Proportional Representation: General Elections
Richard Holden Excerpts(2 days, 19 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Marie Goldman (Chelmsford) (LD)
When I was out knocking on doors in my constituency in last year’s general election campaign, lots of people reminisced with me about a previous general election when the Liberal candidate came just 378 tantalising votes short of the incumbent Conservative. They spoke very fondly of that candidate, which might not be surprising, except the election that they were recalling was in 1983—over four decades ago.
I also remember speaking to an elderly, lifelong Labour voter who was lending me his vote for the very first time because he had to do something different. When I thanked him for placing his trust in me, he told me not to take too much from it, because his entire life he had never voted for a candidate who had won. I will always remember that conversation. As I walked away, I said, “Well, we’ll see about that.”
Until last July, for 74 years the constituency of Chelmsford, in its various shapes and sizes over the years, had never been represented in Parliament by anyone other than a Conservative. In fact, it had been 100 years since Chelmsford was last represented by a Liberal—something I am extremely proud to have corrected. It should not have to be this way. I hugely admire the tenacity of that erstwhile Labour voter who lent me his vote, hoping against all the evidence of his lifetime that this time it might make a difference.
No wonder turnout in elections is often so painfully low. Our antiquated first-past-the-post system can be incredibly demoralising, even for a committed political campaigner like myself. Believe it or not, I do not like having to ask people on the doorstep to lend me their vote so that, together, we can game the system to get the change that we want. Would it not better if people could cast their vote in a way that let them set out their preferences? They would know that all would not be lost for them if their first preference candidate did not win, as their vote could be transferred to someone else that they also would not mind seeing elected. The turnout in last year’s general election, as has already been alluded to, was 65.9% in Chelmsford, slightly better than the national turnout, which was a pretty poor 59.7%. In Manchester Rusholme, the turnout was just 40%. But these are dizzying heights compared with the turnout in local elections.
Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
I appreciate that the hon. Lady is talking about a preferential voting system, rather than a proportional voting system. Does she understand that there is quite a big difference between those two options, and obviously today’s debate is about proportional representation?
Marie Goldman
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I do not think those two things are mutually exclusive. There are preferential systems that can lead to proportional results. In fact, we see that in many places that use preferential systems.
In the election in May 2024 for the police, fire and crime commissioner in Essex, the turnout was barely 25%. So why are people not voting? Surely part of the issue is simply that they do not believe that their vote counts. They do not believe that they can make a difference. Although I do not completely agree with that, I certainly agree that the first-past-the-post system makes it harder.
There are also other things in our electoral system that make it harder, and I do not think that we should be talking about changing our voting system without also talking about them. For example, the introduction of voter ID was supposedly designed to enhance trust in our elections, but the evidence suggests that there have been some other consequences. In the 2024 general election, 4% of people who did not vote said that the voter ID requirement was the reason that they could not do so. Additionally, 0.08% of those who went to the polls were unable to cast their ballot because they did not have the correct ID. Those may seem like small figures, but if we put them into rough numbers, rather than percentages, we can see that, with about 28.9 million people casting their vote, the number of people who showed up who could not cast their vote because they did not have the correct ID was approximately—unless I have got my maths wrong—23,000 people. That is an incredibly high and quite shocking number.
Let us think about that for a moment—23,000 people could not vote because we wanted to stop voter fraud. Of course that might be a good idea if there was lots of voter fraud going on, but the Electoral Commission’s own website says:
“In the past five years, there is no evidence of large-scale electoral fraud. Of the 1,462 cases of alleged electoral fraud reported to police between 2019 and 2023, 11 led to convictions, and the police issued four cautions.”
Talk about a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
Voter registration is another area where improvements are needed. Research shows that as many as 8 million people across the UK are not registered correctly at their current address. This affects key groups such as young people, private renters and recent home movers who may not realise that they are missing from the register until it is too late. Although the current system allows for late registration before elections, this puts unnecessary pressure on electoral services and risks leaving some people unable to vote on polling day.
We can see the impact that even small barriers to voting can have. Imagine what would happen if we broke down those barriers and got rid of them. We must recognise that barriers to participation, including voter ID, voter registration and the voting system itself, are dangerous to our democracy. I urge the Government to take the opportunity to fix this and thereby to strengthen democracy and democratic engagement in our country.
Steve Race
It is not that it is okay, but we have introduced legislation that has essentially restricted many, many more people from voting than otherwise would have happened.
Steve Race
I will make some progress, if I may.
I am pleased that this Government have legislated to allow the use of the veteran’s ID card, and I ask that they look at a wider range of suitable ID, including train driver licences, in any future review. Preferably, though, we should return to the traditional British approach of not demanding ID to have access to a vote.
On the issue at hand, I want to recommend to colleagues the outcome of the Jenkins Commission of 1998, which designed an elegant solution to the issues that our democracy faces when it comes to representation. Jenkins, one of the great social reformers of this place to whom many of us still owe a great debt of gratitude, proposed a hybrid system that kept many of the benefits of first past the post, such as the strong relationship that an MP has with a defined and manageable area, but with additional proportionality through the additional member system. Constituency MPs would be elected through the alternative vote system to add choice into the system.
Versions of that system are now in operation for elections in the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Senedd and the London Assembly, so this is not theoretical and voters understand it perfectly well. This is proof that a Labour Government can and do deliver much-needed social reform and always has.
Although I do not support electoral reform in the sense of pure PR, I absolutely accept that politics is about priorities. This Government have a huge task to do—three things all at once, I believe, which is not something that many Governments have faced before. We must stabilise our public finances, get the economy growing in a sustainable way, and rebuild our public services. That is a mammoth task, but it is what the public demanded when they elected our party with a landslide last year. I can well understand that these issues take priority over time for electoral reform. I do not think that I could look my constituents in Exeter in the eye if I knew that we were spending much time—and it would be much time—in this place discussing how to be elected, rather than addressing their immediate concerns.
As I have mentioned, there is much that we can do to make the current system more democratic and accessible, so I support the call of my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) for a commission to look into this issue and find a way forward. Therefore, although I remain an electoral reformer, I also welcome the Government’s current focus on supporting the development of a stronger economy, grabbing the opportunities that are on offer for my region, and delivering jobs and investment in places such as Exeter, while also working and legislating hard to fix our roads, end our homelessness and housing crisis, clean up our waterways and rebuild our health system.
Cameron Thomas (Tewkesbury) (LD)
It is an honour to sit on the fair elections all-party group, which is so well chaired by the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel). It is also an honour to take up this fight in this House with the Liberal Democrats for whom electoral reform has been a central tenet for decades.
In order to be here today, I had to resign my commission in the Royal Air Force where I had, for 23 years, defended our country and our interests overseas. However, I came to recognise that the most crucial way to defend our democracy was to do so here while backing proportional representation. Throughout the 2024 general election campaign, residents across Tewkesbury constituency frequently expressed their frustrations with an electoral system that was certain to condemn them to another five years of the same Conservative Member of Parliament whichever candidate they voted for. Tewkesbury had been represented by my predecessor for 27 years, and it was the view of many residents that Tewkesbury would never experience change because our broken electoral system would see this safe Conservative seat won by the Conservatives at an eighth consecutive election.
Cameron Thomas
No, for two reasons: the Liberal Democrats defied the odds, but there are many other smaller parties who are not adequately represented; and, as I will come to later, 58% of voters across the country did not get the MP they voted for, and that is true even in my constituency.
At the general election, Tewkesbury did see change, but only through the coming together of several unique circumstances, and despite first past the post. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman), I was loaned the trust of Labour, Green and Conservative supporters. The general election may have been won by Labour and returned Liberal Democrats in record numbers, but let us not delude ourselves: the country voted tactically in record numbers for whoever would remove the catastrophic, nepotistic and morally bankrupt Conservative Government of 2019.
July’s election brought the briefest respite before frustrations rose once again. This is the most disproportionate House of Commons in British history, with Labour MPs in 66% of seats but with the lowest vote share—some 34%—of any winning party since 1945, and 58% of UK voters did not get the MP they voted for. I have previously described first past the post as “barely democratic”, and these figures vindicate me.
Public apathy towards politics is reflected in a steady decline in general election turnouts since the 1950s, from over 80% to less than 60% in 2024. If we want to arrest this decline, people must feel that their vote matters. The only way to ensure that the next election returns a representative Parliament is to transition to a proportional representation electoral system.
I have occasionally been challenged by those who say that proportional representation would increasingly return hung Parliaments, and would lead to bickering and chaos, rather than functioning government. This challenge falters when those people are presented with the fact that the previous Government and their 80-seat majority were elected through first past the post. Never in the field of British politics was so little achieved by so many. They scrambled from controversy to controversy, fighting among themselves while undermining our institutions and allowing our public services to crumble.
Today, our friends in the United States are living with the inevitable result of their two-party system. Far-right populists have seized the previously conservative Republican party, neutered the media and dismantled many institutional safeguards. We must recognise that we face the same threat, as our Conservative party—the most successful election-winning machine on earth—continues its lurch to the right and brings fringe opinions into the mainstream. It can happen here, and we must have a fair electoral system to mitigate that.
Liberal Democrats were elected in record numbers in 2024 on a pledge to deliver proportional representation. Labour Members want proportional representation, and the public increasingly want proportional representation, so I say to the Government: let us come together and do something historic. Let us put aside our individual and party political interests for the many. Let us do the right thing. Let us change our country for the better and deliver proportional representation.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Rushanara Ali)
I start by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) for opening the debate and by congratulating the Backbench Business Committee and the key Members on securing this debate.
The UK’s democratic system and institutions are strong and are rightly held the world over as a strong example of democracy. I know as someone who was born in another country that the UK’s democratic system has provided inspiration, even though as we have heard many hon. Members believe more work needs to be done in some areas. In defence of our democratic system, I reiterate how much our system and our democracy is cherished. Whichever side of the argument Members are on, it is vital that we work tirelessly to protect our democracy, which faces different kinds of threats in the current climate. Indeed, I hope we will all work together in that endeavour to make sure that we protect the integrity of our system, our institutions and our precious democracy.
How we select our representatives in Parliament is of fundamental importance and Members quite rightly have strong views. The choice of voting system is central to that concern, as we have heard in the many speeches made today, and how votes are cast goes to the heart of our democracy. I, for one, am incredibly proud to have been the first person of British-Bangladeshi heritage to get a democratic mandate in our system in 2010. That democratic mandate must never be delegitimised, even if we believe that there should be a different system. Whatever Members’ arguments, whichever side of the argument they are on, whichever system they believe we should adopt or whether they believe we should retain the current system, it is absolutely vital that we do not delegitimise the democratic mandate that this Government, or any other Government in the past, have been given to serve this country and the people who have voted for us.
Mr Holden
The Minister makes a broader important point about the mandate that individual MPs feel when they are elected to this place. Does she agree that that individual mandate—our names are on the ballot paper—is strengthened under the first-past-the-post system? Does she also agree that that means that our electorate can single out MPs, which could not happen under a party-list system, in order to remove them?
Rushanara Ali
The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point about the importance of the constituency connection. Hon. Members have made important contributions about alternative systems, outlining their merits and limitations. Each of those systems has its pros and cons, and that has been strongly and powerfully debated by many hon. Members today. I respect those strongly held views on electoral reform.
I know that colleagues will be disappointed, and I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news when there has been a general love-in during the debate across the parties, bar some exceptions, but at this time the Government have no plans to change the voting system for elections to the House of Commons. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I am getting unlikely cheers; I am not used to being cheered by Conservative Members. As has been pointed out, the first-past-the-post system, while not perfect, provides for a direct relationship between Members of Parliament and their local constituency. A change would require a national conversation and referendum. The Government’s focus and No. 1 priority, having won the general election and secured a mandate, is to kick-start our economy, create the growth that is desperately needed, and improve living standards, our NHS and public services, to serve the people of our country.
Members have put their arguments across eloquently, and I respect those arguments. As others have pointed out, we had an opportunity to change the voting system in the 2011 referendum. Unfortunately for those who are proponents of such a change, that referendum was lost. The processes that underpin our elections are of paramount importance and changes cannot be made lightly; however, I stress that we are not averse to changes to, and innovation in, our democracy. We must continue to monitor all aspects of our electoral system, and ensure that it runs effectively and adapts to the modern challenges that we face as a democracy.
As we set out in our manifesto, we are seeking to make changes, including our commitment to extend the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds. We are continuing to assess the voter identification policy in order to address any inconsistencies. I am pleased that we were able to add veteran cards to the list of accepted documents last year; our veterans community will be able to use them to vote in polling stations this May. We are continuing to consider whether further improvements to policy can be made. I am conscious of the contributions of some hon. Members about the exclusion of legitimate voters. It is crucial that we ensure that people are not disenfranchised, while ensuring that there are not abuses of our system.
As I mentioned, the Liberal Democrat party, in coalition with the Conservative party, secured a referendum on AV in 2011, with considerable cross-party support from Labour Members. The proposal was rejected by 67.9% of votes. While I recognise the strength of feeling, I have made the Government’s position clear. Hon. Members asked whether the Government have any plans for a national commission on electoral reform. At present, we do—we do not. [Laughter.] That was not a Freudian slip. Some hon. Members asked about the London mayoral election and police and crime commissioners, following the changes in the Elections Act 2022. The Government currently have no plans to change the voting system for those polls. Like a number of policies, we will keep these matters under review.
A number of hon. Members suggested that the first-past-the-post system is contributing to a decrease in turnout, and pointed to the low turnout at the last election. It is on all of us to think carefully about the drivers of low turnout, which will be a range of factors. We all have a responsibility, as elected representatives, to work with our parties and communities to promote engagement, particularly among young people. We will work with colleagues to promote that democratic engagement, and ensure that young citizens are active citizens from an early age.
In order to allow my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central and Headingley enough time to wind up the debate, I will address just one other point. My hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) spoke about foreign interference in relation to funding. Foreign money has no place in UK politics, and it is vital that we protect our democracy from those who seek to interfere in UK elections through illegitimate political donations. That is why we committed in our manifesto to strengthening the rules around donations to political parties. We will work with Members across the House to ensure that we protect the integrity of our democracy.
Rural Housing Targets
Richard Holden Excerpts(3 days, 19 hours ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
This is exactly the issue facing my constituency, where two proposed large developments are going through planning, one on Wash Road on the outskirts of Noak Bridge, and the other—it went through a couple of weeks ago—on Laindon Road in Billericay. There are huge pressures on local services; local primary schools are overflowing. When we see our local authorities changing from two-tier to unitary and being moved around, there is real concern that section 106 money will not even go towards the needs of the communities having housing imposed on them. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that adds extra complexity to the situation?
Damian Hinds
I agree with my right hon. Friend, who has done an outstanding job of highlighting such points, including on the Floor of the House, to the benefit of his constituents.
It is also important to pay attention to maintaining the character of areas. We talked in the past about urban sprawl, but increasingly we face the risk of rural sprawl, with ribbon developments that lose the distinction between settlements. In addition to a beautiful landscape, my constituency has an important cultural heritage, as the home of Jane Austen. That is important not only to people who live in East Hampshire but to many who visit from elsewhere in the country and from abroad.
On the new formula, the Government need an overall 50% uplift in housing numbers, but in many areas they will increase by a lot more. East Hampshire is one: our target will increase from 575 to 1,142, or 98%—let us just call that doubling. That is not unusual. Colleagues will have seen that the Library paper looked at 58 mainly or largely rural local authorities and found that all had had an increase, two thirds had had one above 50%, and the average increase was 71%.
Meanwhile, in urban areas, increases are much lower—more like 16% or 17% on average. Quite a few places will see a reduction, including large parts of London and Birmingham. The Library analysis found that 37 out of 41 local authorities with a decrease were urban. I want to stress that this is not about a north-south divide; it is specifically an urban-rural divide. The County Councils Network has helpfully provided figures showing the difference in county areas. Compared with the south-east, the north-east, north-west, and Yorkshire and the Humber have much higher average increases, albeit from a lower base.
It is also important to note that this is not about correcting an historic mistake. People might think that not much building has happened in the countryside in the past, but looking back over 20 years, the rate of building—the number of additional dwellings relative to the existing dwellings per thousand households—has been higher in predominantly rural areas than in urban areas.
That shift from urban to rural is a problem for multiple reasons. One of them is a big theme today: economic growth. I am sure the Minister has a lot of time for the think-tank the Resolution Foundation. Its analysis is that tilting development towards cities, because of the agglomeration effect and other factors, makes a material improvement to growth prospects. It is also important for another theme of the day. We talk about airport expansion and the tension between economic growth and decarbonisation. When housing moves towards the countryside, that is bad for decarbonisation, because the numbers are so high that houses have to be put everywhere and it is not possible to focus on the relatively small number of places that have good strategic transport links. That hardwires reliance on the motor car, which in constituencies such as mine means two cars per couple in a household.
Why does the formula do that? We do not have the time to explain. We would need whiteboards, Excel and possibly PhDs to go through this subject—you might already have a PhD in this subject, Ms Jardine; I do not want to suppose otherwise. Various changes have been made to the formula, in particular the multiplier that gets applied to the affordability calculation, which has risen from 0.6 to 0.95. That means that the affordability calculation does a lot more work, and is more important than it was before.
No calculation of affordability of housing is close to perfect. There are all manner of problems with trying to make such a calculation. In particular, with the formula that we use today, there is a proper debate to be had about the balance between workplace earnings and residency-based earnings. Sometimes we talk about a choice between the two, but I think they are both relevant to the affordability of housing. It is also about the distinction between earnings and income, and whether we are really comparing types of housing like for like.
As I say, this is not the place to discuss those issues in detail; it is not possible in a debate format. However, I will say to the Minister that I am sure the formula looked logical when it was done on paper or a computer screen, and I am sure it was done for the right reasons, but in practice it has delivered perverse outcomes, which will reduce housing development in urban areas and harm growth, and it will be extremely difficult to deliver—certainly, it will be impossible to deliver sustainably in the countryside. The formula is an errant, rogue algorithm. We know what that feels like because it happened when we were in government, too; it can happen to anyone. The important thing is to address it as quickly as possible once it is spotted. Whatever their intent was, given the outcome, I ask the Government to look at the formula again.
The second issue is that the formula does not encourage enough of a change in the mix towards homes that are actually affordable. I will say what I mean by “actually” in a moment, but first I want to note the good work of my constituent, Nick Stenning, who has helped me in this area. We want more affordable homes, but when constituents come to my surgery and say that they want housing to be more affordable, they do not mean it in the sense the public sector means it, which is what I call Affordable with a capital A—the very strict definition of housing association rent, council rent and part ownership. They just want a home they can afford. Of course that includes those types of tenure and rent, but young couples overwhelmingly aspire to own their home, and we should be in the business of helping them to do that.
All other things being equal, for a developer, the best economic returns come from larger, costlier houses. When we consider that there is a premium on new build homes anyway, that means that, paradoxically, in spite of the economic theory, when we add more homes, the median price increases because we are adding them in the top half of the distribution. We then get a cycle that ends up calling for more of the same. We say, “Well, this area is now even less affordable than it was before, so we need more houses,” and we get more of the same homes. That is not entirely true, of course—there is a mix, but it is disproportionately weighted towards four or five-bed executive homes. I ask Ministers to look again at that; I am sure we have the same objective in this regard.
The third and final area I want to cover is specific to my constituency. It applies to a lesser extent in other areas with so-called national landscapes, but there are literally only one or two areas in the country where it applies to quite the extent it does in mine. The South Downs national park is an unusual national park: it is England’s newest, but it is by far the most populous. Its population density is about 3.5 times that of the Lake District national park, which has the next most dense population. It has huge swathes of open countryside but also significantly sized settlements, one of which is Petersfield in my constituency. Alton, which is outside the national park, is a similar size to Petersfield. They are both historic market towns and many of the people living there have the same needs and objectives, but they are treated completely differently from a housing development point of view.
There would be no point in having national parks if they did not have special protection, but the problem I have is that so much of my district—57% of the land area—is inside the national park. We have to calculate the housing need on the basis of the entire area, but that need has to be accommodated overwhelmingly in the area outside the national park. When there is a change—for instance, the number has just gone up—but the numbers that can be accommodated inside the national park do not change, we get a magnified, leveraged effect in the parts of the district outside the national park.
We would not expect development to be in proportion to landmass; otherwise, there would be an awful lot more building in, for example, the constituencies of the hon. Members for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) or for Hexham (Joe Morris). Other things being equal, we would expect it to be broadly in proportion to the existing development and existing population. In the district of East Hampshire, the South Downs national park accounts for 27% of the population and, since the national park came into existence, it has accounted for 15% of the housing development. However, with the change in targets, and without that much changing in what the national park is planning to do, it will account for 8% of the housing development, as against 27% of the existing population.
That fact creates particular pressures just outside the boundary of the national park, in places such as Alton, Holybourne, Four Marks and Medstead—all the way along the A31—and in the south of the district around Horndean, Clanfield and Rowlands Castle. There is already an imbalance between housing affordability inside the national park and housing affordability outside it, as was demonstrated by the bespoke analysis that the Office for National Statistics kindly produced. That imbalance will widen over time, and that has implications for the age mix of people living inside the national park, and therefore for the viability of schools, churches, shops, pubs and so on.
Mr Holden
My right hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way. My question touches on that point about the balance between urban and rural. Semi-rural and rural areas are now being densified, and given the changes in the requirements on new buildings, places such as London are seeing less extra densification. Does he agree that the Government should be looking at schemes such as the one up at Finsbury Park, to which the Industry and Parliament Trust will take us on a visit in the next few weeks? A post-war estate of 2,000 homes is being transformed into 5,500 homes. That is proper urban densification around a major existing transport hub, and it means that those houses are not being built in the green-belt areas that he is talking about.
Damian Hinds
My right hon. Friend makes an interesting point. In fact, there is a good example of that in my constituency, on a much smaller scale. Those schemes can materially improve amenity: we can make a better-looking housing estate and add facilities, such as a shop, even a pub, a better children’s playground and so on, that can benefit everyone.
Hon. Members will be pleased to hear that I am coming to the end of my speech. I do not want to overstate matters: the South Downs national park authority does build houses. In fact, it builds more houses, or plans for more houses, than other national park authorities. It co-operates and communicates with East Hampshire district council. However, we still end up with this imbalance, which is bad for both the part inside and the part outside the national park. Quite apart from the question of balance, there is also the question of public confidence, democratic accountability and responsiveness —people knowing how the numbers have been derived, rather than the council effectively having to be a number-taker, as it were, because of the decisions of another group.
My primary ask of the Minister is that he look again at how numbers are distributed between urban areas and the countryside overall. However, I also ask him to look again at how the calculations work in areas such as mine, so that we do not have demand calculated for the entire district with supply going mostly, although not entirely, to one part of it. That could be rectified in different ways. One would be to give district councils total clarity on how they can adjust their method for calculating need without running an excessive risk of the plan being found to be unsound. There is guidance—the Minister may have this in his notes—but here is what it says:
“The standard method should be used to assess housing needs. However in the specific circumstances where an alternative approach could be justified, such as those explained at paragraph 014”,
on national parks,
“consideration will be given to whether it provides the basis for a plan that is positively prepared, taking into account the information available on existing levels of housing stock and housing affordability.”
I do not know about you, Ms Jardine, but I am not sure I could explain to somebody else what that means. If we are going to have guidance, fine, but it has to be clear and it has to give confidence to councils and councillors, who, at the end of the day, are managing public money, that they are not running a serious risk of ending up in court proceedings when trying to do the right thing.
This could be done in other ways. It could be done by having the national park explicitly and transparently set a housing target for the entirety of its area, leaving the individual districts to work it out for themselves. That could be done either individually for each district, or just for the park as a whole.
Green Belt: Basildon and Billericay
Richard Holden Excerpts(2 weeks, 1 day ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
I am delighted to have secured this debate after entering the ballot many times.
The origins of the green belt go back certainly to the start of the last century, but perhaps even further, because in 1580 Elizabeth I tried to impose a block on building within three miles of the City of London, in order to prevent the spread of plague. Today, I will talk a little about the Green Belt (London and Home Counties) Act 1938, the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, and a large area of land now known as the green belt.
Almost two thirds of undeveloped land in the Basildon borough is green belt, covering some 6,590 hectares. Why this debate today? Basildon council has put forward a new local plan, with a consultation that closed just a few days ago, for 27,000 homes right across the borough—the majority of which are in my constituency—covering a huge quantity of that green belt. There are 25% more homes this year on the green belt, because this Labour Government cut the need for housing in London by 17,000 properties a year and increased it in the home counties by 18,000 properties a year. All those extra properties will be heading to the green belt in constituencies such as mine across Essex and the south of England.
Dr Neil Hudson (Epping Forest) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend and fellow Essex MP on securing this important debate. His constituency, like mine, has precious green belt that is so important to the environment, biodiversity and our physical and mental health. I acknowledge the need for housing, but does he share my concerns about this Labour Government’s central top-down targets being imposed on communities against their wishes and, equally, their plans to reclassify some of the green belt as grey belt, thereby putting our precious green belt under immense pressure and danger?
Mr Holden
I certainly agree, and I was about to move on to that point. None of us on the Opposition Benches is against more housing, but often that housing does not come about because of local need in our constituencies. This is about a Government shying away from difficult conversations about densification in our cities, a mayor who has consistently failed to deliver on his own housing targets, and a failure to redevelop crucial brownfield land in the centre and on the edges of our major cities.
My hon. Friend’s point about the grey belt is particularly important at the moment, because the council is starting to redesignate large areas of my constituency. Just a few years ago, those areas were grade 1 or grade 2 agricultural land. Now, they are being designated as grey belt, despite never having had any buildings on them. I am concerned about what this insidious grey belt phrasing could mean for developments right across the country.
The Government will ask where the housing should go. London is a third less dense than Paris. It seems mad that we are building on virgin greenfield sites rather than densifying our cities, especially at a time when constituents in Essex and across the country are having to cross-subsidise the Mayor of London for his transport. They do not get access to it, but they have to pay for it. If we had greater density in our cities, some of those transport routes would be able to fund themselves.
Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree not only that the Mayor of London has been given subsidies for Transport for London and has wonderful transport infrastructure links, but that he has the devolved power for housing and has not met his housing targets consistently? He has been rewarded with a reduction in housing targets, which have spilled over to the home counties.
Mr Holden
My hon. Friend is right to make that point. The Mayor of London is being rewarded for failure, just as he was with his knighthood not that long ago. My constituents, many of whom grew up in the area or moved there for the green space nearby, now feel that they face seeing their communities concreted over because of the Mayor of London’s failure.
The green belt was designated by Conservative Governments in the 1930s and Labour Governments in the 1940s. One cannot talk about it today in the context of Basildon and Billericay without talking about Basildon council’s disastrous local plan, which is built on the destruction of the green belt. It will result in the emergence of a contiguous conurbation all the way from Shoeburyness, through the Thames gateway corridor and my constituency, into Brentwood and then through London all the way to Uxbridge on the other side. Essentially, the area from Heathrow airport to Southend airport will become part of that contiguous conurbation.
What I have to say about the green belt rests on so many conversations I have had with county, borough, town and parish councillors, but overwhelmingly on conversations with local residents across my constituency. My argument rests on four main points. First, there is overwhelming opposition to the proposals, especially in the context of London seeing a reduction in its housing targets. Secondly, there are serious concerns about existing and future local services and infrastructure, if this housing goes on the green belt. Thirdly, there will be a need for even more physical infrastructure on whatever remains of the green belt to cope with the proposed development, leading to its further erosion in the future. Fourthly, local residents have broader concerns about why the plan is being rushed through so quickly with the destruction of so much green belt, while our local councils have a gun to their head in respect of the Government’s devolution plans.
I want to be clear: residents of Basildon and Billericay are not against development per se. They are entrepreneurial, hard-working people who love their area. They are also community oriented and have stayed in Essex to raise their family or moved to Essex from London for the green space and greater sense of community. The level of building proposed is on a scale completely out of whack with what other parts of the country away from the south-east face.
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
I am grateful to my parliamentary neighbour for giving way. One of the most worrying things about Labour-run Basildon council’s new local plan is that 17,000 of the 27,000 proposed dwellings—just shy of two thirds of the total—are intended to be built in the green belt. Surely that is environmental and ecological vandalism.
Mr Holden
My right hon. Friend is absolutely correct. It would basically mean the merging of Wickford in his constituency with Basildon, as part of the continuous conglomeration of building that would go all the way through Greater London.
Earlier this week, the Minister for Local Government and English Devolution said in answer to my question that Basildon and Billericay residents should be proud of their council and its plans for 27,000 more properties. If every constituency in England was being asked to take what Basildon and Billericay is being asked to take, the Government would have a housing target of 12 million homes by 2040. We are bearing more than our fair share and more than is necessary. It is difficult to see how that is justified when housing targets are being cut for London.
As you can imagine, Madam Deputy Speaker, there is overwhelming local opposition to this. Central Government should be concentrating on densification of brownfield sites. There is a real fear that when the green belt is gone, the green sites left in the constituency will face immense pressure—places such Norsey Wood in Billericay, which will be the only green space for so many local residents. The pressure on the green spaces that remain will be huge, because none of the alternatives will exist.
If this plan is accepted, even with modifications, the towns and villages of the Basildon borough will become part of an amorphous mass. Villages such as Little Burstead, Great Burstead and South Green, Ramsden Bellhouse, Crays Hill and Noak Bridge just will not exist any more. They will be footnotes in the history of Labour’s plans to build, build, build.
There are serious concerns about local education provision, as we already have oversubscribed primary schools. That is particularly acute when it comes to special educational needs, with some of the services being in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois). There are already major pressures on our green belt from the housing plan, and we are not seeing the services to go alongside it. That is particularly difficult for the green belt, because the only place where those services can be built is in that green-belt space. With the plans the council has put forward, what we are seeing is just the start of the erosion of our green belt.
Healthcare is another major concern for local people. We are already seeing acute pressures on primary care services in south Essex, and yet we are expected to take potentially tens of thousands more residents, without any clear guidance from the Government on what will happen or any plans for where the additional health services we will require would be. We have seen recently in the borough a lack of support from Basildon council’s leadership for Conservative councillors in Burstead and Billericay who are trying to push back on plans to close South Green surgery.
Police and fire services are another classic example of where we already face big pressures. The infrastructure required for the fire service and police service to respond within the required times is already being stretched to breaking point. All that extra building on the green belt in constituencies such as mine will just put more pressure on those local services.
That brings me to the need for more physical infrastructure. At the moment, Tye Common Road in my constituency is basically the last bit of green space we see before we get to the greater conurbation of London. That is not going to exist—in the next few years, it will be carpeted with huge amounts of new building. Small local roads that are already over capacity, all of which go through the green belt, will have to be expanded. Whether it is the A129, the A176 or Tye Common Road, which go between Basildon and Billericay, the massive expansion of those roads will further damage the green belt. That is before we even come to the A127 or A13, which run east-west through my constituency or just outside it, and are major arterial routes for the entire region. The green belt is already massively at stake, and I do not want to see it further at stake. I do not want to see massive new road building programmes, but they will have to happen if the Government’s proposals go ahead.
Before I close, I want to mention the future-proofing of these plans. We are seeing the Government push for devolution across the country, and nowhere more so than in Essex. The local plan that has been proposed, with all this churning up of our green belt, may well not be what is wanted by the council that the Government are basically going to impose on us, with a new unitary authority and a mayor, in a couple of years.
I urge the Government to think very carefully. Once the green belt has gone, it cannot be changed back. We need to think again, especially as we face massive local government reform over the next couple of years, pushed forward by this Government. So many properties are being proposed locally for building on green belt land. That means irreversible destruction, and the merging of towns and villages across Basildon borough. It is hardly surprising that local people are outraged by the loss of their green belt. I have yet to find anyone in my area who supports the proposal. The people of Basildon and Billericay, Laindon, Crays Hill, Noak Bridge, Noak Hill, the Bursteads and Ramsden Bellhouse want the green belt to be protected to keep their communities special. They are not against development; they are just against the wholesale destruction of their communities by a Government who do not seem to understand or care about them.
Matthew Pennycook
I assure the right hon. Gentleman that I have heard the point he has made. He will understand that given the quasi-judicial nature of the planning system, I cannot comment on the specifics of an individual local authority’s plan, but he has put his point on the record regarding health provision in the area.
When it comes to affordable housing, our new golden rules will require a 15 percentage point premium on top of existing requirements, up to a maximum of 50%. No site-specific viability assessments will be permitted until we have strengthened national planning guidance on viability, in which we will consider the case for permitting viability negotiations on previously developed land and larger strategic sites that are likely to carry greater infrastructure costs. We have also ensured that the sustainability of sites must be prioritised. No one wants to see isolated and disconnected development, which is why our policy asks authorities to pay particular attention to transport connections when considering whether grey belt is sustainably located.
I want to make it clear that while our reforms will help deliver the homes and development that this country so desperately needs, they will not come at the expense of the natural environment or rural communities. We are maintaining the existing strong protections in the national planning policy framework for the best and most versatile agricultural land—the land most important for food production—and we have preserved protections for high-quality green-belt land and land safeguarded for environmental reasons, such as national landscapes. Alongside those protections, we are ensuring that green-belt developments deliver more accessible green space and support nature recovery.
As the right hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay knows, to support the Government’s plan-for-change milestone of building 1.5 million new homes this Parliament, we introduced a new standard method for assessing local housing need. We recognise that as a result, some areas of the country will see their targets raised. That includes London and the south-east; the numbers we consulted on back in July were raised partly in response to concerns expressed through the consultation about the lack of responsiveness to affordability. Many areas will see their targets raised, and on 12 December, we raised London’s target from the number we had consulted on. However, the acute and entrenched nature of the housing crisis in England demands that we take steps to significantly increase the supply of homes of all tenures, and all parts of the country, including Basildon and Billericay, need to play their part.
Before I conclude, I will touch on the importance of up-to-date local plans. As I have just made clear to the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford, due to the Secretary of State’s quasi-judicial role, I cannot comment on specifics. However, I will take the opportunity to underline that having up-to-date local plans is the best way for local communities to shape development in their area, deliver housing that meets the needs of their communities, and ensure the provision of supporting infrastructure in a sustainable manner.
Mr Holden
Will the Minister reflect on the concerns I have raised, and that have been raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) in previous debates, about the huge changes we face locally with devolution? Who will be accountable for local plans when the council that is ramming them through will not even exist in the near future? There is real concern that this is like a hit job being done on our local communities.
Matthew Pennycook
I recognise the right hon. Gentleman’s point. That will depend, of course, on the state of the local plan and what point it is at—whether it is at regulation 18 or 19—and where it is moving forward, but I recognise the point about interaction of the local plan development process with the proposals set out in the English devolution White Paper. There is also a related concern, which I have spoken to the right hon. Gentleman about on a previous occasion: the Government are very clear that we want to see universal coverage of strategic planning across the country, and we will be asking sub-regions across the country to come together to produce spatial development strategies. That may address concerns in his part of the country and others by ensuring that they consider whether cross-border co-operation might ensure that housing growth happens in a planned and more sensible way, rather than every local authority attempting to meet its need within its own confines.
The right hon. Gentleman will know that this Government inherited what I consider to be a frankly appalling situation in which less than a third of local planning authorities have an up-to-date local development plan. That is not a sustainable basis for a plan-led system, and that is why we have set out an expectation that every local planning authority must have a local plan. I appreciate that the right hon. Gentleman’s involvement in the affairs of Basildon council is a relatively recent development, but he will know that some of the pressures of unplanned development that the authority is experiencing will be because the current local plan was adopted in 1998, making the authority one of a very small number without a Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 plan in place. That reinforces the point that getting a local plan in place is the most effective protection against speculative development. Where plans are not up to date, or where local planning authorities are not delivering the homes that their communities need, it is right that development can come forward from outside the plan, but we want to see more plan-led development across the country.
The new council leadership has acted to address the failures of its predecessors by bringing forward a new local plan. I have registered the right hon. Gentleman’s views about it. Local residents will obviously, through consultation, be able to feed in their own views about that emerging local plan, but we think it is important that it comes forward, whatever form it finally emerges in. It is a sad reflection of the predecessors in that authority that the previous Government had to intervene to ensure a new local plan timetable was produced in December 2023. As the council continues to work on the emerging plan, we expect it to explore all options to deliver its housing targets, including maximising the use of brownfield land; considering the densification of sites, where appropriate; working with neighbouring authorities, as I said, as we move towards that emerging universal strategic plan coverage; and, where necessary, having considered fully all other reasonable options for meeting its identified development needs, reviewing its green belt.
To conclude, I thank the right hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay for bringing this important matter to the House. I note the concerns that he and the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford have raised, and I look forward to engaging with him further on how best we can meet housing need in full in his constituency.
Question put and agreed to.
Local Government Reorganisation
Richard Holden Excerpts(2 weeks, 3 days ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Jim McMahon
My hon. Friend will be aware that Dame Louise Casey is conducting a broader review of adult social care for reasons that are well understood by the House. On whether the matter should or should not sit with local government, I will say that where local government really excels is in being local and rooted in the community, in being the deliverer of a public service and in being able to organise at a place level. That does make a difference, and we should not underestimate the impact when done well. We need to make sure that social services are adequately funded for the work they have to do to provide a good level of service for local people.
Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
Across Basildon and Billericay, my residents are concerned about the idea of two years of delay while massive reorganisation goes on locally. Will the Minister provide reassurance that the local plan for 27,000 new houses across the area, which has just been consulted on, will not suddenly be rushed through by a local council that will not exist in future, with residents having to live with the consequences for years to come?
Jim McMahon
I would say that, given our housing crisis, 27,000 new homes seems like good news to me, and we need to see more of that. Councils need to operate in a business as usual way, making sure that they get their business done. The worst outcome would be for councils going through a reorganisation to press pause on important items of business. That would be a complete absence of leadership.
Oral Answers to Questions
Richard Holden Excerpts(1 month, 4 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Alex Norris
I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for that question. It will probably not surprise her to hear that the first question I asked when I became Minister with responsibility for building safety was, “How many buildings need remediating?” I do not think that it will surprise her or colleagues to hear how astonished I was to find out that between 4,000 and 7,000 buildings were unidentified after seven years—which shows the previous Government’s intent. We are going to identify them, work out what their risks are and get them remediated.
Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
I welcome the Government’s commitments, in response to my written parliamentary questions, to a consultation on ending fleecehold. However, my constituents in Markhams Close and across Basildon and Billericay just want to know when that will take place.
Matthew Pennycook
As I set out in response to a previous question, we will consult on how to end the prevalence of new fleecehold estates, and we will, in the short term, ensure that residents on existing estates have the protections they need against unfair management charges.
Council Tax
Richard Holden Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Matthew Pennycook
I am more than happy to commit the Local Government Minister to a meeting with my hon. Friend.
Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
During Prime Minister’s questions yesterday, the Government accepted that they were giving councils a maximum of £600 million, but the Local Government Association has said that there is £2.4 billion worth of pressure. Does the Minister accept that councils will have to increase their tax by about £1.8 billion to fill the gap between what the Government are offering them and what they need to provide local services?
Matthew Pennycook
As I have made clear, we do not recognise the £2.4 billion figure. It fails to take into account increases that I have already mentioned, such as the £300 million increase in business rates income and the £300 million increase in income from new, additional houses. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that we expect council tax to raise £1.8 billion in 2025-26, but that is in line with the previous Government’s spending plans and baked into the OBR forecast as of March 2024.
Oral Answers to Questions
Richard Holden Excerpts(4 months, 4 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Matthew Pennycook
My hon. Friend is correct. The Government have today published a formal response to that consultation, setting out precisely why we will not be taking those proposals forward. It is important that we allocate social housing fairly and efficiently. The proposals put forward by the previous Government were deeply flawed. As respondents to the consultation made clear, they would not only fail to improve how social housing is allocated, but cost taxpayers a fortune, swell the number of people in expensive temporary accommodation and increase the risk of harm to the public. The only way to meet the demand for genuinely affordable social rented homes is to build more of them, which is precisely what we intend to do.
Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
Obviously, social housing is important, and we want to see it in the right places across the country. I cannot understand why this Government are now proposing to reduce the number of new homes in London by 17,000 a year and in areas all around London—including counties such as Essex—by 18,000 a year. Surely one of the most important things that we need to do is increase that supply of social housing, particularly in London.
Matthew Pennycook
I think the hon. Gentleman is referring to the changes to the national planning policy framework rather than to social housing specifically. We have made those changes proposed to the standard method. They will give London a realistic, but achievable, new target. [Interruption.] Let me explain why. The way that the previous Government applied the urban uplift unfairly to London gave it an unrealistic, fantastical target that it could not meet. We will ensure that we are pushing the mayor on a realistic, but achievable one.
Oral Answers to Questions
Richard Holden Excerpts(2 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Michael Gove
The hon. Lady makes a number of important points. It is fair to say, and most people in the House would acknowledge, that, although progress over the past five years has not been everything that it should be, in recent months we have succeeded in securing commitments from developers to remediate the buildings for which they are responsible. With the publication of the open letter today and the passing of the Building Safety Act, a requirement has been placed on freeholders to pay for the work that is required. We have a cap on the commitments that any leaseholder has to enter into and that cap is consistent with the precedent in Florrie’s law. I look forward to working with the hon. Lady, as an assiduous constituency Member of Parliament, to make sure that those whom she serves are relieved of any obligation beyond that which is fair to ensure that their buildings are safe.
Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)
Most of the new build properties built in North West Durham are built to a high standard, but sadly some are not, and when they are not, people get in touch with my constituency office. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that by further extending the rights of residents to seek compensation for issues arising from poor workmanship during construction we will help millions of new homeowners throughout the country to have the opportunity to pursue developers for poor workmanship, so that no one is left in substandard new housing?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend is a brilliant campaigner not just for his constituency but for those who are in poor housing. Although the overwhelming number of new homes are built to very high standards, some do not meet the quality and decency thresholds that they should. I will work with my hon. Friend to achieve precisely the goal that he outlined.
Consett Energy from Waste Plant
Richard Holden Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)
I reflect the comments of other hon. Members who have spoken in saying that it puts everything into perspective at every level to speak in the same Chamber to which President Zelensky has just spoken.
After many attempts in the Adjournment debate ballot, I am glad to have secured this important debate, which concerns a local waste to energy facility—a topic that is close to my constituents’ hearts. The planning permission for it to be built in Consett in my constituency was soundly rejected by Durham county councillors last year after thousands of local residents objected to the proposed plant on the Hownsgill industrial estate in the Delves Lane area. That movement was spearheaded by the unwavering hard work of a huge number of local people. I particularly thank my local Delves Lane councillors, Michelle Watson and Angela Sterling, whose campaign I backed from the start. It was a real community effort, however, and thousands of people were involved in pushing objections and leading lots of local groups.
Although I acknowledge that Members of Parliament have no specific powers with regard to local planning permissions and council decisions, I have none the less been blown away by the huge outpouring from local people—mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, grandparents, residents—who have coalesced around an issue that they see as important for our local community. That has been incredible to see, and it has marked another occasion where hundreds of local people have come together and made me incredibly proud to be the Member of Parliament for North West Durham.
Sadly, this debate is not about celebrating a hard-fought win, but occurs in the shadow of a potential appeal that is being prepared against Durham County Council’s decision to reject the building of the plant. As a result of the reignition of the local debate against the backdrop of the potential appeal, I decided to conduct a survey of my constituents’ views last week. In just a couple of days, I received hundreds and hundreds of responses. A pattern has emerged, which I can summarise: they say that no means no when it comes to the proposed Consett incinerator, they want their views to be listened to, and they do not want the result of local democratic action by the council to be overturned by those who seek to ignore them.
I will read a couple of comments that constituents posted in response to my survey. One constituent explained that
“the planning committee made their views clear, as did the people of Consett and this decision needs to be respected.”
Another constituent explained that the plant will cause
“noise…next to houses, schools, health facilities, clean air”
and is right between major residential areas of the town. Another constituent put it even more concisely and confirmed that the Consett incinerator
“has no place in our town and we do not want it here. ”
Well over 95% of people who responded to the surveys and work that I have conducted are implacably opposed to the plant.
After synthesising all those views and asking people what we should do instead, it is clear that my constituents are behind the general drift of Government policy. The Government believe in reduce, reuse, recycle—that is the priority that we are driving—not blight and burn, which is clearly what is being proposed.
The Government have also done a great job in recent years in highlighting the environmental agenda. We led COP26 in Glasgow by really driving through—not just for Britain but internationally—a desire to see emissions reduced and to help protect the environment. Over 100 countries have now committed to ending deforestation. We have seen a big shift from carbon-intensive power generation and an end to new coal financing. Two hundred countries agreed to the pact to keep 1.5° alive, along with cutting methane emissions by 30%.
It is particularly interesting to look at how far we have come. Britain has led the world in trying to reduce our carbon emissions, and recently that shift has been even more stark. When the UK took over the leadership of COP a couple of years ago, only about 30% of the world was covered by the new targets, but that figure is now about 90%. This Government have also been keen to really push forward sensible environmental changes, with things such as animal welfare legislation—for example, the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill, which I have supported in this House.
That does not mean that we should jump to a position of wanting immediately to ban all incineration. There is a case for it in a limited number of circumstances, particularly given the need for certain medical waste and things like that to be incinerated. However, the Government are driving for a two-thirds reduction in the amount of waste sent to incineration and to landfill by 2030, so why start to create new facilities? It does not even look as though this will be a long-term solution for the communities I represent, or perhaps even for the developers. Instead, we need to be concentrating on using less and less each year.
As you can see, Mr Deputy Speaker, the Government have demonstrated their commitment to the environment and so have my constituents. Everybody is in agreement —my constituents and the Government—about the unattractiveness of incinerators and, actually, the increasing lack of need for them as we push forward with our agenda.
How did we end up where we are today? I looked through the County Durham plan from 2019, and there was an indication that this land was going to be designated for industrial use. However, the only stipulation imposed on its potential use as an incinerator was that there should be a “degree of restraint” against incineration. That is the only wording about it in that document, on page 256. So we have been left high and dry by a plan, while the rest of the country has moved on environmentally and local people have become implacably opposed. During that time, large numbers of new housing developments—with hundreds of new houses going up—have been proposed within half a mile of the site.
Today, I am calling on the developer to withdraw its appeal, and instead respect the decisions of the democratically elected councillors and of my constituents. There is almost total unanimity among my constituents about backing the Government’s plan to reuse, reduce and recycle, and we want to see as little as possible sent to our landfill or for incineration. Of course, there will always be a small need for incineration of things such as medical waste as part of a diverse package, but that should be in very limited circumstances.
The general direction the Government are taking is one of reducing waste year on year, and that is what my constituents want. Building more incineration facilities is antithetical to the Government’s broader narrative and their environmental aims. Those aims are strongly supported not only by my constituents but by people across the country, and I believe by those on all sides of the House. Although I understand that the Minister, like me, has no specific role in individual planning cases, and this is obviously a matter for continued debate between the council and the private firms, I do want to ask him to take a broader look at incineration and the Government’s approach to it. Will he also reflect on the views of my local councillors, supported by me, and of my constituents in his response to my debate tonight?
Oral Answers to Questions
Richard Holden Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Stuart Andrew
Let me first make it clear that it is my keen ambition in this role to do everything I can to help more people on to the housing ladder. We have produced a great many schemes that help to achieve that purpose. We already have the First Homes scheme, which provides a 30% discount for local people, for whom those homes remain in perpetuity.
Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend join me in welcoming the fact that last year saw the highest number of first-time buyers in two decades, under this Government, and will he pledge to do everything he can to increase that number in future years?
Stuart Andrew
My hon. Friend is right to highlight the increase in the number of first-time buyers. We are keen to ensure that it continues, and the levelling-up White Paper will be key to delivering that for as many people as possible throughout the country.