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Mrs. Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside): Will the hon. Gentleman retract, and apologise for, the grossly insulting comments that he made about my constituents in Toxteth during his visit to Liverpool yesterday? Or was he misquoted?
Mr. Norman: I am delighted that the hon. Lady raises that matter because it gives me the chance to point out, as I will demonstrate later, that building executive homes in the south-east perpetuates the migration from the inner cities in the north. When I was in Toxteth and in Kensington, which is also a deprived area in Liverpool, I said that it is a tragedy that over the past few years the Government have put so much money into building fortress-like houses and buildings in deprived areas, that they cannot now afford to provide adequate community policing. That means that the crime level in Liverpool has risen by 3 per cent. in the past year and that during the three years of this Government, the number of policemen on the beat in the city has declined by 160.
Mr. John Gummer (Suffolk, Coastal): Does my hon. Friend think that it is perfectly reasonable to doubt the Government's bona fides when they say that they will listen to Serplan's complaints, given that they not only refused to listen to Sussex, but turned their back and told Sussex that it should jolly well have as many houses as they said? Sussex took the Government to court, but they went ahead. Why should we believe that they will change their mind now?
Mr. Norman: My right hon. Friend speaks with great authority on the subject, and the Minister will want to respond directly to the point he makes later. This is not just a matter of decentralisation; even on a central view, the Government's policy is wholly wrong.
As the Minister has said, his own projections show that 70 per cent. of the new household requirement for the next 20 years is for single people. Most of them are elderly people, living alone. A further 10 per cent. approximately is for single parents, who are much in need of affordable housing. They want to continue to live in the towns and cities where they have always lived, yet there is no evidence that the process that has been embarked upon of building 50 per cent. or more of the houses on green fields in the south-east will deliver any such result.
Serplan recommended that 40 per cent. of the new housing should be affordable, but the Minister ignored its recommendation in his guidance. Only two months ago, Shelter stated that it was concerned about the inadequate provision for affordable and social housing in that guidance. Only a week ago, homelessness figures were published showing that priority homeless cases are at the highest level for the past four years. Far from providing homes for the elderly and less-well-off, which is the real challenge and real need, the policy will deliver identikit executive homes--the same type and design in Yorkshire
as in Kent, in Suffolk as in Cornwall--and it will leave the elderly, the less able and single people behind in the inner cities.
Mr. Peter Bradley (The Wrekin) rose--
Mr. Bradley: Looking at some Opposition Members, I think that Tory Regaine would be more to the point, especially in the case of the hon. Member for Lichfield (Mr. Fabricant). What are the right houses and where are the right places for them? If the hon. Gentleman allows local authorities the discretion to take their decisions without national guidance and they refuse to accommodate those houses, what steps would he take to ensure that housing provision was made for those who need it most?
Mr. Norman: The right houses are those that local people decide on under an obligation to provide for local needs. We believe that many local authorities in areas of economic expansion in the north as well as the south will decide to build more houses because they want to fuel expansion for their local employers. We will trust local people to take the right decisions, properly informed by the resources of central Government.
Mr. Norman: I shall not give way because I want to deal with the point made by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman). She made the mistake of referring to migration from the cities of the north and urban renewal. Not only are the wrong type of houses being built, but the process will perpetuate the cycle of urban decline and the loss of green fields. There has been much contention about the facts, and the facts about migration from one region to another are less than clear. The Deputy Prime Minister has stated that he does not believe that migration from the north to the south is an issue. In his statement on the Serplan consultation, he said:
- Let there be no doubt that demand for additional housing in the south-east is not the result of massive north-south migration, but mainly the result of migration within the south-east, particularly from London to surrounding towns and villages--[Official Report, 7 March 2000; Vol. 345, c. 864.]
Two thirds of the new houses to be built in the south-east under the Government's policy will be occupied not by single people but by families; not by
people who live in the south-east, but by people leaving London. That gives the lie to the Minister's claim that the proposals are about accommodating local people. In The Independent of 13 June, he said:
- it is about housing for the sons and daughters of existing residents, and people who are essential to the local economy.
Does the Minister think that all the new houses in the two new towns in world-class countryside in Devon, in Cambridge and in Ashford, which will treble in size, will be occupied by sons and daughters of the people of Ashford, Cambridge, Plymouth or Exeter? That suggestion is simply ludicrous and untenable. We know that it is not true, and he knows that it is not true. If he thinks that, he must explain how Ashford can treble its population without importing people from London and the north. We all know that it is complete nonsense.
The problem exists not only in the south, but in the cities of the north. I could take hon. Members to areas in the centre of Leeds that are 3 miles from a thriving commercial centre--the boom town of the north--where there are housing estates with empty homes, with 50 per cent. of people unemployed and with little local investment. I could take them to places 10 miles out of Leeds, such as Thorp Arch or Boston Spa, and show them executive homes being built on green fields so that income-generating families can move out of the centre and travel back in their cars to work. Is that sustainable? What has that to do with the Government's transport strategy or inner city regeneration?
We have to accept that, if executive homes are built in the countryside, there will be a declining school roll in the city, or an empty house left behind in the most deprived urban areas. Shops will be boarded up in deprived areas, as I saw in Toxteth only yesterday. Crime rates will rise in the inner city, as I saw in Liverpool only yesterday, and another commuter will have to travel back in from the green fields, adding to congestion.
The defining characteristic of the great cities of Europe--Paris, Dusseldorf, Munich, Amsterdam, Madrid or Barcelona--is that they are residential cities in which families want to live and work. The consequence of Government policy is that it will perpetuate the trend of people migrating from the cities. The hard fact is that until we get entrepreneurs and developers to apply their ingenuity to redeveloping brownfield land first and greenfield land only last, we will never create the accommodation that income-earning people need to stay in this country's great cities.
Mrs. Anne Campbell (Cambridge): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, especially as he mentioned my constituency. Does he accept that, if new homes are not built in Cambridge, many of the sons and daughters of local residents will not be able to afford houses there? Is he aware of the work of Professor Christine Whitehead, who has said that Cambridge will be unable to sustain its labour force after the middle of the decade or provide affordable houses for its workers?
That has been backed up by staff from Addenbrooke's hospital, who are concerned about the difficulty of recruiting workers into the health service in my region.
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