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4.47 pm
Mr. Ivor Caplin (Hove): I was appalled by the comments of the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo). His brazen attacks on Ministers did a disservice to politics and had nothing to do with the subject of the debate. He and his party should be ashamed.
My constituency has the downs to the north and the sea to the south. I asked the Council for the Protection of Rural England where we should build houses. It did not have an answer. There is no answer in my constituency. I should like to address the issue for some colleagues in West Sussex, who have been moaning about the decision. With the exception of the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames)--he is no longer the hon. Member for Crawley--they were not around in 1994-95, when I was leader of Hove borough council and was trying to develop a harbourside site in Hove.
The problem that we had with infrastructure was simple. West Sussex county council, run by the Conservatives, was not interested in discussions about the development of that site. Over the past few years, it has blocked every opportunity to create a development there, time and again.
Mr. Loughton:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Caplin:
Yes, I should like to hear an explanation from a newcomer to the area.
Mr. Loughton:
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman--also a newcomer to his seat--for giving way to me, because I could not allow him to get away with the complete nonsense that he was talking. Does he not acknowledge that the reason why Shoreham harbour, most of which is in my consistency, has not been developed is that he and his colleagues have said, "One more lorry? Over my dead body"? They have not allowed any more transport to get to the site, and, without that transport infrastructure, nothing can be built.
Mr. Caplin:
That proves who is in charge and who is responsible for the environment. We say that we do not
I shall now talk about housing and retail superstores, which I notice Conservative Members have not mentioned. When I asked the Council for the Protection of Rural England the other day where we should go to build houses, the first thing to which it referred me was the 1995 document, "Where shall we live?"
That document was generated by the Conservative Government, and mentioned the total of 4.4 million new homes that the Minister has already mentioned. However, it did nothing but ask a question. It had no suggestions about how to deal with the issues. The Conservative spokesman, the hon. Member for South Suffolk, did not give any explanation either about how the Tories proposed to deal with them.
Mr. John Gummer (Suffolk, Coastal)
rose--
Mr. Caplin:
I have only 10 minutes, so it had better be short.
Mr. Gummer:
May I remind the hon. Gentleman that in that document and in the material accompanying it we said that we would build at least 60 per cent. of the new homes on brown-field sites, and that I said further that we would hope to build 75 per cent. of them there. The fact that the Government have now stuck to a target of 50 per cent. means that my hon. Friend has had to say that when we are returned in four years' time his target will have to be downgraded, simply because, over the next four years the Government will not have done what we promised we would do, and were doing.
Mr. Caplin:
I do not know which document the right hon. Gentleman has been writing or reading, but it is not "Where shall we live?" What he says is not in that document, I am sorry to say. Let me remind him and his hon. Friends that what the Conservative spokesman said earlier is that in 18 years of Conservative Government the figure rose from 38 to 50 per cent. He never accepted until this afternoon, or until the "Today" programme, or wherever he has been appearing, that the target should be higher for house building on brown-field sites. After all that time, the right hon. Gentleman has obviously got mixed up.
In my constituency, the problem is that we have a high level of homelessness, so we need to build new homes, but we cannot build them because we do not have the space. No one has the answer, and the neighbouring Conservative council is trying to block any development ideas.
Mr. Caplin:
Let me tell hon. Members what happened in the past. There was a proposal to dig up green land in Hove and build a superstore. Along came the developers with their ideas, and the local Labour party, of which I was leader in the late 1980s, objected. Even the local Tories objected with us. Then along came a Secretary of State and said, "Of course you can knock down the golf course and build a superstore". That was the Tories' policy, and they cannot deny it, today or ever.
What we have heard this afternoon has been not only hypocrisy but the arrogance that got the Conservatives kicked out on 1 May. It is still there now that they are in opposition, and it is about time they had some humility before the electorate and admitted their gross mistakes over the past 18 years, when they allowed concrete to be generated all over the United Kingdom. They alone were responsible for the developments in that time. Now, as in so many areas of policy, the Labour Government have to come along and clear up the mess.
The other day, I went to a meeting chaired by the right hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King), with my hon. Friend the Member for Swindon--
Mr. David Drew (Stroud):
Stroud.
Mr. Caplin:
Sorry, Stroud; it is somewhere close by.
I was appalled by the comments made at the meeting. It was an attempt by the Conservative party to use the Council for the Protection of Rural England, a respectable organisation, as a front. I say clearly to the CPRE, "Don't be used by the Conservatives."
Mr. Loughton:
What about Lord Rogers?
Mr. Caplin:
Lord Rogers was there making a point, and he was perfectly entitled to make it. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Mr. Loughton) was not there.
Mr. Caplin:
Well if he was, he certainly did not contribute.
The CPRE was being used by the Tories for their own ends. The House must stand up against such action. [Interruption.] I hope that if the hon. Member for South Suffolk sums up later, he makes a better speech than he did at the beginning--and if he does, he may like to comment on what I have said.
There are always tough decisions to take when one is in government, whether central or local. That has always been clear to people. Local authorities are capable of taking decisions in their localities. However, far too often they pass difficult decisions to the Government.
In modernising the planning process, we have a duty, as I hope the Minister who replies will say, to allow local authorities to make decisions and not to pass them up the line. If they pass decisions to the Government, often a bizarre inspector comes in and makes a ridiculous decision.
I shall give the House an example. About two years ago, an appeal was lodged concerning a golf driving range on an area of green land abutting my constituency. I went to the meeting as a councillor, to represent my constituents. Two applications had been made, one for a golf driving range, which would have been a tremendous development, and the other for a car park.
Mr. Matthew Taylor (Truro and St. Austell):
I start by congratulating the right hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) on his comments. They were well reasoned, and brought a better tone to the debate than that provided by the two Front-Bench speakers. The right hon. Gentleman took a strong stand on the subject even before the general election and opposed some of what the previous Government were doing, so, on that ground alone, he displays a measure of consistency, which is welcome in the debate.
Not many statistics have caused as much recent turmoil as the Conservative Government's adoption of the projection--accepted so far by the new Government--that by 2016, a total of 4.4 million new homes will be needed for newly created households.
I shall deal with those numbers first. The Opposition Front-Bench spokesman somewhat sidestepped them. However, there are real doubts about the housing projections, and those doubts must be addressed, because once land is released for development it will be almost impossible to retrieve it from the developers if the numbers turn out to have been wrong.
I shall give one important example. There is undoubtedly a rising number of people living alone in Britain, for reasons such as divorce, and the facts that young people leave home earlier and old people live longer independently. However, the Council for the Protection of Rural England has rightly pointed out that the effect of a related trend, cohabitation, has been seriously underestimated.
During the 1980s, the number of unmarried couples choosing to living together more than doubled, yet the Government predict that over the next 25 years the number will remain virtually static. Given the fact that nine out of 10 people who leave marriages go on to cohabit with someone else, the Government's projection is, to say the least, conservative. It should be re-examined, because such figures make an important difference. If, over the next 25 years, the rate of increase in cohabitation continues along the 1980s line, 1.4 million fewer homes will be required.
Of course, even if the problems with housing predictions are resolved, it is likely that a substantial number of new homes will still be needed. I do not believe that anyone argues against that.
With development on such a scale, it is essential that the right kind of housing is provided: housing that meets the requirements of new householders. I believe that current policy is fatally flawed in that regard. The Environment Select Committee considered the issue last year and said:
The Institute of Housing, in a submission to the Select Committee, said that it was vital that the figure of 4.4 million should not simply be taken as a green light to
developers, but that proper consideration should be given to where houses should be built, what types of houses are needed, and what local services and businesses should be located around them, to make the house a home in a successful, functioning community. Those powers no longer rest with the local authorities and are not exercised by Government.
On close consideration of the type of household that will develop in the future, it should be obvious that estates of big houses in the most beautiful areas of the countryside may well meet part of the demand for housing and satisfy developers' need for profit, but they will certainly not meet housing need, which is a different issue. That is especially the case for social housing: homes for the elderly and for single young people on low incomes, which will not easily be provided by the housing market.
Rural people are genuinely concerned about the loss of green-field sites around their towns and villages, but most are not NIMBYs. They accept that there will be changes in the character of the countryside, but reject the idea that the answer to housing need is to allow companies to build rows of large detached houses around every village. In Cornwall, there is certainly real support for homes for local people--every village survey has shown that--but not for ever more suburban semis catering to incomers and the rich retired.
The Conservative Members who still represent rural areas have been very agitated recently about development in the countryside, but the figure of 4.4 million was the product of the Conservative Government, who allowed huge rural development, and especially out-of-town shopping centres, often despite local refusals, and even overturning planning inspectors' reports.
Cornwall, including my constituency, suffered many such cases. I say suffered because, in an area in which many town centres are filled with struggling businesses, shoppers are being lured away. That is bad not only for the town centre business but for the countryside, because the more derelict town centres become, the less people want to live in them; so the move out into the countryside is encouraged. The new Government started to create policies to put that right, but, frankly, they shut the stable door long after the horse had bolted, and the existing permissions will be taken up for many years to come.
We must consider whether the fact that many people want to leave urban areas and have a different life style is a sign of the attractions of living in the countryside--despite the hours of commuting to which many people subject themselves--or of the policy in cities and towns going wrong.
Urban areas can and should be places where people want to live, even when they earn a larger salary. Indeed, some of the most expensive and desirable housing in the country--in Kensington or Bath, for example--is inner-urban and developed to an extent that would not be allowed by planners, who would say that it was too dense.
"developers will naturally wish to build homes which will maximise their profits and . . . there may therefore exist a dynamic which will effectively inhibit the building of homes which are affordable by those on low incomes."
Conservative Ministers would not accept that point at the time, because they believed that the market, combined with councils requiring developers to include some social housing, would be more than adequate. I believe that they were wrong.
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