I apologise for troubling the House twice in one day, not least since I only very rarely intervene in this area of public policy, but in Sutton Coldfield we are absolutely astonished and mystified by the Secretary of State’s unwise and illogical decision to lift the stop imposed by his predecessor on the plans from Labour-controlled Birmingham City Council to build 6,000 new houses on Sutton Coldfield’s green belt. I should make it clear that we are strongly in favour of building more homes in Sutton Coldfield. My excellent local councillors—11 out of 12 of them are Conservative—have consistently sought to ensure that, where appropriate, we build new homes, because we are conscious that we want our children and grandchildren to benefit in the same way as my generation has, but those homes have to be built in the right places.
4.45 pm
I support the measures tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) and by my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen), and wish to speak to amendments 28 and 29, which stand in my name and those of right hon. and hon. Friends. Amendment 28 would stop the Government from paying, under the new homes bonus scheme, a bonus to those who want to build on the green belt. Such a payment is clearly a perverse incentive that encourages developers to do precisely what the Government do not want them to do—build on the green belt. I am pleased to help the Government out by tabling the amendment.
Amendment 29 addresses the importance of including town and parish councils in local plans, and the role that they can play in the development of those plans. Once again, the amendment is four-square behind the Government’s wishes, so I have much pleasure, as a former Government Chief Whip, in assisting the Government. It is inconceivable that the Minister would not accept both amendments with gratitude for my helping him out in such a way.
The Secretary of State recently said, and I quote him exactly:
“The green belt is absolutely sacrosanct…Unless there are very exceptional circumstances”—
note that he said “very exceptional circumstances”, not “exceptional circumstances”—
“we should not be carrying out any development on it.”—[Official Report, 18 July 2016; Vol. 613, c. 544.]
Call me old-fashioned, but I think that if a Minister, and particularly a Secretary of State, makes such a statement to Parliament, he should stand by it absolutely. However, on 24 November, speaking at a National House Building Council annual lunch—I applaud what my hon. and right hon. Friends have said about the pernicious effect of some developers—the Secretary of State agreed to lift the moratorium on Labour’s plans to build 6,000 homes on our green belt. I do not know whether he was not expecting his words to be reported, but he said:
“Birmingham City Council has put forward a plan to meet some of its local housing need by removing green belt designation from a small area of land...it’s fundamentally a local decision made by local people. They’ve looked at all the options. They’ve considered all the implications.”
It must have been a very good lunch indeed because those claims are wholly fallacious. Saying one thing in the House of Commons and saying another at a lunch with developers is precisely the sort of thing that brings politicians and Ministers into disrepute. The fact that people behave in that way is the reason why we have seen the election of President-elect Trump in America, the growth of Nigel Farage in this country, and the growth of the people versus the establishment.