---

Summer Recess Adjournment

May I associate myself with the tribute that the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) paid to our armed forces? Having spent a year with the armed forces parliamentary scheme, including a trip to Afghanistan, I was massively impressed by our young people in the armed forces here, and that was exceeded only by seeing them in action in Afghanistan, where the work that they are doing is in our national interest. All the lives that have sadly been lost there will have served to make the world a freer and a better place. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we must ensure that those enormously brave young people are properly equipped and that there are enough of them to do the very important job that they have been given. I wish to talk about a planning issue that particularly affects my constituency. By the time we come back after the recess, the consultation will have been completed and decisions will have been taken, and plans that will shape my constituency, and those of my neighbours, for many years to come will practically be at the point of going off to the regional office. West Northamptonshire joint planning unit is drawing up proposals for many thousands of new houses and industrial units for Northampton, and it proposes to turn the town into a city. I have spoken to my neighbour, the hon. Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Binley) about this, because a number of the plans affect his constituency as much as, if not more than mine. We are both extremely concerned not only about the proposals but about how they are being dealt with. I want to raise three concerns and ask three questions of my hon. Friend the Minister. First, the number of proposed units should be reviewed. The requirements need to be reviewed in the light of the recession and the fact that several sites already zoned for development have not been developed, while a large number of industrial and commercial sites in the town are empty. Secondly, infrastructure should be provided before new units are put in place, particularly schools, hospitals—we very much need a new hospital—and transport services. That subject was raised at a packed and lively meeting in my constituency. Thirdly, and most importantly, there should be proper consultation about the proposals. Usually, when a policy proposal is discussed, we are used to having three months' consultation. Arguably, a major emerging plan will affect individual people much more than a general policy proposal, and yet there is to be only six weeks' consultation. That would be bad enough, but the six-week period starts on 28 July. Most people would understand that residents' associations, parish councils and all the other local groups that need to have meetings to consider these plans do not meet during August, and one cannot rely on their meeting in the first week of September. If the planning unit holds local meetings and asks people to go to them, many will be unable to do so because they are on holiday or tied up with children on school holidays. Although it is said that this an emerging plan that sets out only broad principles, many of the broad-brush proposals for where the developments should be sited are based on actual plans that property owners have put forward, and are therefore about more than broad principles. If the land allocations are agreed, fairly well-worked-up plans could come forward fairly quickly and people could see things change equally quickly. We are being told that the time limit for the consultation—apparently six weeks is okay legally—has been set on the basis that the plans have to get to the regional office by November. Unfortunately the planning unit, which has not been particularly competent in going about its work, has missed a number of deadlines and is now up against the buffers. It is completely wrong that people who will have to live with the consequences of this development should pay the price for the fact that the organisation producing the plans has not been able to get itself organised to produce them in time to have proper consultations. Will my hon. Friend the Minister relay to her colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government queries about revisiting some of the development proposals, numbers, and regional and local strategies in the light of the impact of the recession? Can we have some genuine assurances about the provision of infrastructure before any development takes place? Most importantly, will serious attention be given to the consultation so that local people have a chance to put their views, well before the decisions are taken, on developments that will affect them? The Liberal Democrats are driving the timetable on this, which is shocking. We should not come back from our holidays to find that my constituents, and those of my neighbours, have lost their right to control or have a say in the use of the land around them, and that the plans are on the brink of going off to the regional office for final approval. I wish you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and everybody else in the House a very happy holiday.