I can only say to my hon. Friend that I do not know whether there is any connection between the two things, but it is quite an interesting pair of clauses. What are they for? Why do Ministers apparently want to make it easier for the Planning Inspectorate to fine councils for the decisions that they have made?
Clause 5 proposes significantly to weaken the contribution that section 106 agreements make to the much needed provision of affordable housing. If section 106 really was the cause of stalled housing developments, why does the clause focus only on the affordable housing requirements, rather than other section 106 requirements—for example, contributing to transport, other infrastructure or new schools? I ask because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) pointed out, the National Housing Federation tells us that 35,000 affordable homes are provided each year because of section 106 agreements, yet the Secretary of State failed to make the case that the lack of house building is because of the affordable housing element.
Where is the evidence? This will be a familiar theme in this debate. We are told that there are 1,200 sites and 75,000 homes that are stalled. Apparently the figure comes from something called the Glenigan database. When I asked the planning Minister if he would publish it so that we could see for ourselves the information on which the statement is based, he refused to do so. So we cannot see—[Hon. Members: “Why?”] Apparently it was something to do with commercial confidentiality, but are we as Members of the House not entitled to see the evidence base on which the policy is allegedly founded?
Perhaps that is why, when the planning Minister was sensibly asked by the Select Committee how many of these sites were stalled because of section 106 requirements, he came over all vague.
He said:
“It is very difficult to say. It is quite hard to say why nothing is happening.”
Let us look at what others have to say about section 106. The chief executive of the Homes and Communities Agency stated in a letter to my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who chairs the Committee:
“We are not aware of any current issues relating to section 106 agreement on the very small number due to start on site this financial year.”
What about the National Housing Federation? It has stated: “No evidence has been provided to suggest that planning obligations are routinely stalling development.”
What about the Council of Mortgage Lenders? It has stated:
“We are not convinced that section 106 obligations are necessarily the key sticking point”.
Well, if it is difficult to quantify and really hard to say why nothing is happening, and if the HCA does not think it is a problem, the National Housing Federation does not think it is a problem and the Council of Mortgage Lenders, which ought to know, does not think it is a problem, what is the purpose of clause 5? Everyone knows what the real problem is: people cannot get mortgages or raise deposits, so developers are not building houses because they do not think that they will be able to sell them if they do.
The Government admit that clause 5 will reduce the number of affordable homes built, which is why they have come up with an extra 300 million quid. If that really is the cause of the problem, I do not for the life of me understand why the Government do not just approach the developers on the 1,200 sites and offer them money to get them moving and bring forward the affordable housing numbers that were previously agreed. To reduce the number of affordable homes through the Bill and then come up with £300 million to try to replace the lost homes in an alternative way seems to me to be an extraordinarily roundabout way of addressing the problem. The truth is that everyone wants to get stalled sites moving. As the Secretary of State has acknowledged, to be fair, many local authorities have demonstrated that they are perfectly willing to enter into negotiations with developers in order to vary the conditions relating to affordable housing because they, too, want to get the homes built, and Leeds is one example of that.
The other thing that is puzzling about clause 5 is: what will it give developers that they do not already have? I hope that the Minister will answer this when he responds. Under the existing arrangements, could not a developer who wants to change the affordable housing requirements on an existing permission simply put in a new application with the lower figure and then, if it is turned down by the council, go to the Planning Inspectorate on appeal and cite the new provisions on viability set out in paragraph 173 of the national planning policy framework?
What is the problem that this clause is trying to solve, and will it work? I doubt it. This is my last point on section 106 agreements. For a measure that is supposed to speed up movement on stalled sites, it might result, as the Royal Town Planning Institute has pointed out, in the very opposite. A developer that hopes to reduce the affordable housing obligation will now have a clear incentive to wait for the Bill to reach the statute book rather than entering into negotiations with the local authority—in other words, delay.