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1.2 pm
Mr. Tony Baldry (Banbury): I listened with interest to the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Mr. Pickthall), whose speech caused me some concern. He spoke for just under half an hour. When a Labour Member does that on a private Member's Bill day, one knows that the Whips' fingerprints are on it. Indeed, I see one of them ensuring that other Members on the Government Benches talk the Bill out, although I am not sure whether they want to talk out this Bill or the one immediately afterwards, as they may by now have learned that attacks on the countryside and field sports do not work well for the Government.
Mr. Oliver Letwin (West Dorset): Does my hon. Friend agree that, if the second is the tactic, it will be welcomed?
Mr. Baldry: Indeed, but, sadly, I suspect that the Whips' tactic is for Government Members to talk out this Bill, which would merit getting into Committee.
The hon. Member for West Lancashire talked about moving Government Departments to the regions. He represents a north-west constituency. He would do well to cajole the Government, whom he supports, supposedly, not to move those Departments to the regions, but--as is happening with the synchrotron project--to stop moving projects to the south-east. The Government are reinforcing the bottom-heavy aspects that he alluded to. There is concern among those of us who represent constituencies in the south-east about the inexorable pressure for housing in the region.
I commend the Bill. I am sorry only that my speech today will not attract as much attention, either locally or nationally, as my comments to the House yesterday, but the Bill is excellent.
Only this month, the overwhelming majority of residents in a village just outside Banbury called Bodicote voiced their concerns in a petition that I presented to
the House. It is a typical example of the pressures in the south-east. Bodicote has existed since the Domesday book; it has taken from then until now to reach 850 homes. Within two years, it is planned to build a further 1,100 homes in that village. That is simply unsustainable. Indeed, if I could afford it, I would love to send every Labour Member a copy of George Orwell's book "Coming up for Air" for them to reread. It is an illustration of how much of the home counties was built over during the 1930s and 1940s. Unless we take steps to mitigate those pressures, much of what is left of rural England will disappear under the same pressures.
Another problem is that much of the language is almost incomprehensible to the average elector and others. Mention is made of PPGs, regional planning guidance, structure plans and local plans. How on earth do we expect constituents to understand code terms such as PPG3? It is the only way that we can talk in this respect, however. In any event, there is much that I welcome in the new PPG3. It puts an end to predict-and-provide planning and replaces it with a more monitor-and-manage approach. That can only be good news. It introduces a sequential approach that places a presumption on using urban sites before rural ones, and requires urban capacity studies to be undertaken by local authorities. It improves quality and reduces land take, and favours urban extensions to new settlements. That provides a solid base for regional planning guidance. However, PPG3 has left unfinished business, which is important to good planning and which regional planning guidance should include.
I do not intend to talk in detail about the exact number of houses that the Government plan to impose on the south-east. They have settled on an unsatisfactory, split-the-difference compromise between Serplan and Crow. It will mean too much housing for a region that has already grown dramatically. Housing provision in my constituency has risen by 70 per cent. since the early 1970s. Between 1981 and 1996--a comparatively short period--the district of Cherwell grew by nearly 30 per cent. When in the history of our country has one seen that level of growth?
A recent cartoon, I think in The Daily Telegraph, showed a family opening a box of the board game, Monopoly. It was the south-east edition, and the family were buried under the miniature houses. That cartoon got it right. The Government have resolved on more house-building in the south-east than the region can sensibly bear. I do not think that they have listened to the legitimate concerns that have been voiced. More needs to be done to alter the approach that we take.
In a statement to the House earlier this month, the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions said:
There is much in my hon. Friend's Bill to be commended. It is no more than plain and simple logic to require an assessment of local infrastructure. With regard to the effect of the PPG on Oxfordshire, for example, the
road network in rural north Oxfordshire is already under considerable pressure and suffers from a lack of maintenance. The capacity of the three junctions on the M40 in my constituency already poses serious problems much of the time. Yet the plans for the south-east and for north Oxfordshire do not seem to take account of this plain and simple logic.
Had these measures been in place in addition to PPG3, an assessment would have shown that north Oxfordshire cannot cope with the increased demands on its roads, water, sewerage, waste, health and educational facilities. It would have shown that such house building cannot be sanctioned within the existing facilities without detriment to the quality of life of local communities.
The Bill would empower the bodies that are best placed to make such assessments--the local planning authorities. It would require any application to a local planning authority that is likely to have a significant impact on the existing infrastructure to be accompanied by an assessment of that impact. That seems a very sensible measure.
Sir Crispin Tickell has said that development should meet the needs of present generations without compromising the needs of future generations. Sustainable development obviously needs sustainable infrastructure. The Bill would ensure that planning permission would be granted only if necessary additional infrastructure could be provided without burdening the public purse. Part of north Oxfordshire's problem is that improvements in infrastructure have, inevitably, lagged behind where public funding has been required. For example, the Government's settlement to the county council results increasingly in failing roads all over our rural network.
A debate last year in the other place on the south-east regional planning committee--Serplan--showed where the Government are going wrong. Lord Whitty, Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, said:
The Bill would go a modest distance towards helping to avoid that. It would focus developers' attention on towns and cities in which infrastructure already exists and where tens of thousands of acres of land are not fully utilised. It would not choke areas, but would reduce the pressure for greenfield development in the countryside. PPG3 may aim to do that, but it misses the target in the south-east.
In the debate in the other place, the Under-Secretary said:
As the Council for the Protection of Rural England points out, we cannot let a draft development plan proceed in 12 months' time without an urban capacity study. The Government have consistently been told that that will happen, but it will not if the Bill is enacted. In its 17th report, the Select Committee on the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs said that it did not believe that regional bodies would have sufficient resources. The Government responded with woolly words, but did nothing.
In the other place, the Under-Secretary said:
No official summary has been offered of the significant shifts in policy, and no attention has been drawn to the changes required. Nor is there any intention to publish best practice guidance on key aspects or, as the CPRE notes, on urban capacity studies and existing land allocations. The Government have been told time and again that those things are needed. It is clear that the planning system will be unable to cope within the time scale envisaged in PPG3 and that it will struggle to produce structure plans and local plans to deliver proposed growth against inevitable public concern and opposition.
PPG3 has trumpeted the sequential approach, but what will be the major gain if it continues to put tremendous pressure on the green belt? My constituency has only 24 hectares of brownfield capacity. One does not have to be a planning expert to realise how little brownfield land is available in north Oxfordshire. Without Bills such as this one, PPG3 contains little that would ease the pressure on greenfield sites, on the green belt and on remaining green areas in countries such as Oxfordshire.
Many of the Bill's proposals would put responsibility into the hands of local authorities. I welcome that move, although it is disappointing that such ideas have not already fulfilled their potential. Two years ago, the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions told the House:
The nub of my speech is that, on the one hand, we have a Government and a planning process using language such as PPG3, structure plans, county plans and local plans, while on the other hand, housing numbers are increasingly imposed on local communities from above. Local
communities--local councils and villages--say, "Surely, we should be able to decide how fast and to what extent our towns and villages grow."
I am putting in place policies that will radically alter the way in which we build new homes in this country. I want an end to the wasteful, badly located and poorly designed house building that has gone on for the past 20 years.--[Official Report, 7 March 2000; Vol. 345, c. 863.]
To that end, apparently, the new PPG3 has been produced. Although I welcome elements of it, it does not radically alter the way in which we approach housing.
We are both concerned to see sustainable development at the centre of any plans for economic growth.
However, the Government blatantly ignore the genuine concerns of those who rely on the economic prosperity of the south-east. PPG3 brushes aside the congestion and pressures on services and infrastructure that the south-east is already experiencing. Instead, the Government pursue a policy intended to promote economic growth at the expense of quality of life. PPG3 will have the ultimate effect of choking off economic growth and preventing the south-east from realising its full economic potential.
There is general agreement that we cannot go on building in the laissez-faire pattern which has occurred in recent years, above all in the south-east.
We would all agree with that, but not allowing those who represent the south-east to have a say in what is imposed locally is much worse than laissez faire. That does not
provide better resourcing for regional planning bodies that are running on a shoestring. It does not allow for better collection and monitoring of assessed projects. Nor does it increase resources given to forward planning and monitoring in local authorities. It makes no commitment to a new concordat with local planning authorities that would combine hand-holding and help during preparation of development plans with formal comment or objections where the guidance had not been followed.
We may have to concentrate on more limited areas and a more structured approach.--[Official Report, House of Lords, 15 December 1999; Vol. 1798, c. 251.]
Surely a structured approach would require some timetable for planning in the south-east and a published action plan for implementation of PPG3.
Decentralisation is an essential aim of the Government.--[Official Report, 23 February 1998; Vol. 307, c. 22.]
However, that has not happened in planning. Local authorities are not being given the chance to make more local decisions.
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