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Ms Karen Buck (Regent's Park and Kensington, North): I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way and allowing me to give another example of the benefits of the Government's approach. A major development in Paddington will involve 1,000 homes and 30,000 jobs. It is an excellent example of inner-city regeneration and has been backed by £13.5 million of Government money under the single regeneration budget. It has also been designated an education action zone. That shows that the Government are able and willing to bring together all the components needed to make inner-city regeneration work. However, it is one of the last brownfield sites available in central London. Conservative Members are saying that they do not care about the housing need in the city that is not met because they are closing all other options.
Ms Jackson: My hon. Friend is entirely right. What has become abundantly clear from the lamentable contributions of Conservative Members is that they have no care for the provision of housing in urban areas and no concern for the provision of housing in rural areas. It is this Government who have increased the green belt in three short years. In the 18 seemingly unending years of the previous Administration, we saw depredation after depredation when it came to the green belt.
Mr. Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale, West): Does the hon. Lady accept that there is no point in increasing the total square mileage of green belt for as long as the green belt itself is eroded and moves outwards from the cities? The kind of regeneration in the city centres that the hon. Lady and I would both like to see
simply will not happen if the Government continue to allow the green belt to be eroded at the fringe where it meets the city boundaries.
Ms Jackson: With respect to the hon. Gentleman, let me say that the Government have no intention of allowing an erosion of the green belt. If he is thinking about what happened under the previous Administration, that happened because they failed significantly to make our cities desirable places in which to live. They did nothing about affordable housing--people fled to rural areas to find somewhere decent to live. It is interesting that the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mr. Norman) seemed to blame people who had been driven out of city centres into rural areas for taking away the opportunity for the sons and daughters of the people already living in rural areas to find affordable properties in which to live. That is an interesting volte face from the party which claims to speak exclusively for rural communities.
As I was saying, the reclamation of the Greenwich peninsula which was, I would argue, one of the most polluted sites in Europe, is proof of what can be achieved. The millennium village is a benchmark of what can be achieved, and what, under this Government, will be achieved. Its properties are being built and will be maintained, using the most environmentally friendly techniques. One would never know, from standing outside a property, whether someone had bought it or rented it. The village contains facilities such as schools and a park; the environment is not only pleasant to live in but will attract people into the area; and thousands of jobs have been created.
It is, surely, a basic human right to have our own space in which to live and a door that can be closed to ensure our privacy and, equally, that we keep outside that part of the world which, at a particular moment, we do not wish to see.
The previous Administration failed lamentably to tackle housing issues. This Government have produced a Green Paper that can lead to the results that people want. It is a scandal and a disgrace that there are still people in this country who have nowhere to live but a pavement or a shop doorway. This Government will bring about the changes that the country needs for the future. The contribution of Conservative Members this evening has been lamentable, matched only by their practices in this area when they were a lamentable Government.
9.13 pm
Mr. Andrew Lansley (South Cambridgeshire): I am grateful to have the opportunity to contribute to the debate and to follow the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Ms Jackson). May I remind her that last Friday, Shelter was talking about an increase of 45 per cent. in the number of registered homeless since the Government came into office?
I would not have sought to contribute to the debate except for the simple fact that when I wanted to bring a deputation of representatives of local authorities in the Cambridge sub-region to see the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Ms Hughes), her
response was to decline to receive such a deputation. She said that she considered that to receive such a deputation
- would not add to our understanding.
The Under-Secretary and other Ministers at the Department need to understand that this would not set a precedent for other areas. Cambridge and the area around it have some special factors that have been expressly dealt with in regional planning guidance. The Minister knows that I have taken an exceptionally close interest in this matter, including attending both of the days during which this was the subject of an examination in public before the panel. He will know also that the response from the Government to the panel's report and the representations from the standing committee of East Anglia local authorities departed substantially from the panel's recommendations in relation to the Cambridge sub-region, and that the recommendations that Ministers have issued by way of draft regional planning guidance impact probably to a much greater extent in determining the shape of the structure plan in Cambridgeshire than would be the case in almost any other county in the south-east regional planning committee's or SCEALA's region.
The housing projections for Cambridgeshire that were published by the Department last year for 2000-21 showed an increase of 33.8 per cent. over the period from 1996 to 2021. That is a higher increase than in any other county. We recognise in the Cambridge sub-region that we are wrestling with virtually unprecedented levels of development pressure, both economic and housing. The two sectors are intimately related. The Minister will know--I would have hoped that his ministerial colleague would have been prepared to discuss matters with local representatives before finalising regional planning guidance--that there are still substantial reservations about the proposals in the draft RPG.
I will put the reservations simply in four terms. First, SCEALA and the local authorities in East Anglia have put forward a set of proposals that the Government have largely accepted in contradiction to Serplan. They have largely accepted SCEALA's forecasts, but not in relation to the Cambridge sub-region. Working exhaustively on the basis of environmental sustainability and capacity, local authorities saw 4,000 homes per year as a maximum figure. The Government, however, are considering 4,000 as a minimum, and in five or 10 years hence it is conceivable that that figure will be substantially exceeded.
Secondly, there are considerable reservations about the balance, even within Cambridgeshire, that the Government are seeking. They are proposing that 70 per cent. of new houses will be within the Cambridge sub-region in due course. At the present level of building, 2,000 homes a year are being constructed in the area. The implication of the Government's proposals are that more than 2,800 homes a year can be built in the sub-region.
There is no question of people in Cambridge or the surrounding districts saying that they are simply full, putting up the shutters and resisting economic development where it is desirable. However, there is a limit. The necessity of striking a balance between the quantum of economic development and environmental sustainability in the Cambridge region demands a different balance from the one towards which the
Government seem to be heading. To increase by 40 per cent. or more the rate of housebuilding in the Cambridge sub-region will be regarded as complete folly. Indeed, it will be regarded as impracticable when we consider the speed at which planning permissions are generated and processed and building is able to take place in the region. Against that background, an increase of 40 per cent. would be almost impossible.The third serious reservation is that the RPG makes references in explanatory text to the infrastructure consequences of economic and housing development on the proposed scale. However, it does not tie Government policy commitments to the achievement of specific housing target figures. Residents of the Cambridge sub-region will wonder what sort of Government could, in the middle of 1998, take the A14 out of the roads programme--a road that is instrumental in the cluster development between Huntingdon and Cambridge, and all the cluster economic development in high-tech industries that the Government so much wish Cambridge to accommodate. They press upon Cambridge large additions to the housing stock, but at the same time remove from their investment programme the infrastructure development that is essential to achieve such large increases in housing stock.
The fourth serious reservation is that the Government talk about the importance of green field and green belt, and the protection that should be given to the green belt. The Minister said, "Brown field first, green field last." However, when we come to the sequence of the location of housing that the Government set out in the draft RPG, we see in the five-point sequence that No. 2 states that development should be on the periphery of the built-up area of Cambridge, subject to any review of the green belt. In the minds of the former Labour administration of the city council--the Liberal Democrats shared the same view--businesses should be pushed out, large areas of green belt taken over and substantial housing built on it.
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