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Mr. Raynsford: I give way to the hon. Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman).
Mrs. Teresa Gorman (Billericay): Is the hon. Gentleman aware that there are twice as many Conservative as Labour Members present? We regard this subject as significant, whereas we can assume that the vast majority of Labour Members have nothing better to do than gawp at the television.
Mr. Raynsford: The speech of the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells explains the empty seats only too clearly. Hon. Members were driven away by tedium.
Mr. Fabricant: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for the Government Whip to go around imploring Labour Members to stay in the Chamber?
Mr. Deputy Speaker: That is not a point of order for the Chair. We are considering a serious subject. I suggest that we deal with it seriously. I call Mr. Raynsford.
Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby) rose--
Mr. Raynsford: It is difficult to comply with your request, Mr. Deputy Speaker, if I am interrupted the moment I rise to my feet. However, I shall give way.
Mr. Robathan: First, will the Minister confirm that Government Whips determine the days on which specific business will be considered, and that they allocated today for Opposition business? Secondly, will he confirm that, apart from a few louts and perhaps Labour Members, most people in this country believe that the subject that we are considering is much more important than whether the English football team beat Romania tonight?
Mr. Raynsford: We are holding an Opposition day debate. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman does not realise that
the Opposition choose the timing of such debates. His remarks were offensive. I hope that, on reflection, he will realise that it is inappropriate to attempt to compare hon. Members with the louts who have besmirched this country's reputation in Brussels.In contrast to the Opposition, we relish the opportunity for a thorough and full debate on the subject, and I hope that, by the end of this evening's debate, the England team will have scored as many goals as us.
Any serious analysis of the issue must start with the recognition that we face some tough and serious challenges that require thoughtful and mature political responses. We live on a small island; we are already one of the most densely populated areas in Europe, and we have a clear responsibility to protect our countryside and our environment.
We have an equally clear responsibility to meet the housing needs of our country. They include the needs of the sons and daughters of existing residents who want to continue to live in areas where they were born and grew up, and those of key workers, such as nurses, teachers and police officers, who are essential to vital public services. We must also meet the needs of those who are fundamental to economic success, so that businesses are not prevented from expansion and development by lack of housing for their work force. To pretend that there is an easy way of reconciling the potentially conflicting pressures is facile. So too is the assumption--much promoted by the Opposition since they became an Opposition but different from the line that they took when they were in government--that the problem can be resolved by allowing local councils to put up the shutters and say, "No more housing in our area."
Mr. Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton): Will the Minister consider visiting my constituency? He could then visit residents in Pagham, and hear about their fight to stop a development of 700 houses off Hook lane, or residents in Felpham, who face the prospect of 700 houses in their village, or residents in Littlehampton, who face the building of 1,000 houses in Toddington. If he met those people, he would understand the genuine anxiety caused to people in west Sussex by the amount of building that will happen as a result of the Government's policies.
Mr. Raynsford: Most housing that is being built is on sites for which the previous Government granted permission. I was trying to make it clear that those who are worried about the countryside and those who are anxious about the housing needs that I outlined are equally concerned. The issue requires balance and thoughtful and careful policies, not facile, knee-jerk reactions.
Let me quote the words of the last Conservative Secretary of State for the Environment, the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), in a chapter he contributed to a volume entitled "Town and Country", which was published in 1998. He began by making a robust defence of his estimate of the demand for 4.4 million homes up to 2016. Though what I assume is a typing error in the book alarmingly suggests that he thought that 4.4 million homes would be required by 2006, I cannot believe that that is the case. He goes on:
- If we accept that there is a demand for 4.4 million or more new units we could of course simply refuse to allow the demand to be met. The trouble with that answer is that the people who would be
- hit are those least able to cope with the result, and often the most deserving of a new home. It will not be the richer and more competent members of society, since they can afford to pay the high prices which such a shortage would inevitably produce. It is also quite clear that no government would see this solution as remotely politically possible . . .
Mr. Gummer: If the Minister had continued with the chapter, he might have noticed that I suggested that the real problem was the location of the houses. Before we build the houses, we say that everybody will live where they want to live. We then build the houses in a specific place. When people move into those houses, we say, "We were right to build them there because that's where they have moved." The Minister should be prepared to ensure that the new homes that are needed are the sort of homes that one-person households want, and that they are not built on greenfield sites, but in our cities and places other than the south-east.
Mr. Raynsford: I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that it is important to ensure that houses are built to meet need. In the chapter that I cited, he rightly highlighted the growth of single-person households. He also said that we should try to build the houses on brownfield sites. That is the Government's policy. His chapter, which was mostly admirable, is far from the policy that Conservative Front-Bench Members espouse. He might reflect on the extent to which the Conservative party in opposition has departed from the right hon. Gentleman's position when in government.
Mr. Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden): The Minister claimed that the bulk of demand, which he aims to meet, will come from single-person households. Why have the Government agreed to the rape of the green belt in Hitchin to build 10,000 houses if the bulk of the need is for single-person households? Why are the majority of the houses that are being built for families? That is the question that my constituents ask most frequently.
Mr. Raynsford: As the right hon. Gentleman knows from our many exchanges about the issue, Hertfordshire county council took the view that it was better to concentrate the development that was inevitable in Hertfordshire in one area rather than spread it throughout the county. That was the basis for the decision. Although the right hon. Gentleman did not agree with it, it was a local decision.
Mr. Raynsford: If the right hon. Gentleman will bear with me, I am trying to answer his first question. If he waits to see the pattern of development, he will hopefully see the benefits of the policies that we are introducing to ensure mixed developments through a proper mix of housing types and sizes, and affordable and market housing. That is preferable to the proliferation of executive boxes that characterised the planning policies of the Government of whom he was a member.
Mr. Lilley: I shall clarify the position. The decision to which the Minister refers was not a democratic local
decision. It was taken by the ruling group of Liberal Democrats and Labour members, with a majority of one. They refused to let the full council consider it; only 14 of the 70-odd councillors in Hertfordshire voted in favour of the measure to which the Government subsequently agreed. Will the Minister now answer the question: why are the houses not for single people--who, according to the Minister, represent the bulk of demand--but for families?
Mr. Raynsford: It is always interesting to hear people justify their departure from democratic decisions with which they do not agree. It is always possible to find ways of disapproving of the majority view. That is not sensible; it is right to accept that the decision was democratic, whether the right hon. Gentleman likes it or not. There are democratic decisions that I do not necessarily like; that is life. We should not try to repudiate decisions that we do not like on the tenuous basis that the right hon. Gentleman outlines.
I was speaking about the article by the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal. It continued:
- People who see house prices rocket, and who find that they cannot afford the home which they once expected to buy, will take their political revenge.
That is what the Conservatives did when they were in government just four or five years ago, and to pretend now that we can do the exact opposite without adverse consequences is facile and utterly unconvincing. Indeed, to pretend that local councils can put up the shutters on new housebuilding without the unhappy results so cogently spelled out by the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal in his book flies dangerously close to hypocrisy.
However, we should not simply stand aside while housebuilders gobble up acre after acre of greenfield land, as they were allowed to do in the 1980s and early 1990s, when the Conservative party was in power.
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