| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. James Gray (North Wiltshire): I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. She names her noble Friend in the particular context, but would not the decision have been taken by her right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry?
Mrs. Dunwoody: As the hon. Gentleman knows, because he was an adviser to the previous Government, who adopted all the disastrous policies that we are discussing today, if a Minister has a special responsibility, as Lord Sainsbury has for science, he is presumably the person who takes decisions that affect science and the science-based industries. If that is not the case, someone should make that clear to the general public, who have a valid interest in such decisions.
The Bill is slightly confused. It is not necessary. The Government have at long last begun to think seriously about how to balance the myriad interests and bring them all together in a useful and civilised way. Because this country is a small island, our future lies in our learning to live together. The Government have day-by-day responsibilities to take decisions, such as the one in relation to the synchrotron, which will give plain guidance as to their long-term objectives.
Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome):
It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody). The common sense that she brought to the debate is much to be welcomed.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) on his good fortune in having the opportunity to present the Bill, and on addressing a particularly important subject, although one that has not gone undebated in the Chamber during this Parliament. Indeed, it is one of our most regular subjects for debate, with good reason. Great concern is felt across many parts of the country, including my part of the south-west, about the consequences of decisions taken back in 1995, which are now working through the system, and the effects that they will have on our rural areas.
If I have a criticism of the way in which the matter has been debated on previous occasions, it is that there has been an over-emphasis on the green belt. The green belt is important, but it is not the sum total of the concerns, as the hon. Gentleman made clear. Many important landscape areas far away from the green belt are being put under pressure by housing policy.
I also have a concern, which I express in the most gentle way, about the preponderance of contributions to the debate to date from hon. Members representing the south-east. Undoubtedly, that is the area where the pressure is greatest and where there is greatest new household formation, but concentrating on the arguments relating to the south-east, as has been the case in previous debates, means that there is a danger of the argument in the south-west, for example, being lost by default. It is undoubtedly the case that, if we do not have the framework for proper discipline, for every house that is not built in the south-east, an extra house will be built in the south-west. I am worried about that because I represent a south-west constituency.
We are considering an important matter. Sadly, the previous Government are culpable through their predict and provide policies. To his credit, the hon. Member for Totnes admitted that predict and provide was a disastrous policy. The numbers were unsustainable. Before I became a Member of Parliament, I was involved in the argument between local government and central Government. We failed to make an impression on the previous Government when we made the case for a more sustainable policy.
Our views crossed party lines. The right hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) was in the Chamber earlier; I do not know whether he intends to contribute to the debate. [Interruption.] I am pleased to hear that he intends to do so, because our views of the effect of such policies on Somerset have been similar. When I was a member of the county council before 1997, and I qualified the structure plan and stated that the plan for the numbers that
the south-west and our county were asked to accommodate was based on false premises and needed revision, the view received cross-party support.
My experience in local government was not in local planning. I greatly admire those who sit on district and borough councils and have to deal with local planning issues. It is an extraordinarily difficult task. Councillors who do that often receive insufficient credit for the care with which they formulate their arguments and the difficulties that they experience, not least through the process of appeal and local government inspectors being prepared to overrule local decisions and impose an alternative view, which local communities and councils do not support. I was involved with strategic planning, which was difficult enough.
We argued that the figures, which were produced for all sorts of reasons, such as lack of economic opportunity and inward migration not meeting the expected requirements, were deeply suspect, and that a better methodology was needed. Ministers are beginning to take note of such arguments, and I give them credit for the adjustment in Government policy. I am worried that it does not go far enough or act on existing structure or local plans, which are on deposit or have reached a later stage. There will be a time lag during which plans that are destructive to the open countryside remain in place. However, a start has been made.
The hon. Member for Totnes asked pertinent questions. He is absolutely right about many matters. He considered urban regeneration, which is the other side of the coin from rural protection. We cannot have one without the other. It is a simple equation. Unless our cities are not only habitable but attractive places for people to live, the countryside will suffer further pressure. The means getting the social environment of cities right. Schools must provide a level of education that is attractive to parents. Public transport, to which the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich referred, must be up to the task. A solid block of congestion through a city means that anyone who could possibly avoid it would not want to live there.
This country is different from so many countries in western Europe, where the social pressure is to live in the city rather than outside it, and there are rural depopulation problems, although we may eventually experience such problems if the agriculture crisis continues in the most rural areas. There is a lack of investment in the sort of infrastructure that makes it a pleasure to live in an inner city rather than a suburb or a rural area.
The hon. Gentleman also discussed the problems of unoccupied or under-occupied land and buildings. That is another crucial issue. It covers not only local authority and central Government land and property that is not used to its full capacity but that in the private sector. The move away from flats over shops in town centres is significant. Many town centres are devoid of life. That is a problem for the urban environment in the evenings when it sometimes seems that there is an urban wasteland in town centres. If people live in the town centre, above the shops, a community takes up that empty space and makes its home there.
The hon. Gentleman was also right to argue that we should be clearly predisposed to previously used land when possible. Our planning procedures should provide
for that so that planning authorities consider the extent to which they can identify and make available previously used land. I am glad that we have not got into a futile auction in the percentages of brownfield sites in people's plans. That is a sterile pursuit that gets us nowhere. What matters is not the targets, but the outcomes. I am glad that we are making improvements, partly through the Government's urgings. I congratulate them on that.
The hon. Gentleman is right to consider the effects on infrastructure. Planning authorities constantly experience the problem of infrastructure development not keeping pace with the demand for development. I do not know whether that is a planning or a local provision problem. Which comes first: the responsibility of local authorities--including statutory undertakers--to provide the facilities that are needed to underpin new development when the planning has been determined or whether they have the resources to do the job? The latter is often a critical factor for many local authorities, especially as regards school places. It also affects policing, which has not been mentioned, the fire brigade and all the different public services that are needed to make a community effective.
We must also consider whether the necessary private sector services exist. We held a big debate on the future of sub-post offices. Shopping facilities and privately provided leisure facilities must also be taken into account. In the 1970s and 1980s, massive urban sprawl, with estate development that included none of the facilities that I mentioned, was too often created. People did not have access to private or public community facilities, or easy access to employment opportunities. That created an environmental problem of travelling to work across town or out of town. The result was a less satisfactory community.
I have a problem with what the Bill says rather than what the hon. Member for Totnes claims that it says. The hon. Gentleman takes an impressionist view--he is a sort of Vincent van Gogh of the Conservative party, although, happily, he has two ears--of his intentions and the extent to which the Bill provides for it. He may also take an impressionist view of the positions that he once adopted. I have serious anxieties about some of the wording in the Bill. If it is considered in Committee, those matters will have to be discussed carefully.
Let us consider urban capacity studies. There is nothing wrong with the principle. The hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich asked about how to determine the balance between housing and commercial and industrial usage. It is not correct to say that every bit of underused, pre-used land presents a housing opportunity. Clearly it does not and we need to have an internal debate about that.
We must consider the extent to which land is contaminated--that point was raised by the hon. Member for Lichfield (Mr. Fabricant)--and what procedures local authorities should have to deal with such land. That is a big issue in some parts of the country, and I think that the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) has experience of it in Hampshire. We must also consider the extent to which what would be useful land for housing development purposes is effectively taken out of the equation by contamination.
The Bill provides for audits of buildings and land and I have serious concerns about the definitions. It refers to "under-utilised buildings". What is an under-utilised
building? One person's under-utilised building is a manor house with a couple in it as opposed to a two-up, two-down house accommodating a family of six. Listing all those in the property-owning class whose houses have insufficient citizens under their roofs is a rather Maoist concept. The hon. Member for Totnes said that the list would be published at 25p and available at every service station so we would be able to discover exactly who is in the property-owning class. Presumably, the next stage would be the red guards coming round to sort them out. The right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean) has made a good point about that.
Ownership is also a difficult issue as land ownership changes all the time. How often should the ownership list be revised? Should we have an army of people whose job it is to provide a rolling register? I happen to believe that an overall and easily accessible land register should be established, but I am not sure that the Bill is the mechanism for doing so. However, local government and central Government should clearly understand what surplus land they own and the extent to which publicly owned property is unused. The lack of progress in so many local authorities on this issue always amazes me.
When I was leader of Somerset county council in the 1980s, I was astonished to find that it had no overall property terrier. There was no list of the land owned by the county council as it was all held by different departments. I put in place a comprehensive property terrier using information technology. It dealt with property holdings and took in a rolling review of property to check on its cost-in-use and the extent of the capacity for disposals. Every local authority should have such a terrier as a matter of course, as should central Government. Were such terriers to be established, we would find that a lot more land is available than we think. Although the Ministry of Defence has disposed of land recently--I am glad about that--it is one of the biggest offenders. For too long, and for its own purposes, it has hidden behind matters of national security to hold land and property that it does not require.
The Bill refers to maximising use of previously developed land, but we have a problem with definition. How is use maximised? What is the preferred density of use? Will that be determined at national level or would it be better decided locally? I do not know. We need to explore that and the assessment of alternative sites. I am worried because, at face value, the Bill could paralyse the planning process. I do not think that that is what the hon. Member for Totnes intends, but the reality is that we could end up with no decisions being taken about anything. On occasion, local government has a capacity not to take decisions if given the opportunity to do so. That is the danger of the Bill.
Clause 7 deals with the effects of development on the infrastructure. The hon. Gentleman has identified a crucial point, but what will be the practical effect of his chosen way of addressing it? I suggest that the proposal is a charter for every NIMBY protester in the country to say that they do not want anything to happen. Every development will have some effect on the infrastructure and some effect, professed or otherwise, on the quality of life of somebody somewhere. The art of planning is mediating between those conflicting pressures to make sure that the outcome is right.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |