Tessa Munt
Main Page: Tessa Munt (Liberal Democrat - Wells and Mendip Hills)(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
Thank you very much, Mr Crausby, for calling me to speak.
In the very short time available to me today, I will not try to respond to the many points made by the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson), who sadly is no longer in his place, having spoken in the debate for 20 minutes.
The number of MPs here in Westminster Hall from both the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat parties shows the degree of concern about some of the planning changes proposed by Her Majesty’s Government. I want to give the Government the benefit of the doubt, because they are genuinely trying to introduce localism and to hand decisions about development back to local people, but I will reserve my judgment, and if it turns out that those planning changes are a charter for developers, I, for one, will strenuously express my opposition to them. For now, however, the Government are right in trying to hand the decisions about these developments back to local people, represented by their local councillors, who are the right people to decide whether there should be building and, if so, where it should be.
Mr Gray
I will not give way, because I do not have time to do so.
Right now, speaking in this debate on the green belt, I am in opposition, because in North Wiltshire we have no green belt—it does not exist in our area. However, we face very significant threats to areas such as Purton, Lydiard Millicent, Lydiard Tregoze and even Royal Wootton Bassett, which is called “royal” after the magnificent ceremony that took place on Sunday. Swindon is sprawling westwards and currently there is no constraint whatsoever apart from the “rural buffer zone”—no one quite knows what a “rural buffer zone” is. Equally, there is talk of putting 5,000 houses around the town of Chippenham, which is already growing very fast. Even in Malmesbury, there is talk about putting some houses in the Park Road estate, effectively on green belt land, which is very worrying.
I have written to Ministers about this subject, asking why we do not have green belts in North Wiltshire. We ought to have them, as we are under as much threat as anywhere else in England. I was very encouraged to receive a response from Ministers telling me that the body that can decide whether or not to have a green belt is, in fact, the local authority. It is not the Government but the local authority that can decide to have it. Now is the moment that the local authority can do that, when we are consulting on plans for the local area.
My message to Wiltshire unitary council—a very fine Conservative-run council—and indeed to councils up and down the land run by all sorts of parties is that if we are concerned about our green belt and the green fields surrounding our urban areas, there is a very simple solution. Let us create a green belt around the towns of Swindon and Chippenham, and let us say to developers, “You may not build on these green fields and green belt. You may not build there at all. You must build on brownfield sites in the centres of towns.” Let us not do what Lord Prescott—who is much missed here in the Commons—did. You will recall, Mr Crausby, that he very famously said, “The green belt is a Labour triumph—let’s build on it.”
Andrew Stunell
Fortunately, my task is made much easier by the fact that that definition takes up about a page and a half of the NPPF. I remind the House that there will be a debate specifically about that on Thursday, so I will contain my remarks to those aspects related to the green belt. I encourage hon. Members and my hon. Friends to contribute to the debate on Thursday.
Tessa Munt
Will the Minister consider supporting the Second Reading of my Electricity Transmission (Protection of Landscape) Bill, which covers land that is of value to the community but not strictly green belt land, particularly in view of the fact that parish councils will be putting together their plans and local people can be heard in that way?
Andrew Stunell
I have certainly heard what my hon. Friend says. I will concentrate on the green belt for the moment, if I may.
The draft NPPF sets out the Government’s proposed policies on planning and retains the key policy protections for the green belt. I emphasise to the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) that I preferred his choice of poetry to his choice of lawyer in his description of what we have done. The draft NPPF says:
“Inappropriate development is, by definition, harmful to the Green Belt and should not be approved except in very special circumstances.”
Those special circumstances, as my hon. Friend said while introducing this debate, are clearly set out. She drew particular attention to one aspect that she did not like, but that was an exception contained in the original green belt policy, which is currently in force.