Westminster Hall
Tuesday 30 January 2007
[Mr. Bill Olner in the Chair]
Hertfordshire Housing Target
Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—[Tony Cunningham.]
9.30 am
Mr. Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con): It is a privilege to open the debate, and I express my gratitude to my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans (Anne Main), for joining me in securing it, as we promised at a big public meeting on housing that covered both our constituencies. This is a key issue throughout Hertfordshire, but nowhere more so than in the city and district of St. Albans and north Hertfordshire district, both of which cover my constituency.
The green belt is much loved and needed. I have defended it since my maiden speech, in which I described the contrasting views of different parts of my constituency and remarked that one thing that united the different settlements within it was the desire to remain separated from each other by strips of green belt. That desire remains. Those strips of green belt provide green lungs, access to the country, room to breathe and a sense of different identity. I have always defended the green belt, and for nearly a quarter of a century we have always succeeded in our defence. I have spoken at every public inquiry on proposals to build on the green belt, and we have usually seen off such developments—until recently.
We have seen those developments off and been able to build homes and meet targets, so what has changed? A number of things. First, the Government keep raising the targets, and I want the Minister to explain why. Secondly, the way decisions are made has changed. We now have regional planning assemblies such as the East of England authority, which most of us do not recognise and few of us understand, but all of us know is not directly elected. It is simply a creature of the Government that enables them to divide and rule and say to other representatives—or appointees—from Norfolk and Cambridge, “Why don’t you vote for more houses in Hertfordshire and Essex? If you don’t, we’ll plonk them on you.” That change has given the Government the opportunity to steamroller through increased targets.
There has also been a political resiling from defending the green belt. The first and most serious example of that was when the county council, which was temporarily under Lib-Lab control—together they had a majority of one—steamrollered through proposals for the biggest incursion on the green belt that this country has ever seen: the decision to build up to 10,000 houses on the green belt to the west of Stevenage. They had to change the orders of the council to ensure that the majority of one could prevail. It was a pretty sordid process, but it worked. Of
course, their proposals were endorsed by the Deputy Prime Minister and given the go-ahead.
There has also been a change in the Government’s attitude from the traditional view—in the words of the Deputy Prime Minister, “We created the green belt and now we’re going to build on it”—to the other meaning of that unintended double entendre. They are now preaching that a green belt can be flexible and that the boundaries can be changed as long as that is compensated for by land elsewhere being reclassified as green belt. That destroys the purpose of the green belt: if it is elastic and plastic rather than firm, rigid and defensible, it ceases to serve any purpose.
If the Minister were given responsibility for defending the list of protected species, would she say, “It doesn’t matter if a few of them become extinct, because we can always reclassify the common house sparrow and chaffinch, so the total will not alter”? That seems to be the Government’s view of the green belt.
I can no longer say to my constituents, as I have for a couple of decades or more, “Back me, support me, we’ll fight and we’ll probably win.” I now have to say that the odds are stacked against us because the Government are actively encouraging building on the green belt, not least in my constituency and that of my hon. Friend and neighbour.
Anne Main (St. Albans) (Con): May I make a point about the flexible green belt? At a meeting that my right hon. Friend and I attended, Tim Frehey, head of development and infrastructure, explained the compensatory green belt, using slides. When we challenged him on the concept of a compensatory green belt, he quickly resiled from the phrase and said that it was not a very good one. Does my right hon. Friend agree that Mr. Frehey thought it not very good because people at the meeting understood exactly what it meant, and now a better phrase will have to be adopted that makes it sound better to the public?
Mr. Lilley: I agree entirely. My hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. That example shows that even officials are infected by the new Labour view that if one changes the wording, one somehow changes the substance, and that most of the people can be conned most of the time. However, they cannot con our constituents, because they have rumbled what the Government are doing and are incensed by it.
None of that is to say that my constituents or I believe that there should be no building. I accept that there is a need for homes. The fact that homes are so hideously expensive in and around London is a sign that demand has outstripped supply. I have never opposed building outside the green belt where that is appropriate and sensible. I have not taken a nimbyist view. When there were plans to build houses at the bottom of my garden, I did not object as some of my neighbours did, even though those houses will deprive me of a view of the countryside, due to the fact that that is quite a sensible place to build. The plans were contiguous with existing buildings and were not an infringement on the green belt.
I support building and recognise that we must have some new homes because young people cannot afford to leave home. They have to stay at home for longer
and longer, like young Italian men—they will still be at home with mama at 30. Indeed, a survey yesterday showed that whereas, 15 or 20 years ago, about 59 per cent. of people had got on to the housing ladder by 30, now only 40 per cent. have. There has been a huge drop. Will the Minister tell us why the Government have failed on this policy? Why are young people increasingly unable to buy homes?
Those who have bought homes have to pay such astronomical prices that they are mortgage slaves for the first 20 years of their lives together. That is why one sees few young couples at public meetings—both are working such long hours. At the meeting that my hon. Friend and I attended, it was significant that very few of those mortgage slaves could attend to discuss housing, however crucial the issue is to them.
I am not nimbyist and neither is the county council. When the Lib-Lab coalition that steamrollered through the proposal to build on the green belt was ousted by the electorate, it was replaced by a Conservative administration. The new administration recognised that it had to build houses, not only because the Government were telling it so, but because it recognised the genuine need. It carried out an urban capacity study and concluded that there was substantial capacity outside the green belt, on brownfield and other sites, to enable it to meet the targets imposed by the Government. But the targets have moved. When the capacity to meet the first target was found, the target rose again and again as the Government yo-yoed back and forth in their dealings with the East of England assembly.
We have to ask ourselves why demand is outstripping supply. Yes, we have to find extra land and extra capacity to build, but we cannot treat this simply as a question of supply. We need also to examine demand.
In a debate in the main Chamber on 7 December, the Minister for Housing and Planning said:
“On the overall level of house building that is needed, we believe, given the growing number of households with people living alone and an ageing population, that we should be building at least 200,000 new homes a year.”—[Official Report, 7 December 2006; Vol. 454, c. 507.]
She was being a little economical with the truth, because a growing number of households and people living alone as they age is not the only factor behind the need for house building, although it is an important one.
There has been a tendency for people to live in smaller households, which has, over the years, increased the number of residences and dwellings that we need by roughly 0.5 per cent. a year. One does not need to be a mathematical genius to know that if there are about 20 million households and that number is growing by 0.5 per cent. each year, that makes 100,000 extra a year, not 200,000. Where does the greater number of houses that the Government require come from? Not from the causes that the Minister for Housing and Planning mentioned or described to the Select Committee.
Something else is happening: for 50 years, there has been a move towards smaller households. When I prepared some draft notes, my research assistant, who is new to the subject, looked up the figures and found
that there has been no reduction in the average size of household since 2000—the move to smaller households has stopped since then. I suspect that it has stopped not because there has been an outbreak of matrimonial harmony and people are not getting divorced any more, or because people have decided to invite their children to stay with them longer, but because people cannot do otherwise. The cost of housing is forcing people to remain in larger households than they would choose and the underlying demand is being suppressed. I am not trying to pretend that it has gone away. We ought, and will need, to cope with it by building the 100,000 houses a year.
We need to recognise one thing. To the extent that the growth of housing demand comes from having smaller households—the same number of people living in more houses—there is no increase in demand for infrastructure. If no more people are involved, just more smaller households, we do not have to build more houses or hospitals, or provide more water and so on. These are big issues locally because our hospitals are being closed or run down. Several hospitals in Hertfordshire are earmarked for losing their accident and emergency services, if not for closure, and cottage hospitals in my constituency are following suit. There is great concern that we are losing resources, but, at least to the extent that there is no change in population, we do not need additional resources.
The second factor often quoted by the Government as allegedly accounting for increasing demand is people moving from the rest of the United Kingdom to the south-east. The Liberal leader of the council that I mentioned got a great cheer when he said that we should try to reverse and discourage the process by persuading people to stay in Scotland and the north by developing those areas. That might be a slightly antagonistic attitude to take towards the Scots and northerners, but it got a great cheer and was not deemed to be in any way racist. If that council leader was right and if that process were happening, we should be trying to encourage development elsewhere and discourage movement to the most congested part of the country, but that is not what is happening. There was a small net increase up until the early 1990s, but it never represented more than a tenth of the population growth in the south; it was never even as much as a tenth of the population growth in the south-east.
Since that time, there has been a net outflow from the south-east to the rest of the country and a return of people to Scotland and the north. So, that process is not a factor behind the ever-rising targets that the Government are imposing on us. The simple truth is that the big, new and rising element of demand over the past nine years has been people moving to this country from abroad. I hope that we can deal with that issue in a sensible, moderate and reasonable fashion, and that we can all agree on one thing: the caricature of economic migrants to this country as people who want to rip-off the benefits system or as lawless, unsatisfactory people is the reverse of the truth. By and large, they are dynamic, ambitious, hard-working and law-abiding, and they want to improve their life and that of their families, so I look favourably upon them.
However, we must ask whether we should be a country of settlement. Should we be asking people to come here to settle in large numbers? If we think that
that is right and proper and that there should be large-scale settlement in this country, we need to ask whether we should house the people involved. I have no doubt that the answer to that question is yes.
If there is large-scale migration to this country, we must build a corresponding number of extra houses. The Government forecast that over the next 20 to 25 years the population of this country will increase as a result of net immigration—the extent that immigration to this country exceeds emigration and people returning elsewhere from this country—by 6 million. That population growth equates to growth by approximately the population of Southampton every year, and those people need to be housed.
The Government deploy respectable arguments that there are economic benefits of mass immigration and settlement, and that it is worth the candle. But let them be open and frank, and admit that that is why we face such pressure and demand on housing, why we will have to build on the green belt and why young people who are already here, from all races and ethnic groups, find it difficult to get a home due to increased population and the resulting pressure.
This is not a debate about immigration. I have examined the arguments that the Government deploy and that purport to justify migration on this scale economically, and I find them bogus and inaccurate. There is a need for some immigration, but not for massive immigration on that scale. There are only two honourable positions to take on this matter: that of those who say that it is economically necessary and will mean large-scale house building, and that of those who say that it is not economically necessary because we can do without immigration on that scale and can return to a more balanced position such as prevailed in the 1980s and early 1990s. Thus, we will not have constantly to increase our housing targets.
What is not tenable logically, morally or with any humanity is to say that we should encourage large-scale settlement in this country but not build the additional houses.
Mr. Bill Olner (in the Chair): Order. We are ranging fairly widely. The debate is about housing in Hertfordshire.
Mr. Lilley: I take the point, Mr. Olner. You will know that Hertfordshire is very near London. The vast majority of those coming from abroad come initially to London and, in turn, people from all ethnic groups in London move out to Hertfordshire. They are very welcome, but that is the pressure that we face. An indirect consequence of that flow is that there is huge pressure on housing in Hertfordshire. We want some recognition of that from the Government.
If the Government think that the process needs to continue, we want an open justification of it. We want an end to the pretence that it is not a factor and, above all, an end to the pretence that anyone who discusses this factor in a reasonable and sensible way is somehow pandering to racism. If we do not discuss these things openly, we let the British National party have a field day. That is not what I want. It already has a foothold in other parts of Hertfordshire, and I do not want the BNP to spread into my part of the county, thank you very much.
We face a serious situation in Hertfordshire: young people are unable to get homes, those who do are mortgage slaves for much of their lives, there is increasing pressure on our green belt, our facilities and infrastructure are under stress and strain, and greater strains will be imposed on those if we have a rising population rather than if we simply cope with the tendency for people to live in smaller households. There are pressures on our health service, schools, infrastructure, water supply and roads, which are aggravated by the pressures posed by potential development of the two airports in Hertfordshire.
I hope that the Government will think again about their attempts to impose targets of this size on our area, and about their policy of no longer treating the green belt as sacrosanct, and come clean with the people of Hertfordshire about what they are up to.
9.50 am
Anne Main (St. Albans) (Con): I shall speak briefly because unfortunately I have to go to a Public Bill Committee meeting on the planning gain supplement. That supplement, which the Government want to deliver the necessary infrastructure, is one matter that I wish to raise here.
A couple of years ago the East of England regional assembly refused to sign off its draft plan because we had a recognised infrastructure deficit. When I raised that with the Minister I was told, “Well, everybody says they’ve got an infrastructure deficit,” and it was batted aside. We are being asked to take a significant amount of new development, crucial to which is the infrastructure network needed to support it, including hospitals and schools, about which we have major concerns, and water and roads.
I was totally disappointed that when I said to the head of development of infrastructure for the east of England, “You haven’t even touched on the planning gain supplement when explaining how we are going to deliver these housing totals with a compatible infrastructure,” he said that he believed that the supplement was simply meant to bring land forward more quickly. That is not the Government’s objective, and I am pretty depressed that the head of development of infrastructure sees it in that way. It shows a lack of information and does not fill me with any confidence that we will have the infrastructure to support the new houses. He did say that we have per capita water use targets. That is fine and dandy, except that there are already water shortages with our existing housing stock. No information was given about people currently suffering from a lack of water. The River Ver is in danger of drying up, and I know that other areas of Hertfordshire are similarly taxed in dryer spells. Just to say that we have a water use target does not fill me with confidence.
We are also to have a regional target to reduce CO2 emissions. I am sorry: we already have a significant CO2 emission problem in Hertfordshire. We use 3.7 worlds in the carbon footprint of St. Albans alone. Coupled with that, we have air quality management areas that I have asked the Government to help us with. The response has been that there is no statutory obligation to do so, merely to note and recognise them. I do not want more and more CO2 emissions to
accompany the carbon footprint of housing, which contributes 23 per cent. of our emissions. I do not want more houses in Hertfordshire along with a target and the recognition of a deficit in our air quality. That is not good enough, and my constituents need an explanation of how they are supposed to live happily and compatibly with the extra houses.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) rightly spoke at some length about the pressures coming to our area from London. We will unfortunately have between 5,800 and 10,000 new homes—it is a flexible figure—on an aerodrome site between my area and Hatfield. It will be partly in my constituency, and I asked the developers what the thought process behind it was other than the fact that they liked the site. I was told, helpfully, that it would provide an overspill for Harlow. I mentioned that for St. Albans residents, providing an overspill for Harlow was not a high priority, particularly considering that the housing will not be included in the St. Albans total. Yet again, the figures are fudged and there will be pressures from all sides. The Hemel Hempstead figures will also include areas near St. Albans and there might well be houses that are in my constituency but not counted towards my target figures.
People are not sure what the figures mean. My constituents went to consultations on figures that they believed could be delivered principally using brownfield development, which we all want to see. They now feel that if the figures are redrafted and revised by the Government, we will have housing imposed on us. The consultation was a complete sham.
Mr. Mark Prisk (Hertford and Stortford) (Con): I entirely endorse much of what my hon. Friend says. Does she share my concern that the change in Government policy on green belt, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) referred, means that speculators both in my constituency and, I believe, in her district, are pegging out fields for future development? The principle of green belt has been broken by Government policy.
Anne Main: I completely share my hon. Friend’s concern. What is more, developers use some of the Government’s press releases on their websites to encourage people to have hope value in particular parcels of land. Unfortunately, that makes it look as though the Government are hand in glove with developers, although the Government would not see it that way. Developers believe that they are being encouraged to proceed in that way.
Green belt can never come back. I know that that is an obvious statement, but it was there for a purpose. It was not meant to be a green field with views and a cow in it: one of its principal purposes was to prevent the coalescence of developments. That is the one element that cannot be compensated for, and St. Albans will end up joined up with Hemel Hempstead or Welwyn Hatfield.
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