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Housing and Regeneration Bill

I thank the hon. Lady for such a useful intervention. I can tell her exactly how many new homes Basingstoke needs, because as I said at the beginning, housing is an issue that we take seriously. I have been told by local officials that we need around 600 houses a year in Basingstoke, but Government targets have dictated that we are currently building 1,000 units a year. We are happy to shoulder some of the burden imposed by the deficit of housing in the area, but in my area we are fortunate to have an unemployment rate of only 1 per cent. The hon. Lady will probably know where I am going with this one, but that low unemployment rate means that we are dragging more people in my area—it is a great place to live and I am proud to represent such a great part of north Hampshire—who then have to go outside Basingstoke to seek jobs. We are obviously concerned about the importance of protecting the green spaces in our communities. Indeed, some of those green spaces have become an integral part of our drainage system, for example. As some hon. Members may be aware, in the 1960s the London overspill was built into the heart of our community and is now an important part of what makes Basingstoke a thriving place. The construction of those estates relied on quite large amounts of open space surrounding them, to ensure that flooding did not occur. Are we to imagine that under the Bill those estates will lose those open spaces, which are so integral to their design, or will we see investment for further improvements in our drainage systems, after the tremendous amount of flooding in the recent summer storms? There are other elements of concern in the Bill, which I am sure will be considered in more detail by those who are fortunate to serve on the Committee. I refer in particular to the ability of the new HCA to acquire burial grounds and other religious sites for development. I am sure that that would only ever be done in a sensitive manner, but the way it is described in the Bill perhaps needs a little more detail, to ensure that it does not cause any concern or possible uncertainty in communities such as mine. I should like to turn to the responsibilities of the new quango organisation in relation to infrastructure. Infrastructure improvement is not currently going hand in hand with the house building targets that the Government are foisting on the south-east of England. I was somewhat concerned by some of the language in the Bill relating to the responsibility of the HCA to provide infrastructure. It states, for example, that the agency ““may”” provide infrastructure. The terms used are vague and lack specificity. In particular, the Bill lacks a commitment to ensure that any house building targets will be matched by improvements in local services. My hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps) expressed the view very succinctly in his opening speech that infrastructure needs to be guaranteed, and I should like to reiterate that on behalf of my constituents, who are suffering from a lack of investment in infrastructure locally. That is now starting to cause significant problems of traffic congestion on our roads, and on main arterial highways such as the M3. I am running a strong local campaign, with the support of about 1,000 residents, to get remedial measures put in place at junction 6 of the M3 to deal with the congestion problems there. The Minister might be interested to learn that those problems have resulted in two fatalities in the past two years. The Government also need to explain how the HCA is to be held to account. If there is to be no obligation to ensure that a sufficiency of local services goes hand in hand with any house building programme, how are we to ensure that the agency can be held to account? I should like to highlight a couple of measures that I would have liked to see in the Bill. First, and perhaps most importantly for my constituents, there are no measures to tackle the barriers that still exist to prevent first-time buyers from getting into the market. It is all well and good to talk about housing targets and building more houses—we are building 1,000 new houses a year in my constituency—when all that we have seen over the past decade are house price rises that have outstripped any increase in wage inflation. I should also have liked to see a provision in the Bill to ensure that enough family homes with gardens are built, rather than the high-rise blocks that are increasingly becoming the trend throughout the country. The hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) also made that point in his speech. In my constituency surgery, I meet families who are being forced into accommodation that simply does not provide sufficient space for them to bring up their children in the way that they want to. I am concerned that my local authority is being forced to give permission for the building of more tower blocks when my constituents need more family homes. It would also have been useful to incorporate in more detail provisions to encourage the development of more community land trusts, which would give residents the ability to participate in purchasing their own homes at a reasonable price. Many people have an aspiration to own their own home for their family. I have just returned from an interesting trip to visit our armed forces in Afghanistan, and I am pleased to see that the Bill contains provisions to help ex-armed forces personnel to find accommodation. That issue has caused particular concern in my constituency. I hope that the Minister will be able to respond to some of the points that I have raised, which are important issues, not only in my constituency but throughout the south-east and the rest of the country, and are worthy of consideration.