---

House-building Programme

My Lords, most of us have to be very grateful that the full weight of the Government’s policy on housing affects only a limited, but nevertheless very important, sector of the total housing market. That policy is rightly focused on the desire to increase levels of home ownership by increasing the supply of affordable housing. In particular, it is aimed at first-time buyers and key workers. However, its implementation is a juggernaut of sustained insensitivity, the short-term consequences of which are alarming and the long-term consequences truly frightening. Our grandchildren will condemn this era as we condemn the 1950s. With a great flourish, Mr Prescott announced growth areas in the south-east to meet the demand that we know is there. The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, referred to that, and I look forward to hearing the noble Lord, Lord Best, who will doubtless comment on the excellent latest Rowntree Foundation report on the problem where a market is not met. No environmental or social audit was carried out before Mr Prescott made his announcement. The utility companies were not even consulted. The south-east, particularly London, is vulnerable to any environmental change. All new development should take account of the ““urban heat island”” effect, which can add up to eight degrees centigrade to the temperature in urban areas. Secondly, there is the flooding problem. London already experiences sewer flooding, surface-water flooding and fluvial flooding. Mr Prescott’s flagship in the south-east, the Thames Gateway, backed by huge amounts of taxpayers’ money, boasts 120,000 new homes within 10 years. Ninety-one per cent of those homes will be built on flood plains and at risk of flooding. In only 24 years time, a new Thames barrier will be needed but, with rising sea levels, the location and design of the new barrage is uncertain, as is the future of those houses. Many of them will be not be insurable, mortgageable or saleable. Thirdly, there is a water supply problem. Hotter, drier summers mean more consumption but we are unable to capture and thus store the increasingly common monsoon-like downpours that we get to replenish supplies. That is compounded by too much concrete and tarmac in new developments. Mr Prescott took none of that into account. Building the extra 139,000 homes per year for 15 years, suggested by Kate Barker in her report, could increase carbon dioxide emissions by up to 28.9 million tonnes, up 20 per cent on current levels. Over 9 million tonnes of waste, equivalent to 40 per cent of overall 2001 levels, will be generated. Development on that scale requires a full environmental audit. In the north, Mr Prescott ruthlessly imposes his notorious Pathfinder scheme. In Merseyside alone, 20,000 homes, many currently occupied, are due for destruction—that is more than Hitler destroyed during the whole of World War 2 in that area. The cost to the taxpayer of that and their rebuilding is over three times as much as the refurbishment that the private sector could do. The strict rules on development on green belt land have been relaxed, which will please the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold. Mr Prescott’s rulings as Secretary of State have gradually ensured that green wedges, strategic gaps and rural buffers cannot be long term in the green-belt sense. A Conservative government established the green belt but a Labour Government are going to build on it. Mr Prescott is proud to have upped the density of dwellings per hectare—up by nearly a half. High-density per se is not bad but it requires several things to make it attractive and sustainable. The design and quality needs to be of a very high standard, otherwise it will give rise to issues of noise and anti-social behaviour. In another Prescott flagship, Greenwich Millennium Village, apartments costing about £200,000 each are blighted because of poor insulation, despite the developer following Mr Prescott’s new ““robust details””, supposed to enhance soundproofing. The areas around new developments need to be attractive and high quality: in other words, good, safe open space. The developments need to be genuinely mixed communities, with a variety of housing types and tenures—social housing, private rented and freeholds for sale. In contrast, Mr Prescott is pushing for prefab identical buildings. The average home here now offers less dwelling space than most across the Channel, so we have among the pokiest developments in Europe. What are being built are little boxes, little boxes, little boxes, all the same. The profusion of one and two-bedroom flats that have recently been squeezed on to sites are greenless, soulless, poorly designed dormitory extensions that will become the ghettoes of the future. Mr Prescott has set arbitrary quotas for cash-hungry local authorities to meet if they are to receive grants. That encourages more compulsory purchase. He has increased regional involvement in the provision of social housing, he is turning old five-year plans into 15-year plans to try to micromanage the market, and he is linking changing house prices to the need for development. Gordon Brown and he are attracted by another form of the discredited development land tax and a second-homes tax. Mr Prescott has introduced regional spatial strategies; local development frameworks; site allocation development plan documents; sustainability appraisals and annual monitoring reports. There has been a step-change to an unprecedented level of centralisation in England, which sidelines local involvement in decision-making. That ““dictate and provide”” building policy is the failed system used by Soviet planners in the 1950s, but has not Mr Prescott always admired and wanted to emulate them?