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Mr. Anthony Steen (Totnes): Nearly a year ago, I instigated the first debate on the Rogers report, "Towards an Urban Renaissance", and it appears that, whenever I speak, the Minister is wisely in his place to ensure that everything that I say accords with his views. In that debate, I congratulated Lord Rogers and the urban taskforce on their report, not least because it came to many similar conclusions to those that I had reached 17 years earlier in my book, "New Life for Old Cities". However, the Rogers report clearly showed the immense task facing this country. It was committed to reverse urban decline and decay, to make cities vibrant and alive and to attract young people to the inner cities.
During that debate, I made a prediction. I said that the Rogers report is a wish list of things that cannot be achieved without the political will. We will need to find a political will that must go beyond one Minister and one Department, however good their work may be. This country has produced fine reports over the years, but sadly little has changed. I had hoped that the challenging report by Lord Rogers would usher in a new era of urban regeneration, but I feared that it would not. To date,
although the Government have an interesting list of initiatives that they have taken--I thank the Minister for replying to my written question on 16 May--that is only a start and there is a long way to go.When I came seventh in the ballot for private Members' Bills, I concluded that the most useful thing that I could do to accelerate and expedite the recommendations in the Rogers report was to introduce the Urban Regeneration and Countryside Protection Bill, which had simple aims and would have been of benefit to Lord Rogers and his recommendations. Those simple aims were to identify brownfield land, place a statutory duty on Government, local and national, to utilise that land, and to ensure that any housing development did not place an undue strain on existing local infrastructure. The term infrastructure I defined as including health, education and recreational facilities, as well as transport and sewage.
On Second Reading, on 24 March, the Government welcomed my Bill but said that they could not support it for two reasons. They claimed that it was too broad in focus, with aims that were too general, and that many of the clauses had been covered by points in the PPG3 guidance to local authorities. However, that was before the Government came up against something of a brick wall with Serplan. Lord Hanningfield, the chairman of Serplan and the leader of Essex county council, stated that the scale of development proposed by the Deputy Prime Minister would place an intolerable strain on the region's infrastructure. The Government do not appear to have paid much attention to that, but they should reflect on what has been said. If, say, transportation links were to become overloaded in the south-east, what would happen in other areas?
When we talk about planning, we always concentrate on the south-east, but there are other areas. What will happen in the south-west, where 395,000 new homes have to be built by 2011? The south-east, as we all know, has the best transport links in the country. If they will be at breaking point under the strain of the new proposed housing numbers, what will happen in the south-west? It will inevitably face gridlock.
The Government's numbers will be challenged all over the country by regional planning bodies unless they specify how the proposed scale of new development will be sustainable. Serplan's comments reflect a wider problem with the entire planning and urban regeneration process. Everything revolves around numbers. The Conservative Government whom I supported said that 4.4 million new homes were required. This Government have reduced that to 3.8 million. The prevailing view is that it does not matter whether it is 4.4 million or 3.8 million, because the houses will not be built by 2011.
The Government have changed the slogan. "Predict and provide" is now to be considered evil, and the replacement is "plan, monitor and manage". Nobody knows what difference there is between the two. It is just a lovely spin--plan, monitor and manage--a sort of slogan that one whispers to one's planning officer and he says, "Oh, yes, of course that will be all right," whereas the old predict and provide was obviously wrong and flawed. It is just part of the new Labour spin. It is attractive, but we should know what it means, and it means very little.
The entire process still centres around the allocation of numbers, and not the infrastructure provision. That is why my Bill was rather important and still is. The Urban Regeneration and Countryside Protection Bill, which the Government allowed a full day's debate on 24 March and which is still in the list, would ensure, if they adopted it, that infrastructure was the key factor in deciding whether housing allocation could be achieved. It would ensure a bottom-up approach, with local councils deciding not only where the numbers should go, but what the numbers should be, based on the ability of the local infrastructure to sustain development.
Even if the Government had not made the wrong decision in talking my Bill out, they have made another mistake. I have raised it already, and I shall stress it, because it is so crucial. They have run into difficulty with the European Union over urban regeneration. That matter should be addressed in the winding-up speech.
Local Government First, which I dealt with in my intervention, reported that the EU Commission had ordered the Government to stop giving grants to assist companies in clearing up contaminated brownfield land earmarked for redevelopment. The Government failed to mention that when the issue was debated in Westminster Hall on 13 June. Did the Minister make no mention of such a problem because it is new, or was it in existence on 13 June? If it is a problem, and the Government cannot overcome it, their aim of having 60 per cent. brownfield redevelopment by 2008 will be completely in disarray. Contaminated land often lies in the heart of our cities, in the old industrial urban areas, the very areas that need to be revived if we are to witness an urban renaissance.
I am a little puzzled as to why Europe has got into this, because I have the good fortune to be a member of the European Scrutiny Committee. This year alone, we have passed directives allowing the French and German Governments to subsidise their coal and steel industries. I cannot understand how the Commission allows the payment of vast subsidies to those industries in those countries, yet rules that it is illegal for our Government to make a modest contribution to help regenerate rundown, contaminated land. Perhaps the Government could say a little more about what they hope to achieve. It has been somewhat glossed over in this debate, but it is a crucial issue, because it will put a coach and horses through the Government's policy.
At the beginning of my speech, I referred back to my speech of a year ago. Those hon. Members who were present may remember that it was a bit of a tour de force. I stated that the political will for urban regeneration must go beyond one Minister and one Department. The Chancellor has not got the message yet. Perhaps the Minister could say something to him. If he cared for urban regeneration, he would not allow VAT, which he fails to impose on new build, to be added to renovation material used to renew the urban decline of houses, flats and warehouses in the inner city. It cannot make sense to talk about urban regeneration but leave out the sticks and the carrots. At present, the sticks and the carrots are in the wrong place. One gets a stick if one renovates in the inner city; one gets a carrot if one builds on greenfield sites. That cannot be right.
Given the Government's inertia on urban regeneration and other problems, I earnestly suggest that the Minister look at my Bill again. If he did, it might give his entire
programme of urban regeneration a kick start. This country would be far better if my Bill had become an Act of Parliament by the time we rose this summer.9.3 pm
Ms Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Highgate): I do not remember hearing the previous tour de force of the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen). After his contribution this evening, I must say with all due respect that I am extremely grateful that the Government will be concentrating on meeting future housing need through their Bill and not through the hon. Gentleman's proposals.
This has become an extremely interesting debate, now that the baying brigade of the Opposition have left. It should be noted that the issue is of such importance to the Opposition that there are precisely three of their Back-Benchers sitting in the Chamber. The serious contributions to the debate have come from my hon. Friend the Minister, my other hon. Friends who have spoken and the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock).
I represent an inner-London constituency. After I was returned to the House in 1992, I was shocked by an explosion of homelessness in this capital city during the previous Government's maladministration of housing. People in every metropolitan area had nowhere to sleep other than pavements. Thousands of homes were repossessed because of the inequity of the previous Government's economic policies. There was not one iota of commitment to acknowledging that housing is a national resource.
The previous Administration argued for leaving the matter to the vagaries of the market--"You cannot buck the market"--I believe was one of the phrases used. We were in the centre of a great car economy, we were told. When the Labour Government came to office, they were confronted with a shambles. Huge and diverse problems surrounded the maintenance of the housing stock in the south-east and throughout the United Kingdom.
This debate concentrates on the Government's proposals for the south-east. The Green Paper makes a great step forward by acknowledging that housing is a national resource that must be maintained and developed nationally. However, this is a small island, as my hon. Friend the Minister said. We cannot expand our physical borders so we must therefore maintain our green belt. If we are serious about urban regeneration, and I believe that we are, we must ensure that public spaces in cities such as London are maintained.
We must create greater densities, but that will inevitably require infinitely better insulation and sound proofing in the buildings that are put up. There must also be close integration with transport bodies to encourage the sort of social infrastructures that can make cities vibrant, thrilling and exciting places to live.
Our inner cities decayed under the previous Administration. Crime took over deserted city centres, all sense of community disappeared and social structures broke down. I was amazed to hear Conservative Members argue against planning proposals in their constituencies. They must know that permissions for those proposals were granted by the previous Administration. For example, major developments were proposed in my constituency. My local authority, my constituents and I argued against them ferociously, on the ground that they
would bring no benefit to communities in the area, but they were rubber stamped by the then Secretary of State for the Environment. They went ahead with no regard for the genuine needs of people living in an inner-London borough.The present Government have made a major step change in their approach to this country's future housing needs, especially in the south-east. My one criticism of the proposals is that they do not emphasise that single-occupancy dwellings should not be single-bedroom dwellings. We should not consider building any property that does not have two bedrooms at least. Our population is ageing, and we know that most elderly people prefer to live out their lives in their own homes. It is entirely reasonable to suppose that, as people become frail, they may require the attentions of carers or other family members, because they will not want to go into a hospital or nursing home.
We must begin to look at the immediate housing needs in the south-east and throughout the country, but we must also look to the long term, so that we can have a truly flexible housing stock. Houses must be able to meet the needs of individuals and young couples on the one hand, and on the other, the needs of elderly couples or individuals who require care.
I strongly endorse the Government's proposals. For a glowing example of what can be achieved by building on brownfield sites, one need look no further than the Greenwich peninsula. I want not to discuss the millennium dome, but to concentrate on those aspects of development on the peninsula that demonstrate what can be achieved through the Government's approach.
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