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9.59 pm
Mr. Oliver Heald (North-East Hertfordshire) rose--
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord): Order. Does the hon. Gentleman have permission of the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) to speak in the debate?
Mr. Deputy Speaker: And that of the Minister?
Mr. Heald: I have not mentioned it to the Minister. I certainly mentioned it to my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) as that bit of extra time was available this evening.
At a rally some six weeks ago, the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. McWalter) and I stood shoulder to shoulder on this issue, in support of the points that my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden has made. My right hon. Friend has been fighting tigerishly to defend--[Interruption.] Tigerishly is the right word. He is fighting fiercely to protect--
It being Ten o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Kevin Hughes.]
Mr. Heald:
My right hon. Friend has been fighting fiercely to protect our part of Hertfordshire. The hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead knows the area well, too. He was a North Hertfordshire district councillor in Letchworth. He knows how important it is to Letchworth that it has the agricultural belt around it and the green belt beside it. He knows, as I and my right hon. Friend do, that it is important in Hertfordshire that the green belt should not be a flexible thing that can be tossed aside and an area where developments can occur in huge numbers.
There is no doubt about the demand. People could build as many houses as they liked in Hertfordshire and they would sell them. Buyers would pour over the borders from Bedfordshire, Essex and come up from London because Hertfordshire is a wonderful place in which to live, but, in doing so, they would destroy its character. That is why this proposal has been strongly opposed not just in Hitchin and Harpenden--although, my goodness, it has been opposed there--but in Letchworth, where people care about the environment, and in other places in my constituency.
The county has a lot of green belt. It has protected itself through the green belt; I see Labour Members nodding. Not just I and the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead, but the leader of North Hertfordshire district council, a Labour member, as my right hon. Friend mentioned, and the chairman of the council have said that this will not do.
I bitterly regret the fact that the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions was not prepared to budge. He let down not just Conservative
supporters of the green belt, but everyone in that part of Hertfordshire: Labour, Liberal and all those individual people--
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Mr. Nick Raynsford):
Nonsense.
Mr. Heald:
The Minister says, "Nonsense," and I noticed that he was laughing earlier. People in north Hertfordshire are not laughing. They think that this is an absolute disgrace and a decision which he should reverse. If he and Secretary of State mean what they say, they must act, not just give us words. It is time that this decision was reversed. The Minister should get on his feet and actually do something for the environment, rather than just talk, talk, talk, which is what Labour does.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Mr. Nick Raynsford):
I am grateful to have the opportunity to respond on this subject, as it enables me to outline the Government's policy as it relates to the new Hertfordshire structure plan and to remind the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley)--and the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald), who did not have the courtesy to inform me that he intended to speak--of the record of the previous Government, whom they supported. Their remarks indicate an astonishing degree of selective amnesia about the performance of that Government on decisions on the green belt. I shall be pleased to remind them about the Conservative Government's record.
I shall start by outlining the procedures; it is right that the House should be aware of them. Structure plans were introduced by the Town and Country Planning Act 1968 and carried forward into section 32 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, which requires county councils to prepare structure plans for their areas. Planning policy guidance for structure plans is set in PPG 12, entitled "Development Plans and Regional Planning Guidance", which was published in 1992. It requires structure plans to set out broad proposals for housing, employment, transportation and other strategic matters and their distribution between districts.
Structure plans do not identify specific sites--that is the preserve of local plans--but they can identify strategic allocations for major development. When applied to housing, a strategic allocation is generally taken as being 1,000 or more dwellings.
Structure plans must have regard to regional planning guidance, which is non-statutory advice published by the Secretary of State--in consultation with standing conferences formed by local authorities--to guide the regional distribution of development and housing. It is not part of the role of RPGs to specify the location of new development. Later in my speech, I shall deal with our proposed changes to the system for preparing regional planning guidance. Hertfordshire is guided by regional planning guidance for the south-east, which is in RPG 9.
Structure plans are prepared and owned by county councils. The Secretary of State has a reserve power, under section 35(2) of the 1990 Act, to direct modifications to a structure plan. He exercises that power,
very sparingly, to ensure that plans do not depart from national or regional planning guidance without very strong justification. For structure plans, the power has been used only six times since 1993--to direct the modification of plans for Suffolk, Surrey, Berkshire, Kent, Bedfordshire and West Sussex. All except the last of those were made by the previous Administration, and the last four arose from the failure of the councils to propose adequate housing provision.
As hon. Members will know, my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister recently announced our new approach to planning for housing, "Planning for the Communities of the Future". I am well aware that several hon. Members are concerned about how Hertfordshire's plan squares with that and with policy for the green belt and reuse of brown-field sites. I know that hon. Members are concerned about protecting the green belt and the countryside; the Government are also concerned about it. We remain fully committed to their protection.
Protection of the countryside has always been a planning priority. Green belt policy is guided by planning policy guidance note 2, "Green Belts", which was published in 1994. The PPG note makes it quite clear that--as has always been the case--green belt boundaries can be changed by the development plan only if "exceptional circumstances" exist.
In recent years, both the current Government and the previous Administration have had to allow releases of green belt land for development. There is nothing new about that process. My hon. Friend the Minister for the Regions, Regeneration and Planning recently met the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden and other hon. Members, told them that the previous Administration had allowed releases of green belt land for housing and said that we would provide some examples.
The right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden will undoubtedly be interested in those examples. They are as follows: 46 hectares in Birmingham, 158 hectares in Broxbourne, 137 hectares in Dartford and 260 hectares in Solihull. In case Conservative Members think that that is only some dim and distant recollection, I should remind them that, in the final year of the previous Conservatives Administration, they released, on appeal, 500 hectares of green belt land for development. In one of the three sites affected, they acted directly against the recommendation of the inspector, who recommended refusal.
The suggestion made by the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden and other Conservative Members that the previous Government's record on the green belt was somehow magnificent and that the current Government are acting improperly is erroneous. It is an extraordinary statement of hypocrisy on the right hon. Gentleman's part.
Mr. Lilley:
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for pointing out those decisions. He should therefore be able to confirm that the Government's single decision in Hertfordshire will have a greater effect than the effect of all those decisions he has listed put together.
Mr. Raynsford:
The right hon. Gentleman has again missed the point. The fact is that--in that one case, in the last year of the previous Government--500 hectares were
10.2 pm
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