I draw attention at the outset to my interests as declared in the register.
It is widely agreed, I think, that clause 6 is unsatisfactory. It is clearly based on conjecture and prejudice, rather than evidence. It was put together in a hurry, without adequate thought about its likely consequences, and there is a wide view that it is likely to have damaging impacts, not least on the provision of affordable housing. Ideally, the clause should be withdrawn. However, if the Government persist in promoting it, it is at the very least essential that it be amended to prevent some seriously damaging impacts on well-established mechanisms for the delivery of affordable housing. The purpose of amendments 3 and 4, which have been tabled in my name, is to prevent the destruction of a mechanism that has been in place for 25 years or more and that has secured a great deal of affordable housing, particularly in rural areas.
The other amendments in this group have been tabled in the names of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) and my hon. Friends the Members for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods)
and for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) on the Opposition Front Bench. They seek further amendments to the clause in order to offset some of its unfortunate consequences. I will not speak to those amendments; I will simply speak to amendments 3 and 4.
The issues were debated in Committee and were raised as a consequence of the evidence presented to us by Dr Nigel Stone of the English National Park Authorities Association. What was clear during the evidence sessions was the overwhelming weight of expert opinion against clause 6. Planning experts from the Royal Town Planning Institute, the Town and Country Planning Association and the Planning Officers Society joined representatives from local government, politicians and officers in condemning the clause as inappropriate and damaging. In his telling evidence, Dr Stone said that, as currently drafted, the clause could fatally damage the policy of rural exceptions, which has worked, as I have said, for more than 20 years and allowed the provision of affordable housing in a substantial number of areas where commercial housing development would not usually be acceptable.
The policy is called the exceptions policy because, exceptionally, it allows affordable housing—which may be social housing for rent, but could equally be low-cost home ownership—on the clear understanding that that housing will, in perpetuity, be kept available for the needs for which it was produced and that it will never be converted into market housing. The reason for that is obvious to everyone who cares about national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty and rural areas where the beauty of the landscape would be seriously compromised by indiscriminate, speculative development. Such areas need people to work to help the local economy and desperately want to keep existing rural communities alive with opportunities for long-term residents to continue to live in the villages in which they were born and brought up.