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Housing and Regeneration Bill

Let me deal with targets up front. Conservatives without targets built more houses than Labour with targets. Labour set targets, in respect of which it continues to disappoint. There is no evidence that targets deliver. They have been the fig leaf which Labour Members have used today to cover their embarrassment at their failure. I know what my constituents who are looking for houses would like. They would like the houses that would be built under a Conservative Government and they would like a stamp duty policy that would help them get some of them. That is it for the discussion of targets. Under Labour—[interruption.] The hon. Member for Luton, South (Margaret Moran) should listen. Her speech of denial was a classic of its kind. Under Labour, as she was reminded, an average of 145,290 homes a year have been built. In the last 10 years of the previous Conservative Government, the average was 164,000 a year. Across the whole period of the Governments of Mrs. Thatcher and John Major, the average was 173,000 a year. As my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield said in his speech, people do not live in targets; they live in houses. If targets are of no consequence to Labour because it cannot meet them, what is the point? I would rather we went back to a more sensible approach. My hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs. Miller) defined a target as what those in her local community believed to be the right number for them. They had one, they built to it and it was right. The Government came along and imposed something on top which cannot be delivered. That is why it is nonsensical for Labour to advocate targets. The Minister for Housing was generous in taking interventions during her contribution and made a robust defence of her policy. I appreciate what she said, although her defence of policy which is failing was admirable but wrong. The hon. Member for Chesterfield (Paul Holmes) made two key points. He took on the central argument about why houses were not being built, and explained that it was a problem of the centre trying to take more and more powers and of no incentives for local authorities to build houses. He is right. He also noted that the attempt in the Bill to give councils the chance to build more houses was a chimera, because the money will not be made available. The hon. Gentleman spoiled it all at the end. Having described his objection to Government policy, he explained why he would not support our amendment, which was a shame. Let us get to the heart of the argument. We intend to work through the Committee and hope that we can produce a better Bill by the end of it. At the end of that process we will make a judgment as to how we will vote on Third Reading. At this stage, as our reasoned amendment makes clear, we believe that the evidence of delivery under the Government's fixation with control and top-down, unaccountable regional bodies is not good enough. It does not deliver the housing that all our constituents want, and virtually every Member seems to agree with that. The new merged agency will not deliver on its own, and the new social regulator will not deliver on its own. Those bodies will be assisted by the acquisition of new powers. That will give them greater powers at the expense of local decision making by democratic bodies, which is an answer that so many hon. Members have missed or simply swept aside. The hon. Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey) was angry and testy, but she made some good points. She mentioned the targets in her area and said that she does not think that they can be met. In all fairness, if she does not think that they can be met, what is the point? She also said that she has read the Bill carefully and wants to make sure that it includes a duty for the new agency to consult on planning, because she fears that it might be too aggressive in its controls. The right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford) spoke with the knowledge gained from his previous experience and made a number of suggestions for when the Bill is in Committee. My right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) made an excellent speech with the benefit of his long experience. He discussed amending the Bill to introduce a national mobility scheme, which makes a great deal of sense. He also discussed the danger of the new agency acquiring too many powers, in which he was not alone. In a number of interventions on his colleagues, the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) drew attention to what he sees as the agency taking more powers away from councils, and he is right about that. The Local Government Chronicle headline for 22 November stated ““Planning grab fears. Housing quango may silence councils on new towns””. That headline could have been written by my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield—that is his sort of language. The editorial stated:"““Clearly, the government's housing targets are too precious to leave solely to local government. Housing Minister Iain Wright””—" who is on the Government Front Bench—"““is explicit on our front page this week, when he says that the agency is there to 'challenge' authorities that drag their heels over housing quotas. While this is an attempt to mitigate some of the NIMBYism that blights housing supply, it also takes some of the local out of local government. One of the crucial components of councils' ability to 'place-shape' is planning, and if they can be steamrollered over where housing and eco-towns are located, their role as local community leaders is significantly undermined.""We need urgent clarifications on just how these planning powers will be used, or else we could find the Bill takes us two steps forward, one big leap back.””"