Oxford-Cambridge Arc

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) on securing today’s debate. I welcome the opportunity to debate the future of the Oxford-Cambridge arc and follow the lucid arguments advanced by the hon. Members for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey), for Henley (John Howell), for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer) and for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller).

I have very happy associations with both Oxford and Cambridge, having had the pleasure of living in both cities for a couple of years. I took my MSc in applied statistics at Oxford University and my MPhil in history at Cambridge University. I love both cities and their surrounding areas, and care about their distinctive character, history and future development.

However, the plans for the Oxford-Cambridge arc are already outmoded. Events have overtaken plans drawn up in a markedly different age. Covid-19 has challenged the assumptions that underpinned the Oxford-Cambridge arc back in 2016, which was based on a model of building 1 million new homes, along with a road and rail transport system to take people to places of work at various points across the arc. My first question for the Minister is whether Her Majesty’s Government have properly re-evaluated the assumptions underpinning the scheme, not just on population growth but on changes to patterns of commuting and working, and where people will be working in the future, to ensure that plans meet the needs of residents?

The spatial plan consultation, for example, should cover whether there is a need for genuinely affordable and social environmentally-sound housing; I believe there is. Local authorities should be given proper representation within the arc arrangement. I have discussed these important points with my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), the chair of the Labour party, who, fighting assiduously for her constituents as usual, has already met the Minister and his officials and has written to him. Although she could not attend today’s debate, I hope that her invaluable input will not be ignored, but instead incorporated into Government plans. Local people, businesses and leaders cannot be ignored. Proper consultation must be guaranteed.

We recognise the need for more homes, but have Ministers thought through the implications of 1 million new homes and the impact on existing communities, on the natural environment, on biodiversity and on levels of pollution? If we build 1 million homes, how do we balance the needs of the local environment? What kind of homes? We need homes for young people, just starting out, and homes for nurses, teachers, train drivers, supermarket workers and social carers—in other words, homes for the heroes of the pandemic. Where is the plan for affordable homes for those heroes? In all candour, I tell the Minister that the blue wall will not be happy if he ignores their views, as we have heard eloquently, again and again, from hon. Members today.

Then there is the question of transport. Central to the Government’s version of the Oxford-Cambridge arc will be the expressway, a massive motorway-building project, like something from the 1970s or 1980s. I welcome the Minister’s decision to scrap the expressway and I praise campaigners who fought so hard to make Ministers see sense, especially my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), who rightly called it

“a last-century approach to a 21st-century challenge”.

Yet again a Conservative Government is catching up with Labour policy, but dither, delay and retreat on the expressway cannot be replaced by dither and delay on the Oxford-Cambridge rail link. The Government must now give their full-throated support to the completion of phases 2 and 3 of the East West Rail link, linking Oxford, Bicester, Winslow, Bletchley, Bedford, Cambourne and stops along the way to Cambridge.

That investment in the railway is a superb opportunity for world-class station design and facilities for passengers; for full access for people with disabilities; for integrated transport systems linking up walking, cycling and bussing; for affordable spaces for local businesses and traders; for flexible ticketing and sensible pricing; and for environmentally friendly and sustainable use of buildings, energy and land. Most of all, the East West Rail link must be fully electrified. It must be a shining example of post-carbon, safe, clean and affordable public transport. The last point that I invite the Minister to address, therefore, is the full electrification of the East West Rail link. Rather than further prevarication and evasion, today would be a perfect opportunity to announce Government support for full electrification.

Labour supports investment in new homes, in new rail links, in projects that tackle climate change and in community building—in investing in a 21st-century economy—but they must be the right projects, based on the correct assumptions in our post-covid society. At all stages, they must engage every part of the community, not just the loudest and best organised, and never in a dash for growth at the expense of existing communities, never at the expense of people on low incomes, and never at the expense of our climate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christopher Pincher]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. My fundamental point is that the local plans and local authorities remain the building blocks—if he will forgive the pun—for house building and commercial construction in the area. We certainly want to make sure that local authorities work collaboratively with one another to make best use of this space, but it is the local plans that drive the numbers.

To answer the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey), some authorities may wish to be ambitious and go further than the local housing need number, based on 2014 Office for National Statistics numbers. They may wish to go further. Others may have constraints. They may be green belt constraints, AONB constraints or other constraints. Those also need to be taken into account when local authorities take their plans to the planning inspector. It is for the planning inspector to decide what is a reasonable plan. If local authorities can demonstrate they have a reasonable plan, the numbers in that plan are what they are judged against, not the local housing need number.

I make two further points. The first is that if a plan falls out of date, it is the local housing need number that the planning inspector will look at if speculative planning applications come forward, so all authorities should ensure that they have up-to-date plans. Secondly, it is the case, generally speaking, that when local authorities collaborate with each other constructively, they can find ways of spreading their overall need across a wider space and thereby, using innovative means such as pursuing brownfield regeneration or using the permitted development rights tools that we have given them, ensure that there is less pressure on the all-important green spaces that we all know and enjoy.

If I may, I will address some of the points raised by colleagues. My hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield raised a number of points. She made it very clear that she wants local authorities to define what should be built, and our planning reforms emphasise that very point. We want local authorities to define the homes or the commercial properties that they need to build, the density and the design of them and the quality of them, to ensure that we get the right homes, the homes that we need. She also made the point that in her constituency there are certain challenges with affordability. That is one reason we have introduced the First Homes policy, which will allow the construction, through the planning system and developer contributions, of new homes discounted by at least 30%, which can be defined as for local people or key workers, for example, in order for them to benefit from the opportunity to own their own home.

We have also introduced the affordable homes programme for 2021 to 2026, which provides £12.3 billion of investment in affordable homes across our country. It will provide a significant number of new homes that local people can rent at reduced prices or that they can buy into, in a shared-ownership sense, at reduced increments, so that people can get on the housing ladder more easily.

My hon. Friend also raised the question of biodiversity and the importance of having green spaces that people can enjoy. We certainly recognise that, in the post-covid world, that will be important. She asked what the effect of the covid emergency would be. I think—like Zhou Enlai answering the question “What has been the effect of the French revolution?”—that it is as yet a little too early to say. But we do know that people need better green spaces. That is one reason why, in the national model design code, we have called for tree-lined streets and a better hierarchy of homes versus green space. We have also, in the Environment Bill, made it absolutely plain that when development takes place there must be a biodiversity net gain of 10%. We have also made it plain that local nature recovery strategies, to which she refers, are a fundamental building block of that Bill, which is soon to become an Act, and we shall bake those strategies into our plans for planning reform when we introduce legislation later this year.

My hon. Friend the Member for Henley made, as ever, a very thoughtful speech. He raised the question of the expressway and how that was handled. I will certainly take his remarks back to the Department for Transport and to Homes England. I simply note that in that particular case the Government listened. Clearly, there was local concern about how the approach was made and the proposals were tabled, and the Government have agreed that another course should be taken.

A number of colleagues have discussed—again, eloquently—the question of the spatial framework. We will begin a consultation on the spatial framework very, very shortly. In building our approach to that, which began in February, we have taken on board the views of local businesses, local councils and local authority leaders, who, across the political divide, have given us useful input. We want to ensure that we carry the public with us as we undertake this spatial framework vision consultation. The questions that we will ask in that consultation over the next several weeks will be high-level ones: “How do you want your space to be used?”; “What sort of environmental considerations do you have and how do you want them baked into planning?”; “What are the transport issues that you face?”; and “What are the job and the skill opportunities that you want to see for yourself and the place where you live?” The answers that people give us to those questions will feed a set of policy prescriptions that we could then take forward into another consultation, again engaging local people and involving local authorities and local leaders.

Fundamentally, we want to ensure that local people really get to have their say and not just the usual suspects, if I can put it that way. That is one of the reasons why we have taken such great pains to use the most modern technological tools, such as apps, to reach as many people as possible, including in diverse communities—those people who are not usually touched by the sorts of dry questions that Government and our agencies sometimes ask, including young people, people from ethnic minorities and people from less advantaged backgrounds—so that we get proper feedback that can then inform the decision-making process. We want to make sure that there is proper consultation, proper feedback and proper engagement at the heart of this.

That is also our approach to the growth board that we want to set up, to ensure that business leaders across the area can provide their full and fundamental feedback as to what policies they want to inform this space, because—again—this process is not simply about housing. Homes are important, but so are jobs and the infrastructure to support those jobs, which is why we want to ensure that the growth board plays a vital role in the arc.

My hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire asked the very important question: “What about the infrastructure that really matters to people?” Not the big roads or the great big railways that impress certain people, perhaps, but the GP surgeries, the clinics, the playgrounds, the schools and the extensions to schools. That is one reason why, in our proposals for planning reform, we are proposing an infrastructure levy to replace the community infrastructure levy and section 106, which I think most people and bodies, including 80% of local authorities, agree is a rather convoluted and opaque process for providing developer contributions. It tends to be loaded in favour of the bigger developers, it tends to be very slow, and it tends to result in the infrastructure that was initially conceived of being negotiated away.

We want a system that will provide infrastructure up front that is far less negotiable and that means communities get what they want when they expect it, and as they want it. That is one of the reasons why the proposals built into our planning reforms will be so important for community buy-in to the proposals.

My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South said that this process is not just about houses. Well, he is dead right; it is not just about houses. I have been at pains to be clear about that. It is about the economic generation of a very wide area in the centre of our country in the south, and not simply about houses. He also asked us to be collaborative. We will be, because we fully understand that if we are to succeed in this area, we need to engage the public and take them with us.

Sir Edward, I am conscious that I have now gone on for some 10 or so minutes, that there will be a Division soon, and that the Opposition spokesman wants to intervene, so I shall let him do so.

[Mr Dhesi]

I thank the Minister for giving way; he is most generous to do so. He has not responded to my key point about the east-west rail link. In order to assuage residents’ concerns and ensure that we are moving towards a greener post-carbon society, can he confirm that the east-west rail link will be fully electrified?

[Christopher Pincher]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and I understand his concern. He will know that this Government are the greenest Government that we have ever had, and the policies that we are pursuing and the commitments that we have made will ensure that that continues. For example, the future homes standard will ensure that homes built after 2025 are at least 75% more carbon-efficient than present homes. He will note that I am not the Transport Minister. DFT is looking at the proposals for east-west rail. We are all committed to it, and I trust that we will get an announcement sooner rather than later.

We are fundamentally committed to the arc and the economic opportunities it presents. We are committed to ensuring that local people are engaged in our plans. We want to ensure that the homes that are built to support the people who want to live and work in the arc are of the right quality, in the right places and are built with the grain of local communities.

We want to ensure that the right infrastructure to support those homes is developed at the get-go and not way down the line. We want to ensure that the jobs and skills in the arc complement those industries that are already there, and provide the jobs for the future. We want to take everyone with us in that enterprise. We believe that the arc can be a tremendous boon to our country and support to the local community. We are determined to see it happen and do it with the support of the local community.