That this House takes note of the Report from the Built Environment Committee New Towns: Laying the Foundations (2nd Report, HL Paper 183, Session 2024–26).
My Lords, before I begin, I say some words of thanks. First, I thank the 88 organisations and individuals who submitted written evidence, alongside the witnesses who appeared before the committee over 11 sessions. Secondly, I thank the team backstage: our excellent specialist adviser, Kelvin MacDonald; and the committee staff, comprising Dervish Mertcan, Emily Macpherson-Smith, Charlie Warner and Nick Boorer, who all kept the show on the road with exemplary calm. My thanks also go to our embassy staff and all those who hosted us in Copenhagen. I express my genuine and personal thanks to the Minister, her team and those in the department, who have shown deep respect to not only me but the committee and helped us on this issue and others.
Finally, and not least, I thank my colleagues on the committee, some of whom are here, not only for the invaluable support they have given me and the committee but for the fact that they have tolerated me throughout that period. They have steered us to what is, I think, a brilliant final report. I thank, if I may, Viscounts Hanworth and Younger. Their voices are missed in the committee and in this debate—particularly, for me, Viscount Younger, who was always incredibly supportive.
This is the committee’s first report of three—everyone will be delighted to know that—on new towns. Given the scale and ambition required to deliver new towns, we chose to split the inquiry into a series of modules. This has enabled us to take a more targeted and granular look at discrete elements of the overall programme, rather than trying to cram everything into a single tome. Since this first report was published in October last year, we have published our second report, on creating communities. Today, I will focus my remarks on the first report, but, worry not, at a future date we will talk about creating thriving communities. It is worth noting that our committee chose not to look at or comment on specific locations which the Government were already doing when we started our inquiry.
My Lords, this new town agenda is very exciting. It is a chance for us to create new, high-quality communities for the 21st century, where the quality of people’s lives will be boosted by their surroundings: places where people can live, work and play and, above all, be inspired. But this agenda needs to be driven. It needs dedication and a degree of government urgency, which seem to be currently lacking.
I am now convinced that success in politics is not so much about what you believe in and more about whether you are able to get things done. But such is the risk aversion within Whitehall and Westminster, that it is now only by exceptional enthusiasm and drive that you can achieve anything. So a forward-looking agenda such as this new town agenda needs inspirational leadership and the will to drive it forward. It is not a controversial agenda. Who can deny that we need new housing? Who can deny that we need well-built, carbon-neutral communities, surrounded by a renewed and biodiverse environment? Who can deny that we need communities that bring people together, provide a high percentage of affordable housing, and make people proud to live there? We need communities with the best health and education services, sports facilities, and places to meet and chat for all ages.
What do the Government need to do to make this happen? They have to commit leadership and inspiration to overcome local opposition—or, actually, to inspire such opposition to see the very real possibilities for a good life for their children or for themselves in their old age. The message is that high-quality design and well-built buildings with trees and green spaces might even be better than the farmland that they had before—and I speak as a farmer who loves our countryside.
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, and my noble friend Lord Gascoigne. I pay credit to my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, for the work that they did in this committee and continue to do. It is very helpful. I share the view of my noble friend and regard myself very much as a friend of the New Towns Taskforce and the new towns programme, albeit occasionally a critical one, as the Minister knows well.
I remind noble Lords of my registered interests, particularly over the past decade as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. It is on Cambridgeshire that I want to focus for a couple of minutes. I was the Member of Parliament for South Cambridgeshire for 18 years and for the past decade I have been working in the development forum and continue to live in the area. Thirty years ago, we started building Cambourne on a greenfield site to the west of Cambridge. To put it all in context, in the Cambridge region we are building out Cambourne. If Cambourne North is in the local plan, which I expect it to be eventually, it will be 25,000 homes. We are building out Northstowe, which is anticipated to be 10,000-plus homes. We are building out Waterbeach, north of Cambridge, on the A10 between Cambridge and Ely, which is expected to be 11,000 homes. Last week, the Government, in the shape of Homes England and the Hill Group, secured the project for the build-out of Cambridge East, which people think of as Cambridge airfield, which will be more than 10,000 homes.
My Lords, I welcome the Select Committee report, particularly its emphasis on an infrastructure-first approach, mandatory basic design standards and capturing land values. I welcome the overall direction set out in the Government’s consultation on the draft new towns programme and policy, particularly the emphasis on high-quality place-making, environmental sustainability and the integration of green infrastructure. However, I will press the Government to be bolder in three key areas. I apologise to the Minister for repeating points that I made during the Social Housing Bill, but a good story can take repetition. I declare my interest as chair of the Forestry Commission.
The first point on which I encourage the Government is that the scale of the new town programme presents a significant opportunity to embed trees and woods as fundamental components of place from the outset. Trees and woods are just as vital basic infrastructure as road, rail, schools and doctors’ surgeries. Trees reduce heat effect and promote nature-based solutions to flood risk, both within urban developments and surrounding them, by slowing the flow of water. They support biodiversity and measurably promote health and well-being. They fulfil a government commitment that there would be an accessible green space within 15 minutes’ walk for urban dwellers. They improve air quality, sequester carbon and promote community cohesion. If there were no trees, you would have to invent them.
My Lords, in 2004 the Labour Government were struggling with a shortage of homes and rising housing costs, so I offered some published advice on how, for example, they could initiate the construction of a new garden city by the Thames. I provisionally called it Thames Reach—it was in the Ebbsfleet area—as an example of how it would be easier to get consent to something bold and visionary which included infrastructure and formed complete communities than to just keep on adding piecemeal to existing communities who often did not like the stresses and strains that could create. It did not appeal to the then Labour Government, but the incoming Conservative Government later took other advice and decided on Ebbsfleet Garden City, and that is now well under way, with a development corporation to do it. I am very pleased they did it, and I think it is an example of what can be achieved.
Like others in this debate, I would like to see more passion, enthusiasm, urgency, force and development. The Government made a mighty promise to our country of 1.5 million houses in five years. The last Government were achieving around a million; they hit their targets. The Labour Opposition were quite right to say that they were not that stretching, and they came up with this stretching target. But I have got news for Ministers: two years in, they are miles off the pace. They will not even hit the pace of the outgoing Conservative Government. They need to make a big shift in what they are trying to achieve.
My Lords, I join others in paying tribute to my noble friend Lord Gascoigne for his report. I recognise the need for new homes, and the role that new settlements can play in that provision. The question, of course, is where those new settlements should be located, and on what scale.
I must declare not only the interest which I have placed in the register—that I am chairman and have other positions in the Countryside Alliance—but also that I live near Newmarket, on the edge of a proposed new development on the east Cambridgeshire/west Suffolk border. My views, therefore, may be discounted because I have an obvious interest and concern, but I hope to make a case against this proposed settlement on its merits.
It is called Forest City, an oxymoron reminiscent of Shakespeare’s “Sweet sorrow” or Milton’s “Darkness visible”. It is a privately promoted scheme which first emerged, to general astonishment, last year. It is not a new town; it is a city which would apparently comprise 400,000 homes across 45,000 acres, and that scale is extraordinary. It is twice the size of Bristol with about the size of Birmingham’s population, itself the second largest city in the country. It is a larger city than Manchester and would be one of the most significant urban developments in modern British history. It is more than three times the size of the largest new town, Milton Keynes; five times the size of the second largest, Telford; and—I am sure of interest to the Minister—10 times bigger than Stevenage and 20 times bigger than Welwyn Garden City.
My Lords, this is a very welcome debate not only because it is the opportunity to discuss our first report of the Built Environment Committee, but also because it is turning into a very interesting debate in all manner of ways. I pay tribute to our excellent chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, who is extremely enthusiastic, focused and gets the best out of witnesses. He said, quite rightly, that from the start the committee recognised that we were dealing with a very big idea when we addressed new towns: an idea that needed big presence and big energy but required more than a single report and a deep dive. I will focus on a few key issues that illuminate why we have come to our conclusions. The report was innovative, but it also had quite an unusual context. It was modular but it was also very dynamic, because policy was being made by the taskforce while we were doing our work. When the list of sites was revealed, it was good to see that the committee and the taskforce shared so many assumptions about the power of place-making.
A second characteristic was that new towns are sui generis. They take decades to deliver. Ministers are very lucky to see spades in the ground, but they depend on the keenest foresight, whether about energy or food or nature security or extreme weather. The watchword that runs through this is “stewardship”, and therefore development corporations are the right vehicles. Mayoral development corporations will be tremendously useful and have great potential, and they have the capacity to be responsive and flexible and far-sighted as the realities change.
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lady Andrews and so many other noble Lords in this debate. I, too, pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, and the Built Environment Committee for making today’s debate possible. Its report is essential reading for all of us who want to see the Government’s promise of a new generation of new towns delivered, because that commitment to housebuilding in general, and new towns in particular, is both urgent and essential.
I will use my time today to focus on one of the new proposed town locations, that of Tempsford. It is in a part of Bedfordshire that I know well, having been born just down the road in Great Barford. Noble Lords will be forgiven if they are not immediately able to find Tempsford on a map, but its role in the Second World War, revealed in the recent opening of the archives, means that it certainly deserves to be better known. Indeed, the noted local historian Bernard O’Connor has described RAF Tempsford as “Churchill’s most secret airfield”. Between 1942 and 1945, the Special Operations Executive, along with RAF’s 138 and 161 special duties squadrons, operated from Tempsford. It was the primary departure point for hundreds of secret agents and for supplies for resistance movements across occupied Europe. It is particularly notable how many of those agents were women who, like those at nearby Bletchley Park, were unable to tell their own stories, so we should do so now.
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The report was produced by Members who looked carefully at the evidence and arrived at the same broad conclusion: this programme has huge potential but only if it is done properly. We approached the inquiry as a critical friend of the Government’s programme. We want it to succeed; indeed, that is precisely why we think it is our duty to say plainly where it is not yet on track. We would be failing in our duty to the Government and our fellow citizens if we did not hold the Government’s feet to the fire.
This is, after all, not the first time this country has set out to build new communities at scale. It is the latest chapter in a story that stretches back more than a century. The post-war new towns were, by any sensible measure, a considerable success, as the Minister can testify. They housed millions, opened up opportunity and showed what the Government could do when they combined ambition with organisation. But a good many attempts since then have been less glorious. Some never got properly off the drawing board, some delivered housing but not places, and some lacked warmth and coherence. This really is an opportunity to get it right this time.
The test of the Government on this agenda will be the towns they actually build and whether these are places in which people can live well, get around easily, find work, raise families and feel they belong. That is why the first report is about the foundations. Foundations are not the most glamorous, but they are crucial. I will start with the positives, as there are things that the Government have done in getting the ball rolling that deserve real credit.
The first is development corporations. We recommended that they should be the default delivery mechanism for new towns and large-scale settlements, and the Government have broadly agreed. They matter because they work. They are tried, tested and credible. They can assemble land, plan at scale and keep a steady hand on the tiller.
Secondly, some of the necessary legislative plumbing is now in place. The Government have moved beyond aspiration and into action. Crucially, compulsory purchase reform now includes the ability to remove hope value in the right circumstances. I know that this can be controversial, but it matters because if land values rise steeply on the expectation of future development, it becomes much harder to fund affordable housing, infrastructure and community benefit.
Thirdly, the wider devolution framework is moving towards powers for mayors and more tools to support infrastructure and regeneration. If these new towns are to succeed, they need to be tied into transport, economic strategy and local leadership. New towns simply cannot be dropped from the great administrative height of Whitehall and expected to land elegantly.
Fourthly, there has been welcome movement on patient capital. The National Housing Bank is a serious development. If this programme is to work, it needs long-term money that understands long-term returns.
Fifthly, the Government have established a new towns unit—a single front door to government—moving from broad intent to an actual process of consultation, assessment and site development.
So let me be clear: this is not a picture of total inertia. Quite a lot has happened and the Government should take credit for it. However, despite that progress there are still some serious gaps. We are two years on and the clock is ticking.
The first area is vision. We said in our report that the Government needed to retake control of the narrative. At the moment, I am not persuaded that the Government have yet supplied that vision in their own voice. Too much of the story still seems to be borrowed from the taskforce. People need to hear clearly and repeatedly what this is for. Is it about giving young families a realistic chance of a home? Is it about healthier places? Is it about joining up housing, growth and infrastructure? Is it about building communities that are greener, better connected and more affordable? Is it about creating and supporting tech centres?
Whatever the goal, whatever the mission, the Government should say so plainly, confidently and often. This should and can be a great national endeavour. It should be exciting, positive and upbeat and should be something we are proud of doing and talking about.
The second area is governance—or, as I say, “grip”. This is the gap that worries me the most, because until the Government get a real grip of the programme and own it, we are not convinced that it will ever happen. These are not five-year projects. They are not even 10-year projects. They are multi-decade undertakings.
We recommend two things: a genuinely independent central body to oversee the programme and proper cross-government leadership of sufficient seniority to hold it together over time. What we have instead is a unit within one department. I am sure that unit is useful, but a unit is not a commission, and it is certainly not a substitute for Cabinet-level leadership.
These are 60-year projects, yet at present they seem to rest heavily on the energy and commitment of a single Minister who has new towns listed as one of his 12 ministerial responsibilities. Admirable though that may be, and even with the support, dedication and passion of our own Minister, and others, to me it just does not feel enough. The vast scale of the task at hand means that it needs to be driven day in, day out, so that someone can bang the table—ideally, the Cabinet table.
Ultimately, this scheme requires the Treasury to play ball. It needs round-the-clock grip, not just to handle Whitehall but to engage local authorities and encourage the private sector and investment to help unblock issues that may arise. Our conclusion on this was blunt—because the evidence justified that bluntness —that without sustained government management and support, there is a strong likelihood of failure.
Thirdly, there is a question of the government ownership stake. We recommend that the Government should retain a small but effective ownership stake in each development corporation, because the evidence suggested that even a modest state stake could improve investor confidence and unlock cheaper longer-term borrowing. We saw this in Copenhagen—its model is not transferable in every detail, of course, but the principle was clear enough: a small public stake can create a great deal of confidence. So we appeal again, because it seems to be one of those rare policy levers that costs relatively little and achieves rather a lot in return.
The fourth is skills. We recommended that the abolition of level 7 apprenticeships for those over 21 be reversed, at least for the professions in the built and natural environment. It makes no sense to announce an ambitious programme such as this—not to mention the 1.5 million target—while quietly narrowing one of the routes into the professions needed to deliver it. Planners, surveyors, urban designers, environmental specialists and the many others on whom good development depends—we cannot just magic these people up overnight. They need training, routes in, and institutional support. The professional concern here is serious. Just when everyone agrees that the system needs more capacity, we are making it even harder for people to enter some of the very professions on which success depends.
Fifthly, there is money. Our committee asked for clarity on the financing mechanism. The Government have pointed to existing programmes, and those are welcome as far as they go; but existing programmes are not the same thing as a transparent, dedicated funding model designed around the realities of new towns: high up-front infrastructure costs, long time horizons, patient returns, land value capture, and proper stewardship. I am afraid too many of the answers in the government response amounted, in effect, to: “We will say more in the spring”. I think we have passed spring, so here is the chance.
There is one final point I want to make, because it goes to legitimacy. We said that the framework for community engagement should be set before sites were announced. That was not procedural fussiness. It was an acknowledgment of the obvious truth that people are more likely to trust a process if they believe they are part of it before the broad shape of events has already been settled. If people feel that consultation begins only once the machinery is already humming in the background, suspicion will grow; and once suspicion takes root, delivery gets slower, not faster.
I end with four requests of the Minister. First, is the Minister able to give the House a firm date for the full government response now that this consultation is over? Secondly, will the Government commit to leadership with genuine and real cross-government authority? Thirdly, will they reconsider the case for a small government ownership stake in each development corporation? Fourthly, will they, even at this stage, exempt the built and natural environment professions from the changes to level 7 apprenticeship funding?
We remain a critical friend of this programme. Get the vision right, the governance right, the skills right and the money right, and this generation of new towns could stand in comparison with the great achievements of the post-war era. Get them wrong, and we will not have built a new generation of communities at all. We will simply have extended a long and, alas, increasingly British tradition of promising much, consulting often and delivering less. We can do it.
I thank the Minister and all those who will take part in this debate, including my fellow committee members, and I look forward to all their contributions. I beg to move.
If some of today’s voters do not get it, I point out that our committee recently conducted a school survey on new towns, and 900 children responded; that is the highest response rate the engagement team has ever had. I can report that if today’s voters are less than enthusiastic, tomorrow’s voters are hugely enthusiastic and have loads of ideas about creating communities fit for tomorrow.
Turning to the economics, I am afraid that, even in these stringent times, the Government have to commit money, either through investment or, preferably, by loan guarantees. The land value uplift and the initial sale of houses will not provide enough to get these inspirational schemes off the ground—although, after 20 to 30 years, the development corporation should be able to turn a surplus. I am afraid that the Treasury has to get involved, and, if PPP is the latest answer for translating vision into reality, go for it. It is not like previous PFI hospitals and so on, which were derided for lumbering future generations with debt. These new town projects will turn a profit. It is just the first 30 to 40 years that are difficult; everyone benefits, eventually.
More than the Treasury, the Government need to get all the departments on board. Before the first house can be sold, there have to be good medical services available, so that is the Department of Health; good educational services, schools and perhaps even a training college, so that is the DfE; good local transport that fits into national transport, so that is the DfT; and good police and fire services, so that is the Home Office. There also has to be a commitment from the private sector that it can provide the shops, pubs, cafés and restaurants that will make these places truly vibrant—that is the PPP bid. All this investment commitment has to be spelled out by our political leaders ASAP. It is not complicated; it just needs vision and commitment.
There is nothing in our report to frighten the horses—in fact, quite the opposite. Everything we say looks forward in a positive way, yet, in spite of this agenda being a manifesto commitment, two years after the election the Government’s response to our report was at best lukewarm. However, I am pleased to say that, in recent weeks, there has been a bit more spark coming out of the department, so let us hope that this develops into a veritable blaze of enthusiasm and drive.
So we have our own new towns programme. None of these are in the Government’s new towns programme. Cambridgeshire is planning to deliver 55,000 homes through its own new settlements, without the benefit of the new towns programme in any formal sense. However, the Government are planning a development corporation. I look forward to a debate on the statutory instrument about that, and we will discuss it then.
We have learned a few things. First, in Cambourne, we are 30 years on but only now are we going to get east-west rail with a railway station. Secondly, at Northstowe, we learned the lesson that we needed some of that infrastructure. The Conservative county council built the guided busway and a Conservative Government built the A14 rebuild, but that did not mean that Northstowe happened when we expected it to and to the extent that we thought it would. If I had been standing here in 2007, I would have said, “In 10 years’ time, Northstowe will be established. It will have 2,500 homes and be planning to go to 10,000”. Ten years on from 2007, there were in fact no homes in Northstowe. Why? Because in October 2008 the market collapsed.
It is so important that, as my esteemed friend Oliver Letwin said in his review, we understand the central importance of markets and of ensuring that we respond to them, not least in where we locate new towns and where there is market demand and viability, and in the diversity of tenure in those towns, so that we can see these properties go into the market. It is only those market sales that are fundamentally going to fund the affordable and social housing that we want to be a significant part of this.
We have learned some of those lessons and they are being incorporated into the new towns programme, but we should not imagine that we are operating by looking back to 1945 and then imagining what we are going to do in 2026. No. We can see now in Cambridgeshire what the lessons are. Some of them have been painful ones, but we have none the less come through and are succeeding. I want the Government—we will have this debate another time—to recognise that Cambridgeshire is doing the things that the Government want it to and does not need the new towns programme to make it happen, but that we can learn from it in encouraging other places to do so.
I have two more points. First, yes, there should be development corporations, but in some places they should be mayoral development corporations with tax increment financing, as well as loans from Homes England and the Government. Secondly, when my noble friend’s committee comes to look at the future and community engagement, it should remember that it is the young people today—probably teenagers—who will be moving into many of these homes. Let us engage them too, not just the communities that already live there.
Recent research has shown that where green infrastructure is introduced too late in the development process, opportunities are reduced and outcomes are less effective. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, talked about the Camborne development, and it absolutely embraced the concept of developing green spaces as part of its master plan right from the start. However, it is slightly unfortunate now that East West Rail will go straight through one of the major nature reserves created in that process. That also outlines the need for integrated and comprehensive master planning.
The use of trees and woods to help shape the layout and identity of a development needs to be part of landscape-led master planning and not retrofitted. There are already examples of good practice. The Marston Vale community forest, for example, has agreed with all its surrounding local authorities supplementary planning documents so all substantial developments will have at least the minimum level of tree canopy cover. I encourage the Government to think of that as something that they might make obligatory.
I also urge the Government to use the opportunity of the new towns programme to promote modern construction methods, particularly the Government’s timber and construction road map. The benefits of using wood in construction include replacing carbon-intensive steel and concrete, and locking up carbon for the entire life of the building in addition to the growth period of the tree. Timber is also a natural insulator. However, the Government also need to ensure that long-term and reliable signals are given to the timber growing and processing markets to ensure that as much timber used in construction as possible is produced here in the UK—80% is currently imported. There is a clear policy need there. We want local homes made with local timber providing local jobs.
Will the Minister ensure that recent announcements about fire safety for high-rise buildings do not inadvertently stifle wood-based houses that do not represent a fire risk if they are below three storeys? Some 91% of Scotland’s houses are timber-framed and I have not detected a higher level of house fires in Scotland, despite some of the other habits of the Scots—I can say that because I am one. Here in England, currently only 9% of homes are currently being built with timber.
I have one last point to make, if I may. The Select Committee called for a national spatial strategy and it is good that the land use framework has now been published for England. The approach to new town location needs to use the principles and practice of the land use framework, and the increasing wealth of data that underpins it, to help guide new town locations away from sensitive areas that are inappropriate and towards those most suited, using the whole range of the environmental, social and economic data. That is what a land use framework is for. It would be absolutely first class if the new towns’ planning and policy used that and acted as an exemplar for how a land use framework approach can work.
I know that there will be later comments on particular locations in the programme for the new homes, and I hope that the House will note that the reason for some of the sensitivities about some of the locations is that because a land use framework approach has not been used. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
I would also like to hear more about how it can be based in some fine traditions of British development, and the formation of British communities. Someone I revere as one of our great entrepreneurial designers, Josiah Wedgwood, in some ways started it with above-average housing for the skilled workers that he recruited, trained, and wished to retain, in a village called Etruria. What a good idea to give them an improvement in living standards as part of the package.
That was carried on by other great entrepreneurs and rich families. Go and visit Bournville and Port Sunlight; are Ministers not proud of these? They were great achievements, with wonderful architecture, countryside in the development, people with gardens, sporting facilities that they could use, communal facilities that they could go and enjoy, a community that was built around a place of work that they were proud of, and that paid them decent wages and looked after them. This spread out more widely, as we have heard from others, in post-war developments, when you had the development of garden cities, with Welwyn and so forth taking off. So there is a tradition that we can build on, and the Government could show more passion, and a bit more continuity in British life, drawing on the things we can be proud of: how normal skilled workers got access to much better housing, started to live in communities and then went on to become owners, which is also extremely important for democratising capital and spreading wealth more widely.
The Government should also look at what works to break down resistance, because we have a paradox in public opinion in this country. The public think that we should build more houses, but most of the public do not think any of the houses should be built anywhere near them. I represented a constituency which always had one of the fastest rates of new house building foisted on it by successive Governments: the constituency of Wokingham. So successful was it that they kept having to break bits off from my constituency to form new ones, as we had so many people coming into the patch. I had to be the chief nimby, but you can see that I am not a nimby. We need to build houses. Construction is a great thing. But I did have to represent the perfectly genuine view that, if you took too many of our green fields and green gaps between settlements, you destroyed the community and changed the nature of the fabric of the local area. We were being asked to take too much, too quickly.
I also shared the view that we were not getting access to the funds and projects for the infrastructure. We were inviting people in when there was not electricity, water, enough pipes to take the dirty water away, or enough drained land, so the new houses flooded almost as soon as people moved into them. It was a disgrace that we did not plan it properly.
So I urge the Government to put more emphasis on new cities and towns, to accept the conclusions of the report that you plan them in advance and, above all, that you put the facilities in first.
It is located entirely on beautiful countryside in the Stour valley—countryside which I would argue merits protection in its own right—and is in stark contrast to the kind of lower-grade or degraded countryside, or even areas of green belt that are degraded, which we should not be worried about in protecting beautiful countryside. Significantly, this is also grade 2 farmland. The Government’s own Land Use Frameworkfor England says that its analysis
“aims to reduce trade-offs by avoiding land use change on our best agricultural land”.
That reflects the National Planning Policy Framework, which directs development away from the best and most versatile agricultural land, including grade 2 land.
This proposal sits alongside—directly proximate to—the development which my noble friend Lord Lansley already described: an increase of 50,000 homes in Cambridge that would double its size. On one side of the A11, in the Oxford-Cambridge corridor—your Lordships can see the logic in this—there would be a massive new development and then on the east side, in entirely open countryside, not on the Oxford-Cambridge corridor, there would be another which would completely dwarf it. The proposal seems confused about whether it is a potentially complementary scheme or one which is an alternative.
This area of the country, Cambridgeshire, is water stressed. It is one of the driest areas of the country. Where would the water come from? The scheme’s promoters say that there would be a cost in providing it of £4.3 billion. Where would the transport infrastructure be funded from? The scheme’s promoters say that roads, railway, et cetera would cost some £16 billion—there is no proper railway connection to this development. The local Member of Parliament, Nick Timothy, estimates the infrastructure costs alone as some £60 billion and the state subsidy required to build this development as between £80 billion and £110 billion, because there is a proposal that the housing would be all affordable and that the plan would eliminate land value receipts, which normally fund roads, schools and hospitals. What that suggests is that this proposal is pie in the sky.
There may be an attractive brochure with pictures of beavers and bison, people swimming in lakes, and gobbledygook such as “symbiotic mobility” and “synchromodality”. There may be doublespeak about villages being integrated in the urban fabric of the city, but the truth is that there will be concrete where there was countryside, highways where there were hedgerows and more housing where there are hamlets. This is a utopian delusion. It is not a serious proposal, but the effect on the local community of promoting it is serious, because it creates anxiety and property blight. Of course, it also has an effect on the existing proposed development nearby in Cambridgeshire.
The Government have said that they will consider any reasonable alternatives to the recommended locations of their new towns. I note from the Financial Times on 29 May that the Government said that they had received the proposal that I am referring to and that they were reviewing it. I would encourage the Government to rule out this absurd proposal as soon as possible to eliminate the tremendous uncertainty that is created by it, to recognise that it is a folly and not a serious or sensible proposal, but one that is creating enormous worry to a huge number of local residents.
Finally, it was good to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Redwood, said: this is indeed policy embedded in living history, because the reality of the post-war vision is ever before us. People are still living in those settings. There was a certain wistfulness in our committee that we did not have the heroic vision and the post-war imperatives of rehousing, which were profoundly necessary but also popular. They came with the patient capital investment that paid off, and we make the same case under different conditions, because our housing emergency cannot be encapsulated easily in a single vision, although that is what we called for. It has a dual purpose: addressing our structural housing shortage and unlocking growth. Both are essential, but how do they relate to each other? Where is the novelty? Where is the innovation going to come from?
The challenge is even greater because we are in the foothills of our own industrial revolution, more unpredictable than those that have shaped our world. The uncertainty is compounded by very different financial conditions, labour markets, skill needs and changes in demography. All of that affects housing aspiration and provision. The new towns sit alongside massive new investment in social housing and are faced with all the familiar problems that frustrate every development in the country.
I have two questions for the Minister. Can she say something this evening on the contribution that new towns will make to the overall housing targets? There is still a bit of confusion about that. Can she bring us up to speed with the work of Homes England and the National Housing Bank, because they are so critical to getting things done?
On changes about national mood, people rightly expect to be involved in decisions about their future; they were not in that frame of mind in 1947. It makes a single conversation about new towns and their purpose more difficult and more contentious. Seeing is believing, but the work of the taskforce has been under the radar, and it means the field is wide open to vocal opposition—hence our insistence that there must be a bigger voice and greater visibility to bring the credibility and energy that they demand.
We can do it, because there are new tools and new opportunities. Place-making can bring consciously together landscape, character, sustainability, infrastructure and quality of life. Many of our recommendations audit the unique opportunities that new towns present to think creatively, with private and communal space, conservation, connectivity, integrated services, community ownership, design codes and innovative funding. Those factors will create the new models for the future.
In evidence to the committee, the Minister was a formidable advocate for new towns, and every Minister who came before us was very focused—and the taskforce is extremely impressive. But our final, substantive conclusion is that something above and beyond is needed if the programme is to achieve momentum and public confidence. In short, we think there needs to be a bigger, bolder, simpler story told about the new towns. I am afraid that I am going to use the word “vision”. It is easy to be sceptical, but we need something that captures desire as well as imagination. It does nothing less than shine a clear light on the nation’s hopes for the next generation, giving security and opportunity in housing and jobs. It requires commanding leadership, which is why we suggest a single, powerful voice, a Cabinet Minister with this as their sole priority, and not an internal unit but a cross-government agency with power to advise and pull heads together and deliver. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Today, Tempsford finds itself at a crucial intersection of future road and rail development to support the Oxford-Cambridge corridor, making it the flagship growth corridor site. It would be a town of around 100,000 people, anchored in a new railway station connected to all points of the compass. As the New Towns Task Force said, it is “unique opportunity” and a
“standalone new town in Tempsford provides an opportunity for exemplar development that could provide excellent housing and employment opportunities for people in the region”.
The Government have said that they want to have at least three of these new towns under way by the time of the next election. Meeting that target, as has already been said, will require a level of co-ordination that, frankly, government is not always used to across so many different disciplines: rail, flood mitigation, utilities, land assembly and master planning. There is a traditional government approach that seems to insist on doing everything sequentially rather than simultaneously. I am afraid that I do not believe that we have time for such an approach. To that end, could the Minister please update the House on what progress has been made on land assembly for this project?
As mentioned, it is right that the new rail station is the anchor to this new town. It is in a unique position, connecting the millions of people who live along the east coast main line to new, exciting opportunities provided by the east-west rail line. It is where scientists from Cambridge will train change trains to meet investors in Leeds, or where families travelling from Edinburgh can connect to visit Universal’s United Kingdom Resort just down the road. Last week, the Government announced very welcome investment for the Wixams railway station to support Universal’s project. Can the Minister update the House on when we might be able to get a similar announcement for Tempsford railway station? There has been some suggestion that, on current plans, work would not start until 2030.
For Tempsford and other 21st-century new towns to be delivered, this Government need to be as bold and decisive as their post-war 1945 predecessor. I have no doubt that Ministers embrace that challenge. I simply urge the Government to hear that the clock is ticking, move at speed and learn the lessons of past Governments’ successes and failures, from London 2012 to HS2. We know what works: publish a single delivery plan, with one named senior responsible owner; align every workstream on one timetable; and confirm the delivery vehicle and early funding. A new town cannot be built by rail planners, flood engineers and landowners all working to different speeds, plans and managers. New towns such as Tempsford need one delivery body, one timetable and one accountable Minister to grip it.
In conclusion, the committee describes itself as a “critical friend” to the new towns programme. I look forward to following its ongoing work and to more debates such as this, because we need this work to succeed. The potential is huge and exciting. Let us get going with this most strategically important site and, in doing so, we can honour the legacy of legendary female secret agents, such as Vera Leigh, Violette Szabo and Noor Inayat Khan, in the names of the glorious parks and boulevards of the new Tempsford. This project can be so much more than simply new homes; Tempsford new town can be at the frontier of an ambitious, better-connected, future-facing Britain.