Oral Answers to Questions

Kevan Jones Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I half expected to find a note on my desk from the previous Housing Minister apologising for the fact that there were no houses, but he did not get round to writing it.

I am glad that my hon. Friend draws attention to his role in what I think will be an important paper. He wrote in that paper that the present system

“imposes too many one-size-fits-all rules…Tragically, the very idea that development can benefit a community has…become a casualty.”

That is the reality of the system that we have been labouring under—literally “Labouring” under. The system does not work in practice or in theory; what kind of bankrupt system is that?

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

May I welcome the abolition of the regional spatial strategies? I referred in the previous Parliament to the system being akin to Soviet-style planning, and it certainly put constraints on the development of housing in my North Durham constituency. However, what will the Minister be doing on guidance and, more importantly, funding to ensure that the housing that is desperately needed in former mining villages in County Durham will be forthcoming?

[Greg Clark]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s welcome for our policy, which enjoys a degree of consensus throughout the country, if not among some of his colleagues. It is important to recognise that when things are imposed from the centre, people tend to react against it. We need to provide incentives, including funding, so that the communities that host more housing get some of the funding that they need to provide infrastructure and other things associated with it.