National Infrastructure

Lord Horam Excerpts

Thursday 22nd January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Horam (Con)]

My Lords, as others have done, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, on introducing this debate. We all respect his great record in transport and education. Equally, I am glad that my noble friend Lord Deighton is answering for the Government because he is the great implementer, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, admitted in his remarks. Indeed, with the two of them together, the House of Lords leads once again over our colleagues in the House of Commons; I do not believe that it could field two such Ministers as we have today leading our debate.

Undoubtedly, infrastructure planning has been a problem for this country for many years, stretching over many different Governments. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said that we were now 27th in the league of international comparisons. I thought it was 24th but, whether it is 24th or 27th, it is far too far down for a country that is fifth overall in the economic league tables. Now we have the annual infrastructure plan, which is an excellent idea and has cleared up some of the chaos that we were left in by the previous Government due to their bad planning over PFI and their penury on the macroeconomic front. That has helped to bring an element of stability to the whole situation but it is not enough.

Urgent attention needs to be paid to two things that I want to stress to the Minister, which I hope he will pay attention to. The first is that we need to get going on fracking. There is an important decision being taken shortly—in the right direction, I hope—by Lancashire County Council. I speak as a Lancastrian who knows the area of Bowland extremely well; it is where I was born. That decision needs to go the right way. If it does not go the right way, I hope that the Government will intervene and overrule the council. We need to make progress on this matter, otherwise we will be left behind in this very important area of energy development.

Secondly, affordable housing was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and in a very important speech by the noble Lord, Lord Rogers of Riverside. I agree with both of them: our housing record is appalling. We need between 200,000 and 250,000 houses a year. Even Harold Macmillan in the 1950s was able, from an almost standing start, to get up to 312,000 houses in two years. He was able to do that only by a careful and dynamic plan from the centre, organised by the Government. It will not be enough to rely on private housing providers. They will not build the houses in the right places for the country or for the people who need affordable housing. What is happening in London now is a disgrace in terms of the number of houses and flats that are being built and immediately sold off-plan to foreign buyers and are not available to people who live in London. That must not happen any longer if we can possibly avoid it.

I therefore say to my noble friend: I want to see in the next Conservative manifesto something very concrete on fracking and something very concrete on affordable housing.