Sustainable Communities Bill

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. The Bill will make the Government more responsive to an issue that arouses genuine passion and concern—the problem of community decline in Britain. It will push the Government to go further in giving real power to local authorities and the people whom they serve. That is the only path to delivering sustainable communities that will stand the test of time. The Bill is tenacious—in various forms, it has fought for life for more than five years. It is therefore right to start by paying tribute to the work of hon. Members who sponsored and supported its previous incarnations. I am thinking in particular of the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy) of the Liberal Democrats, the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) of the Labour party and my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), who is sitting alongside me. I also wish to place on record my respect for the campaign group, Local Works, which has built and held together an extraordinary coalition to support the Bill. The breadth of that coalition is amazing. Any Bill that unites the Campaign for Real Ale and the National Federation of Women’s Institutes must be worth considering. The Bill’s principles unite 72 other national organisations, 300 local organisations, 1,000 parish councils, nearly 100 local authorities, the Conservative party, the Liberal Democrats and last, but by no means least, 170 Labour Members of Parliament who signed early-day motion 641 in the previous Session. I am told that, since then, the proportion of Labour Members of Parliament who have expressed support for the principles of the Bill has risen to more than 50 per cent. Out of respect for the strong cross-party support for the measure, I weighted the list of sponsors to reflect the balance of hon. Members in the House. A sensible Minister would consider seriously any Bill that can forge such consensus, and I believe that we are dealing today with a sensible Minister—the Minister for Local Government. Time will tell. He should be encouraged to resist the predictable frogs’ chorus of opposition from Department officials suffering from not-invented-here syndrome. He should be in no doubt about the chord that the measure and the principles behind it has struck with the public we serve. Twenty thousand people have signed up to the Local Works campaign. Hon. Members who have taken part in the more than 70 public meetings throughout the country will testify that they have been packed and vociferous in their support for the measure. What drives the rainbow coalition? It is common concern about what appears to be remorseless community decline in Britain and what that means for quality of life. The decline is well documented, not least through the incisive work of the New Economics Foundation and the all-party group on small shops. It is driven by the loss of key local services—often the hubs of the community. The statistics are stark. In the past decade, we have lost a fifth of our post office network, a quarter of our local grocery stores, a quarter of our bank branch network and more than 30,000 independent community retailers—the people who can often brighten our day with their enthusiasm and passion for the management of their business and their willingness to help others. The decline affects not only the high street but the quality of our public spaces. According to English Heritage, 40 per cent. of urban parks are in decline, with only 18 per cent. considered to be in good condition. Spending on community halls has also suffered a dramatic decline in real terms in the past 25 years. However, hon. Members do not need statistics or third-party reports to grasp that problem. Most of us have all the evidence that we need in our constituencies. In Ruislip and Northwood, we are fighting a constant battle to try to preserve the identity and character of places such as Harefield and Eastcote in the face of enormous pressure. Those open spaces are under threat from the planning regime. Local shopping parades struggle with the challenge of big, uniform warehouses, squatting on a ring road that is choked with traffic. Local service providers are under constant budget pressure, without the flexibility to respond if they do not comply with national targets. Yet I suspect that we are the lucky ones. Across Britain, people living in many town centres and small rural towns and villages feel that the guts of their community have been ripped out. It is not enough for us in this place to say, ““Oh well, that’s the market working”” because, in some cases, such as post offices, public policy has been a driver. We are confronted with growing evidence of the genuine social cost that the market trend imposes on us. It is a cost to the communities in which we live and that we hope to pass on to others as vibrant places to live, work and raise children. It is also a cost on our ability to deal with some themes that should concern us nationally. I should like to concentrate briefly on four of them. First, there is the cost to our quality of life, which is felt particularly by elderly people, who tend to be less mobile and rely more heavily on local services, such as the shop on the corner or the community pharmacy. It is no surprise that both Age Concern and Help the Aged are vociferous supporters of the Bill. The latter put it well:"““we want older people to live successful and independent lives in the community… The drift into Ghost Town Britain is not only undesirable and unacceptable but in terms of increased pressure on public safety net provision, it will be costly””." The growing risk of street crime is also of concern. In my constituency, the once vibrant shopping parade in Northwood Hills is struggling to avoid a spiral of decline. As leases come up for renewal, independent shops give way to fast food outlets, which bring litter and attract yobs who intimidate and vandalise. As a result, resources are diverted, not least from the police, residents get disillusioned and the circle and cycle of decline continues. Secondly, there is a cost to our economy, as the loss of community retailers means that less money is circulating around local producers. Small businesses rely heavily on post offices and local bank branches for the management of their cash flow. That ought to be a real concern for central Government, because the vibrancy of the small business sector matters hugely at the national level. Small businesses employ half the work force in the country. Under normal conditions, they should be the engine of growth and innovation in the economy. Declining high streets and the concentration of retail power appear to be working against their interests. Community decline therefore carries a big cost to our quality of life and to our economy. Thirdly, there is the cost to the environment, local and global. The local cost of community decline can be found in dirty streets, badly maintained parks and children’s playgrounds covered in graffiti—in my constituency, often on the morning after having been set up. The global cost stems from our increased dependence on the car and our difficulty in meeting targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Minister should need no reminding that carbon dioxide emissions have risen in this country since 1997, and that transport is widely recognised to be the problem sector. It represents 20 per cent. of emissions and is the only sector whose emissions are growing. About two thirds of transport emissions come from motor vehicles. Those emissions have grown by 8 per cent. between 1990 and 2000 and the Government forecast that they will grow by another 8 per cent. between 2000 and 2010. We have an urgent imperative to control those emissions. The path to reducing emissions does not lie simply in encouraging us to drive cleaner cars. We need to consider how land and space can be used more intelligently to reduce our need to travel. What we are allowing to happen flies in the face of that. With the loss of local amenities, we are having to travel more. The average person now travels a staggering 893 miles a year to shop for food, which is itself now travelling ridiculous distances to reach the supermarket.