National Planning Policy Framework

Nick Raynsford Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

Both points are of the utmost importance and were reflected by my hon. Friend in his contribution to the consultation. I will have more to say about that as I make progress.

It was, I think, Sir Winston Churchill who said, “We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.” That might be applied to planning policy, so it is right that we have taken the approach that we did. Our reforms have three objectives—first, to transfer power to communities, to give them more power and authority in the planning system than they have been used to having for many years; secondly, to ensure that we support the building of the homes that the next generation will need and the jobs that all our constituents need now and in the future; and thirdly to ensure that the next generation inherits an environment, natural and historic, that is at least the equal of the environment that we inherited. In my view, it should be better than the environment that we inherited. I believe in progress.

[Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

Will the Minister recognise that as a result of two years of almost unprecedented chaos and confusion about where planning policy is going, we now see the lowest level of housing starts that has been recorded in recent history? Does he accept that what he has done is to create a climate where the entire house building industry is deeply worried about the prospects of new homes, and the custodians of the countryside are equally worried about whether the countryside is safe? That is the record that he has achieved over the past two years and he should apologise for the mess that he has caused.

[Greg Clark]

The right hon. Gentleman, of whom I am fond, is confusing his own record with that of the Government. It was his Government who, in over a decade in power, built on average the lowest number of houses in peacetime in the past 100 years. Since the low point for house building during the recession, housing starts are up by 25%. I commend to him what his right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) has said:

“I inherited the regional spatial strategies”.

I think that the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) had something to do with those.

[Mr Raynsford]

No.

[Greg Clark]

Another person who is keen not to be associated with the strategies—I understand that. The right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne said that he

“quickly found that they had…few friends”—

The right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich is another ex-friend. The right hon. Gentleman continued:

“our regional spatial strategies and our approach to planning…was too top-down”.—[Official Report, 30 June 2010; Vol. 512, c. 272WH.]

That is a matter of consensus across the House.