New Towns

Iain Stewart Excerpts

Wednesday 12th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. I add my thanks and congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) on securing this important debate. She hit many nails on the head, particularly about the need for the Government to work on a cross-departmental basis and have a long-term strategy for new towns over the next few decades.

I should put the record straight: Milton Keynes is actually a new city, not a new town. As my hon. Friend correctly said, we celebrated our 50th birthday earlier this year. I should also say for the record that Milton Keynes has more than 900 roundabouts, which I think is more than anywhere else in the country.

[Lucy Allan]

Does my hon. Friend have bristling traffic lights all over his roundabouts, or are they left unfettered to let the traffic flow?

--- Later in debate ---

[Iain Stewart]

We have a mixture. Most do not have traffic lights, but a few in the centre do.

As it turns 50, Milton Keynes is at a crossroads for future development. We have reached the size envisaged when Milton Keynes was designated as a new city in the 1960s in terms of both our physical footprint and our planned population of around a quarter of a million. The issue is not whether Milton Keynes should grow at all—there is consensus that it will continue to grow—but in what way, in what direction and over what timescale it will do so.

In 2013, the council passed a core strategy that provided for more than 20,000 new homes over the following decade and a half, and we are currently meeting our five-year land and housing supply target. The difficulty is that while that core strategy bought us time—it more than meets our need for the next period—it did not set a long-term vision for the future of Milton Keynes.

After the 2015 election, I successfully argued that Milton Keynes should have that long-term future strategy. I was delighted when Milton Keynes Council took up the idea and set up a futures group, ably chaired by Sir Peter Gregson, the vice-chancellor of Cranfield University. That painted a positive, dynamic vision for the next few decades of what Milton Keynes should be, looking at having, for example, not just a standard university but one focused on the STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering and maths—that our economy needs, loosely based on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology model in the States. The plan was originally called MKIT, but it has morphed into Milton Keynes University. That would help not just to generate economic needs but to provide the social community buzz that a place needs to thrive.

We are looking at growth not just in ourselves but as part of the wider Oxford-Milton Keynes-Cambridge corridor that the National Infrastructure Commission is developing. We had the interim report a few months ago and should have the final report by the time of the autumn Budget. That is critical in looking at not just the area’s housing needs but the whole economic construct, from hard infrastructure such as the east-west railway line and the Oxford to Cambridge expressway to 5G broadband provision and all the critical infrastructure needed to support growth.

My concern is that Milton Keynes Council is now pushing ahead with what is called “Plan:MK”, its vision for the next stage of Milton Keynes’s future development. That is not in itself a problem, but my real worry is the timing. The consultation document recently put out explicitly rejected that the council could have waited until the infrastructure commission reported and until the futures commission projects were more developed. The council thinks that would result in an unacceptable delay, but I fundamentally disagree. We have the time now to pause—not to pause house building, because the core strategy provides for our needs at the immediate time—and to look ahead at the smart cities technology and all the other developments that could usefully shape vibrant new communities that are not just urban sprawl.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Telford said, neighbouring counties are fearful of ever-expansion. However, they have their needs too, and by doing this in the right way, planning small villages that are smartly connected, we could create new communities that people want, not the urban sprawl that people fear. My plea to central Government is to help give us the space to develop that long-term strategy, which will be one of the major providers of the housing supply and economic growth that the country desperately needs. We have a homeless problem in Milton Keynes and we want to build new houses, but let us do that in a properly planned way. We also need to think about the delivery mechanism. A metro-style devolution arrangement will not work in the Oxford-Milton Keynes-Cambridge corridor, but perhaps we should look at reconvening the old Milton Keynes Development Corporation, which could be jointly owned by the authorities along that route, as an effective delivery mechanism.

Our city motto is:

“By knowledge, design and understanding.”

We could get a vibrant, new expansion for Milton Keynes and the surrounding areas. That is my plea and my hope. I support my hon. Friend’s plan to create an all-party group to help look at our shared interest and I very much look forward to being part of that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Melanie Onn]

I am delighted that the right hon. Gentleman’s constituency is benefiting from that investment. I am sure that lots of Members around the room will be hoping for something similar or the same; I certainly would not be disappointed if the Minister came to me and offered something similar.

Broadband, which I thought might come up, has not been touched on today. In 2015 we were promised ultrafast broadband to nearly all homes in the country. Maybe someone will leap from their seat and say, “It’s all absolutely fine; we’ve got ultrafast broadband,” but I know that across the board, only a handful of constituencies have more than 1% of connections receiving ultrafast broadband speeds. To make all our towns across the country successful, the Government must take that seriously and press forward on it.

[Iain Stewart]

I should point out that the National Infrastructure Commission, which is looking at the Oxford-Milton Keynes-Cambridge corridor, is not just considering hard infrastructure such as roads, railways and the rest; broadband provision is very much part of its work.

[Melanie Onn]

Excellent. I could not agree more that soft infrastructure is an essential part of connectivity in new towns.