Greg Clark
Main Page: Greg Clark (Conservative - Tunbridge Wells)(12 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Greg Clark)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of the National Planning Policy Framework.
It is a pleasure to be able to discuss our draft national planning policy framework and to hear the contributions of Members from all parties.
I welcome the new shadow Secretary of State to our exchanges for the first time. He is the third shadow Communities Secretary in a year, and we hope he will be around a little longer than his predecessors. He is a regular fixture on Thursdays, and I know he will be much missed in business questions, but we are looking forward to his contributions over the months ahead. May I also recognise the contribution of the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint)? As we all know, she is a doughty political fighter and quite a political pugilist, but she has approached planning issues with a desire to find common ground and a pragmatism appropriate to the issue.
Planning transcends the life of any one Government and builds the foundation on which future generations will live their lives. That is why it is so important, and why we should take the opportunity to put in place a planning system that ensures that the countryside is available in the future for our children and their children as it is for us, that they have decent homes to grow up in and that they live in places that are safe and encouraging rather than threatening and miserable. Those are the purposes of the planning system, and it is important that we have a shared perspective on them.
Today’s debate comes from a commitment that I made to this House and the other place when we published the draft national planning policy framework in July. I think it is right to have Parliament debate the proposals, and we have all afternoon for the debate so that the many Members present can put their views and their constituents’ views on the record. The same debate will be held in the House of Lords in the week ahead, and of course the debates follow a 12-week consultation period that closed this week. There have been vigorous contributions from all sides—never has planning policy been so popular an issue for debate. Despite what people might think, I welcome that, because it is of prime importance and should be discussed in the open rather than the preserve of specialists. The idea that planning policy statements should simply appear having been discussed behind closed doors, rather than engaging people, is the wrong one. Scrutiny of them is a good thing.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
It is absolutely right that we have an open and transparent debate. Will the Minister therefore explain in his speech the funds given to the Conservative party by property developers, and the secret meetings and breakfast meetings with them? What influence did they have on the drafting of the draft framework?
Greg Clark
I am very disappointed that the hon. Gentleman has taken that line. Property developers had no influence whatever on our draft policy framework.
Let me say something about the consultation in which we are engaged. The consultation closed on Monday, as Members will know. It would be neither fair nor legal for me to pre-empt the decisions that we will make in responding to the more than 10,000 responses that we received, as I am sure hon. Members will appreciate. Members might come up with brilliant suggestions and ideas in this afternoon’s debate, either by themselves or on behalf of their constituents, but I will be constrained from saying, “I agree with you; we’ll put it in,” or, “We’re minded to do that,” because that would prejudice our consideration of all the responses. Given that the consultation closed on Monday, Members will not be surprised to hear that I have not yet had time to review all the responses.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Let me say in a supportive way that we could have all the consultation in the world, but at the end of the day Ministers have to be brave, and that goes for every Minister I have known in my 30 years in this House. On the one hand, people want to protect their environment. On the other, 7 million people in this country need to be in decent housing, and there would be £2.5 billion-worth of infrastructure ready to be built—even for energy from waste—if the Government gave the go-ahead.
Greg Clark
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, but it is important to tackle the fundamentals. That is why, following our commitment to review the planning framework, our analysis was that it needed a fundamental review, even though it would have been easy simply to tinker with it and make minor changes. That is why we have made the proposals that we have and why I wanted the fullest possible consideration. We will take all representations into account. I am convinced that we will have a planning system that everyone in this Chamber can be proud of, and that we will take this opportunity to create a planning system that offers future generations better prospects.
Greg Clark
Let me make some progress, and then I will of course give way to hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber.
Let me set out the reasons for our reforms in context, which relates to the point that the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) raised. The first and overriding objective is to put power in the hands of local people. Over the years, we developed arrangements in this country—most recently through the regional strategies—that sought to resolve issues outside what people thought of as their communities. I understand the reasons for that and I do not think that those efforts were ill-intentioned by any means. However, the consequence has been that many people in this country feel that planning is something that is done to them, rather than something that involves them. I am not alone in saying that: the problem was also recognised in our discussions in Committee on the Localism Bill. The last planning Minister in the previous Government, the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) said:
“I inherited the regional spatial strategies and quickly found that they had…few friends…what was clear to me…was that our regional spatial strategies and our approach to planning…was too top-down”.—[Official Report, 30 June 2010; Vol. 512, c. 272WH.]
Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
This is really about definitions. I asked the Prime Minister a question about that, and he said that the measures were about giving power to local people, but does the Minister think that local people and local authorities are the same thing? These measures will give power to local authorities and planning committees, not to local people.
Greg Clark
I am pleased that the hon. Lady has raised that point. We are indeed giving power to local councils, which are the democratically elected representatives of local people. We are also scrapping the regional strategies that impose decisions on them. Crucially, however, the Localism Bill—many Members participated in the debates on it—creates the legal right to a neighbourhood plan in any parish, town or neighbourhood below the local authority level. It is absolutely right that neighbourhoods should have that ability, which is part of our reforms.
Bill Esterson
My constituents have similar concerns to those of my hon. Friends about the Bill’s impact. The biggest issue in my constituency is protection of the green belt. I am sure that the Minister is aware of the legal opinion obtained by the Campaign to Protect Rural England, which says that green-belt policy
“could be undermined by the sustainable development presumption together with the expectation that applications should be approved unless there are adverse impacts to policies in the NPPF as a whole.”
I hope that he will take that opinion on board, or does he have an alternative legal opinion that counters what the CPRE has said?
Greg Clark
I will address that point explicitly later in my remarks. I might just say, however, that the hon. Gentleman’s predecessor in Sunderland—
Greg Clark
I do apologise; the hon. Gentleman is from Sefton. I will therefore not make the point that I intended to.
Let me continue the point about the importance of putting local people in charge. The British people are a pretty bolshie lot, and when we feel that we are being dictated to from above, the natural response is to seek to frustrate, thwart, resist and impede whatever is being imposed without enjoying the consent of the community. We know from this country and around the world that it is good practice to involve people in plan-making early and to allow them a genuine say in producing plans for their area, because then they will participate with enthusiasm. People are right to resist when bad planning is done to them, but when good planning is done with them, they will prefer to get involved and create positive places. That is why we are scrapping the regional strategies and the right of the Planning Inspectorate to rewrite local plans and why we are introducing compulsory pre-application scrutiny for major developments and neighbourhood plans to ensure a local voice.
Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)
Local decisions by local councils are important, but may I draw the Minister’s attention to what has happened in my constituency within 48 hours of the consultation closing? The neighbouring local authority, Tendring, decided to allocate land for about 3,000 houses immediately adjacent to the borough boundary with Colchester, 2 miles away from the nearest community in Tendring. In other words, our neighbouring authority is putting its housing on Colchester’s doorstep. Who will make the decision there?
Greg Clark
My hon. Friend will understand that planning Ministers cannot comment on specific situations such as the one that he raises, for reasons that he knows. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) also knows perfectly well why that is not possible. However, over the years there have been examples of precisely such situations, which is why the Localism Bill will impose a legal duty on neighbouring authorities and other public bodies to co-operate, so that both authorities take into account the consequences for the neighbouring area’s infrastructure. That is an important test in the Localism Bill—indeed, it was strengthened by consensus with the Opposition—that will provide the kind of general protections that my hon. Friend seeks.
Greg Clark
I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma) and then make some progress.
Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)
I thank the Minister for everything that he is saying about delivering localism in planning, for which those of us on the Government Benches have campaigned over many years. We are therefore pleased to see it happening. However, does my right hon. Friend agree that the reason we have to make such fundamental changes is that the system we inherited was not fit for purpose? The top-down approach did not work, which is why we did not have the sustainable development that we should have had during the 13 years of the Labour Government.
Greg Clark
My hon. Friend is right, and that is now a shared view. As I have said, the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne has said that. Indeed, in our conversations about the Localism Bill, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), whom I congratulate on his promotion, also recognised that the regional approach would go and not come back. It has not worked for the reasons that I have mentioned: it sets people against the planning system.
Greg Clark
I want to make some progress, because lots of Members want to speak and I do not want to take up too much time. However, I will take some interventions a little later.
The first objective is to make the local plan central to what happens and to transfer power to local communities. That has to be crucial. However, if we are to put local councils and people in neighbourhoods in charge, it is essential that the policy context in which they operate is accessible. They have to be able to understand it. When I first started to review the planning policy statements and planning policy guidance notes over a year ago, I asked for them to be brought into my office. They had to be carried in—in boxes. It is not possible to put local councils and members in charge if they have to wade through more than 1,000 pages of national policy. The policy has accreted over time. It was not the intention of the previous Government or Governments before them to accumulate such a mountain of policy; it has grown up piecemeal over time. That is why—to respond to the hon. Member for Huddersfield, who has now left the Chamber—it was important to take the issue seriously and review the policy from first principles. That is what we have done to make it accessible. The proposals that we have received to boil it down and distil it reflect a consensus in the House and beyond. In the submissions that have come in from the groups outside the House, I have seen many detailed “track changes” comments, and none of the proposals departs significantly from the type and length of document that we are aiming for.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on having elevated the debate on planning policy, which is vital for the economic future of the country. May I also tell him, however, that all those who work in the planning system now need certainty? Will he move on as quickly as possible from the consultation to provide a definitive national planning policy framework, to give us that certainty?
Greg Clark
I want to make some progress, because this is principally an opportunity for colleagues to make speeches and contributions to the consultation.
We need to make planning policy accessible if we are to achieve our aim of putting local communities in charge. That is the purpose of our reforms. It is also important to consider the effects of the policy regime that we have established. I do not pretend that the planning system is the only factor behind the low levels of house building and the difficulties in commercial development that we have at the moment. That would clearly be wrong. There are also difficulties in accessing finance, for example; there is a shared recognition that that is an important factor at this time. It is important to recognise, however, that the planning system makes an important contribution.
I have been looking at the joint submission from Shelter, Crisis, Homeless Link, the National Housing Federation—representing social housing providers—and the Chartered Institute of Housing. It says that
“reducing the quantity of policy will help simplify the planning system, make it more accessible to all users and will remove a significant barrier to much needed development”
—in this case, in social housing. Recent statistics show that in the five years to 2010, real spending on planning, through planning applications, increased by 13%, while the number of applications fell by 32%. By my reckoning, that means that the average cost has risen by something like 66%. That is a factor.
Greg Clark
May I just finish this point?
The British Chambers of Commerce has said that the system is
“too complicated, too costly and too uncertain. It creates mistrust…and holds back our recovery.”
With that breadth of analysis, it is important to recognise that the planning system is one of the factors that is leading to the silting up of the system.
Mr Raynsford
Does the Minister not recognise that, if he takes the period of five years from 2005 to 2010, which embraced the last two years of the boom before the crash and the three years of recession, he will inevitably get some pretty distorted outcomes? That is not a fair parallel. Does he also accept that, in 2007, the last year before the recession, the figure of 207,000 net additions to new housing was the highest for 20 years? It is therefore completely nonsensical of him to say that the previous system was not capable of delivering new housing.
Greg Clark
It will be obvious to the right hon. Gentleman that I am taking a long-term view. I have said explicitly that the faults that I have diagnosed relate to the long term, but he chooses to cite particular years. Looking at the whole life of the previous Government, from 1998 to 2010, the number of homes built and completed in England was lower than under any previous Government since the war. He is therefore alone in thinking that there is not a problem, and that we do not have a lower level of house building than is appropriate.
Let me outline the consequences of the problem for families. If we persist, over the long term, in building a far lower number of homes than the number of households that are being formed, the inevitable consequence will be poverty. People will have to spend more in rent and have less to spend on their children. It will also be more difficult for people to get on to the housing ladder for the first time. We know that the average age for first-time buyers who do not have assistance from their parents is now getting close to middle age, at nearly 40. We want people to be able to get on; we do not want them to have to make choices.
I received an e-mail from a member of the public, which stated:
“Being part of a couple with a 2-year-old son, living in a flat…we are desperate to buy a family home with a garden, but have little chance.
The social consequences of house prices being so high seem catastrophic to me—both parents being fixated on earning enough to pay for a mortgage, both too”—
the next word might be unparliamentary—
“for much of a social life, every…penny going on the mortgage with nothing left over for holidays that I took for granted as a child. We are currently having to decide whether to abandon our families and friends and go and live…where neither of us has lived before…or to stay in our flat, with our son unable to run around without the people underneath us banging on the ceiling!”
There is a problem for families that we need to address by changing the system and dealing with some of the long-term flaws. That is the purpose of this policy.
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
I am with the Minister when it comes to abolishing the regional spatial strategies. They were authoritarian and anti-democratic in just apportioning numbers of houses to particular regions. I have concerns about the proposals, however. One of the factors in helping urban regeneration and the renaissance of our cities has been the prioritisation of brownfield land over greenfield land. The Minister is talking about poverty and the creation of new households, but those problems have to be dealt with in our cities. I am worried that his proposals will lead not to green-belt development but to green-land development at the expense of our cities. Will he comment on that?
Greg Clark
Of course I will. Let me turn to some of the concerns that have been raised, of which that is one. I shall preface that by saying that it is not our intention to change the purpose of the planning system. There has been some suggestion that the proposals represent a fundamental change in what the system is about, but they do not. They will, quite rightly, balance the environmental, the social and the economic, and there is no change in that regard, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has declared.
Let me turn to some of the concerns that have been expressed, including the definition of brownfield sites that the hon. Gentleman has just mentioned. It is true that the draft national planning policy framework does not use the words “brownfield sites”. However, that is not for the reasons that have been imputed to us. The reasons are rather more prosaic. Many Members will have participated in debates during the previous Parliament in which we discussed the fact that it was being presumed that gardens that had ended up being included in the brownfield definition were available to be developed. One of the first things that we did was to take them out of the definition.
Greg Clark
I am responding to the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer).
In the draft framework, we decided not to use what had been quite a crude definition. Another example—something that I did not know before—is that a china clay quarry in Cornwall apparently falls outside the definition of a brownfield site. Paragraph 165 of the national planning policy framework therefore contains a requirement on councils to allocate land of the lowest environmental value. That was suggested by the environmental charities. There have been representations to say that some strictly brownfield land that has been developed has, over the years, been put back into use to support nature, especially in our cities. That was the reason behind having a more environmentally based definition.
Without pre-empting the consultation, which would clearly be wrong, let me say that there have been suggestions that, because some people have got used to the word “brownfield”, they might appreciate some reference—some explanation—that links the policy to that. That is a representation that has been made, and given that it is our intention, for all the reasons that the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton suggests, to ensure that we bring back into use first land that has been derelict or previously developed and that makes a lesser contribution than green fields, that will be made absolutely clear when we respond.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
The planning framework also requires local authorities to bring forward an additional 20% spare land beyond the sites required to meet their five-year housing supply, so it is entirely possible that one sixth of all the land made available in the plan is not developed, while the rest of it is developed. We could therefore see development on land that is certainly not of the least environmental value.
Greg Clark
It is the Government’s clear intention that it should be the case, as it is a requirement to bring forward land of the least environmental value, but let me comment on my hon. Friend’s point about the sixth year, as it were. If we are putting local plans first and genuinely want a local plan that is sovereign and determines what will happen for the future life of a community, it must be deliverable, sound and accurate. What is known empirically across the country is that not every piece of land that is allocated turns out to be capable of development in the way anticipated. Sometimes there can be fewer homes developed on a site than originally thought, with an allocation for six or seven homes ending up with only four or five, for various reasons—perhaps a tree is subject to a tree preservation order, for example. There is always some fallout. The proposal in the consultation suggests that if we are to plan for the number of homes that are really needed—there is no longer any number being handed down from above—we have to anticipate some drop-off, so a buffer is necessary. It is not a requirement to build any more homes than needed; the purpose is simply to make the plan as accurate as it can be.
Greg Clark
I want to make some progress, as I want Members to able to contribute to the debate. Let me deal with a couple of important issues that have been raised about the definition of sustainability.
Mr Betts
Let me ask the Minister about the issue of 20%, as it is important to the context of building on land where that building will have the least environmental damage. If there is an extra 20%, will local authorities be able to prioritise which sites should be developed first within the 120% requirement? If not, it will be open to developers to cherry pick which sites they build on and it will be the land associated with the least environmental damage that will be left behind, as they will be the hardest sites to build on, while the greenfield sites will be built on first.
Greg Clark
The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point; it is exactly the intention that councils should be able to prioritise and to bring forward the lowest environmentally valuable sites first. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point.
Greg Clark
I want to make some progress, and the hon. Lady intervened earlier.
Let me say something about the definition of sustainability, which I know has attracted some interest. The definition that we have used is the one used by previous Governments. It is the Brundtland commission’s definition, which has stood the test of time. It has been suggested that it is a high-level definition, so there should be a further elaboration of it. Hon. Members will know that planning policy statement 1, for example, contains the Brundtland definition in one paragraph and includes an extra 10 lines referring to the sustainable development strategy. That has been part of the previous document and some organisations and perhaps some Members have suggested that we should make reference to the current version of the sustainable development strategy, the 2005 document.
Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. It appears that rumours are circulating that Colonel Gaddafi has been captured. If that is true, will you ask a Secretary of State or a Minister to make a statement to the House today?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
What I can say is that it is up to the Secretary of State to decide whether to make a statement. The point has been noted and everybody is aware of it. Has the Minister finished?
Greg Clark
That was more hope than expectation, Mr Deputy Speaker. I will finish shortly. I did not think anything more interesting would happen today than our discussion of the national planning policy framework, but I was clearly mistaken.
The Government have not revoked the sustainable development strategy of 2005. Members of the Environmental Audit Committee who interviewed me last week asked some questions about it and it is the subject of one of the suggestions that have been made in the consultation. Let me explain why it was not included in the draft as it stands. As I say, it has not been revoked or repealed in any way. It is simply a matter of whether a document produced in 2005 has the timelessness of the Brundtland definition.
It was necessary to update the 1999 strategy in 2005. Six years on, there are some respects in which thinking on sustainability has progressed. For example, there is the idea that the separate pillars of the economy, the environment and the social aspects of sustainability can be traded off, one against the other. Some people argue—and I think there is some merit in doing so—that that is a rather defensive position and that one should be looking for positive improvements to the environment, not simply to trade-off. That is very much the thinking in the Government’s natural environment White Paper, which talked of a net gain for nature. In response to the consultation we could listen to such representations, but let me say simply that our intention was to make sure that we are not stranded in our thinking when we might have a more progressive approach to sustainability.
Greg Clark
I am not taking any more interventions, as Mr Deputy Speaker has indicated that he thinks I have spoken for long enough.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
It was the Minister himself, not me, who said that he would be brief in order to allow Back Benchers to contribute. The Minister may carry on.
Greg Clark
You are correct and punctilious, Mr Deputy Speaker, in holding me to my commitment.
Let me deal with another issue of concern—transitional arrangements.
Greg Clark
I am taking no more interventions.
It follows from everything I have said about the purpose of these reforms, which is to advantage local plan-making by putting local communities in charge rather than have planning dealt with by appeal through the planning inspectorate, that in the transitional arrangements we will put in place—again, in response to the consultation; we have had many representations on what they should be—we will be clear that no local council or authority that has developed a plan that expresses the future of its community will be at all disadvantaged. We are not going to take decision making from them. Part of the transitional arrangements will ensure that the community is advantaged rather than disadvantaged from the outset. It would pre-empt the consultation if I were to say which suggested approaches we favour, but I make the commitment to the House that we will safeguard and strengthen the ability of local councils to be in charge of their own destiny rather than the reverse.
As was recognised by the hon. Member for Huddersfield, this debate has provided an opportunity for every Member to participate in the reform of a planning system that, over time, had lost its capability of delivering its purpose of planning for communities in a way that we all want. The reforms are necessary to make sure that we have an environment that our future generations can cherish as we do. It is important to give voices to people in communities and, for all the reasons I mentioned about sustainability, it is important to improve and enhance our environment and to restore habitats where we can do so. We also want to improve the standards of design, which have turned many people against development. We also want, of course, to deliver the jobs and homes that the next generation needs, but not at the expense of these important aspects of the environment that we cherish.
I look forward to hearing the contributions of hon. Members this afternoon and to reading all the responses to the consultation that have been made. At the end of this process, I say to every hon. Member, we will have a planning system that reflects the best endeavours and the best intentions of everyone who wants to contribute positively to this process. It will be something of which we can be proud for future generations.
Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)
This is an interesting and important debate, not least because it comes in the context of the Government’s intention to be the “greenest Government ever”. We must ask how their planning policies sit within that ambition. This debate comes as the climate change talks and Rio+20 are about to take place. We want the Government to go to those international negotiations with real leadership, backed up by the action that is being taken at home. That action must relate to planning policy.
It is important that this matter is considered as a cross-cutting issue. Whatever the Department for Communities and Local Government puts before Parliament has to be consistent with the policies of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department of Energy and Climate Change, so that the national policy statements about major infrastructure investments sit side by side with the localism agenda and planning policies. One problem with this consultation is that it is still being brought forward with a silo mentality. The Minister urgently needs to cross-reference it so that everything that comes about as a result of the new planning policies is consistent with the business plans of other Departments that relate to sustainable development. Otherwise, sustainable development will not underpin everything that is done.
Having made those general comments, I wish to congratulate many of the Members who have spoken, not least my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who chairs the Communities and Local Government Committee. It is important that the Minister and Parliament take account of the scrutiny that takes place in Parliament, which is why this parliamentary debate is so important. If Parliament is to be fit for purpose, fit for the 21st century and fit to create the policies that we will need in generations to come, it is right that the Minister should give an undertaking when he responds that he will give us more time to take account of what is said by the Select Committees of the House of Commons. I am sure that the Liaison Committee will want to consider that as well.
Every Member of this House represents their constituency first and foremost. I will therefore say a brief word about an issue that relates to my constituency of Stoke-on-Trent North. It is the issue of brownfield sites, which many Members including my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) have mentioned.
I was interested that the Minister gave away the fact that the priority that there used to be to develop on brownfield sites has somehow been lost as a result of the need to prevent development in gardens. There are large industrial or former industrial parts of the country with huge amounts of brownfield site. In Stoke-on-Trent we have 175 hectares of brownfield land available for development. If we do not get the planning policy framework right, developers and property companies will cherry-pick green belt and greenfield sites.
Joan Walley
But where are the inducements to build houses in Stoke-on-Trent, where there is planning permission for them? It is not the planning permission system that is failing; it is the policies of the Treasury and other Departments. They are not ensuring that we can build the homes that are so desperately needed on brownfield sites.
I wish to mention the role of the Environmental Audit Committee. I am very pleased that we are collaborating with the Communities and Local Government Committee to examine the whole issue of planning. Our Select Committee has been charged with considering the definition of “sustainable development”. That is a key issue, and Ministers from DCLG and DEFRA were before the Committee in a united stance just last week. The present Minister gave what I thought was an undertaking to go away and look at the evidence—I stress that we are examining evidence-based representations. He now needs to consider how the detailed recommendations that we will make on a definition of “sustainable development” can be integrated into the national planning policy framework before it is too late. That is critical.
Greg Clark
The hon. Gentleman is seeking to draw partisanship into the debate. Has he listened to the words of the former Labour housing Minister, Lord Rooker, in the House of Lords last week when he was introducing a debate? He said clearly:
“I am actually with the Government on this issue…The draft planning policy nowhere near seeks to destroy our countryside, areas of outstanding natural beauty, the green belt or our vast open countryside. Those are the facts”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 13 October 2011; Vol. 730, c. 1836.]
Why is the hon. Gentleman trying to create contention where there is none?
Tristram Hunt
I believe in contention. I think it is a good thing. Politics results from it. I think that the noble Lord Rooker is not unfamiliar with contention either.
Deregulating planning does not deliver the kind of economic growth that the Government think it does. We have only to look at Spain, Ireland or the American states of Arizona or Nevada to realise that a strategy of ex-urban sprawl does not deliver such growth. As the Minister should know, business park vacancies currently stand at 17% and 1.6 million square feet of commercial space is free for letting. In a recent letter to the Financial Times, the planning adviser Paul Hackett revealed that when he was asked to investigate Treasury claims that the planning system was a barrier to growth, he
“failed to find any convincing evidence, other than planning controls holding back speculative development by developers and out of town supermarkets and hoteliers”,
that the previous system had undermined sustainable economic growth.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) said, both her and I are privileged to represent a city facing challenges of growth, structural economic change and structural unemployment. We do not think that ending the “brownfield first” and the “town centre first” strategies will provide the kind of development, housing and businesses that we want in Stoke-on-Trent, not least because, as the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney) suggested, we have 750,000 homes sitting empty and existing planning permission for 330,000 unbuilt houses. The problem for development in many situations, particularly for housing, is as much about the financial and mortgage systems as it is about the planning system.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North said, we want a proper definition of sustainable development, a return of the “brownfield first” policy—we welcome the Minister’s elongated U-turn on that—the dropping of the default “yes” when a plan is out of date or silent, a recognition of the intrinsic value of the unprotected countryside, not just green belt, that covers so much of England, and a return to the “town centre first” policy and, with it, the sequential policy. All those decisions would benefit our constituents, who want not only urban regeneration in Stoke-on-Trent but the protection of the Staffordshire moorlands and the towns and villages surrounding it.
As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, next year marks the centenary of the death of Octavia Hill, the founder of the National Trust—perhaps she was a left-wing nihilist, although I doubt it. Instead, she believed in good housing, vibrant cities and a natural environment
“for the enjoyment, refreshment, and rest of those who have no country house, but who need, from time to time, this outlook over the fair land which is their inheritance as Englishmen”.
I hope that we now have a Government who believe the same.