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Housing (Hertfordshire)

No, they were generous. We got two copies of the plan in the library, which caused something of a challenge. It was a 300-page document and people had to queue to see a document that was meant to be publicly available, until some of us shouted and screamed sufficiently loudly. We were told, ““Well, this is fine, it’s available on the internet.? Does that mean that people who are not on the internet are not entitled to be consulted? It was a failure of process that was repeated in Hertford, Ware, evidently in St. Albans, and across the region. The regional assembly then withdrew its support for the plan after Ministers’ promises to fund the infrastructure proved to be false. Yet the Government pressed ahead, and the result was the legal nonsense of a plan that was not supported by the body responsible for producing it. Perhaps the worst example of the shoddy way in which the plan was railroaded through was the episode of the Housing Minister and Harlow North. When the Government-appointed panel of inspectors considered the plan last year, it recognised all the problems of the speculative scheme. Those experts strongly and expressly recommended on 19 June that the new town should not be included in the regional plan. Some people disagreed; the hon. Member for Harlow (Bill Rammell) said that it was unfair and that he wanted to put an alternative to the Government. Of course, as my hon. Friends know, the Government’s own planning rules preclude that. Planning policy statement 11 states that in the period between the panel reporting and the Government responding, any representations would"““undermine the whole examination process and be prejudicial to other participants?." Thus, until the Government publish their changes, Ministers should receive no representations. Fair enough. Regrettably, the Housing Minister apparently breached that rule, as on 13 July she met the hon. Member for Harlow specifically to discuss housing. In December the Government overturned their own inspectors’ recommendations and reinstated the new town in the plan. I have raised the issue in the House on several occasions, and all the way through the Government have defended themselves by saying that the junior Minister, who is with us today, is responsible for making the decisions, not the Housing Minister. That defence was meant to distract me from two crucial points. First, the rules do not refer to who makes the decision. They say that no representation should be received by the Government. The Minister for Housing and Planning meeting a local Member of Parliament to discuss housing between the panel’s decision and the Secretary of State’s announcement is clearly a representation. The fact that that Minister will not publish her papers from that meeting, despite requests from constituents under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, on the grounds that she was ““engaged in making policy?, only confirms the pertinence of the meeting. The second point shows Ministers in a worse light. The junior Minister tells us that she is responsible for the east of England plan. Note the present tense—she is responsible for it now. But was she the responsible Minister last July when that crucial meeting took place? To find out, I tabled named day questions for answer on 3 March. Three weeks later—silence from the Department. With the help of the Leader of the House, on the day on which the House rose for Easter, I was finally able to force an answer from the Department. The junior Minister was put in charge of the east of England plan in October—three months after the Housing Minister discussed housing with the Member of Parliament for Harlow. No wonder they did not want to answer my questions. The housing targets set out in the plan are of great concern to my constituents. Imagine, Lady Winterton, that in your constituency you were to have a new town forced on you, with 25,000 houses on 3,000 acres of green fields, opposed by every parish, town, district and county councillor, which 25,000 people opposed in the consultation. Some 5,000 people in this consultation have said no, yet the Government seek to railroad the plan through by bending and twisting the rules. My constituents firmly believe that the meeting last July breached the planning rules and in doing so undermined the examination process. That prejudicial action, along with the failure to consult adequately, the absence, as we heard, of an environmental capacity study and the resulting decision to designate a specific development, is grounds for saying that the plan and the housing targets that it includes are fundamentally flawed. If people now challenge the plan, it will be because they wish to see due process, open and transparent governance, and sustainable and deliverable housing targets. On all those counts, the Government, and particularly the group of Ministers that I mentioned, have failed, and they should be held to account.