Mr. Nicholas Soames (Mid-Sussex) (Con): I am very grateful to you, Mrs. Humble, and I propose to speak briefly. I hope that you and the Minister will forgive me, but I have to leave for a sitting of the Standards and Privileges Committee at 10.25 am.

In support of my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South (Richard Ottaway), I want to speak about linking development with water resources in my constituency. My contribution is intended neither to be as parochial as it sounds, nor to make a constituency point, because what I have to say affects many other constituencies in the south of England. The Minister knows that, because he is wrestling with problems that are not of his making and have existed for a long time, but they are being exacerbated by the Government’s policies.

The point that I really want to make to the Minister concerns the fact that in about 1999 I became aware of plans that might lead to the building of a substantial number of new houses in the south-east. There is clearly a requirement for more affordable housing and for other housing in the south-east-nobody disputes that-but the sheer scale of the proposals is critical for us. He might know that more houses have been proposed in the Gatwick diamond, incorporating Mid-Sussex, Horley, Horsham, Reigate and Crawley, than there are in Milton Keynes. However, the Gatwick diamond does not have the special infrastructure that Milton Keynes has been accorded, so the infrastructure development is impossible. It is impossible to build such a great number of houses merely on the basis of developers’ contributions, and without the Government’s support for the infrastructure. It is not a matter for argument today, but water is an important part of infrastructure.

When I heard about those plans in about 1999, I wrote to the hon. Member for Sunderland, South(Mr. Mullin), who was a Minister in the then Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, to warn him about them and to explain some of the difficulties. I went to see South East Water, which was then managed by a remarkable woman, Margaret Devlin. She, sadly, has now left her post as managing director to emigrate to New Zealand. Given the scale of the problem that she faced, I do not blame

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her. She is an outstanding woman, and she did a very good job. The Minister knows her, and she is a loss to the water industry.

I went to see Mrs. Devlin to discuss openly with her the extent of the Government’s consultation with the water companies on the sheer scale of the proposals for my constituency and elsewhere in the south-east. She told me, and I must say that I was surprised, that the water companies were not official consultees. On26 May 2000, after I had been to see her, she wrote to me, and said:

“South East Water firmly supports sustainable development and has regular contact with East and West Sussex Planning departments on future development plans. However, until water companies becomes statutory consultees of housing development, it is difficult to see how such planning can be truly sustainable if no account is taken of water resources availability.”

She continued:

“I make no apology for emphasising the need for water companies to be statutory consultees on housing development. It is important to understand that the request to become statutory consultees in the planning process is not driven by a desire to block development, rather to assist in ensuring that all factors are considered in respect of location, water resources and the environment.”

Subsequent to that meeting, Mrs. Devlin sent me the interesting points and the brief that Water UK submitted to the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Committee’s 1998 inquiry into those matters. Inter alia, Water UK recommended:

“Water companies should be made statutory consultees in the planning process to reflect their statutory obligation to supply”.

It made a number of other important points, too. The Government decided to pay no attention to those recommendations. Their response, as set out byMrs. Devlin in a letter to me dated 16 March 2000,

“was that as the current informal arrangements work reasonably well, the need does not exist to formalise the role of the water company in the planning process. The key issue here is that whilst informal arrangements can and do work, more often than not by the time the water company enters the planning process it is usually to receive confirmation of the planning details.”

I wholly support all the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South, who knows a great deal about the subject and has made a number of important strategic points. Mine is a strategic point, too, but it is linked to a local point. The Government cannot go on willing the scale of development planned without matching the infrastructure to make it happen. The issue is not just water, but hospitals, roads, schools, care for the elderly and everything else; all those things are increasingly underfunded. In the south-east, the Government have stripped money from the shire authorities to give it to the north. At the heart of the matter lies the Government’s policy of sustainability.

I shall end with only a slight jibe at the Government’s expense-tendered, of course, with immense respect, affection and admiration. After my exchanges with Margaret Devlin, I tabled a question for the heroic Deputy Prime Minister, asking him to define sustainability. It was not for urgent answer; the usual space of time was given. The departmental answer was that I would get a reply “in due course”. In other words, the Department did not have a clue what sustainability meant. Three weeks later, I got an answer-a detailed letter-explaining to me what sustainability means. Some of what was in that

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parliamentary answer has not survived through to today; because of the sheer scale of the developments proposed, the Government’s new definition of sustainability has had to be thrown out of the window.

Part of the definition of sustainability is the prudent use of natural resources, and so say all of us. The Government must will the way, and must enable us to cope with the level of housing and development proposed for my part of the world. There are proposals for East Grinstead and elsewhere in my constituency, where we need housing, and where young people desperately need to be able to buy affordable housing. However, there is also the question of how they are to travel on roads already gridlocked, and there are hospitals already under great pressure with tremendous deficits. The hon. Member for Hove (Ms Barlow) knows all about that, given where she comes from. The proposals are, by the Government’s own definition, unsustainable.

All that I ask of the Minister, who has a proven record of being reasonable, rational and sane on such matters, is to give us some understanding and some hope that the Government will consider with the greatest care the points being made by colleagues from across the south-east. They are not anti-development; I was distressed that when I went to see the Minister for Housing and Planning at the Department for Communities and Local Government, she was extremely aggressive with a delegation from the south of England, which included my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude), and my hon. Friends the Members for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie), and for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert). She suggested that we were just anti-housing, and were simply nimbys, but we are not. We want the housing, and we know that we have to have it, but we want it to be proportionate and to scale, and we want sustainable resources that will be used in a sensible and prudent manner.

Again, I apologise, Mrs. Humble, for the fact that I have to go at 10.25, but I shall read with great interest what the Minister says. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South, for allowing me to take part in this debate.

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