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Affordable Housing

I do not disagree. My argument is that the fundamental problem is the lack of supply, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell) said at the beginning of the debate. There are other problems, which need to be resolved, but anyone who compares the data with international data will see that the UK has a supply problem. In Southport, the supply problem does not relate to land. Land is available for development—there are big and small plots—without encroaching on the green belt to any great extent. In fact, the causes of the problem lie elsewhere. At one time, they to some extent resided with the builders, who preferred to build luxury flats, often demolishing Victorian houses to do so, and to build for the rich and the retired, thereby bringing such people into the community. That was to some extent stopped by Government planning guidance. We now have planning restraints, housing targets and Government guidance, which we must come to terms with. Paradoxically, the problem now is the restraints and targets, coupled with a lack of support from the Housing Corporation. Southport is part of Sefton, which is a council with a pathfinder area in Bootle. It might plausibly be argued that my constituents could simply move south to Bootle and re-populate the city. That might seem an attractive analysis if we take the example of London, but on the ground the situation is very different. There are serious flaws in that plan, as I hope the Minister will accept. Pathfinder development has been slow and far more expensive than anticipated. As we all know, houses on whole streets that could in the past have been bought for very limited sums now cost £60,000 each. Culturally, Southport and Bootle are very different communities, and the pathfinder area and the surrounding region have their own affordability problems. That is quite apart from the question of whether my constituents could afford to travel to work in Southport, and whether they would want to uproot their children and abandon family networks. In my council area, we cannot simply expect the jobs to follow the housing—that is not plausible and it is not going to work, any more than the suggestion in the Eddington report that economic growth will follow is plausible. It is too simplistic. We need sustainable, local and subtle solutions. We have made some progress in getting that point across. It is certainly understood by the council and English Partnerships. The regional development agencies seem to have wised up, and the Housing Corporation has caught on. The Minister for Housing and Planning also seems to have accepted the point intellectually. There may be a few difficulties with the Planning Inspectorate, but the argument is being won. There is an unassailable case for less rigidity and more flexibility—for empowering and encouraging local, sustainable and pragmatic solutions. That is the case in theory; on the ground, however, nothing very much is happening. I shall return to my constituency tonight and find tomorrow that I have the usual depressing series of cases, with often very futile outcomes.