Examination of Witnesses (Questions 840
- 859)
WEDNESDAY 10 NOVEMBER 2004
MR ELLIOT
MORLEY AND
LORD ROOKER
Q840 Mrs Clark: We will invite a
Treasury minister.
Lord Rooker: Invite a Treasury
minister, because there is a big financial implication here. There
is no question about it. I am not seeking to hide from you.
Q841 Chairman: We will indeed have
an opportunity to do that.
Lord Rooker: I take your point
about what John Egan said. There is a problem here. A lot of people
do move regularly, by the way, but it is the same people who move
all the while. You cannot go by averages, in other words. Some
people move every three years; others stay put for 30 years. So
the average is very misleading. Put it this way. I am not painting
the industry black; far from it. The questions might have done.
There has been enormous progress in the last few years, by the
way. Let us not say we are where we were ten years ago. I think
we are much further advanced than ten years ago.
Q842 Mrs Clark: Finally, is a voluntary
code going to work? Do we not need some powers of law?
Lord Rooker: I think it is always
best to embark on things like this voluntarily at first. There
is always the threat later on of the big stick. Once there is
a consensus, saying "Yes, this is the way forward, this is
the way we should be going forward," it is much easier then.
If you come along and the first thing you do is reach for the
"Big Brother", make it compulsory, it will not work.
It is a bit like stakeholder pensions, if I might put it that
way. You start them off as voluntary and if they do not work,
you might have to make them compulsory. But I cannot possibly
comment on things like that. I think the voluntary route is the
best way to start, but I am not saying you keep it voluntary for
ever.
Q843 Mr Francois: Minister, my colleague
Mr Challen, was making quite a point about Strategic Environmental
Assessments earlier, and I would like to return to that in the
context of the regional assemblies. The East of England Regional
Assembly, EERA, published its Strategic Environmental Assessment
of its own Regional Spatial Strategy this month and concluded
as follows: "The rate and intensity of economic, housing
and infrastructure growth envisaged for the region, especially
its southern parts, is intrinsically damaging to many aspects
of the environment and quality of life. Particularly serious problems
include water resources, flood risks, quantity of movement to
be accommodated, urbanisation and conflicts and competition for
land . . ." It goes on but for the sake of brevity, I will
leave it there. You had requested that EERA had an extra 18,000
homes above the ones they had already voted through, and they
turned that down. The South East Regional Assembly is also said
to be strongly opposed to the target of another 34,000 a year
for its region. Now that these are going against you, do you have
a plan B, or are you just going to force the assemblies to try
and adopt your plans anyway?
Lord Rooker: I know you are going
to accuse me of copping out here, but I have no choice in a way.
There is a legal process to go through from the regional assemblies,
particularly on the South East one, which of course is some way
behind. The way the Growth Areas are planned, they go across the
regions, of course. One Growth Area, Milton Keynes/South Midlands,
is about 18 months ahead of the Stansted-Peterborough-London corridor,
and I mean that. The real reason is, some time towards the end
of next year there will be an examination in public by independent
inspectors of those plans. They are not government plans; they
are the assemblies' plans, and obviously we as Government will
put in evidence, as will everybody else. The one for Milton Keynes
lasted five weeks earlier this year, and at the present time,
the report has been published by the inspectors and we have commented
on that report, for example. There is an eight-week consultation
on our comments at the present time, so it will not be till next
year. The process for the East of England is behind that, therefore
anything I say now will be written down and used in evidence against
me and the Government at the inquiry. I cannot pre-judge the inspectors.
It is their view, their figures. I fully accept them, because
I have listened to them. I have met the district councils in those
county council areas and I fully take on board that there has
been growth in the past without the infrastructure. At the southern
end there is real pressure. The real southern end, of course,
is the north part of the Gateway. I fully accept the point. In
fact, I am reminded every day across the Despatch Box by Lord
Hanningfield, the Leader of Essex County Council, that in the
South they are doing their bit in the north part of the Gateway,
but they do not want any more. I paraphrase him. I understand
the pressures on the infrastructure in the past there, but I am
not going to pre-judge it because their figures in their report
will be put to an independent inquiry in which the Government
has a view and the Government will put its view, that is true.
There are councils in those areas who were really opposed to what
was happening in the area to start with. I am not saying their
attitude has changed but the mantra to them is exactly the same:
no infrastructure, no growth, and I mean that.
Q844 Mr Francois: To follow on from
that, what about the possibility of rebalancing some of these
plans and building some more of those houses in other parts of
the country? When we were taking evidence a few weeks ago, those
of us representing south-eastern constituencies were quite annoyed
about the amount that was coming our way, particularly the way
Sir John Egan described it. I think it is fair to say that colleagues
from northern constituencies were quite alarmed by the fact that,
in terms of population, they were likely to be denuded. There
was almost a consensus around the table that both ends geographically
of the Committee, if I can put it like that, were very concerned
about the process. Would it not be better to try and rebalance
this and redistribute some of the growth more evenly around the
country, bearing in mind what you told us earlier, that this is
meant to be a national concept?
Lord Rooker: It is a national
concept. I am not saying therefore it is all equal. The four Growth
Areas of the wider South East, which goes as far as Wisbech and
Corby, so you define the South East for these purpose, on one
part of it. The Pathfinders, the Northern Way concept, on which
work is being done at the present time, is another part of it,
and that is part of that rebalancing. A practical example of the
rebalancing is the fact that the Growth Areas are not statutory
boundaries. We changed a Growth Area to include Huntingdon and
Peterborough in that London-Stansted-Cambridge Growth Area six
or seven months ago. The original Growth Area did not include
the top part of what would be north Cambridgeshire, for example,
so we rebalanced, in addition to which, by the way—and I
certainly cannot discuss the locations—there are other parts
of what we might call that wider South East that have said to
us as Government "We would like to be part of a Growth Area."
They are outside these four Growth Areas now. The whole idea is
growth is going to happen everywhere. Our plan was to get half
the growth in the Growth Areas so it was more manageable and more
sustainable, rather than spread out higgledy-piggledy across the
countryside, the villages and urban sprawl. But there are other
areas in the wider South East that have said to us and we are
in discussion and considering that very point now with them.
Q845 Mr Francois: One very important
point: time and again from almost all the witnesses we have taken
evidence from it has been emphasized to us that it is very important
to carry local people with you, otherwise the process is not going
to work. Can I put it to you that if you cannot even convince
the regional assemblies to take the numbers of houses that you
want, how are you going to really persuade people at the local
level, on the ground to go along with this?
Lord Rooker: I do not want to
bandy the figures about, but as far as the East of England Assembly
is concerned, they have come up with an offer of 97% of what I
asked for. Is that a failure? I am not going to war over 3%. I
do not call 97% disagreeing with me. Think about it: 478,000,
and there are 18,000 on the edge. It is minuscule. I do not consider
that at war. When I launched the Cambridgeshire partnership,
Cambridgeshire Horizons, the other week, chaired by Sir David
Trippier, a former Member of this House and Minister, there were
councils queuing up to say "We want our share of the wider
Cambridgeshire growth." They are queuing up, so I do not
consider it to be a failure or a war when the Regional Assembly
offers a figure that is 97% of what was a gross, top-line figure.
Q846 Mr Francois: How many district
councils in Essex asked that?
Lord Rooker: I did not meet them.
it just so happened that I launched the Cambridgeshire delivery
vehicle offices, their new logo, Cambridgeshire Horizons. That
was my recent meeting. It is only two weeks ago.
Mr Francois: You mentioned Lord Hanningfield.
Anyway, thank you.
Q847 Mr Chaytor: Can I stay with
Sir John Egan . . .
Lord Rooker: It sounds to me as
though you need John Egan back again.
Q848 Mr Chaytor: He said some very
interesting things indeed, and one of the things he said seemed
to be absolutely at odds with the thrust of the Sustainable Communities
Plan because his view was that, far from these being sustainable
communities where people would live and work, either in the Thames
Gateway or in the eastern region, the main thrust of the purpose
of the house building programme was to accommodate 1 million people
who were going to move into London before the end of the decade.
These were his figures, so I stand to be corrected. If 1 million
people move into Britain, half a million of which would settle
in London, and this was because of the success of London as an
international financial services centre and these would be highly
skilled, internationally mobile people who would be looking for
good quality accommodation with faster access into the centre
of London, this seemed to be a complete contradiction to everything
that people had assumed before about the concept of sustainable
communities, be they in the North East or North West or certainly
the South East, which would be communities—and this is clearly
the criterion in the plan—where people would live and work
and where democracy would be reborn because people therefore would
be actively engaged in their community life. If people are commuting
into the centre of the city at 6 o'clock in the morning and going
back at 9 o'clock at night, they are not going to be terribly
vibrant democracies.
Lord Rooker: They certainly are
not.
Q849 Mr Chaytor: So what is your
view of Sir John's Assumptions?
Lord Rooker: I was not here. I
think I have got the gist of what he said.
Q850 Mr Chaytor: It is all in the
transcript.
Lord Rooker: I am not coming here
to have a big battle with John Egan, but let us get it clear.
I was in the Gateway this morning. There was a CLP visit, a central
and local partnership visit to the Gateway this morning, with
several ministers, local government colleagues, a presentation
from Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, who is a key player in this as chair
of the Local Government Association and of course Chair of one
of the partnership arrangements, and he did make the point clear,
and I think it was a very fair point, and it goes some way to
answering your question. Unlike the other three Growth Areas,
the thing about the Gateway is, it has to have the jobs put in
as well as the dwellings. In the other Growth Areas we have a
lot of pressure on jobs running out of people, in Milton Keynes
and South Midlands, where the jobs are ahead of the dwellings
in some ways. There is a lot of growth going on anyway, as I have
already said, in the area. We are not building the Thames Gateway,
as it were, to be a 40-mile linear dormitory commuter belt, period.
That is not the plan and that is not going to happen. There will
be—there has got to be—an enormous amount of jobs
and investment in that area. The point is, the infrastructure
that is being placed in there, such as the Channel Tunnel Rail
Link and the domestic services and the station at Ebbsfleet, to
open up those incredible brownfield sites, those former quarries—two
and a half miles long in one case, where I have seen the master
planning is well ahead, shifting the 22 million tonnes has already
started. This has got to be for jobs and housing. It is not a
housing programme. Whatever you might have been told or given
nuances about, the Gateway programme is a full communities programme,
ie jobs, housing, green belt, sustainable communities, but it
has to have good infrastructure into central London, unlike the
west, and of course, it will have, built on with what is happening
with Fast Track, which is the system they will have for these
dedicated bus routes in the north Thameslink area between Gravesend,
Dartford and that area, and of course, another river crossing
is envisaged in future, beyond Lower Bean, beyond Dartford. So
there are huge infrastructure implications here in the Gateway,
which is why originally the Cabinet Sub-Committee was set up,
because obviously the financial implications are enormous. But
it will not be a 40-mile linear dormitory village. I cannot spell
it out any more clearly than that.
Q851 Mr Chaytor: You take that point.
That is not what Sir John Egan was saying his understanding of
the drivers behind . . .
Lord Rooker: It is clearly not
what he said. I fully accept what you say; it is not what he said.
He did not say what I have said.
Q852 Mr Chaytor: Maybe the Deputy
Prime Minister and yourself need to have another word with him
to clarify exactly what the purpose was.
Lord Rooker: On the other hand,
let us pay tribute. John did the review also of the sustainable
communities skills, to have a look at the issue for us to see
what we were missing and what we needed to delivery sustainable
communities, and there will be an announcement about a Centre
for Sustainable Community skills at the summit at the end of January
based on John's work, so there will be a national centre for giving
advice to people in this respect.
Chairman: We are hoping to come on to
this if we have time in a minute or two.
Q853 Mr Chaytor: Could I just ask
one other question on this and then move on to the skills issue?
What is the balance therefore, do you think, between the number
of new dwellings that will be for communities and the number of
new dwellings that will be housing people who are working locally?
This is quite critical and it is linked in with the question of
the balance between the percentage of the new dwellings that will
be affordable for people doing fairly ordinary mainstream jobs
and the percentage of new dwellings that will be specifically
providing for internationally mobile people working in financial
services, zipping into London in the early hours of the morning
and returning late at night.
Lord Rooker: Off the top of my
head, I cannot give you the figures, but the fact is, first of
all, the developments have got to be mixed. The one I was at this
morning along with colleagues was certainly talking about 30%.
Q854 Mr Chaytor: That is 30% affordable?
Lord Rooker: Yes, but I am coming
to qualify that, because affordable means different things in
different areas. The fact is, this development, which was designed
some years ago but is under construction now, some 1,000 dwellings,
river-front as well, was actually designed for mid-range prices.
It is quite astonishing. Even today, the most expensive dwellings
down there were only about £290,000, so this was mid-range.
It was built in that way. You might say that is affordable for
many people but the affordable context, the overall aspects of
that site, will be 30%. On the other hand, I cannot give you the
breakdown in terms of population. Most of the growth will come
from indigenous population because of demographic changes in this
country. There is no question about that. It is true there is
a net in-flow, but the fact is that the vast majority of the change
comes about because of our demographic changes, and there are
enough figures to justify that. I think some 75% of new household
formation will be single-person dwellings, for example. We have
these issues to cope with. On the other hand, we want to build
modern, sustainable communities, so we need the schools, we need
the children, we need the mix of ages, and families, because you
are in effect building large developments on brownfield sites
in the Gateway—this is quite unique compared to the Growth
Areas—and it is quite clear a lot of the jobs—and
I would like to think there would be some factories making things,
by the way, not just what I call little jobs—but a lot of
them, simply because of the access from the Channel Tunnel Rail
Link post 2009, or 2007 on the one hand but 2009 when the domestic
services will operate—I think that is the figure—the
materials have been ordered, and the rolling stock was ordered
a couple of weeks ago. The time factor for getting from across
the Channel is really tiny. It is true, again, from Ebbsfleet
it will only be 17 minutes to central London, so you have this
issue of a major change in the transport infrastructure in the
southern part of the Gateway, in the north Kent area.
Q855 Mr Chaytor: Is that not one
of the paradoxes, that the faster it is to get into central London
because of the improved infrastructure, the less likely people
are to stay and work in the Thames Gateway?
Lord Rooker: It is a paradox in
a way, but that is why you have got to manage it. As Sandy Bruce-Lockhart
said this morning—and I think he gave a figure of something
like 300,000 jobs—you have got to have the jobs there. It
will not work if it is just people, because there is not the capacity
inside London in that sense, because you do not want to build
commuter-land. You want to build communities where people live,
work, play, bring their children up, schools, so there is not
this dormitory town aspect of it, and that is what we will seek
to achieve. But it has got to be jobs-led. The Gateway is, if
you like, slightly different to the other Growth Areas because
the jobs are actually flowing in ahead of the population in some
ways. In the Gateway, they clearly are not.
Q856 Paul Flynn: We were glad to
hear the Government is going to respond in late 2005 to the Barker
report. Is there any chance in the mean time that the Government
can give an indication of those proposals, particularly the proposals
that you reject, in order that the many people involved in the
industry who are looking to try to plan for the future will have
some preliminary idea of the Government's thinking?
Lord Rooker: I think the short
answer to that is no.
Q857 Paul Flynn: When Kate Barker
gave evidence to us, she seemed to be far more tentative in her
ideas than the written text suggested, and she talked about the
many practical difficulties that will come about. She talked about
the market-based triggers for development, and I wonder whether
this is something you are considering. Barker herself said that
distinguishing between a long-term trend and cycles in house prices
would not be an easy thing to do—quite right too. Obviously,
we appreciate that this work has to be done, but would you consider
that option, market-based triggers? Is that one that you are seriously
considering?
Lord Rooker: I really cannot go
further into Barker because, honestly, I do not know because there
is an enormous amount of consultation going on. A lot of people
read a lot into Barker which clearly was not there, as implied,
in a way, from what you have said about when she came to give
evidence. We are dealing with what is an incredibly complex process,
in a way. I am not criticising this, but her field was quite narrow
and it took as its starting point the fulfilment of the Communities
Plan operation, the extra 200,000 on top of what had already been
agreed. Obviously, that has implications for many things, whether
it is our building industry, land supply, learning to build at
higher densities. We are creating brownfield land all the while.
We keep a careful watch on the register which English Partnerships
is putting together for us, and at the moment, with a very low
level of production, we are meeting our brownfield target. It
is quite complicated. I just cannot pre-judge what is going to
happen. I think what we will do is pronounce on Barker as a package
after the consultation. It is the end of next year. I am not being
specific about a date, but in the timescale we are operating in,
in terms of planning for land, planning policies, getting land
put together and looking at perhaps restructuring the building
industry and issues like that, it is a fairly small amount of
time. I realise ministers are transient; they come and go, but
in the big scale of things, this is a very small slot of time.
I just ask for patience. By all means ask the Treasury about it;
I always advise that, but it is something that is best to pronounce
on as a package, to be honest, for the industry's purposes.
Q858 Joan Walley: Perhaps we can
just end on Egan, because a lot has been said about Egan throughout
the whole of the afternoon. Many of us were heartened by what
you said just now, that there is going to be an announcement at
the summit in January on the Centre of Excellence. It think that
will be critical in terms of taking forward the whole skills agenda.
I know you have not read the transcript of when Sir John Egan
came to our Committee, but he did suggest to us that the Government
was going to succeed in getting 125,000 houses built each year.
Given the state of the construction industry, there is going to
have to be a huge step change in terms of actually delivering
that and taking on board the ability of construction workers and
the industry as a whole to gear up to that. He particularly cited
management techniques and project management, not just individual
plumbers and expertise. How is that step change going to come
about? If Egan himself is perhaps having doubts as to how it is
going to be achieved, do you think that the establishment of a
Centre of Excellence is going to be sufficient? What more needs
to be done, and what has the Government got in hand to achieve
that?
Lord Rooker: First of all, it
is quite right what he said; he was not just looking at the number
of brickies. He realised, once you start to look at this, looking
at the number of brickies does not solve your problem. For example,
even now, today, if a local authority gets a planning application
for anything more than 500 dwellings on a site, they virtually
freeze like a rabbit in headlights in the middle of the road.
There is a real capacity problem, in other words, in dealing with
large sites. This is something we know. We have talked to local
authorities about it, and other experts, and we have had a panel
working on this across Whitehall, which Keith Hill and I have
looked at. It came up out of looking at what the barriers were
to delivering the existing figures, for example, and one of them
was an inability to get speedy decisions on large sites. I do
not mean quick fixes, cutting corners, but there is a capacity
problem there. It is the management skills, of project management,
of putting this together and looking at the whole of the skills
that John Egan looked at. We are working on this so that the Deputy
Prime Minister can make an announcement at the end of January
on a National Centre for Skills for Sustainable Communities, or
whatever it will be called. I am sure there will be a new logo
and a title, which we will waste a lot of money on probably. These
issues are the nub, because if you cannot get good management,
then it will not matter about dealing with the plumbers and the
bricklayers and the wet trades—because there will still
be wet trades, even if we get a big increase in modern methods
of manufacture. Nevertheless, there are now far more traditional
building companies, for example, actually investing in factories
for modern methods, having learned some of the lessons, they have
got to to manage processes out on sites. So it is actually trickling
down, but it does need to be given a big push.
Q859 Joan Walley: Just before we
come on to the construction skills of individual workers, one
of the concerns I have is that you could well find that that project
management that you are seeking to improve could be improved in
the larger areas and the Gateway areas, but given the recruitment
that some areas, particularly the Pathfinder areas, have, how
can you get a national spread of improved design management techniques
right the way across the country, and how can you link that to
the regeneration agenda in order that you can deliver the Pathfinder
programme?
Lord Rooker: Not everybody wants
to live and work in the South East. This is a natural assumption
of people.
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