Hertfordshire Housing Target

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) on securing the debate, and my hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans (Anne Main) on her speech. The debate is timely and they have both shown how passionately the issue is debated in our area of Hertfordshire. It is important to remember that, with 1 million people, Hertfordshire is already one of the most densely populated shire counties in England. That is the essential context within which any future housing targets should be debated. The Government have published plans for up to 93,200 more houses in Hertfordshire by 2021, including up to 22,000 in my district. In English, that means an extra 200,000 people—an increase of 20 per cent. in 15 years. The plans are unprecedented in scale and completely out of step with local needs, as my right hon. and hon. Friends have said. The Government like to claim that people in Hertfordshire, and therefore we as their representatives, oppose all new houses and that we are merely nimbys. As my hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans said, that is complete nonsense and disingenuous. We recognise the need for more homes. Indeed, they are being built in my constituency at a faster rate than in many neighbouring areas including Harlow and north London. However, development must be sustainable, underpinned by funded infrastructure and planned democratically. Sadly, the Government’s housing policy fails on all three counts. Take sustainability. The Government want us to build 12,000 houses in east Hertfordshire, plus at least 10,000 more in the new town that is currently known as Harlow North even though it is in my constituency. The total proposed development in our area represents more than 47,000 extra people—a 36 per cent. rise in population. It would mean 28,000 more cars on our roads, 300 more pupils in each secondary school and 2,500 more peak-time commuters when our trains are already seriously overcrowded. Environmentally, that scale of development would be disastrous. It would mean the loss of at least 15,000 acres of green belt land, along with several woodlands and the natural habitats of hundreds of wild animals. As any reasonable person can see, that scale of development is completely unsustainable and would prove unworkable in practice. Ironically, the whole policy is undermined by the Treasury’s unwillingness to fund even the most basic infrastructure. When presented with the initial list of key projects for improvements to roads, public transport and, as has been discussed, water and sewerage capacity, the Chancellor refused to fund more than 75 per cent. of them. In other words, the Government want houses for 200,000 people in Hertfordshire, but they are prepared to pay for houses for only 50,000 people. And that is just the most basic of capital projects. Our public services, such as schools and hospitals, are being squeezed, not improved. For example, the Government are closing our hospitals. The Chancellor’s cutbacks mean that the proposed new hospital at Hatfield has already been scrapped. In the eastern part of the county, we now face the bitter choice of whether to shut the Lister hospital or the Queen Elizabeth II hospital. My colleagues in the western half of the county face a similar dilemma, because a further hospital is to close there. More people, fewer hospitals—that seems to be the reality of the Government’s housing plans. Perhaps the Minister can tell us in her reply exactly where the proposed 200,000 people are meant to go when they fall ill. If the substance of the Government’s housing plans is bad, the way in which they have been imposed is even worse. Where there could have been a collaborative effort, we have had ministerial diktat; where there should have been openness, there has been obfuscation. As a result, fewer and fewer private and public organisations support the Government’s housing targets. The Environment Agency, for example, described the effect of those targets on the south-east as an ““environmental time bomb””. The East of England regional assembly—the very body charged by Ministers with implementing the regional plan—has now withdrawn its support because of broken promises about the infrastructure. However, the Government’s approach to setting housing targets is perhaps best typified by their decision to reinstate the new town in my constituency that I mentioned, and I should like to explain how that particular housing target has been engineered over the past year. Promoted by an oil company’s pension fund, the new town would entail the building of up to 20,000 new houses on 3,000 acres of green fields. It would destroy 15,000 acres of green belt land and swallow up the villages of Eastwick, Gilston, Hunsdon and High Wych. When the Government-appointed panel of inspectors considered the proposal in its inquiry last year, it recognised the problems, which included the environmental impact, the distraction from the urgent need to regenerate Harlow, in nearby Essex, the serious water and sewerage capacity problems and the absence of sufficient infrastructure. On housing targets, the panel recommended to the Government on 19 June that the new town should expressly not be included in the plan. Some people disagreed; indeed, the Minister for Higher Education and Lifelong Learning, the hon. Member for Harlow (Bill Rammell), said that it was ““unfair”” and wanted to "““put an alternative to Government””." Of course, as my right hon. and hon. Friends here know, the Government’s planning rules on housing targets preclude that. Planning policy statement 11 states that in the period between the panel’s report to the Government and the publication of the Government’s response, any representations would"““undermine the whole examination process and be prejudicial to other participants””." Thus, until the Government publish any changes to their housing targets, no one should meet Ministers to lobby them, which is fair enough. Regrettably, the Minister for Housing and Planning apparently breached that rule. On 13 July last year, she met the Minister for Higher Education and Lifelong Learning to discuss development in and around Harlow. As a result, on 19 December—strangely enough, that was the day on which the House rose—the Government suddenly announced that they would overturn their own inspectors’ recommendations and reinstate the new town, to the surprise of the public and most housing and planning experts. My constituents believe that that meeting on 13 July last year has undermined the credibility of the whole process of setting housing targets and proven highly prejudicial. That is why they, among others, are now seeking legal opinion on how to challenge the decision and, therefore, the Government’s housing targets in our area. Such a challenge could affect not only housing in my constituency, but development across the county and, indeed, the eastern region.