Debate on the Address

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to open this debate on issues that lie at the heart of the gracious Speech and to share that honour with my noble friend Lord Rooker. Together, the measures we are debating today on housing, planning, transport, agriculture and climate change will all help us to prepare and plan for the future. It is self-evident that we are not dealing with new problems, but the challenges that face us are on a different scale from those in the past. They also carry a global, as well as a national, imperative. Because we are talking about the future, I shall start with a quotation from that great futurologist, HG Wells, who often despaired of the slow pace of change in this country. A century ago, he wrote: "““In England we have come to rely upon a comfortable time-lag of fifty years or a century intervening between the perception that something ought to be done and a serious attempt to do it””." We certainly do not have 50 years to put things right. We already know the impact that globalisation, climate change and demographic pressures have had on our economy and our communities over the past decade. Today we have not had to strain to find a unifying theme for the debate that brings these subjects together: it is about the equitable and wise use of scarce resources, the rights to the fundamentals of life and the wisdom of planning for them. To meet demographic pressures we must have essential new housing and new transport systems that will contribute positively to anticipating and mitigating the threat of a changing climate. In every debate and comment on the Queen’s Speech our ambitious housing programme has been, if not paramount, then at least prominent. I welcome that. Over the past century there have been times in our history when this country has risen to the challenge of providing new homes for its people and building or rebuilding communities on a significant scale, and this is one of them. We have the opportunity to learn from the past that it is not enough simply to build houses; we can and must build sustainable, high-quality, living communities with the right infrastructure, the public space and the services that are needed. To use the most simple language, we must build communities that people would be proud to call home. Our targets are ambitious because they need to be: 3 million homes are needed between now and 2020 simply to ensure that our young people growing up today are not faced with a future of living with their parents—or, for the lucky ones, borrowing from them—or sharing and renting their homes for the rest of their lives. We left that culture behind before the Second World War, but the reality is that house prices have far outstripped earning power all over the country. This is about fairness. Our generation was the first to have a realistic chance to own its own homes; we do not want to be the last to have had that opportunity. But we need to build homes and communities on a scale that is also driven by a different demography: a population that is growing older, living longer, living alone and making a continuing significant contribution to our economy and our society. The over-85s will have increased by 85 per cent by 2031. Older households make up 50 per cent of year-on-year household growth. When we talk about the need to build differently from how we built in the past, we mean building for a lifetime: building homes that are sustainable in terms of energy and can be adapted to meet changing circumstances as we grow older. We mean building lifetime neighbourhoods and communities that are inclusive, welcoming and safe, full of character, rich in green spaces and culture, offering easy access to local services. We mean building homes and creating communities that set a new standard of quality. We have had the immense good fortune in this country to produce many of the world’s finest architects. We have to be courageous in demanding quality. My dream is of a country to which Scandinavians will come to see what we have achieved in our sustainable buildings and communities. We are putting in place infrastructure and capacity to serve an existing community and anticipate the needs of a future community. The Housing and Regeneration Bill will enable us to realise those ambitions to build more and better homes and communities. It will create a new Homes and Communities Agency which will bring together, strategically, the land acquisition and regeneration expertise of English Partnerships, and the skill and experience of the Housing Corporation in investment in public housing. It will be a one-stop delivery partner for local authorities, supporting them to plan and shape cohesive communities alongside unified and lasting plans for economic development and infrastructure. It will make better use of surplus public sector land and maximise the potential for brownfield development. It will demand exacting environmental standards of new buildings. In addition to all the other changes that we are making in the planning of land supply and housing, we will ensure that those new homes will include 70,000 new affordable homes a year from 2010-11, of which at least 45,000 will be social homes. Half the homes on surplus public sector sites will be designated for social rent, first-time buyers and key workers. Our new eco-towns, the garden cities of tomorrow, will quite simply be the first new towns for nearly 50 years. They must exemplify and inspire the very best of design. People will want passionately to live in them, because we have learnt the lessons of the past. We are working with the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, RIBA and the Prince’s Foundation to stimulate new architectural thinking. We have already received 50 applications for eco-towns from all regions. Most of the bids are for towns on brownfield sites, and many have imaginative proposals on environment, sustainability and investing in infrastructure, including rail links. The second and more expansive role of the HCA will be empowering communities. It will fund community empowerment and provide employment and training opportunities, support and information. In so doing it will help to address the problems caused by high rates of worklessness, poor mobility and high levels of tenant dissatisfaction. In addition, the new agency will combine key delivery functions of communities and local government, including those functions which concern decent homes, housing market renewal, the housing PFI, housing growth and urban regeneration. It will be focused on delivery and able to make the best use of private and public investment, land assets and skills. The agency’s third task will be to strengthen the position of tenants in the social rented sector. Following the review by Professor Martin Cave of social housing regulations, published in June this year, the Bill will create the office for tenants and social landlords, which will place tenants at the heart of social housing. We are intent on improving the level of service that social tenants receive and on ensuring that they have a louder voice so that they have more choice and influence in matters that are central to their everyday lives. Alongside the Housing and Regeneration Bill sits the Local Transport Bill, which is motivated by much the same principles; namely, to enable communities to live and thrive socially and economically. I turn again for inspiration to Wells, who anticipated many exotic forms of transport. He was also very optimistic in his judgment of what is still the best and most enduring form of transport. He put it thus: "““Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race””." Well, we cannot all travel everywhere by bicycle all the time, but we must at least be able to rely on local transport services. The more localities that can shape transport systems to their own needs, the better the service they should be able to deliver. It is only right that those authorities that understand how local transport needs really work should now have the power to tackle road congestion and public transport problems in the ways that they know will make a difference. The Local Transport Bill therefore includes measures to improve bus services, to reform the way in which transport is planned and managed in our major cities, and to update the existing legal framework for local road-pricing schemes, so that when local areas believe they may be right for their area they have the freedom and flexibility to do so in a way that best meets local needs. By tackling congestion and improving bus services in rural and city areas, giving people a more realistic alternative to the private car, we can help to reduce carbon emissions. We can improve the links between communities, homes and key local services, and help people to build skills and get jobs and to move on—literally—in their lives. The disadvantaged communities that I have visited over the past few years often find themselves at the mercy of a poor transport system, which makes it difficult to travel to get skills and jobs. In addition to the Local Transport Bill, two major and very popular projects will improve the rail infrastructure and services in London and the south-east to support economic and population growth: the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (Supplementary Provisions) Bill and the Crossrail Bill. The Channel Tunnel Rail Link is a major success story which has reduced international journey times and been completed to budget and to time. Last week, of course, we had St Pancras restored to us, and we are now able to get to Paris and Brussels 35 minutes quicker than before the line was built. From 2009, it will mean a seven-minute journey from St Pancras to Stratford, including for the Olympic ““javelin”” train. Significant regeneration benefits have already been secured. Over 8,000 people have been employed during construction and it is estimated that the project will have created 50,000 jobs in east London and the Thames Gateway. The Crossrail Bill provides powers for the Crossrail project for which my right honourable friend the Prime Minister gave the go-ahead last month when he announced the funding package. There will be more trains with more capacity connecting together London’s major commercial centres with regeneration areas and Heathrow. More capacity and more choice will support growing communities and help London to maintain its leading position as a financial centre, which is of crucial importance to the country as a whole. Crossrail will add at least £20 billion to UK GDP and significantly increase the capacity of the rail network into and across London. This is a crucial Bill if the capital is to meet the expected future demands for transport in a way that supports sustainable economic development and regeneration in areas where housing growth is planned, such as the Thames Gateway and the Lee Valley. Just as passenger safety on our railways is of the utmost importance, we must maintain and increase the already high levels of safety for those working in or travelling through our ports and waters. For this reason I must make mention of the Draft Marine Navigation and Port Safety Bill, which is very important to a safe and thriving global shipping industry, which is in turn vital to our economy. We aim to protect the UK’s interest in this area by promoting a safe, efficient and sustainable environment for this trade to take place. I turn to planning reform. Since 1947, our Town and Country Planning Acts have stood the test of time, ensuring that we have had the right growth in the right places. In recent years, we have built on that through a reformed planning system which has put sustainable development in pride of place at the heart of planning. More houses have been built, our town centres have been revitalised and our green belt has been protected, while commercial growth has been unprecedented. The second Barker report made it clear that given the impact of, for example, globalisation and technological and climate change, we need now to do things differently to ensure that we can plan properly for economic growth and prosperity as well as sustainable development. In particular, we have to acknowledge that our planning system simply cannot cope with the problems of planning for major infrastructure. Decisions, in some cases, have taken years to close. Noble Lords will be familiar with the problem. For example, Heathrow terminal 5 took seven years to decide, the north Yorkshire grid took over six years, and Dibden Bay took more than four years. That sort of delay is bad for the country. Local authorities, the planning inspectorate, developers, investors and the community as a whole will benefit from further change to our planning system. We intend now to create a planning system which is more responsive, timely, transparent and predictable. That is why we are bringing forward a Planning Reform Bill which will create the opportunity, through the national policy statements, for there to be—for the first time—national, public and democratic debate on the future use of scarce resources and on difficult national choices such as those on energy, transport, water and waste needs. By increasing the speed and predictability of applications to construct cleaner energy projects, for example, our proposals will help the transition to a low-carbon economy. Instead of the confusion and delay that has been caused by overlapping consent regimes, the Bill will introduce a single consents regime for nationally significant infrastructure projects. It will establish an independent infrastructure planning commission which will enable the planning system itself to focus on the impact of development. It will streamline planning and make it more accountable. The Planning Reform Bill will also in due course make provision for the new planning charge which will enable local authorities to raise additional resources needed to support infrastructure for housing growth. But I want to make it clear that this is not just a Bill about planning processes and the need to improve them; it is a Bill about better and more transparent, effective and robust democratic decision-making. At its heart is a commitment to greater public consultation and parliamentary scrutiny to ensure that planning tackles climate change and supports sustainable development. It will increase opportunities for more public participation in planning and introduce measures at the town and county planning level to enable more effective local plan making and a more efficient appeals process. The Planning Reform Bill, the Energy Bill and the Climate Change Bill are the three legislative pillars of the Government’s strategy to secure quality of life through delivering on our twin objectives of maintaining economic prosperity and tackling climate change. In different ways, each of the Bills I have described so far, and the national, economic and social imperatives which lie behind them, illustrate the need for sustainability in all we do. I come to the Bill which takes that principle and applies it on a different scale—to global sustainability. We in this country have been at the forefront of climate change science, debate and action for more than a decade. The Climate Change Bill is the first of its kind in the world. It will make the UK the first country in the world to set a long-term, legally binding framework for reducing CO2 emissions and adapting to climate change. It is the first time that a commitment to address this issue will be made law. It creates a new approach to managing and responding to climate change in the UK through setting ambitious targets, taking the powers to help achieve them, strengthening the institutional framework and establishing clear and regular accountability in the UK to Parliament and devolved legislatures. The Bill puts into statute the UK's targets to reduce carbon dioxide emissions through domestic and international action by at least 60 per cent by 2050 and 26 to 32 per cent by 2020, against a 1990 baseline. It introduces a system of five-year carbon budgets to be set three periods ahead to provide business with increased certainty. It also creates the Committee on Climate Change, a new independent body to advise the Government on the pathway to the 2050 target. There will also be a strong, sustainable framework for adapting to the impacts of climate change and the Government will be required to regularly assess the risks to the UK from the impact of climate change and report to Parliament. The Bill will also have a greater direct impact on reducing the UK’s emissions by introducing the carbon reduction commitment, a new cap-and-trade scheme for large organisations not already covered by other schemes, and by ensuring that the renewable transport fuel obligation delivers environmental benefits; and provides a power to pilot local authority incentives for household waste minimisation and recycling. No one should be in any doubt that these are tough targets to meet. Our ambition must be to demonstrate that environmental objectives can be achieved alongside the other shared priorities of these Bills—which are to maintain a vibrant economy and fair society. The Bill will not only help the UK to meet its commitments on climate change but will, in tandem with the Energy Bill and Planning Reform Bill, help the transition to a low-carbon economy and, importantly, demonstrate the UK’s international leadership to help enable progress towards a post-2012 global agreement. Responding to the major challenges over the next decades requires a Government who listen and are prepared to act. The Bills that we are discussing today are essential. They are farsighted. They will ensure that we can properly shape the places where we live and anticipate and master things to come. They will bring new and greater opportunities for decent homes and jobs. They will enhance both the material infrastructure and the social fabric of Britain.