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9.39 pm

Mr. Nigel Waterson (Eastbourne): This has been a good if short debate. It has been a shorter debate than it need have been for two reasons. First, there was the Home Secretary's crass incompetence in not tabling the right amendment in the previous debate. Secondly, the Minister for Housing and Planning spoke for more than half an hour and spent nearly one third of that time on a bunch of unjustified and ill-informed slurs on my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mr. Norman), which simply underlined the fact that he had nothing new to say on the key issues. The rest of his speech was the sort of vacuous posturing that we have all come to expect from him.

The Minister tried to deny that there is a north-south divide, or that there is migration on a serious and growing scale from north to south. However, if he was right about that--even on a random basis, that must occur occasionally--why is he proposing to build 1.1 million, or even 670,000, new homes in the south-east? They are plainly not needed, so why, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Green) asked, is he dithering about disowning the ghastly Crow report?

The hon. Gentleman talked about the north-south divide as if it did not exist. Had he read his own urban task force report, he would have seen that it highlighted the disproportionate level of demand between north and south. There is ample evidence of the different earnings and incomes of residents in different parts. For example, Surrey residents have an average household income that is 71 per cent. higher than that of Tyne and Wear. Has he

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read the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's report, conducted by the new policy institute, which concluded that the gap between the richest and poorest in Britain widened in the first year of the Labour Government, with 1 million more people earning less than two fifths of the national average income? Will he please spare us his lectures about Disraeli?

The Minister also said--I made a note of it because it struck me as such an amazing claim by a Minister in his Department--that the Government were building a successful and united country. Leaving aside the vandalism of devolution, the hon. Gentleman's policies simply do not pass the "Kilfoyle" test. They have not passed muster even with one of his valued former Front-Bench colleagues.

It is rich for the Minister to lecture the rest of us about the green belt, particularly in the presence of my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer). Only last April, the hon. Gentleman said:

"in certain cases where it is desirable in terms of urban extension and sustainability, there may be a case for reconsidering green-belt boundaries."--[Official Report, 29 April 1999; Vol. 330, c. 531.]

What kind of message does that send to planners, local authorities and the population of areas such as the south-east? Does he realise that brownfield development is falling, not rising, under this Government, and that the latest figures show that only 52 per cent. of dwellings were built on brownfield sites in the previous year? In reality, the Government are not even achieving their own brownfield development target.

The speech of the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock) was the usual protracted Liberal Democrat whinge. It is some indication of the importance that the Liberal Democrats attach to the issue, particularly in relation to the south-east, that they have found about the only Member of their parliamentary party who is not a Front-Bench spokesman to come and speak on their behalf. It is something of a rarity to find a Liberal Democrat who does not have a Front-Bench title.

The hon. Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Lloyd) abused us for ignoring the north and its interests, when nothing could be further from the truth. My right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) nailed that particular inaccuracy.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal, who has an honourable record in planning and environmental matters and always speaks with great authority in the House, pointed out that the Liberals always ask for more government and more interference. The hon. Member for Salford (Ms Blears), who was a challenge to Hansard if nothing else, talked about rebuilding communities, but does not she realise that traditionally Labour-supporting communities feel abandoned by the Government? It is no good her talking blithely about what she called Labour heartlands as some are not Labour heartlands any more, and some will cease to be so in future if the Government do not wake up to the problems described in the motion.

Mr. Don Foster (Bath): Would the hon. Gentleman describe this part of his speech as a whinge?

Mr. Waterson: It is merely a recital of self-evident facts.

Mr. Tony Lloyd: The hon. Gentleman has made a serious point, as democracy matters in our cities--there

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should be a political challenge--but can he tell me why the Conservative party no longer fights local elections in the worst-affected parts of my constituency?

Mr. Waterson: As shadow Local Government Minister, I must do something about that.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon spoke with authority about housing, local government and regional planning guidance, which has lost the plot. [Interruption.] It calls for more homes where they clearly are not needed. He adopted an imaginative approach to the financial aspects of the motion, which the Minister will accept raised interesting thoughts on which he will want to reflect.

The hon. Member for Elmet (Mr. Burgon) described himself as a Leeds person and purported to lecture us--and, in particular, me--about the value of Leeds. I was born in Leeds, brought up in Leeds and educated in Leeds until I went to university, so he cannot tell me anything about Leeds that I do not already know. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex--[Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The House must come to order. We cannot have so much noise.

Mr. Waterson: My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames) joined the general agreement that Leeds is splendid, but made an extremely eloquent case for Sussex and other parts of the south-east. I share his view. The Minister tried to pooh-pooh the genuine concern in the south-east about the Crow report, but where are the roads, the rail links, the schools, the hospitals and the natural resources such as water to meet the target of 1.1 million--or even 600,000 or 700,000--new homes? [Hon. Members: "The sewers?"] Indeed, where are the sewers?

We are seeing the opposite of joined-up government. The Government are apparently paralysed in the face of a growing north-south divide and growing migration from north to south--so much so that they could not even carry their former Minister, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Kilfoyle), with them. The Crow report puts more than 430 sq km of rural land--an area larger than the Isle of Wight--under threat of urban development.

We need not come to the House to hear about Government policy; we need only read what the Deputy Prime Minister had to say to the Fabian Society. I am afraid that my membership has lapsed so I was unable to listen to his speech, but he clearly wants to become a hero by saying, "We don't want to go along with that wicked Crow report, which talks about 1.1 million new homes. We'll go for more than the Serplan figure, but less than 1.1 million." In other words, the Government intend to use the Crow report as a stalking horse for a much larger figure than Serplan had in mind.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ashford set out clearly our policies to give more power to local communities so that local decisions can be made on local issues by local people. In contrast, the Government regularly duck the big issues and tend to kick matters such as their own brownfield target, the Rogers report, planning guidance, rural and urban White Papers and decisions on Crow and

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other serious issues into the long grass. Under this Government, the long grass is the only grass that is safe. I urge my colleagues to support the motion.

9.50 pm

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Ms Beverley Hughes): The House always has lively debates on this subject, and tonight has been no exception. I thank my hon. Friends, in particular, for their contributions. As for the Conservatives, they may have a new shadow spokesperson, but it is still the same old story.

We have debated the issue on a number of occasions. Labour Members are always happy to do so, because it is important, and because, each time we discuss it, the Tories' dismal record, and their inability to present any credible policies for the future, are repeatedly exposed. What has been highlighted again today is their failure--especially that of their Front Benchers--to grasp the complexity of the problems, or to come up with any new or workable measures to deal with those problems.

The Tories claim that they care about the issue but, for most of the debate, their Benches were denuded. Only a handful stayed the course to debate this important matter, including the new shadow spokesperson, the hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Green).

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Lloyd), I was struck not only by the lack of attention paid to northern cities by the hon. Member for Ashford in his unfortunate opening speech--I read in "Vacher's Parliamentary Companion" that he used to be a speech writer for the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), which may explain a lot--but by the terms in which the Opposition cast their motion, which is entitled "Northern Cities and Southern Green Fields". It is the old stereotype, and, like all stereotypes, it is a gross and inaccurate over-simplification. For their own political purposes, the Opposition choose to fuel the notion of a north-south divide--grimy cities in the north, and green fields in the south. As a northern woman, I can tell them that we in the north have our green fields too, and we want to keep them.

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