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1.55 pm
Mr. Gareth R. Thomas (Harrow, West): I welcome the opportunity to follow the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray). I share his views on the need for equality of economic opportunity around the regions,
although I suspect that our opinions on the helpful impact of regional development agencies, which are beginning to be part of the solution to the problem of the delivery of that equality of opportunity, are slightly different.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen). I have had warm feelings towards him this week because as part of my research for Monday's debate on access to the countryside and the right to roam I read his contribution to the debate on the Dartmoor Commons Act 1985, which he piloted through the House. He stood out against the pressure applied by the Country Landowners Association against opening up access and delivered an effective right to roam across Dartmoor. I relish the opportunity to support the Bill's aspirations, which he described so well in his opening remarks.
Who could not want to protect greenfield sites from development if brownfield sites exist? Who could not want to champion the regeneration of urban areas? It seems entirely sensible to focus developers' minds on derelict, vacant, under-used and under-utilised buildings and to recognise that infrastructure such as access to general practitioners' surgeries, schools and so on is needed to support housing developments.
My constituency is an example of suburban splendour at its finest and the countryside creeps in at the top end, in Pinner Green and Hatch End. There is a strong community and village feel to parts of my area and green open space is cherished as much in my constituency as it clearly is in that of the hon. Gentleman. A powerful example of that point is the campaign to prevent field and recreation ground being developed under Hillingdon council's proposal to stick some 100 houses on open land cherished by people in Roxbourne, Rayners Lane and South Harrow in my constituency. That successful campaign used an argument similar to the point made about infrastructure in clause 7.
As well as cherishing the open space in my constituency, people in Harrow recognise the great pressure of housing need to find sites for new housing in the area. The hon. Gentleman and others talked about the 3.8 million new homes and where to put them and we could usefully have explored the type of stock that we need. Should it be executive, affordable or social housing? I contend that affordable and social housing must be the priority. Although I recognise that there is a balance to be struck, discussion of how to deliver affordable and social housing stock has been absent from the debate.
To show the seriousness of that omission, 1,251 households in my borough had been accepted as homeless by the end of December 1999, 126 were in bed and breakfast accommodation and our total housing need is for 2,268 households. That graphically illustrates the housing pressures in my borough. The problem is reflected throughout London as 184,000 households are on waiting lists, 6,500 people are in bed and breakfast accommodation and the use of temporary accommodation has risen by 30 per cent. across the city.
On 1 March in Westminster Hall, my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Mr. Love) made the telling point that the average price for a London house is now some £159,000. On average, first-time buyers have to pay £120,000. That clearly has an impact on public sector professionals, as is evidenced by the skills shortage in London. My right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn
and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson), the Labour candidate in the London mayoral election, has rightly identified it as a key problem.
The issue of housing density is missing from the Bill. We should consider that, and also the need to refurbish and redevelop the housing stock that is available. In my constituency, the Rayners Lane estate is in particular need of refurbishment.
Mr. Oliver Letwin (West Dorset):
As I recently detained the House through the night at the Dispatch Box, it is perhaps appropriate for me to speak for only two minutes today. I want to make two points, each of which will occupy one of those minutes.
My first point was alluded to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King). The Bill must be seen in the context of not just the current plans, but the fact that they are to continue. In my area in Dorset, which is not untypical of the south-west, the provision of housing is increasing by about 64 per cent. in the period 1981 to 2021. That rate of increase would give us 700,000 new houses--1 million in Dorset as a whole--by the 22nd century. If any hon. Member is under the misapprehension that that is socially or environmentally tolerable, he or she should think again about what it would mean. In fact, it would mean adding approximately seventyfold to Dorchester, the main town in my constituency.
Anyone who knows a rural area will realise that we face not merely a problem, but the onset of an environmental catastrophe, and in that context I welcome the Bill. However--this constitutes no criticism of my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen)--I regard it as a small, timorous step on an extremely long journey involving major and radical measures, some of which have been mentioned by my hon. Friends.
Mr. Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham):
We have had a first-class debate. I have learned a lot, and I think that others have as well. I congratulate my hon.
My hon. Friend is something of an expert on the subject, and has been for many years. Mention was made earlier of his booklet, entitled "Plums" and first published in 1988 by the Conservative Political Centre. It is a masterpiece; I believe that copies can still be obtained from the Conservative Policy Forum, as it now is.
We believe that the Bill contains much of merit, and we greatly hope that it will go into Committee. There has been an impressive array of knowledgable speakers in the debate. Great talent, gravitas, bottom and depth has been shown by the many contributions. The hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) rightly drew attention to the problems of nationwide integration and the pressure on developers to make adequate provision for transport. She also said that it was short-sighted of the Government to site synchrotron in the south rather than in the northern part of England.
The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) made an interesting contribution, with his reference to the Vincent van Gogh impressionism of the promoter of the Bill and his interesting talk about the Maoist red guard. He rightly and appositely said that children should be able to live in the communities in which they were born and brought up. That is certainly a problem in many rural areas, particularly in his constituency, as I know.
The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Stinchcombe) made a knowledgeable and thoughtful contribution, and has obviously had many years of experience in planning law. He said that he had warm feelings toward the Bill, although at times they seemed to become rather arctic. He had some interesting views on the better use of land, and alluded to the report by Lord Rogers, although it should be pointed out that the Government have taken up only one of the proposals in the urban renaissance report.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Sir N. Lyell), with his customary skill and expertise on this subject, said that what the Government need, despite PPG3, is a statutory prod in this direction. That is exactly what the Bill attempts to provide. I was also interested in the comments of the hon. Member for Warrington, North (Helen Jones), who referred to resentment in the middle ages about Chester cathedral being plonked in the middle of her home town. Mediaeval town planners have much to commend them to Ministers today. The principle of walk to worship in the middle ages by siting houses around the church or cathedral as the centre of the community has lessons for today's transport systems.
My hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr. Blunt) rightly said that the problem with the whole housing issue is that, as it is put to us at the moment, everything cascades down from the demand for 3.8 million houses that we are told that we need, and that will be to the detriment of the south-east of England.
The hon. Member for West Lancashire (Mr. Pickthall) made some interesting comments about contamination. I believe that not enough is being done about that. My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Baldry) rightly said that we need a policy whereby local people can decide how their communities grow. He knows much about that subject. It is absolutely right to empower local communities, and that view was echoed by my hon.
Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray), who is also an expert from his time as an adviser in the Department of the Environment and as a member of the Select Committee on the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs.
Attracting houses and businesses to the south-east corner of the country has a magnet effect. It brings more people to the area, which creates further skill shortages and a shortage of housing space, thus driving up house prices. It is a catch-22 situation.
If the Government are true to their word--especially if the Deputy Prime Minister is true to some of his more articulate words when he presented PPG3 and the response to the Crow report earlier this month--they should support the Bill and work constructively with my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes to bring about many of the improvements that he wants.
In his statement to the House on 7 March, the Deputy Prime Minister spoke about giving preference to recycling previously developed sites. He said that housing must be more affordable, and that we must promote mixed use developments. That is exactly what the Bill aims to do. Above all, my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes recognises that maximising better use of derelict land primarily in urban areas brings mutual benefits to both town and country. It is not a one-way street.
The first two clauses deal with local authority urban capacity studies, which will be revised from time to time, and the audit of derelict, vacant and under-used land. They extend the work of the NLUD--the national land use database--which was first published last year. It revealed that brownfield sites identified so far could accommodate more than 325,000 new dwellings at current density levels. There is doubt, however, about what constitutes brownfield land. We need to define usable brownfield land. The Government have some work to do there. The Bill would help.
Recently, the leader of Bromsgrove council pointed out that identified brownfield sites included a disused railway station in the green belt and a smouldering landfill tip--hardly sites that will be used for building houses. Where brownfield site studies identify railway car parks as potential housebuilding land, again, that surely will interfere with the programme of nodeing transport links and encouraging an integrated transport policy, about which we hear so much.
Clause 3 is about local authorities having regard to urban capacity. There is merit in the clause. It will allow better scrutiny of applications involving planning gain. Too often, local authorities pocket a cheque from developers who want to build unsuitable executive homes, or a do-it-yourself retail centre, for example, in return for funding a new leisure centre, despite the fact that the area is crying out for affordable starter homes and is already prone to rush-hour congestion.
I cut to clause 7, which is particularly interesting and important. It deals with infrastructure, an especially moot point in the south-east of England, where my constituency is located, and in West Sussex, which is to have about 60,000 new houses, which is why the county council took the Deputy Prime Minister to the High Court: that is simply not sustainable. It is a question not of plonking 60,000 concrete boxes on the countryside, but of overcrowded schools, the longest waiting times for diminishing hospitals, a lack of roads and east-west access
across the counties of Sussex and, in particular, a lack of water supply, due to the downs in the two Sussex counties. Too much building has involved sprawling estates with no sense of community or community heart, lacking new schools, community centres, mixed shopping and mixed occupancy.
When I asked the Deputy Prime Minister for details of what account had been taken of the requirements of schools and hospitals in my county, he was found lacking. It seems odd that we can predict all the new houses that will be required, but that no work has been done about the infrastructure requirements and planning that will be needed to go with them.
Government inaction and, in particular, the Deputy Prime Minister's inability to back up his hot air about putting the environment at the heart of Government by securing real financial commitments from his colleagues, particularly the Chancellor, make the Bill even more necessary. On 21 February, we were told:
the deputy prime minister met the chancellor yesterday to urge him to introduce value added tax on new housing to encourage developers to modernise old buildings rather than build new ones.
What did we get in the Budget?--a big fat zero. We still have 17.5 per cent. VAT on brownfield refurbishment. We are promised at best a study into preferential stamp duty for brownfield development. Stamp duty at 1 per cent. on properties of less than £250,000 is no substitute for 17.5 per cent. VAT. The figures do not add up. In the Budget, precious little money for transport has been hypothecated from the rise in road fuel duties.
Mr. Prescott wants next month's Budget to impose a tax on the construction of new homes on greenfield sites. The move would be accompanied by a cut in VAT on refurbishment.
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