorant Government.
Mr. Anthony Steen (Totnes):
My hon. Friend mentioned the south-west. Is he aware that at the Dartington Church of England school in my constituency, the sewer is so small that it cannot cope with the amount of water that goes down it when there is a storm? As a result, the sewage pops up in the basins of the primary school--the sewer is too full because too many homes have been built without the proper infrastructure being in place. Does he agree that we should not build new homes if the infrastructure cannot cope? May I draw to his attention my private Member's Bill to be debated on 24 March, which deals with the matter?
Mr. Green:
My hon. Friend gives a vivid example of what happens when building is too much for the infrastructure. We shall take the advert for his private Member's Bill as the commercial break in my speech.
The Deputy Prime Minister has spent the best part of three years fiddling at the edges of the planning system, without making it integrated, joined up, modern or any of the other buzz words that the Government substitute for principles. He said that he would move on from predict and provide for housing plans. Sadly, he has replaced it with dither and destroy. In the countryside, things can only get worse under this Government.
The Government stand condemned as the enemy of the countryside, but that probably does not worry Labour Members. The few Labour Members who were elected in mainly rural seats expect to be here only temporarily and are already planning what to do next. That may apply less strongly to Labour Members who represent inner-city constituencies. They expect to be here for more than another year. It is refreshing to witness the way in which they are beginning to come out of the woodwork and endorse our criticisms of the Government.
This week, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Kilfoyle), after courageously and honestly deciding that he could not stomach sitting on the Front Bench any longer, blew the gaffe. In The Guardian on Wednesday, he criticised the Government for their "wholly London perspective", which, he is reported as saying, leads to
The hon. Member for Walton is not alone. When the Prime Minister commissioned the famous Cabinet Office report in a desperate attempt to show that he was not letting down the inner cities, Mr. Bill Midgley, president of the north-east chamber of commerce, dismissed it as
"whitewash". He said that Ministers were highly selective within regions, and that anyone could play that game. The hon. Member for Blyth Valley (Mr. Campbell) suggested that the Prime Minister should put up or shut up on the issue. Many of us heartily endorse that sentiment.
The Government fail on two counts: they are unwilling to protect the landscape in relatively prosperous areas and unwilling to take action to regenerate our cities--in the south or the north.
Mr. Bob Blizzard (Waveney):
Last year, I read on page 56 of my local newspaper that the hon. Gentleman had visited my constituency. As he drove north of Lowestoft, did he notice a large, out-of-town superstore? Did he realise that the local council had unanimously rejected the application for it when the Conservative party was in government? Does he know that the previous Government overruled the local council to grant permission for building an Asda superstore? How does he square that with his comments about granting power to local councils?
Mr. Green:
I feel sorry for the hon. Gentleman because he had a prepared intervention for someone other than me. Unfortunately, he is insufficiently flexible to devise an intervention on his own.
I shall present some practical suggestions, which we have made public. The Government can adopt them if they wish; they would help cities in the north and in the south.
Mr. Stephen O'Brien (Eddisbury):
There is an acid test in the life of every Government and, as my hon. Friend considers the north-south divide, we recall the Prime Minister's rhetoric. The acid test comes this week, when we await the decision on whether the Synchrotron award will be given to Oxfordshire or Cheshire. If it is awarded outside the north-west, which has a zone of natural advantage, we shall have proof that the Prime Minister is not sincere about wanting to support the north-west.
Mr. Green:
My hon. Friend has been fighting hard for the interests of his constituents. He has done that alongside many trade unionists whom he met today. I hope that the Government will take note of that.
The Government should set higher brownfield targets; they should be increased to two thirds of all new housing. The Government should do more to release redundant land and buildings from the public sector to the private sector for redevelopment. Run-down housing stock should be transferred from the public to the private sector for redevelopment. The Government could give homesteading grants to provide financial incentives for individuals and co-operatives to transform run-down, dilapidated council houses and flats. The Government could do more to restore contaminated land. They could set tougher penalties for anti-social activity, which makes life difficult in some of the deprived estates in our cities.
Mr. Green:
I shall not give way again. Most important, the Government should revise planning guidance so that local people can have more control over the planning
We have proposed a raft of policies, which are available for the Government to steal, if they wish. If they believe that that is beneath their dignity, perhaps they would like to look to their own side. Last summer, the Labour peer Lord Rogers produced an interesting and full report, which provided many options for regenerating our cities. At the time, the Deputy Prime Minister mumbled that it was all jolly interesting and that the Government would consider it carefully. Since then, there has been a deafening silence, which means that the Department is paralysed at the prospect of making a decision.
Our cities are supposed to be an urgent problem for the Government and the Deputy Prime Minister. It is so urgent that they have put the Rogers report on a shelf in the hope that we shall forget it. I assure the Minister that we will not. The Minister could bring a constructive element to the debate if he gave a firm date for the publication of an urban White Paper, which gave the Government's full reaction to the Rogers report. If he cannot do that, the House must draw its own conclusions.
It is not only cities that feel the Government's slowness in producing their thoughts. I commend the Government for the consistency in their attitude to the rural White Paper. Since they told us that they would produce a rural White Paper, they claim that it will be published in the next season of the year, or the next season but one. Last summer, they claimed that it would be published in the late autumn; in the early autumn, it was scheduled for the new year; before Christmas, publication was set for the spring; last month it was set for the summer. I heard recently that it will not be published until this autumn. At such a rate of progress the Government will be saved from their indecision. The collapse of large parts of agriculture and the over-development of many green fields will mean that no rural life will remain about which to produce a rural White Paper. The rural White Paper is another example of dither and destroy.
"'very often a lack of understanding' of issues in Merseyside and the regions."
Intriguingly, the article continues:
"New Labour had become 'a pejorative term in many people's eyes', which he no longer used."
The Prime Minister may believe that the north-south divide does not exist, but his candid friends in the north clearly do not believe him.
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