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Housing and Regeneration Bill

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Finlay, who is much more expert than I ever could be in matters of medicine and science, and cancer and child leukaemia. In Committee, I mentioned that I was responsible for negotiating the undergrounding of a stretch of overhead cables with an electricity generator. From that experience, I discovered quite a few things. As a housing association, we were very unhappy at the thought that we would be developing underneath such wires. If the law meant that it would be impossible for us to develop underneath such wires, the value of the land that we would be acquiring would be correspondingly reduced, so we would have paid less for the site. As it was, the wires went underground and we were able to develop on more of the green land on top, an option that will always be open to people. At a time when housebuilders are quite desperate to make the profits that they have made in the past, but which have become extremely difficult to make today, it is important for building regulations or planning requirements to make clear that development cannot happen under these wires. They may take actions today that they would not have taken in the past. Equally, with the housing shortage as acute as it is, people—consumers, buyers or tenants—may take unwise risks. It would be much better for the regulations to be clear. With the risks that the science appears to suggest, it would be much better if there was a prohibition on building beneath these wires and options for doing other things, such as undergrounding cables or leaving a green wedge, which are reflected in the price. Whether that should be in this Bill, I leave to others to decide. It sounds more like a planning matter or, possibly, a building regulations issue. In this context, it would apply only to the social housing for which the regulator has responsibility, but I should like it to apply to all housebuilders. I very much support the sentiment behind the amendment.