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Mr. Blunt: Is not the hon. Gentleman trying to have the argument both ways? First he says that those studies and everything else are happening anyway under the Government's proposals, then he says that the Bill would impose a huge extra expense by forcing urban authorities to go through that process. Surely we all agree that the process should take place. He says that it will happen under Government policy, but the Bill would make it happen. It will happen anyway. He cannot run both arguments.
Mr. Pickthall: I always try to have it both ways--do not we all?--but the Bill would involve local authorities in work of some kind. I shall not quarrel with anyone about the amount of work, but they would already have been instructed by PPG3 and by other Government planning guidelines to do precisely such work or work that would cover those examples.
I want to say a word about previously developed land. An element of the problem of locating sites for new homes concerns the comparative reluctance of developers to use existing brownfield sites. I sympathise with remarks made from both sides of the House about the need to adjust the tax regime to help with that, but the nation's stock of brownfield land, if I may put it that way, happens to be primarily in regions and sub-regions that are by no means overheated and in which fewer houses are required overall.
I would like Government thinking to encompass two types of brownfield site. The first is damaged land. In my part of the world, such land would have had a mill on it
and could be remediated--that word is used in the Government documents, although I do not know where it comes from--inside usual planning applications and development gain. The second is seriously contaminated and deeply difficult land such as the chemical dump that destroyed an entire village in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Mr. Twigg). The sites of old tanneries that deposited poisons on land for decades are another example. An MOD site in my constituency is radioactive because large amounts of luminous paint were used there during and after the war and other sites have clearly been badly contaminated by the work of industries associated with the nuclear industry.
It is clearly beyond the means of a local authority and a developer to clean up such sites. That is a task for the Government at national and regional level and I hope that they will establish a fund to be used by the regional development agencies--and eventually, I hope, by regional government--to tackle those monstrosities directly on environmental and development grounds. That should be--perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister will tell me that it really is--part of the RDAs' strategic land development role.
Mr. Loughton:
Given his comments about badly contaminated land, would the hon. Gentleman take issue with a recent press report that the Government are considering making the present owners liable for cleaning such land up, whether or not they originally contaminated it many years earlier? Does that not provide a disincentive for owners to clear up, or indeed to take on contaminated land in the first place?
Mr. Pickthall:
That is a good question. It depends very much on the circumstances in which the contaminated land was acquired. Anyone who buys land that is substantially contaminated is potty unless he or she has a plan, and the money, to deal with it.
Such sites are sometimes owned by local government. It costs hundreds of thousands of pounds, sometimes millions, to clean them; if they are not cleaned, they eventually become a danger to those living nearby. I agree with the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Mr. Loughton) that the Government have a responsibility to ensure that the sites are cleaned, and to put aside resources for the purpose.
The Bill seeks to put a sticking plaster over the problem, but does not and cannot tackle the root causes, although the hon. Member for Totnes did so in his speech. The central difficulty is the vast amount of economic development in the south-east--the "golden triangle". Other regions are much less pressured; some are even still mildly depressed. There is still room for development in the north-west, south Yorkshire, the west midlands and the north-east, and, owing to the industrial histories of those areas, they contain a substantial amount of previously developed land.
However, people who want to move out of London, in particular, want to move to the greener parts of the home counties where they can expend their energies demanding better transport systems to take them into and out of central London. The Prime Minister is right to say that the economic and social divide is within the regions themselves. As my hon. Friend the Minister knows as well as anyone, it would be hard to find a sharper contrast than
that between Moss Side in Manchester and Alderley Edge in Cheshire, only a few miles away. In my constituency, extremely deprived and problematic estates in Skelmersdale are within half a mile of extremely well-to-do villages such as Bickerstaffe and Newburgh. Nevertheless, there is still a huge divide in the country. To describe it as the north-south divide is too simple; for this purpose, the "north" must include the midlands, and possibly Bristol, Southampton and Plymouth as well.
Planning for new homes takes place over a substantial period, especially when it involves the construction of new towns. From the north-west, where we have at least two uncompleted new towns in central Lancashire and Skelmersdale, we view proposals for new towns in the south-east with some amazement. The disparity is, of course, to do with jobs: where there are new jobs, investment and new enterprises, the demands for housing and infrastructure will follow.
Governments have tried for decades to lure businesses into the regions, sometimes with success and always at great cost to the taxpayer. Smaller-scale operations by local authorities such as mine have been quietly successful in many areas, but they have not produced vast new development. The geographically bottom-heavy economy of this country is difficult to deal with, precisely because of the pull of the "golden triangle"; but one part of the whole puzzle is entirely within the control of Government--and that is, in fact, Government.
I would like Government to consider, over the same span of time as their housing plans, the removal of Ministries from London to the regions. I saw a very good "Yes, Minister" sketch on that subject some years ago, which might have put the Government off contemplating the idea, but it is not particularly problematic to locate a Ministry in each of the English regions in an age of electronic communication. Ministers and their teams could probably all be housed in one of the existing buildings, such as the Treasury, and could be in constant aural and visual contact with civil servants in, say, Liverpool just as easily as if they were on another floor in the same building.
Many huge buildings in Westminster would consequently be available for other purposes. Some of them are only fit to be museums, but others could be adapted as homes, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Stinchcombe) suggested. I would quite like a flat in Richmond house: it would be a good idea.
Many civil servants would object to such a move, but there would be certain blandishments. They would be able to buy a four-bedroomed house with a quarter of an acre of land in Lancashire for less than the price of a one-bedroomed flat in central London. They would be almost guaranteed a good school in whichever direction they looked. House prices in London would fall to some extent, and would rise in the regions. The country would become more balanced in respect of that vital motor of the economy.
Young people who are attracted into the golden triangle to work in the civil service would find opportunities closer to home. The substantial brownfield resource in the north of England would be mopped up, and commerce would be attracted north, south-west and east. Interest rates would no longer be bullied by the south-east housing market.
I realise that that is grossly over-simplified, but it is within the Government's control over a decade--and we are talking about building millions of houses in a decade. It would enable us to argue that the country no longer needs kellies--we had them as children, I do not know what they are called now--which are bottom heavy and all the weight is in one place: in this case, in London and the south-east.
I referred to the unhealthy and artificial campaign to make urban and rural areas opposed and antagonistic polarities. That campaign is based on an untruth. A large proportion of our population live in suburbs--even very small towns have suburbs--that benefit from the virtues and are subject to the problems of both urban and rural areas. Many people live in the country and work in urban centres, so have a stake in both.
West Lancashire is typical of many other constituencies. It is a large horticultural and agricultural area with a small market town in the middle, a new town in one corner, a dozen villages, and 20 or so hamlets sandwiched between Merseyside, Greater Manchester and Preston. All the transport links are between the major towns, and pass through West Lancashire, serving the rural areas. Because they go from Preston to Liverpool and from Wigan to Southport, my area has a rail service, but it does not generate enough activity for its own rail service. Many residents in my area use Manchester and Liverpool for work, but more so for cultural and sporting activities. There is massive pressure for development in the green belt, because the bulk of the constituency is green belt.
We face particular problems to which the hon. Member for Totnes alluded. A deal was suddenly on the cards for Newburgh, which is a village of about 1,000 people. A developer wanted to provide a bypass for the village, which is badly hit by heavy traffic, in return for permission to build 380 houses. I wanted the bypass, but I and the people of the village strongly opposed it on the simple ground that it would entirely change the nature of the village. There was no problem with the school or transportation: it was the fact that it would no longer be a village. Such planning problems are not easily spelt out in the Bill.
The large MOD site in my constituency is up for sale and about to be developed. It is in a large village--a small town of about 6,000. The site is on the edge of the village, sandwiched between the countryside and the canal. Again, the proposition is attractive because it is a brownfield site and building those houses would relieve pressure on the district council to build on green belt elsewhere, but it would change the nature of the village. We must examine carefully the infrastructure that is required and what will happen to the quality of life there.
I will not labour the point that was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough, but there is vast scope for new homes in cities, if people want to live there. There is vast scope above shops and offices. I walk to work every day in this place along Rochester row; I have done so for some years. It is a fascinating street. It has empty, semi-derelict buildings. They are vast; there is an old police station there, too. We could probably house 200 or 300 people in there if there were the incentive to do so through taxation and planning policy.
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