The government should stop trying to force councils in the South East to build hundreds of thousands of new homes and instead let local people decide how much new housing there should be, Tories said last night.
Shadow Environment, Transport and the Regions Secretary Archie Norman accused ministers of “issuing diktats” to local authorities at the start of an opposition debate on government housing policy.
Last week, councillors on the South East Regional Planning Authority (SERPLAN) voted to keep their original 33,000 homes pa target, instead of the higher annual goal of 43,000 homes goal proposed by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott.
Norman denied government claims that he had deliberately “politicised” the situation by encouraging SERPLAN councils to defy the government. It was for ministers to justify why they wanted councils to build new homes on greenfield land in the South East. The Government was failing to regenerate inner cities and refused to admit there was a problem of migration from North to South, he declared.
Asked by Labour’s Martin Salter (Reading W) how key public sector workers such as nurses, firefighters and police officers were supposed to be able to afford houses in his area unless new ones were built in the Thames Valley, Norman replied it was a decision for local people. “It is quite simply the wrong houses in the wrong places,” he added, to Tory cheers.
For the Government, Junior Environment Minister Beverley Hughes told the Tories: “You’ve got nothing of substance to say about how we should tackle some of the most difficult problems facing the people in our towns, our cities and our countryside.”
It was a “myth” that towns in the South East were being “flooded” by migrants from the North of England, she claimed.
The limited evidence available suggested there may be a small overall migration towards the North, she told MPs. She accused Tory-controlled councils on SERPLAN of having “abdicated their responsibility” by obeying the “political diktat of the Opposition”.
A Tory move condemning ministers’ “apparent intentions” to ignore the SERPLAN vote and its failure to regenerate urban areas was defeated by 326 votes to 175.
EGi News 21/06/00
