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Housing

My Lords, I welcome the Statement and the Minister’s subsequent remarks about the importance of quality in building and of building for communities, not just housing for its own sake. Does she agree that in the dash for housing it is important not to neglect quality and to remember the importance of the human scale of development? From what she has said, I am sure that she does agree with that, but I invite her to recognise that, if we are to live up to the aspirations of which she has spoken in the Green Paper, a change of policy will be required in certain areas. I am certainly aware of proposed developments in the area of London in which I live where those principles will not be adhered to unless we see a change of heart among those who sponsor them. I know from travelling around the world, as I do, that it is possible to build high-rise buildings on a substantial scale and yet imaginatively, in a way that is congenial for communities to live in. I have just been to New York where there are in busy streets wonderful refuges of small open spaces with water features and so forth, which make living in those areas a delight, compared with some of the developments of which I have spoken and which are proposed. I invite the Minister to recognise that if we proceed with faceless tower-block buildings, we are likely to have the sort of problems that have been experienced in the Paris banlieues on our hands in a generation to come.