Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [Lords]

I have a lot of sympathy with what the hon. Gentleman says. Parish councils in my constituency have actively tried to challenge the regional spatial strategy, but they have been ignored along with everybody else. The Government have failed to include in the Bill a rigorous definition of "sustainability", so we face a ridiculous situation whereby the Government's own advisers and the Foresight report explain that increased urbanisation increases the risk of flooding, but, yet again, a wider economic priority as defined by the regional development agency is handed down and seen to be far more important than conditions of sustainability. If the Bill does not include such definitions, it will make the situation much worse. In 2008, the progress ground on and we had the grandly named examination in public. "At last," we thought, "we will actually be consulted in public, so maybe that will make a difference." We all wrote, lobbied and sent postcards and e-mails, although MPs were excluded from the examination in public hearings, apparently because we had a vested interest in speaking. However, I made a lengthy submission, and I am sure that constituency neighbours from other parties made submissions of one length or another. We again argued against urban extension into our green spaces; that the various communities, which I have already mentioned, had repeatedly rejected and opposed any construction there; that those objections had been supported in repeated votes by local authorities on both sides of the boundary and by local planning inspectors who had considered past planning appeals; and that the 750,000 to 1 million empty homes in this country were more of a priority than building on greenfield sites. We argued also for more regeneration in urban areas, and I quoted the Communities and Local Government Committee's inquiry of a couple of years ago, which heard from the west midlands regional development agency. Ironically, it pointed out that concentrating more development around already affluent towns such as Cheltenham undermined its efforts to attract developers to urban centres. We even agreed with the emerging strategy for rural housing from my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and St. Austell (Matthew Taylor), who said that if we had to build on greenfield sites, it was better to do so on a small scale, with local and sustainable communities that are isolated from existing communities—to preserve the green space around them—but linked by good public transport. That strategy would help to support rural post offices, schools and shops that are dying because of the lack of people using them. One interesting thing about the consultation in Swindon was that, while the regional government representatives did not listen, some representatives from local areas did listen to each other, and I was impressed to hear even Conservative members, from counties such as Wiltshire, supporting more housing in very rural areas to help the growth of villages and to sustain local communities. We found unexpected common purpose on the issue. We supported better local transport, urban light rail and low-carbon vehicles as the alternatives to short car journeys, which, in terms of sustainability, seemed to be the only rationale for the urban extensions. Indeed, low-carbon vehicles are, I hope, only a couple of decades away now, and that is well within the planning scope of either these regional spatial strategies or their successors. We argued that the housing numbers themselves, handed down as they were from national Government models, were unreliable, first, because almost any 20-year model predicting economic and housing development would be unreliable; and secondly, because the growth assumptions were fast becoming out of date. The Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Khan), who is seated on the Front Bench, confirmed late last year the economic growth assumptions underlying the south-west regional spatial strategy—still intact, I understand. I am not sure whether he would care to intervene on me to defend them now. The assumption under the south-west regional spatial strategy is that over the 20-year period, economic growth will average 3.2 per cent.—that is plus 3.2 per cent., I should say, for the avoidance of confusion. Clearly, that is utter fantasy. It is a dangerous assumption. On the ground, it translates into the assumption that towns such as Cheltenham will grow enormously through more economic activity, more migration and more growth. However, it completely ignores the important environmental constraints that we are discussing. We also argued that the Barker review and the whole strategy that gave rise to the numbers were flawed because the issue was about affordability rather than identified local housing need. In 2004, in evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee, Barker herself said that if there was a downturn, the targets should be reduced; the downturn has happened, but the numbers have not been reduced. Ministers questioned by the Environmental Audit Committee steadfastly refused to budge on whether they would ever reduce the numbers in a downturn, as Barker had recommended. The Government have departed from even their own adviser's original strategy and are sticking to the numbers as if they were religious dogma. There is no connection at all with locally identified housing need. In Cheltenham, the numbers that we have ended up with compare with a housing waiting list of some 3,500 people in my constituency. If a high enough percentage of the original number of 8,500 had been for social housing for rent, that housing need could easily have been coped with. The number that we have ended up with in and around Cheltenham is 13,800. Inevitably, that has forced green belt land and other valuable green spaces into the area freed up for development, and that was based on no rational analysis that I can see. That last bump up in the numbers came as a result of the examination in public and visits by what the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) called "fatuous" inspectors.