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Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [Lords]

Pompous inspectors, then. I made a freedom of information request to discover exactly how much time those officials had spent in one of the communities into which an urban extension that had not been in the regional spatial strategy before was added. I discovered that on the trip to examine the various areas, the inspectors in the examination-in-public process went from Bristol to Thornbury, Quedgeley, Brookthorpe, Gloucester docks, Twigworth, Innsworth, Down Hatherley, Brockworth, Gloucester business park, Crickley Hill and the community in question, Leckhampton. They then went on to Shurdington, Cheltenham, Uckington, Swindon—I think they meant Swindon village—Cheltenham racecourse, which implies a strange route, Prestbury, Bishop's Cleeve, Ashchurch, Tewkesbury, the southern edge of Cheltenham, Avonmouth and the Avon gorge, before finally finishing in Bristol. How long did that tour take—a month, two weeks? No. It was completed in a single day. My local paper spent time with a satnav and worked out how long could have been spent in each location. The answer was no more than five minutes. In the examination-in-public report, the tour resulted in precisely 12 words relating to the Leckhampton community. They were:""A further area of search is identified to the south of Cheltenham."" That was it; there was no further explanation or rationale. On that basis, an area that has been fought over for decades—and repeatedly rejected by local planning inquiries and local planning inspectors as inappropriate for development—is to be handed over to greedy developers. On the other side of Cheltenham, to its north-west, is an area that is almost entirely made up of green belt land; it stretches up to the toxic waste dump at Wingmore farm, and is also being allocated for housing. As both areas are subject to flooding, I would not rush to buy a house in either area. The treasured green fields that people have enjoyed and valued will be built on as a result of the process. The Bill does not introduce the greater powers for local authorities that we might have sought. It does not seek to consult bodies such as the Sustainable Development Commission or even allow local regional bodies such as Sustainability South West to influence the development of these strategies to bring in more sustainability. Instead, economic prosperity boards will be brought into the process, so we will have more of the manic pursuit of economic growth without regard to sustainability. I would trust a body such as the Sustainable Development Commission to have a positive influence on this, because it might clear out some of the fluff around the definition of sustainability, and the Government could do worse than to consult it on the definition that they should have in the Bill. Jonathon Porritt, who is my constituent, I am proud to say, has done an exceptional job as chair of the commission, and I am sure that he would gladly oblige the Minister by providing him with a robust definition of sustainability that might give the Bill slightly stronger environmental criteria. We now have a regional spatial strategy based on a completely unsustainable economic growth rate. A growth-based set of housing numbers will be handed down to the regional spatial strategy, but without the growth. What happens when we have growth-based numbers without the growth? The areas that have been brought into play, including all the large greenfield sites and green belt areas, will be the first, not the last ones that developers make a beeline for. The Government introduced the sequential test for greenfield sites and tried to prioritise brownfield sites but have since abandoned it, which might mean that developers end up developing the greenfield sites but never get around to the brownfield ones because, in practice, the numbers will not be delivered. Nothing in the Bill reassures me that this unsustainable policy will be reversed by the Government, let alone by the democratic will of local communities. There is a lack of a clear definition of sustainability. There is the reinforcement of undemocratic, unaccountable regional governments. There is more hidden power for the centre and the Secretary of State, as my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy) rightly pointed out. There is no reference to any obligation to take climate change, either mitigation or adaptation, into account. There is not even a reference to the Government's own natural environment public service agreement as part of the regional strategies. There are precious few environmental safeguards, and there is less democracy and less accountability. The south-west regional spatial strategy is the last such strategy still awaiting implementation—it is still on the Secretary of State's desk. Perhaps even now she may delight my constituents and get me off her back and those of her Ministers by making some of the changes that local people have asked for. We have some hope of that, but we also have a great deal of fear. My constituents in Leckhampton, Hatherley, Swindon village, Hesters Way and Springbank fear that they will lose their last defence against many of these development proposals, which have already started, and cite the emerging regional spatial strategy as the reason for that. Others fear many other things. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds fears that""Existing regional spatial strategies are an important part of the toolkit to"" prevent biodiversity loss""and many contain forward-thinking policies on biodiversity such as the South West Nature Map, which identifies the best areas in the south west region to conserve, create and connect wildlife habitats at a landscape scale. These policies are at threat from a streamlined single regional strategy which prioritises economic growth."" The Campaign to Protect Rural England is certainly fearful of what may happen. It has identified the potential loss of 27,000 hectares of greenfield sites—an area the size of Birmingham is at risk. That means higher CO2 emissions, loss of local food production, and a catastrophic loss of the green space that is good for our physical and mental health and adds peace and beauty not only to great, sweeping landscapes but on a small scale that is very valuable to local people. It allows them to go for walks in green fields rather than through housing estates, and preserves small fields and small rural environments that are an escape from urban sprawl. Once lost, those vital green spaces will be lost for ever. Expenses scandals may well be forgotten one day; I think that some hon. Members would like that to happen quite soon. Ministers at the Department should look to the long term and hope that they will not be remembered as the people who empowered regional governments, not local people, and enabled the destruction of large swathes of the British countryside.