House of Commons
Friday 24 March 2000
The House met at half-past Nine o'clock
PRAYERS
[Madam Speaker in the Chair]
Orders of the Day
Urban Regeneration and Countryside Protection Bill
Order for Second Reading read.
9.33 am
Mr. Anthony Steen (Totnes): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
This is the first opportunity that I have had to introduce legislation. For 25 years, I have signed the ballot for private Members' Bills. I have chosen all sorts of strange numbers, in the belief that I might come out of the hat in the top seven. This year, I did not bother with the numbers but just signed the book. To my amazement, I came in at No. 7, which I feel is quite an achievement after a quarter of a century. Some hon. Members never get this opportunity, Madam Speaker, so I am glad that your hand gravitated towards my number on the piece of paper.
First, may I thank my right hon. and hon. Friends for turning up to this important debate? I shall pass over the fact that there is only one Liberal Democrat Member present.
I hope that the House will recognise that I am trying, by legislating to deal with a new problem, to make our country a better place in which to bring up families. Where do we put the 3.8 million new homes that everybody says are needed by 2011? We have 11 years in which to find land for 3.8 million new homes. The Bill provides the ground rules for putting the new homes in the right place, making developments sustainable and maintaining the quality of life for existing communities.
Some hon. Members may think it strange that I am introducing additional legislation, given that, for the past 10 years or more, I have campaigned to deregulate. I have consistently and persistently campaigned to reduce the number of statutes, to repeal rules and regulations and to minimise the number of laws that intrude on every aspect of our life. The snag is, I am ensnared in this institution of which I am part. The Chamber is about passing laws, not repealing them. I would like to think that we could come here every Friday to find laws to repeal. However, as I am on the treadmill, I must instead add to the weight of statute law.
If my Bill becomes law, more and more officials will be employed for the purposes of regulation and enforcement. The consequence of passing law is that larger bureaucracies arise--the very thing that I have fought against consistently. Yet here I am, in a Chamber
which passes laws, introducing yet another one. I hope that the House will forgive me. As is fashionable, I apologise for introducing what I hope will become another piece of legislation.
I have good reason for attempting to introduce new legislation. My Bill is not proactive; it responds to the situation that has been forced on us. We need more homes for our population. In the past, there was probably sufficient housing stock. Three or four generations often lived in one house. Today, the same four generations require between four and six houses, and often as many cars. In the past, grandparents lived with their children and their grandchildren. Today, with people living longer, one grandparent may be living in their own house, another in a residential home. Their children will have a household of their own, with their children. As those children grow up, the family may well split. The number of divorces and separations continues to increase, each resulting in the creation of two households instead of one. For every divorce or separation, an additional home is required.
Children used to stay in the family home until they were married. Now they leave the nest earlier to follow an academic course at university, or--as today's generation are more upwardly mobile, aspiring and materialistic than their parents--migrate to areas with better job prospects. The nuclear family, therefore, while in semblance still alive, is spread laterally across the country. There has been a shift from vertical integration, with three or four generations living in one house, to families being spread laterally over more than one home.
It is not only in this country that that is happening. The break-up of the family unit is occurring all over Europe. The resulting pressures are the same--more housing, transport links and health and education facilities are needed to meet the increased demand. However, there are fundamental differences. Mainland European countries have more land available, and they use it more effectively. They have different planning systems, and their housing tenure differs, with more property being rented and fewer individual freeholds owned.
In the United Kingdom, 67 per cent. of the population own their own homes, compared with around 41 per cent. in Germany and 54 per cent. in France. Buildings on mainland Europe are more appropriate to continental housing needs.
We must not conclude, however, that the need to build houses is a peculiarly British problem--it is a European problem. Our land values are higher than those of other European countries. Individuals in the United Kingdom are prepared to spend a higher proportion of their earnings on property than are people in continental Europe. The French spend more on food; we spend more on houses. The well-coined phrase "An Englishman's home is his castle" is apt. Everyone seems to want to buy his or her own home, to own land and to have a defensible space.
In many other European countries, houses are leased or rented, and there is an attitude towards property not found in the UK. Our approach to housing needs and how to pay for them must be more flexible than our "must-buy" psyche allows. A common European solution to planning and housing problems simply would not work in the UK because different countries take different approaches to sociological and demographic problems. The problem
facing Britain is peculiarly British. The European Union principle of subsidiarity must apply, and Parliament alone must address housing and planning.
How can we tackle the housing requirement? We have had many debates about the numbers involved. Under the previous Administration, I was one of the Members who said that 4.4 million new homes for England and Wales by 2011 would be far too many. I was not afraid to say that that number was unsustainable. I challenged the figures and the mythology. I constantly questioned whether officials in Kingsway who dream up the figures had used the right science, and asked whether the Office for National Statistics could review the figures.
The science has become sophisticated, and predicting population numbers and where people will wish to live is a science that few understand. When the Conservatives were in office, we coined the phrase "predict and provide" as a means of justifying numbers. The science was to predict the numbers, and the aim to allow developers to provide the homes that statisticians said were required.
With the arrival of a new Administration, and following the national outcry over the 4.4 million figure and the discrediting of predict and provide, the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions replaced that philosophy with the phrase "plan, monitor and manage". Whatever that may mean, it has allowed the Government to justify reducing by 600,000 the number of new homes required over the next 11 years. Despite the science practised in Kingsway, the 4.4 million required has miraculously dropped to 3.8 million.
How do we plan, monitor and manage? Surely, one can plan only if one predicts. One can monitor the number of new houses, but how can one manage once they have been built? With a little thought, it becomes apparent that plan, monitor and manage is nothing more than a new slogan. Like the emperor's new clothes, it makes no difference in practice, but it makes all the difference to statisticians who can justify a drop of more than half a million new homes. It is also a nice spin for the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions who, offering a new philosophy, can justify a reduction in numbers.
Planning policy guidance note 3, page 7, paragraph 8, is headed "Plan, monitor and manage". I do not know whether the House will understand it better than I do; I realise that I have some limitations, but the House may find that it has some too. It states:
It is an essential feature of the plan, monitor and manage approach that housing requirements and the ways in which they are to be met, should be kept under regular review.
That sounds very sensible. It continues:
The planned level of housing provision and its distribution should be based on a clear set of policy objectives, linked to measurable indicators of change. These indicators should be monitored and reported in the RPBS'--
regional planning bodies'--
annual monitoring report. Such monitoring should be the basis on which the RPB periodically reviews and rolls forward its housing strategy. Review should occur at least every five years and sooner, if there are signs of either under or over-provision of housing land. Advice on the indicators which can be used for monitoring is set out in paragraph 77 and in PPG11.
I hope that the House found that helpful, because I do not know what it means. I hope that the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions,
the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Ms Hughes), will explain it; it is good of her to be here. No Opposition Member quite understands it.
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