Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Julian Sturdy and Alec Shelbrooke

Monday 2nd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Alec Shelbrooke]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. The council is playing with people’s lives. These are people who have moved into communities and are working damn hard to pay the mortgage and develop the life that they want, but they do not know what is going to happen. Saying that they want to be looking out on to fields and that they have paid for that is an important argument, but we also need to make the other arguments. Where are the children going to go to school? Where is the road capacity to cope with 400 houses here and 400 houses there, with no infrastructure improvements whatsoever? How do people get access to the doctor’s surgery? People have genuine concerns about how they can function in their daily lives.

I urge my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to look at these areas and say, “We’re giving you the power through a register of brownfield land. If you’re not going to develop that land, we want to know why. We want to know why you’ve decided that all this land in the centre of Leeds is going to be left derelict and you’re going to build on virgin land outside, whether it be green belt or greenfield.”

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making some powerful points. Is it not the case that developers will always go for the easy option, which is greenfield and green-belt land over brownfield land, and that we have to do everything we can to make sure that local councils are putting brownfield sites first?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I know that he suffers from many of these issues in his constituency. The Labour party in Leeds is allowing developers to get away with this by going on to the most profitable land masses and building properties that are not going to help the situation. Houses worth £250,000 or £300,000 are not affordable starter homes in anybody’s view.

The fundamental point is why councils are allowing developers to get away with this. Why are they being allowed to say, “We’re going to leave that area derelict and build on this greenfield?” Most constituents in a rural area, if challenged to look at a meadow and say whether it is green belt or greenfield, would not be able to do so—most people do not know the difference. They are planning terms. People will then see swathes of land in the city centre that are not being developed because the council is not considering that. It is time for the council to get on with it, to engage with local people, to look at things strategically, to say “There’s a brownfield register and we’re going to use that land.” They need to get on with building the number of houses we need rather than an over-inflated number that means that the developer will always be able to have the choice cuts and build the most expensive and profitable houses.

Unemployment

Debate between Julian Sturdy and Alec Shelbrooke

Wednesday 14th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. As a fellow Yorkshire MP, does he agree that if we are to tackle unemployment in the north, we must tackle the north-south divide, which sadly widened under the previous Administration?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. We could list example after example of when infrastructure spending was removed from the north of England and brought down to marginal seats in the south in what can only be described as an attempt to hang on to power, not operating in the best interests of this country.

A bit of humility from Opposition Members would not go amiss in this debate. Very few Opposition Members have this afternoon spoken about trying to tackle the problem. I go back to where I started: when someone becomes unemployed, it is a massive tragedy for that family. Where will they find the money to pay the bills? Where will they find the money for Christmas? It is no wonder that there is a rise in suicide rates. Opposition Members should not dare say that Government Members believe that that is a price worth paying. We do not. We believe that we need to put in place the strong foundations for an economy that will work in the long run, and that will work for generations beyond the one that has been terribly let down by the previous Labour Government.