HC Deb 14 April 1961 vol 638 cc746-56

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Noble.]

4.3 p.m.

Mr. Harold Davies (Leek)

After the entertaining objections about the Ticket Touting Bill and the Minister offering at the end of the rainbow a crock of gold, I should like to raise in this House an issue not only offering crocks of gold but shovels full of gold so far as building and the breaking down of the green belt areas in my constituency are concerned. I regret very much that the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Osborne) did not have much time in which to discuss the vital problem of aid to under-developed areas, but I wish to deal with a purely local problem which has national implications as well.

It is a growing fact in this country that land values are soaring, but nobody seems to do anything about it. It is now becoming a racket throughout the country, because it is a proper bonanza and casino for those people who happen to have a little information sometimes. It is time that the House of Commons seriously investigated what is now taking place in Britain in regard to land values and sketch plan maps for green belt areas.

I wish to quote an extract from the "Planning and Land Market" article by M. A. Carter published in the Estates Gazette of 19th March, 1960, in which he said this: I think, however, that by far the greatest effect of high land values, wherein the threat to proper planning and good development lies, is that they are creating very considerable pressure indeed for local planning authorities"— and these are the operative words— release for development vastly increased areas of land over and above those allocated in approved development plans. The formation of pressure groups for this purpose is very evident. If these pressure groups are successful in achieving their aims, the post-war planning system will collapse, and we shall extend suburban sprawl with all its disadvantages over vast new areas. High values are also resulting in speculation in unallocated land, particularly in white areas between residential allocations and the inner edges of green belts which in the light of the values involved some planners have aptly suggested should be called 'gold' land, It is obvious that the speculators will add their voices to the demands for increased allocations. On 16th October last the Manchester Guardian said: The property market is betting a huge and rapidly mounting sum that it will succeed in breaking planning control or, alternatively, that it will get its money back in the form of compensation at current market prices for the refusal of permission—which would speedily produce the same result. The Government will no doubt be urged to adopt this oblique and fair seeming method of dismantling the planning system. The Minister has told us that at one time he was concerned with the green belts and the following are extracts from his speeches and from newspapers of that time. The Minister—I am quoting again from the Manchester Guardian—said in the House: We are not going to let the green belts go. He then suggested that we should work with the tide of the market. Sir Basil Spence's view on this was that the country was becoming 'a casino for the speculators,' and spoke of 'a sensational and shocking rise' in land prices, with fortunes made overnight and the public —poor creatures; I put that in parenthesis— getting no benefit from these inflated values. Never mind the political claptrap of General Elections. We talk of making this a property-owning democracy. Both sides of the House like to see men and women buying their own homes, but the small house purchaser today is being bled by high interest rates and high land values, and nobody seems to be doing anything about the matter. In fact, it was Sir Basil who referred to these values being casinos for speculators.

Some local authorities have more courage than others. I was glad to see, again quoted in the Press, that One of the biggest local authorities put its feet down and warned —this was two months ago— There will be no more exceptions to the green-belt rules. That was in Lancashire. We were also told by the Minister that he believed 'green belts, once properly established, should, except in very special circumstances, be maintained inviolate'. We all agree.

I am rather worried about the position in my area and so are thousands of people in Staffordshire. We are worried about what seems to be taking place. Many people in the northern part of Staffordshire and in my own division have come to me with grouses and grumbles, but without at times, I agree, sufficient facts, regarding what they consider to be undue speculation in land values. We know what the result of such speculation can be, because we have had examples of it. I will give two or three examples from different parts of the country.

The Daily Express reported on 27th October, 1960, Thirty acres of building land which the council at Banstead, Surrey, valued at £2,500 when it was bought eight years ago, is about to be resold for £250,000. Here again the value of the land has increased a hundred-fold in eight years. This has to be met by the community. It has to be met by the businessman if he wants to start business. Worse still, it has to be met by the young couples who are trying to buy their own homes.

The Financial Times on 3rd December wrote: The cost of land for each flat in development planned at Woking, Surrey, will soon be well over £1,000, said Mr. P. J. Hurman…at a Ministry of Housing and Local Government inquiry…. Three years ago the price was £500. The Financial Times of 23rd February wrote: The obvious question now is whether this rise in house prices can continue. Almost certainly it will though the rate of appreciation is likely to slow down for a while after last year's burst. The 1960's look like being the first decade in which the average man buys his house in the same way as the 1950's saw him buying his washing machine and television. If this happens, the rate of urban expansion is likely to accelerate rather than slow down, a prospect that makes the need for careful planning all the more necessary. One must not stop at planning. More than ever, care should be taken in local areas to see that green belts and exceptions within green belt areas are carefully watched, and that the public can be sure that there are no sharp practices in the exceptions which are made.

I do not want to mention men's names; I believe that in the House, where one is privileged, one should not use that privilege to mention men's names in a casual way. I am fairly certain of these facts but I will omit the names. I have a letter from a councillor written to me on 20th February: Mr. Brooke made it quite plain by a forthright statement in the House that the green belt was to be preserved at all costs. This gentleman writes about Stone Rural District Council, which is contiguous with my rural district council. He writes: I am an elector and a member in the Blythe Bridge area opposing the City of Stoke-on-Trent over the boundaries and opposing the question stressed by the Commissioners and opposing also the possibilities of annexation. He has fears about the preservation of the green belt, and he writes: In spite of three planning refusals by the Stone Rural District Council on the recommendation of the regional planning Officer, an application by a builder —I am leaving out the names— has been approved and 27 acres have been taken out of agriculture and the green belt in Blythe Bridge. This, I feel, sabotages our case as presented to the Boundary Commissioners and forms a distinct breach of faith to the electorate. The last time this application came up for consideration by our Committee was in December, 1960. Unknown to us a sub-committee of the County Planning Committee had given approval to this application in the same week. This I felt to be such an unusual procedure that, to say the least, I felt more than curious. Immediately following our meeting of 8th December considerable pressure was exerted on our council's administrative staff from Stafford to get this application reconsidered. On 4th January the county planning officer wrote to our clerk suggesting that I go to Stafford to discuss this issue. There it was explained that the reasons for taking it out of the green belt and incorporating it in a village plan was making the area safe from annexation by the City of Stoke-on-Trent. I asked for a copy of the Minister's decision some weeks before and was not even given a reply. At the same time, there was a person walking around with a copy, and I was assured that £85,000 would be made out of the deal. It is no good the Minister saying, as I have heard him say when I have raised this matter in the House that this sort of thing is not going on. It is going on in various parts of Britain. Pre-knowledge is being used and speculation is taking place as it has never before taken place, sabotaging—as the writer of that letter said—out efforts to establish a complete green belt system in Britain.

In several letters he has written to me the Minister has given his view. He has said that the green belt is the county council's proposal and he thinks it unlikely that they are allowing development which would conflict with it. You refer to land deals. That may reflect the hopes of speculators that they will be able to get permission to develop, but they do not in themselves mean any infringement of the Green Belt proposal because there cannot be any development without permission. We all know that. There should be a deeper check made at the centre, made by the Ministry.

I tried to elicit an answer to a question, and it took me a long to to do so. Eventually, I had a telegram and a letter about it. I tried to find out how many acres of land had been allowed to go out of the green belt area in my constituency of Leek. I was told that 45 acres of land within that part of my constituency outside the development area are to be released. I am told that the county council has not received any general objections to the release of the land. I can explain why there has not been any general objection. There is not very much publicity about the release of such land.

I am grateful to the Minister for being here, and I want him to answer certain questions. Has he an example of substantial departure from approved development plans in the green belt area? Can he give examples of the price of land per acre which has been developed in the Leek area? Does he know of development companies and building companies which have been active, and more than active, in this area?

Twenty-seven acres of land were taken out of agriculture in the green belt area of Blythe Bridge. Planning permission was refused three times, but, eventually, the land was allowed to be released. Did the Minister and his officials know of this? Were they consulted? Was there a public inquiry on the spot?

In Kingsley, in Biddulph and in other parts of my constituency, I hear stories of this kind of thing going on. I am not prepared to work on stories. I am prepared to work on the facts. I have given some, and I want a direct answer from the Minister today.

4.18 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Sir Keith Joseph)

For ten out of the seventeen minutes that the hon. Member for Leek (Mr. Harold Davies) has used, he did not discuss local matters. He discussed national matters and—adopting his own words—he treated us to grouses and grumbles without facts. The only fact that we had from the hon. Gentleman related to the particular case of the release of sketch plan green belt land for development at Blythe Bridge. I have the map relating to that case before me.

What the hon. Member failed to do was to put the matter in proportion. I propose to go into all he has said. The Potteries green belt covers roughly 100,000 acres. The hon. Member spoke as if this is all in danger. In fact, he gave one example only.

Mr. Harold Davies

I could give others.

Sir K. Joseph

The hon. Member had seventeen minutes. He chose to give one example. He spent ten minutes discussing land prices in general, on a national basis, not speaking about Leek. I can only say that it was a general smear which I shall try to answer in general terms. It was not worthy of the hon. Gentleman's usual behaviour.

First, the hon. Gentleman says that land values are soaring everywhere. They are not soaring everywhere. There are parts of this country where land values have barely kept pace with the falling value of the pound and with the change in earnings and wages. On the other hand, there are large parts of the country where land prices are soaring. This is because, by planning and by the facts of nature, there is only limited land available to us as a country, and by planning we have restricted the land that shall be available fox development far below even that amount. The limited amount of land which is available for development is bid for by a rising number of ever-more prosperous claimants for that land. Naturally, therefore, there have been substantial rises in the price of land.

The hon. Gentleman speaks as though there were a sinister conspiracy in this matter. He speaks of pressure groups to release land. Is he not aware that, just as strong as the pressure groups to release land, there are pressure groups against the release of land? He should realise that any claim or proposal to make use of land nearly always meets with violent local and sometimes national objections. It is because of these conflicting claims on land and the need to reconcile them in the national and local interest that the planning procedure exists.

Let me remind the House of that procedure. First, there is for every area a development plan which has been the subject of a public inquiry and which, modified or unmodified as a result of the evidence given at that inquiry, finally has the approval of my right hon. Friend the Minister. Once that development plan is approved, any substantial departure from it has to come to my right hon. Friend. He, in nearly every case, will have a public inquiry. There is a separate drill within this system for green belts.

Mr. Harold Davies

How many public inquiries have there been in Leek?

Sir K. Joseph

That is a separate question of which I need notice. The hon. Gentleman could well have asked me that question in his speech and I should have given him the answer if I had had time to get it.

Mr. Davies

The hon. Gentleman said that he would tell me.

Sir K. Joseph

Indeed I did not. The hon. Gentleman makes discourteous interventions after having failed to use his seventeen minutes correctly.

I was trying to describe the sketch plan procedure for green belts. They are defined in the sketch plan and, after examination, need the approval of my right hon. Friend. Pending that approval, there is an agreement with local planning authorities that they shall treat the green belt as if the approval had been given by my right hon. Friend. The green belt area therefore receives the maximum protection that the planning process can give it.

Nothing that I have said should detract from the fact that my right hon. Friend welcomes very much the interest of the hon. Gentleman in the planning of his area. The interest of the public, and particularly of their representatives in Parliament, is a great aid to the planning procedures of this country. However, what it is very difficult to deal with—I hope that the hon. Gentleman will understand this—is general allegations without particular examples.

As the hon. Gentleman said, there are far too few facts to support what he was trying to indicate. The planning procedure is laid by Parliament firmly on the shoulders of local planning authorities. If the local planning authority gives approval for a proposed development, there is a reserve power in my right hon. Friend to revoke. But these are generally local matters best decided by local elected representatives. My right hon. Friend very rarely revokes a planning approval by a local planning authority. He will revoke where the national interest is at stake. If the local planning authority refuses an application, the applicant has an appeal to my right hon. Friend.

I have already explained that in the hon. Gentleman's area the Potteries green belt is at sketch plan stage, but, as I have said, by agreement between the local planning authority and the Government the same protection is given by the local planning authority as if the green belt had been formally approved. Any substantial departure from the green belt must be referred to my right hon. Friend. I agree, however, that it is for the local planning authority, the local elected representatives, to decide whether any departure is, in fact, substantial. Where a green belt is in sketch plan stage, we can take it that local planning authorities scrutinise applications all the more meticulously before deciding whether any departure is or is not substantial enough to be referred to my right hon. Friend.

Indeed, there are often reasons why a sketch green belt might need minute modification, particularly at the boundaries. For example, a sketch green belt may be drawn to leave out a particular town, village or development, and when there is an examination in great detail, it may be found that a certain field has been made into a salient and that it would be better to draw the boundary slightly differently.

Even at the extreme, let me concede to the hon. Member that when dealing with a planning application a local planning authority may decide that it made a mistake in the line which it drew when submitting its sketch green belt. Surely, any procedure must allow for the correction of minor errors. That is what the procedure permits. I stress, however, that compared to the bulk of the green belt, these corrections of sketch green belt boundaries are absolutely trivial in terms of acreage. They are normally only for minor adjustments, in proportion to the acreage of the sketch green belts, at their edges.

The hon. Member spoke as if it was the duty of my right hon. Friend to know all the statistics and to watch in great detail the planning process in every area. Surely, the hon. Member realises that my right hon. Friend is not an invigilator supervising an examination. There is no need for him to prowl up and down the country seeking for misdemeanours as if local planning authorities were mischievous schoolboys. Planning authorities are responsible bodies elected locally and responsible to their electorates.

The attention drawn by the hon. Member is the very best sanction against the sort of evils that he has in mind. If he alleges that mistakes are being made, he should take them up in the first case with the local planning authority, the county council concerned. It is true that my right hon. Friend has reserve powers in default and there have been cases where he has decided that the local planning authority has made such an indefensible decision, so damaging to the local area and the national interest, or taken with such apparent disregard of the facts as brought out in local evidence, that it would be right for him to intervene. These, however, are rare cases, because in nearly every case the issues are local and in nearly every case—in very nearly every case, I may say—the local planning authority scrupulously takes into account all the interests concerned before coming to its decision.

I agree with the hon. Member that in what he implies—namely, that the preservation of the proposed Potteries Green Belt is a vital national as well as a vital local objective. I again commend the hon. Member's interest in seeing that that in general is protected. It is also important, however, to ensure that sufficient land is allocated in every area for factories, houses and all the other developments that make life possible.

Planning authorities, I am sure the hon. Member will admit, have a difficult task in reconciling competing claims for land. Staffordshire, the county to which the hon. Member has referred, has a fine record in planning. Its contribution to overspill alone has been outstanding. It has stimulated and helped more than a dozen district councils to initiate and carry out town development schemes for the benefit of Birmingham, Walsall and Wolverhampton. I am sure that the hon. Member would wish to join with me in paying tribute to the services that Staffordshire has performed.

Mr. Harold Davies indicated assent.

Sir K. Joseph

The hon. Member has asked me a number of specific questions. The only example I know of a substantial departure from the Development Plan that has been approved by my right hon. Friend in the green belt in the Leek area is the 27 acres of land which the hon. Member has instanced at Blythe Bridge. My right hon. Friend approved the departure after carefully considering it on the ground that there was nothing against the development coming up to the by-pass, which would provide a boundary for the green belt.

If I may try to explain to the hon. Member and to the House, the 27 acres are a triangular area. It is bounded on two sides by existing development and on the third side it is bounded by a proposed by-pass. Had these 27 acres been left as a triangular island between the development already existing on two sides and the new by-pass on the third it would not have been of great benefit to agriculture, and indeed there was no great effort to preserve it for agriculture. Therefore, it seemed appropriate to establish the boundary of the green belt along the by-pass rather than to cross the by-pass just for that extra 27 acres of green belt.

The hon. Gentleman asked me some other questions. I am afraid I must answer him like this. It is not the business of my right hon. Friend to obtain the prices of land for which permission is given. That is not a planning consideration. Nor is it my right hon. Friend's business to know what companies or what builders are active in a particular area. Nor is it my right hon. Friend's business to watch whether any of these builders or companies are represented on any particular county council.

If the hon. Gentleman comes across any evidence of dishonesty or of failure by local authority members to declare their interest in a matter which the local authority is considering as required by Section 76 of the Local Government Act, 1933, the evidence should be sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Mr. Harold Davies Whitewashing.

Sir K. Joseph

The hon. Gentleman has smeared here a number of representatives without mentioning individual names, alleging that pre-knowledge has been used for speculative purposes. It is his duty to do all he can to see that any evidence of this pre-knowledge which he alleges is given either to the police or to the Director or Public Prosecutions. I hope he will not take it ill from me if I ask him to raise these questions with the county council and to seek, when anybody complains to him in future, to obtain the evidence behind those complaints.

I wish to reassert once again what my right hon. Friend has already said and what the hon. Gentleman has himself quoted, that green belts will be held. Nothing he has said has given any evidence to the contrary against this. He has produced one example of 27 acres in a 100,000-acre green belt—27 acres which, in my right hon. Friend's view, should never have been included in the sketch green belt at all.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-eight minutes to Five o'clock.