House of Commons, Tuesday 9th June 2009

Mr. Nicholas Soames (Mid-Sussex) (Con): My hon. Friend knows very well the difficulty in building more houses in the south-east, which highlights the Government’s monstrously bad record in this respect. Does he agree that it would make it easier for everyone if a commitment were given to put the infrastructure in place that could support these housing developments, instead of building houses in places that are completely unsuitable for the people who live there?

Grant Shapps MP, Shadow Housing Minister: That is evidenced by the reality on the ground. Not only have fewer affordable homes been built, but this Government have on average built less housing overall in every year of their Administration. Something is going badly wrong, and what is not working is their regionalisation of housing policy. Planning and top-down targets are patently failing to deliver housing on the ground. The more it does not work, the more the Government think the way to make it work is to push harder and blame the people on the ground. They misunderstand the reasons why it is not working. People do not want building to be imposed on them; instead, they want to be part of the process of building their own communities.

That is a fundamental misunderstanding of how housing works which we will correct. We will end regional spatial strategies, get rid of regional assemblies-if the Government have not quite passed their legislation on that in time-and strip the regional development agencies of powers over planning, housing targets and numbers. We will return that to people on the ground, who can use those powers, together with incentives, to go ahead and build the housing that is really needed by local communities. In doing so, we will outperform this Government’s appalling record on house building over the past 12 years.

Hansard Volume 493

No 87

Column 715-6