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Housing (Hertfordshire)

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I was not aware of that and I agree with him. The emphasis on building new houses has a particular environmental impact, because it takes the equivalent of some 25 tonnes of carbon to build a new house as opposed to 1 tonne or 2 tonnes to refurbish an existing one. All other things being equal, it is environmentally a much better idea to refurbish and re-use rather than to build new. The other supply-side issue that I was going to mention is the scandalous number of empty homes. The latest figures that I could find were for October 2005, where the estimate was that there are 723,000 empty homes. Why, therefore, have the Government not taken more policy initiatives on that front? Why have VAT rates, for example, for greenfield developments, for which the rate currently stands at 0 per cent, not been harmonised with those for the repair, modernisation and conversion of existing properties, where work currently attracts VAT at 17.5 per cent.? That would at least encourage some developers to look at bringing more rundown empty houses back into the market. The environmental impact of all that is clear. Hon. Members have referred to the impact on the water table and the local rivers in Hertfordshire. I understand that the River Ver is under great pressure and that other local rivers quite often run dry as a result of over-extraction. I have also referred the carbon cost of new build as opposed to the re-use of existing housing. There is also the issue of the impact on environmentally friendly forms of transport. I understand from local campaigners that First Capital Connect trains are already full to bursting and that, as the hon. Member for St. Albans pointed out, the A414 is often severely congested. Transport, congestion and pollution are obviously serious environmental threats and I share her alarm regarding those issues. We are facing such an onslaught because the Government’s instincts are always to overrule from the centre, not to listen to local people, and scarcely to listen to environmental arguments. The hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Prisk) has offered a forensic analysis of the flaws in the process by which the numbers were arrived at, but the bald facts are that the East of England regional assembly said that it would propose 478,000 new houses—an enormous number—for the east of England. That figure has been more or less arbitrarily increased to 508,000, which may bring the total for Hertfordshire itself to perhaps as high as 100,000 new houses on top of a total existing housing stock of only 500,000. As the hon. Gentleman said, that is a 20 per cent. increase in a relatively short time. Hon. Members who have spoken so far were right to reject the accusation of nimbyism. I have always considered nimby a childish playground taunt that is used to attack people who are defending their quality of life. Let no one accuse the Liberal Democrats of nimbyism. The Liberal Democrats in Hertfordshire support at least 70,000 new houses in the county—just like I have supported 8,500 new houses in my constituency. I accept that such housing will inevitably be at a higher density than existing housing, but when the Government constantly ratchet up those numbers, we move from development to overdevelopment, which often means overflowing into the green belt. However, this is not just a green belt against non-green belt issue. I am all for an intelligent review of the green belt and there may be areas of the green belt that can be looked at. I do not have an example that is local to Hertfordshire, but in Gloucestershire I strongly support the inclusion of valued green land such as the so-called Leckhampton ““white land? into green belt to provide more permanent protection from predatory developers. However, I fully recognise that that cannot always be a one-way process. I was delighted to receive a letter from Cheltenham race course this morning, which said that a large area of one of its car parks is green belt land that could be usefully surrendered. It would probably be appropriate to use that particular land for a hotel rather than housing, but it shows that green belt land can be intelligently reviewed and that within existing green belt designation, significant brownfield sites that would be appropriate for housing can be found.