Budget Statement

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, much as I would like to pick up some of the things the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, just said, I will resist the temptation. Instead, I hope to intrigue your Lordships by declaring an interest as chairman of the Woodland Trust and as a resident of the Oxford-Cambridge arc. That is “arc” as in geography, rather than boat, which would mean that we are sinking. Let me reveal the secret. I will talk about housing, but in particular I will draw the House’s attention to some tensions between different government policies in the housing sphere and ask the Minister to respond on how they will be resolved.

In the dash for housing, which I absolutely support and understand, we need to ensure that we understand why new housing needs to be of good quality, environmentally sustainable, well-served by infrastructure and should promote quality of life. One example of that is the Government’s industrial strategy. That will prosper, and inward investment flow, only if well-trained staff with aspiration are attracted to good places to live. Yet we now build the smallest, boxiest houses in Europe, new settlements are frequently ill served by transport, health, care and social services, and they certainly fail the settlement design standards that the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment promoted before the Government did away with it in 2011.

In a similar vein of policies that seem to be in conflict, the Government have repeated with admirable vim and vigour the commitment they outlined in the housing White Paper to improve protection for ancient woodland. Yet over 500 ancient woodland sites are currently under threat in England, and half of these threats come from housing development. Last year we lost 50 ancient woodland sites, two-thirds from housing development. The Department for Communities and Local Government is reviewing the National Planning Policy Framework at the moment but, so far, the changes it is proposing simply will not deliver the improvement in ancient woodland protection that the Government have committed to carry out in another place. The Chancellor’s statement in the Budget pledges continuing strong protection of the green belt—where most Conservative voters live—but where was the Government’s similar commitment to ancient woodland? There has been no sight of it at all.

However, the Chancellor was much keener on garden towns, and the name has rather a fine ring. Letchworth Garden City, for example, is a superb historic demonstration of what is possible in bringing the built environment together with the green environment. Ebbsfleet is rather less so. In the Budget three years ago the Chancellor pledged a garden city of up to 15,000 homes there. Since 2012, 33 government announcements have mentioned Ebbsfleet, but only 749 homes have been built in total. I make that 23 homes for every press release. We need true garden cities—the Letchworth sort of garden city—led by proper development corporations with a keen sense of place and a commitment to the environment and quality of life. Otherwise, developers, hoping to get a favourable planning status for unsustainable, cheap, boxy developments with inadequate infrastructure, will sex up their proposals—if I may use that technical term—with the odd badly-planned and ecologically unsound scrubby park and damaging encroachment on ancient woodlands that are trapped in concrete within these developments.

In the Budget, the Government endorsed the National Infrastructure Commission report on the Cambridge-Milton Keynes-Oxford corridor—the Oxford-Cambridge arc—and committed to build 1 million homes by 2050. That NIC report says all the right things about the environment, sustainability and access to infrastructure but, alas, schemes spawned by the idea of the corridor are already proposing garden villages. These have poor access to road and rail infrastructure, both north-south and east-west and, distressingly, often encase ancient woodlands in concrete zoos.

Can the Minister assure the House that the dash for housing that the Chancellor’s Budget showcased will not result in the short-changing of other important government policy commitments for the environment and for quality of life? If, when the Government change the National Planning Policy Framework, they could state that damage to ancient woodland would be contemplated only in wholly exceptional circumstances, that will be a good sign that they can harmonise their policies for housing, industrial growth and the environment—that they can walk, talk and chew gum at the same time.