Hertfordshire Housing Target

I take the point, Mr. Olner. You will know that Hertfordshire is very near London. The vast majority of those coming from abroad come initially to London and, in turn, people from all ethnic groups in London move out to Hertfordshire. They are very welcome, but that is the pressure that we face. An indirect consequence of that flow is that there is huge pressure on housing in Hertfordshire. We want some recognition of that from the Government. If the Government think that the process needs to continue, we want an open justification of it. We want an end to the pretence that it is not a factor and, above all, an end to the pretence that anyone who discusses this factor in a reasonable and sensible way is somehow pandering to racism. If we do not discuss these things openly, we let the British National party have a field day. That is not what I want. It already has a foothold in other parts of Hertfordshire, and I do not want the BNP to spread into my part of the county, thank you very much. We face a serious situation in Hertfordshire: young people are unable to get homes, those who do are mortgage slaves for much of their lives, there is increasing pressure on our green belt, our facilities and infrastructure are under stress and strain, and greater strains will be imposed on those if we have a rising population rather than if we simply cope with the tendency for people to live in smaller households. There are pressures on our health service, schools, infrastructure, water supply and roads, which are aggravated by the pressures posed by potential development of the two airports in Hertfordshire. I hope that the Government will think again about their attempts to impose targets of this size on our area, and about their policy of no longer treating the green belt as sacrosanct, and come clean with the people of Hertfordshire about what they are up to.