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National Planning Policy Framework

On Tuesday, the Chamber resounded to paeans of praise to the Minister from the Minister. It would be churlish not to acknowledge that a decent man with an open mind has listened to the powerful case that was made by Labour, the countryside, heritage representatives, the business community and the Select Committees. There have been moves on brownfield development, albeit that they do not go far enough. Under Labour, brownfield development went from making up 50% of development to more than 70%. It is a mistake for the word ““prioritising”” not to be used. There has been progress on the intrinsic value of our green and pleasant countryside, on garden grabbing, on the sequential test and in the strengthening of the duty to co-operate. In our debates on the Localism Act 2010, the Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) listened and acknowledged that we needed ““larger than local”” decisions. He could not use the phrases ““regional”” or ““sub-regional”” because he would have been sat upon by the Secretary of State. Nevertheless, moves there were. This is no way to conduct a campaign—[Laughter.] Ours was a very good campaign. This is no way to conduct a debate on matters as important as this. Concerns remain about how the NPPF will work at the worst possible time, and significant weaknesses remain within it. The hon. Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley) was right to celebrate the purpose of planning. I thought that he was going to go on to celebrate one of Labour's greatest achievements, when in 1947 it introduced the post-war planning system that sought to reconcile the need for growth with a say for local people and protection for the natural environment. The planning system was not the problem that the Prime Minister pretended it was. It was preposterous of him to stand at the Dispatch Box and say that the problem with housing was the planning system. It was nothing of the kind. Planning applications were overwhelmingly granted speedily and there was development land with planning permission sufficient to build 300,000 homes. The fact that homes are not being built is nothing to do with the planning system; the principal problem is the failed economic and housing policies of this Government. This has been a master class in how not to conduct a debate, with polarisation and the demonising of critics. Even the usually sane Macmillanite Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) engaged in absurd hyperbole, criticising the National Trust as being akin to ““Trots””. I have acknowledged that progress has been made. I will now turn to the problems. There is no vision for England—no spatial plan that brings together housing, economic development and infrastructure to ensure that if there is growth, all parts of England will grow. There are no longer any strategic planning mechanisms capable of dealing with the problems that exist. I will give one example. Stevenage badly needs to build thousands of homes, but it cannot meet the demand in Stevenage. It will have to build outwith Stevenage in Hertfordshire. The chances of Hertfordshire co-operating with Stevenage to ensure that its housing need is met are remote in the extreme. My right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) was right to say that we have witnessed a remarkable collapse in the building of affordable housing—a 99% collapse in the figures for the past six months. We now see in the NPPF the potential downgrading of the importance of affordable housing. The Wolfson paragraph, as I have come to call paragraph 173, allows affordable housing to be traded off in the development process. Lord Wolfson complained on ““Newsnight”” about how a friend of his, a developer, hoped to develop a major site in Clerkenwell but was unable so to do because the council insisted on affordable housing. The council was absolutely right to do so, and it is wrong to downgrade its importance in development.