I congratulate the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) on securing this debate. The contributions have been excellent. I often meet constituents who bemoan the quality of our debates. I always tell them, “Don’t bother watching on Wednesday lunch time. Switch on the BBC Parliament channel on a Thursday or Tuesday afternoon and you’ll get an entirely different impression.”
What has been interesting is how many of the issues that have been raised on both sides of the House have parallels. Listening to the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) and the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), I was struck by how statist their solutions appear, which I strongly encourage. I remember two or three years ago when my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) first mooted the idea of seizing land off developers who are not getting on with building. It was seen as positively communist. It appears that, all the way from Doncaster to Grantham, the centre ground of politics really is shifting. I encourage much of that.
It is important to recognise that Governments can free space for the private sector to develop, but the rules of the game are the rules of the game at the moment. Given those rules, it is useless for us to come to this place and complain that developers do not build houses from which they cannot make a profit. We need to understand that. If we rely entirely on the private sector, we will get houses built and developed in areas where those houses will be profitable. London authorities will build houses at an amazing rate, but nothing like the same numbers will be built in towns in the north, where there has not been the same sort of investment in infrastructure and where a variety of other things have not been done. We will not see anything like the same numbers built and we will not get them built on brownfield sites.
In Chesterfield in 2005-06, a housing development was being built on the old Bryan Donkin site. The developer went bust about a third of the way through the development. That huge brownfield site remained unbuilt for the next seven or eight years. Therefore, there is no point our coming to this place to bemoan the fact that developers, which are companies that are ultimately there to make a profit, are not building on sites on which they will not make a profit.
What has been lacking from this debate is the sense that housing and planning are just one part of this whole thing. We need to talk about skills because, if there are not enough trained people in the construction industry to get more sites built, there will be an impact on the cost of labour, which will have an impact on the number of houses that are built.
Transport is incredibly important. The north has huge potential, but we need to improve the transport infrastructure. When 10 times more is spent on transport infrastructure in London than on transport infrastructure
in other parts of the country, it is unsurprising that everyone wants to move into London, where they can move about easily, and not into areas where they cannot move around so easily.
There has been a lot of talk about the green belt and that is sometimes misleading. Whenever I fly over Britain during the day while travelling overseas, I look down and see that Britain is a green and pleasant land—I fly over field after field before coming to a town or city. If we are to build these houses, the public sector needs to have a role because the public sector can build even in times when building is not profitable.
I would like to see the Government address the issue of right to buy. I am not against right to buy but, unless councils can borrow and know that they can build new houses without the prospect of having to sell them at a discount three years later, local authorities will not build those houses. Local authorities have a role to play in this and I would like the Government to recognise that.
I would like this debate to recognise the importance of transport and local infrastructure. We have heard about the objections in many areas to developments, but often when people are objecting they are concerned about the impact on schools, roads and local health services. Infrastructure needs to be a part of all this discussion, as do skills; we need a much wider debate.
In the final minute available, while touching on the planning issue, I also wish to discuss the issue of Traveller sites. In Chesterfield, we have a local plan, which is currently under consultation. The council has identified two sites for Travellers already in Chesterfield, but it has been told it needs to identify two more. There is a huge amount of public concern about that. Four sites in my constituency—in Grangewood, Newbold and Inkersall—have been consulted on and I know there are two such sites in the constituency of the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley). The pressure that is going on councils is unfair. There is also pressure on constituents, who are, for understandable reasons—I would be concerned for exactly the same reasons—very concerned about this. If we are going to see local authorities put in control of their areas, we do not need to see them forced to have sites such as this, as is currently happening in Chesterfield.
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