Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. First, we are introducing a duty to co-operate, so that one authority has to be talking to its neighbour in order to get its local plan signed off. Secondly, I can confirm today that the flow of new money from the new homes bonus will be some £900 million, even before top-slicing in the later years, so it will be a significant amount. In that context, there is nothing to prevent one local authority from speaking to its neighbour and saying, “Look, we’d like to build these homes here, but we recognise that this would have some impact on you there. We will come to a deal with you, and if we’re both happy it will go into our local plan.”

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

When a local authority has decided to take the money from the homes bonus, little though it is, at the expense of a neighbouring local authority or in the face of local opposition, whose views will take precedence—the local authority taking the money, local people, or the neighbouring local authority?

[Grant Shapps]

I am amused that the hon. Gentleman thinks that billions of pounds is little money: it shows how the Opposition thought about taxpayers’ money when they were in power. It is a large amount of money and it will make a significant difference. The answer—although I know this is a strange concept to Opposition Members—is something called democracy. It is called asking voters what they want and putting a local plan in place that reflects the local population’s wishes, not what the Minister wants here in Whitehall, as happened under the old regional spatial strategies.