Housing and Regeneration Bill

That was a very long and useful debate. On the first amendment on eco-towns, no doubt the Minister read in the press about the noble Lord, Lord Rogers of Riverside—who was chairman of the Government’s urban taskforce or something—talking about eco-towns a couple of days ago: "““I think eco-towns are one of the biggest mistakes the government can make … They are in no way environmentally sustainable””." He went on to say that the Government should concentrate on the regeneration of towns and cities, rather than developing greenfield sites. He then cited the US Green Building Council, which apparently demonstrated that building more accommodation in a dense urban centre was far more efficient than an eco-home on a greenfield location. He went on to say that there is a need to increase the density around public transport, not creating a new town where you must then create a new transport system. Urban areas already have transport systems and infrastructure in place. By building your eco-communities in an urban setting, you are making use of the facilities and the infrastructure that are already there. I will come back to infrastructure in a moment. There is an odd argument here. When food prices are going up and we are talking about world food shortages, why are we building on agricultural land? Some of the building will be on MoD land, but why are we building on agricultural land? We should not be doing that. We need our agricultural land to produce food. It cannot be a green, sustainable answer to concrete over our most productive arable land in order to create communities. We live in an increasingly wasteful, throw-away society. Some 750,000 or one million homes are empty. Why are we not concentrating on those? What will be the unit cost per house in an eco-town? It will probably be £80,000 or so per house. What is the cost per unit of getting an empty home back into use? It is probably a quarter of that figure. Given that the Government have a finite amount of money available over the next three years, I argue that their money would be much better spent in ways other than building eco-towns. I think that the sum of £8 billion was mentioned the other day with regard to the money that the Government will allocate to providing affordable housing. At £80,000 a shot, that is 100,000 new homes over the three-year period. If that finite amount of money were allocated to getting empty homes back into use at, say, £20,000 a shot, you immediately have not 100,000 but 400,000 homes in use. That might be a better way to use that money. There are other ways of dealing with this. I was heartened by the response on gardens. I shall read what the Minister said and perhaps take that back to my council and get it to toughen its stance in that regard. I was also heartened to hear that English Partnerships is already pursuing this policy as regards brownfield sites. The amendment seeks to ensure that the policy is carried over into the HCA. As regards flooding, I am trying to get the Department for Communities and Local Government to discuss the Pitt report with Defra to see what laws or rules and regulations need changing or amending. PPS 25 may need toughening up. Certainly, some of the existing rules and regulations will need to be amended. It is no good Defra doing this on its own without talking to the Minister’s department. The amendment seeks to get everyone to talk to one another to get the right answer. However, at this stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. [Amendment No. 51B, as an amendment to Amendment No. 51, not moved.] Clause 8 [Powers to deal with land etc.]: [Amendment No. 52 not moved.] Clause 8 agreed to. [Amendment No. 53 not moved.] [Amendment No. 53A, as an amendment to Amendment No. 53 not moved.] Clause 9 [Acquisition of land]: