Hertfordshire Housing Target

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.