This is an occasion on which I must apply Mr. Speaker's recent ruling that, when topics are of a particularly local nature, the time for wind-up speeches by the main Opposition parties' spokesmen is reduced from 10 minutes each to five minutes each. The Minister still retains his right to 10 minutes, which may not please him. One of the Conservative Members must inform their spokesman if, and when, the hon. Gentleman arrives.

I am grateful to be able to bring this issue to the attention of the House today. I am glad that my hon. Friends the Members for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) and for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Sayeed) are here, as well as the hon. Members for Milton Keynes, North-East (Brian White), for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey) and for Bedford (Mr. Hall), who also represent the affected area. I welcome the Under-Secretary of State, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, Phil Hope, to the debate. He can claim to be wearing two hats today: that of the spokesman for his Department and that of a local constituency Member, although he is probably not allowed to speak in the latter capacity.

Two years ago, the Government published their sustainable communities plan, which designated four regions of south-east England for large-scale residential and other development. The term "Milton Keynes and south midlands sub-region" was invented to describe what I still regard as a pretty disparate area covering most of Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire. As the panel appointed by the Government to assess their sub-regional strategy commented,

"The area chosen for the Sub-Region was somewhat arbitrary".

The most recent figures to have emerged from the Government's planning process predict that, under their sustainable communities plan, there will be a further 169,800 new homes in the Milton Keynes and south midlands area by 2021 and, more provisionally, an additional 103,100 new homes in the subsequent decade to 2031. It will come as no surprise to the Minister that I have been sceptical about the Government's approach from the start, but I want to make it clear to the House that I am not opposed to all development. In fact, it is difficult to find anyone, even among conservation organisations, who claims to be against all development.

One of the ironies about the debate is that places such as Aylesbury, Milton Keynes and Northampton were already, before the sustainable communities plan was published, planning at local level for significant new housing and commercial development in the years and decades to come.

Like some professional commentators, I have found the whole process bedevilled by the need to unpick the figures for planned and incremental growth. It has been difficult to work out from the overall aggregates how much development was already in the pipeline and how much the present initiative has added to it.

My hon. Friend puts the point well. In recent months, that complication has been aggravated by the publication of the Barker report and the south-east England regional plan when, once again, we have to distinguish between new growth already in the pipeline, growth provided for by the Government under the various stages of the sustainable communities plan, and growth planned now under the post-Barker recommendations.

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that one of the reasons why the Government, rightly, tried to bring some order to the matter is that, had it been left to them, market forces would have forced development on the areas that he is talking about? That is why infrastructure is so vital.

I do not wish, and never have wished, to leave things entirely to market forces. I would rather put my trust in local communities through their elected representatives, who, particularly in the areas that we represent, have shown themselves able to judge correctly the balance between growth and conservation that is suitable for their town, district or county. They do that much more skilfully than the regional or central bodies that have been given so much power in recent years.

Does my hon. Friend agree that if local authorities of any political colour do not meet their local housing need, they will not be re-elected? The Government do not seem to realise what pressure there is on Tory local councils to meet housing need. Those councils want to meet it.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

I find it odd that the Government have sought to address the challenge of high housing costs in the south of England by concentrating development—it seems to me—in towns where house prices have been in general lower than average for the south-east region.

The hon. Gentleman spoke about trusting local authorities. What would be the situation in my constituency, where the local authority has run out of land and will have to build or find housing outside the borough? That cannot be done without mutual agreement between authorities or some kind of Government intervention.

The hon. Gentleman puts his finger on it when he talked about the need for mutual agreement between local authorities. It seems to me that we need to have a sensible coming together between those authorities that want to provide additional housing and those that are responsible for the transport and public services that will be required if such housing is to lead to successful and sustainable communities. That has not been happening during the Government's implementation of their sustainable communities plan.

I understand the hon. Gentleman to be saying that growth is expected to occur in places where house prices, as he pus it, are lower than average. Is he aware that the Housing Corporation says that an income of £40,000 is required to afford a house in Milton Keynes? Does he think that that is acceptable? What would he say to the many people in my area who have incomes well below that?

I have never denied the need for more affordable housing. My point was that the areas in the south-east of England singled out by the Government for concentrated growth are not those where housing costs are highest. As I shall explain, one consequence of that approach is the real risk that the proposals will generate not sustainable communities, but a lot of extra road-carried commuter traffic, taking people from the new developments to work in other areas where housing costs remain high.

One of the things about the proposals and the Government's approach that I worry about is that the focus on building on the edge of existing towns risks not only drawing resources away from inner-urban regeneration, but making many villages even more exclusive than they are at the moment. I have a lot of time for the proposals coming from the Rural Housing Trust: one of the things that we need is small-scale developments in a large number of English villages of a type that suits the needs of those parishes and local communities.

Is the hon. Gentleman not aware that one of the reasons for locating growth in urban areas was the fear that otherwise lots of villages would get swamped by development? Is that not what the hon. Gentleman is advocating?

No, I am advocating what the Rural Housing Trust has been advocating: if small-scale developments were made possible, in some cases there could be as few as six, 10 or 12 additional homes in small villages. Those homes could be for people with a local link—perhaps they are employed in that village or have family members who are employed there. The villages would be sustained as balanced communities and we would avoid the need for so many people to drive in and out of them. We would be able to keep the countryside as a place where people are able to work and not just as a place to which well-off people are able to retire.

However, I want to concentrate not so much on those objections of principle, which I wanted to make clear in advance, but on whether the plan as it has developed in the past two years is likely to achieve what Ministers said they wanted to happen. From the start, the Deputy Prime Minister claimed that the sustainable communities plan is about far more than just more house building. The White Paper of February 2003 stressed the need for a flourishing local economy, good transport systems and high-quality public services. The Government assure us that they are determined not to repeat the planning disasters of the 1960s—indeed, the term "sustainable" implies that the development will be qualitatively different from and better than past growth, and in particular that development will reflect environmental limits and not just economic pressures.

indicated assent.

I see the Minister nodding. He thinks that I am giving a fair summary of how the Government stated their case.

Let us look first at the environmental impact. It is undeniable that the plans for the Milton Keynes and south midlands area will lead directly to the loss of greenfield land, and in some areas—south Bedfordshire is a case in point—to the loss of green belt land. The development proposed in the sub-regional strategy for the area to the south of Aylesbury threatens to build on green fields and lead to the coalescence of the town with villages such as Wendover, Weston Turville and Stoke Mandeville. In Kettering, about 80 per cent. of new build will have to be on greenfield sites and in Northampton about 27,000 out of 49,000 homes will be built on greenfield sites. I believe that the plan for Milton Keynes is to build not just within the existing urban area but on greenfield sites on the edge of the city.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Minister could usefully explain what the Deputy Prime Minister meant when he said in a letter to the Daily Mail on 6 February 2004,

"Your article on Wednesday mentioned threatened Downing Street plans to allow thousands of homes on Green Belt land. There are no such plans. No Ministers are demanding the rules on Green Belt must be relaxed."?

My hon. Friend speaks from experience of the real threat to the green belt in the communities that he represents.

The second issue is that of pressure on areas of particular environmental importance and sensitivity. I will speak at greater length in a moment about the Chilterns area of outstanding natural beauty, which covers a large part of my constituency, and the wider Chilterns area. The impact of these plans on the Nene valley in Northamptonshire is something that has caused anxiety to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

Inevitably, housing growth on the scale proposed will lead to an increased tension in rural neighbourhoods between the demands of conservation and those of recreation—each a legitimate demand. The strain will become greater. There is also the matter of the indirect environmental impacts of the proposals, which include the traffic generated by the new growth; the carbon dioxide emissions that the study commissioned by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs found would be one result of the Government's house building plans; the added burden of refuse collection and disposal; and the impact on water supply and sewage treatment.

Although I do not dispute that development has an effect on the environment, has the hon. Gentleman seen the interesting survey of Milton Keynes' biodiversity compared with that of the low-grade agricultural land that preceded it? There is greater diversity of flora and fauna in Milton Keynes than there was before, which shows that building does not necessarily damage the environment; it can create good, new, managed environments.

The hon. Lady has just added an interesting item to my long reading list. I do not quarrel with her basic point, but, first, the forthcoming reforms of the common agricultural policy are in part designed to restore biodiversity to rural areas; and, secondly, one consequence of the Government's decision to encourage greater density of house building, which was taken for understandable reasons, will be to limit biodiversity in areas where there are plenty of green spaces and gardens within an urban development.

The hon. Lady's comments bring me to the third point that I wanted to stress in my remarks—the need for an environmental assessment to be done. The Government have hitherto refused to carry one out. If one considers what various agencies have said—I am not talking about Opposition politicians but about the Government's own watchdogs—there is no doubt that there is real concern about environmental impact.

In September last year, the Environment Agency's annual report on the state of the environment in south-east England said that development plans

"could set off an environmental time bomb".

The agency's director for the Thames region, which covers much of the area that we are discussing, declared that

"in some parts of the region we are reaching our environmental limits. Unless the environment is built into plans for development now we will seriously threaten the quality of life in the South East."

I therefore find it dismaying that the Government have still not carried out any serious assessment of the environmental impact of their plans. Back in April 2003, the Select Committee on the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister called for such a review. All that has been done is that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs commissioned one consultancy study, which had to be completed within six weeks. That is a completely inadequate response to proposals that will generate change of the order that we are debating today.

A report published last month by the Environmental Audit Committee was frankly damning. I remind hon. Members that that Committee has a majority of Labour members. Paragraph 47 said:

"ODPM seems to have taken the approach to sustainability and the SCP that by simply calling it 'sustainable' and mentioning the environment occasionally . . . the Plan is inherently and obviously fully compatible with the principles of sustainable development. This is clearly not the case."

Paragraph 52 stated:

"It would appear to us that many of the efforts directed towards achieving sustainability within the SCP are little more than a window-dressing exercise. This is unsatisfactory and bound to have severely detrimental consequences in the long term."

I ask the Government to do three things. The first is to carry out, even at this stage, a proper environmental assessment of the sustainable communities plan. Perhaps it could follow the approach outlined in the EU strategic environmental assessment directive. The second is to secure explicit recognition in the plan of the need to protect the special qualities of areas such as the Chilterns area of outstanding natural beauty The third is to acknowledge, to a greater extent than Ministers have done so far, the relationship between the environment and the plans for housing, jobs and transport. The Chilterns is obviously the area of which I have the greatest knowledge.

The Secretary of State's proposed changes to the sub-regional strategy, especially paragraphs 48 and 59, imply that housing in Milton Keynes and the south midlands will help to meet demand among employees working in the Heathrow area and the western corridor. If that is the right interpretation of the Secretary of State's proposals, it would mean a massive further increase in commuter traffic along the inadequate roads that run right through the middle of the Chilterns area of outstanding natural beauty. It also places a question mark over the Government's claim that the plan will deliver employment as well as new homes.

Is the hon. Gentleman looking at net inward commuting into Milton Keynes as part of the future growth of the city?

The hon. Gentleman makes the point based on his experience of Milton Keynes. Looking at my constituency, Aylesbury already has a serious imbalance of housing over jobs. The number of jobs in the town has fallen in recent months and I think that the same is broadly true of south Bedfordshire. However, the latest version of the Government's plan includes figures that show a lower ratio of jobs to homes—at least for the Aylesbury area—than in the proposals as they were first published. I urge the Minister to look again at this issue.

There is real concern about infrastructure and public services, even among those people and organisations that are less sceptical than myself and generally support what the Government are trying to do. In September 2002, an independent study by Roger Tym and Partners predicted that £8.3 billion would be needed to provide the roads, railways, water and sewage treatment and public services to cope with the Government's development plans for the Milton Keynes and south midlands sub-region. A more recent study of the Aylesbury area by the same company last October concluded that for Aylesbury alone—the town and its surrounding area, not that part of Aylesbury vale district that abuts Milton Keynes—those costs would be in the region of £768 million. The original Tym study in 2002 stated that

"unless an adequate programme of funding is programmed it is doubtful whether the scale of growth envisaged should be contemplated at all".

Let us consider what is, or is not, happening in respect of particular needs, dealing first with transport, specifically railways and the east-west orbital rail link. The letter that I received from the Minister's colleague, Lord Rooker, on 29 October 2004 made it clear that the Government do not regard the orbital rail link as a priority for public funding, despite the fact that the local authorities in the areas affected by it believe that the development of that route is critical to the future transport infrastructure. Lord Rooker wrote:

"we must look to alternative funding routes to contribute to East-West and other infrastructure projects in the growth areas. Developer funding is clearly a critical area and this needs to be fully investigated, alongside the other calls on it and we would also expect a contribution from local authority resources." "Local authority resources" tend to be a euphemism for a further rise in council tax.

Let us consider the rail link from the centre of Aylesbury to the Berryfields development to the north of the town. A letter to me from the managing director of Chiltern Railways, dated 1 December 2004, made it clear that some public funding would be needed if the project was to go ahead, but that the company was still in discussions with both local authorities, the Strategic Rail Authority and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to try to identify possible sources of funding. I hope that the Minister will give me some good news today and say that he has been able to knock heads together to ensure that this much needed and much wanted scheme can now go ahead. It is ironic that, at a time when we are talking about the need for enhanced rail services, the development of the sustainable communities plan has coincided with severe cuts to commuter rail services in Milton Keynes. I am sure that the two Members of Parliament for the city are able to confirm that.

On roads, I make my pleas again for my local area. We will need bypasses for villages like Wing and Rowsham, yet according to the Government's projections, the upgrades needed for roads like the A418 and for the M1 near Milton Keynes are not likely to happen until after the additional houses have been built. Little thought seems to have been given to the high-capacity road links that will be needed to cope with the extra freight and business travel that the development will engender—for example, there will have to be some link between the Aylesbury area and the M40, for which various options and routes might be considered. I thought that I was pretty unshockable after 13 years in this place, but I was shocked when I contacted the Highways Agency about its 10-year route strategy for the M40 and was informed that it was completely unaware that that was an issue and did not really think that it was relevant to its strategy document.

As for water and sewage treatment, Thames Water tells me that the sewage treatment works in Aylesbury will struggle to cope with the expansion set out in the local council's plan, let alone the sustainable communities plan. There is no money in Aylesbury's Ofwat allocation for new technology in the area until 2010 at the very earliest, and if a new sewage treatment works is needed, it will probably not start operation until 2016 or 2017. It is little wonder that the director of the Thames region of the Environment Agency wrote to me on 9 December last year to say:

"We have looked at the impact of the Government's plans for additional housing. As a result we have serious concerns about accommodating growth at Aylesbury in an environmentally sustainable manner."

He continued:

"We are presently pursuing Government funding to carry out this work, which is additional to that covered by our current budget."

I emphasise that that is a Government agency—one that happens to be chaired by a former senior Labour councillor, and one whose chief executive takes the Labour Whip in the House of Lords. It is the Government's official watchdog and enforcement body on the environment that is commenting in those critical terms.

On public services, I have heard the hon. Member for Milton Keynes, South-West say before that Milton Keynes general hospital is pretty stretched to deal with the existing population of the city, let alone the additional population that would come under the Government's plans. In Buckinghamshire, the Vale of Aylesbury primary care trust, like all other PCTs in Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes, is running at a significant financial deficit. In education, it seems likely that there will be a gap of between 18 months and two years between houses being built and new schools opening.

That does not add up to development that can legitimately be described as sustainable. The time scale for the planned development does not match with that for infrastructure and services and there is no clarity about levels or sources of funding. Frankly, the idea that £8.3 billion or anything like that will come from developer contributions is fanciful. I can find no serious observer on any of the local councils, from any political party or from an outside agency who thinks that developer contributions of that scale are possible. The Government need to engage in some joined-up thinking.

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the difficulties in the whole scoping of this exercise has been the Government's tendency to assume that developers are a given and will simply come forward? If the plans are to succeed in any sense and are to become genuinely sustainable, is it not essential that there be a real demand on the part of developers, and that they can carry out their development and get returns from it? That is not assured merely by Ministers saying that they want that to happen.

I agree completely. There is a danger in Ministers' statements about developer contributions. They are like children waiting for the tooth fairy. I see no evidence that developers will be willing to cough up money on the scale needed.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I want to conclude my remarks. Then he and others will have a chance to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker eye.

Underlying the problems is the undemocratic nature of the entire exercise. Power has been taken from local councils and given to regional bureaucracies or bodies such as English Partnerships, which are accountable directly to central Government. If the Government are determined to pursue their policies through the planning structure that they recently created, they should be able to do far better in terms of public consultation. From what I have seen, consultation as it affects my constituency has been rushed and scanty. Most parish councils and local community groups, for example, were excluded completely from the panel hearings on the plan that were held in Northampton last spring.

There is too much central prescription of the detail of the Government's plans, even if we accept their basic structure. For example, the plan says that new development around Aylesbury should be to the south of the town—the implication being that it should be on greenfield sites between Aylesbury and Wendover and based around a southern relief or distributor road. However, those matters should be entirely for the local council to determine. If the Government want to win over sceptics not only in Parliament but in the communities that we represent, they must show that they trust local communities and are prepared to change their plans from time to time in response to strongly felt and well argued local opinion.

Several hon. Members:

rose—

Order. I see six hon. Members seeking to catch my eye but, even with the application of Mr. Speaker's new ruling, we have only 40 minutes available before the Front-Bench winding-up speeches. I hope that in making their contributions and in accepting and responding to interventions, hon. Members bear the time constraints in mind.

In view of the time constraints, my contribution will be somewhat telegraphic. I am confident that if my hon. Friend Brian White is called, he will fill in the gaps that I leave.

I am proud to be one of the MPs who represent Milton Keynes, which is a highly successful example of planned growth. It has a hugely dynamic economy and a pleasant environment, as everyone who lives there knows. Milton Keynes has excellent facilities, notably, our theatre, indoor ski slope, the first multiplex cinema—it has now been superseded by another—the Milton Keynes Dons football stadium and the shopping centre. Enormous numbers of people come from the surrounding region to use those facilities.

Everyone in Milton Keynes—the business community, the general population and the council—understands that further expansion of Milton Keynes is essential. It is essential for two reasons. First, there is an excess of jobs relative to the number of houses available for people to live in, such that, according to the 2001 census, the net number of people commuting in daily is 16,000. Many of those people would live in Milton Keynes if they could afford to do so. Businesses frequently complain to my hon. Friend and me that they cannot expand as fast as they want to because they have extreme difficulty in filling vacancies as there are not enough people available.

The second issue is the lack of affordable housing. I alluded to the Housing Corporation claim that a salary of £40,000 is required to be able to afford to buy housing in Milton Keynes. I suspect that that figure is slightly out of date. Many constituents complain to me about the lack of affordable housing to buy or rent. Consequently, many people live in overcrowded and unsatisfactory accommodation or live outside Milton Keynes and commute in because they cannot afford to buy there.

Most people in Milton Keynes—certainly the business sector and the council—therefore welcome expansion and the fact that it is to take place within an overall planning framework. They broadly welcome the structures that the Government have set up: the Milton Keynes partnership and the inter-regional board, which will oversee that growth and try to ensure that all the public bodies that will be affected by the expansion build the necessary provision for it into their forward plans. People welcome the commitment that has been given by Lord Rooker on many occasions that infrastructure will be provided in parallel with the new housing. All that is broadly welcomed, although there are many disagreements on detail, which I do not want to skate over, but which I shall not go into in the short time available to me.

It is not surprising that many people in Milton Keynes remain suspicious about whether infrastructure will be provided in parallel with housing. That suspicion is largely based on their experience, accumulated mostly under Conservative Governments. There was huge underinvestment and poor performance by the Conservative Governments in providing infrastructure. I need cite only the hospital to demonstrate that: everyone in Milton Keynes knows that what was planned was not delivered. That is the root of the many problems that we have had thus far, and we have been able to catch up with the population growth only recently.

I am not surprised that people who have had such experiences remain suspicious of whether the infrastructure will be provided. They also recall that during the entire period of Conservative Government, the funding for the national health service and local government lagged behind the population figures. I was incredibly pleased to hear in the recent announcement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health that NHS funding for Milton Keynes and other growth areas will be provided on the basis of population projections. That is the first time that that has happened, and it has happened under a Labour Government.

Also under the present Government, significant capital sums have been spent on upgrading provision at the hospital, including at the beginning of this year the opening of the £12 million treatment centre with its four extra operating theatres, which has won plaudits from all and sundry, including unsolicited letters in the local press. There has also been provision of new GP surgeries on the eastern and western sides of the city, where growth is happening, and in the older parts, as well as funding for a new health centre at Wolverton.

Contrary to the experience alluded to by Mr. Lidington, since the Labour Government were elected, the local council, whether it has been Labour or Liberal Democrat controlled—as it is now—has never made a request for money for school building that has not been met. On some occasions, the request has come through a bit late, which is why the funding has been late. I suggest that if the hon. Gentleman is having problems, he speaks to his local authority and asks it to get its planning in sync so that it knows when to ask the Government for money for new schools, instead of just complaining when it does not turn up. The local authority has received an extra £9 million for growth and the third largest increase in percentage terms of any local authority in England both this year and last.

The first issue that I want to highlight is rail. There is a problem with commuter services on the west coast main line, which I have been working closely with the new rail user group, the partnership board and the council to address. I am confident that Ministers will respond soon to the bid to put in an extra platform at Milton Keynes Central station, which will deal with the overall problem.

I am glad that we have already built more than 1,000 affordable houses over three years, 516 of them for key workers, and I want that development to continue. I have major concerns about the detail of the local plan process and how it is being handled by the council. In particular, I am concerned about the quixotic decision by the local inspector to include area 11 and exclude area 10.4 from the local plan for 2001 to 2016. I am very annoyed that the Liberal Democrat-controlled council went along with the decision when it had perfectly good planning reasons to ignore the inspector. I will continue to work with local residents on that issue to ensure that we get back to what the local plan said and do not go with it as it is at present.

My final point is about the extraordinary suggestion by the hon. Member for Aylesbury that all the growth can be contained by expanding villages and providing jobs in them. How many of the firms in Milton Keynes is he proposing should move out into villages around the city? How many villages will have to be expanded to make up the houses needed for the 16,000 jobs already in Milton Keynes that are filled by people from outside?

May I first congratulate my hon. Friend Mr. Lidington on securing the debate? Like many of us, he is aware of the sheer anger felt locally at the Government's plans. I am sorry to say that I do not think that the Government are aware of it. My hon. Friend talked about Government plans up to 2030. Fortunately, by then there will have been a series of Conservative Governments who have listened more carefully to what local people have to say and have not ridden roughshod over their views.

I intend to confine myself to the rather narrow margin of the next decade. Even now, the Government are planning some 67,000 homes for the Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes area by 2015, and the Deputy Prime Minister has said that it may be appropriate to revise those figures upwards. Some 40,000 of those homes are planned for just north of Luton. In one very small, already congested area—from Milton Keynes to Woburn, Aspley Guise and Toddington—3,230 homes are proposed. That does not make sense.

I realise that there is pressure for homes: there are changing living patterns and a lack of rental accommodation, which is much more suitable for many people. However, the Deputy Prime Minister's motivation should be called into question. When he first talked about his plans, he said that one of the problems was that people in the north-east and north-west of England could not find jobs there, but that there were jobs in the south-east, so we should build more homes in the south-east to attract people from the north-east and north-west to leave their homes there and come down here.

Such a proposition is back to front, like some of the Deputy Prime Minister's sentences. He has got it wrong. What he should have said is, "Let's provide more work in the north-east and the north-west of the United Kingdom", but he did not do so. We must consider why so many people in Milton Keynes are interested in expanding towards the south and the south-east of the town, when there is already a considerable development area further to the north and north-east. We know that if the town developed towards the north and the north-east, that would be welcomed by people in Rugby and Warwickshire, who are undoubtedly worried about the sink effect of Milton Keynes attracting industry and commerce away from them.

Why are the plans being proposed at all? Why are they being proposed for an area where they are opposed by the East of England Development Agency, which is a Government quango? Why are the Government deliberately misinterpreting the regional development plans and ignoring—despite what Dr. Starkey said—the need for affordable housing by expanding into an area that is the most expensive part of the expansion area of Milton Keynes? Why are they ignoring the already overstretched infrastructure, as well as local opinion? The answer is very simple: the reason is money. If Milton Keynes develops towards Aspley Guise, Woburn and into the vale of Aylesbury, where land values are high, property values will be high; as a consequence, the community charge take by the local authority will be higher. Local authorities will receive more income. That is why the Government want the expansion there.

The hon. Lady said that there are more jobs in Milton Keynes than homes, and I accept that that is the case. She also talked about very high house prices in Milton Keynes. If house prices are very high in Milton Keynes, the answer to that is to build where house prices would be lower because the land cost is lower. That is not to the south and south-east of Milton Keynes, but to the north and north-east. If there are more jobs in Milton Keynes than homes, and if more homes need to be built, they should be built to the north and north-east, rather than the south and south-east. The plan is deliberately designed to increase local authority council tax take and to provide commuting jobs in an area from which commuters travel to London, and where infrastructure is already overstretched. The easiest way for people to oppose the Deputy Prime Minister's plans is to get rid of him and the present Government.

A key point in answer to Mr. Sayeed is that market forces are driving investment in the area. If one did nothing, that investment would still happen. Milton Keynes has been a success because it was planned. If housing growth is unplanned, we get housing without infrastructure, as happened around Bracknell and Basingstoke. At junction 13, in the hon. Gentleman's constituency, the Tory-controlled local authority is putting in businesses, expecting Milton Keynes to sort out housing, and then complaining that there is growth. The authority is trying to have its cake and eat it, as the hon. Gentleman tried to do, but that will not wash. His comments do not add up.

My hon. Friend Dr. Starkey has covered a large number of the issues. Other key factors are time scales and, more specifically, the number of houses built per annum. I am concerned that we keep to a level of housing growth of about 2,000, which is what Milton Keynes has been able to deliver. I urge the Government to aim for and accept that activity level.

There is a problem with the interaction of the different political parties, in that regional planning is controlled by the Conservatives and the local authority is controlled by the Liberal Democrats. However, beyond that there is a key role for developers, and the role of English Partnerships in delivering the Government's agenda has to be addressed. It is important that the Minister gives clear guidance to English Partnerships to operate in an environmentally sustainable way, so that issues such as zero-carbon houses are taken seriously. The transport issues that my hon. Friend referred to in relation to railways, which would apply equally to roads, should also be taken into account.

If my hon. Friend the Minister needs money, he could get it by scrapping the widening of the M1. He could invest that money in the infrastructure of Milton Keynes and the south midlands. I strongly urge him to do so, but I suspect that he will decline. Widening the M1 will not solve the problem, but if that money were used to widen the A421 from Bedford to Milton Keynes and to invest in local infrastructure, it would help with the existing development plans.

One of the problems with English Partnerships, local authorities and regional government is the way in which they communicate, which Mr. Lidington mentioned. A large number of those bodies communicate in professional language—professionalese—that goes over the heads of ordinary people. For example, developers put out a development brief on an estate in Caldecotte in my constituency; they thought that they had reached an agreement, but in fact the language had gone over the heads of the residents. When local people saw what was happening on the ground, the developer encountered a massive reaction against it. That happened because the developers, the local council and regional bodies used planning language instead of plain English. It is important to use planning language when developing an interaction, but getting ordinary people on board and explaining what is going on is critical to success. I have suggested that the Milton Keynes partnership committee holds a daily blogging exercise through which people can interact with it. However it happens, the language must be right and information must flow.

There has been much concern about high-density development, mainly because in the 1960s it was associated with poor-quality development, but that does not have to be the case. I urge the Minister to say specifically that high density must be high quality. There are a number of issues relating to the local plans on the eastern flank, but it is not appropriate to raise them now as other hon. Members wish to speak. There are issues relating to the infrastructure. We have to get the development briefs right and not wait for the detailed planning permissions; we have to get the developers on board at an early stage, so that the genuine fears in the community can be addressed.

Most people want the 1,500 families in Milton Keynes who are in temporary accommodation to be housed. They want their children to have houses and jobs. Those are the people whom the plans will benefit. Local people also want the rural areas in the north of my constituency around the Ouse valley to be protected, which is why it was made an area of attractive landscape. I was interested to hear the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire suggest that there would be no problems going into the Ouse valley. In fact, there would be real problems.

There are a number of important issues, but there is not sufficient time to go into them in detail. Milton Keynes can deliver on the Government's sustainable agenda if the support mechanisms are in place. The different levels of government must get it right, the communication has to be right, and growth must be backed up with the infrastructure money that is starting to come through and must continue.

I recognise that there is local housing need in my constituency and I defer to no one my desire for it to be met. All my colleagues who have problems with the sustainable communities plan want their local housing need to be met, but they disagree with the scale of the actions that the Government have proposed. I have wide cross-party support in my constituency. A petition was presented, signed by 17,000 people, backing our local objections to the plans, and leading Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors supported it.

I shall talk first about local jobs. The problem in south Bedfordshire is the reverse of the situation in Milton Keynes. Only half the residents of south Bedfordshire have jobs within the county: 12,923 people commute out and 1,083 are unemployed. The Government's figures predict that by 2031—admittedly quite a way ahead—an extra 100,000 people will come to south Bedfordshire, bringing about 70,000 cars. The Government want to turn south Bedfordshire into a dormitory town for London and elsewhere. That is the wrong approach. The Government are ramming far too much housing into the four areas in the south-east. A more organic approach is needed. It would be better to spread growth more widely.

If we have those numbers of jobs, people and cars, our already poor transport infrastructure will be further burdened. Our trains are full to bursting going south. The M1 is gridlocked, and even with the fourth lane it will still be blocked. The Translink proposals have been forced upon us by the Government and we have lost the opportunity for a proper east-west link across south Bedfordshire, perhaps going from Leighton Buzzard all the way to Welwyn Garden City.

Bedfordshire county council has calculated on a very scientific basis that for every extra 1,000 houses built, the Government should provide £38 million of infrastructure support. We have nothing like that on offer. The East of England regional assembly—a body that I will not be sad to see disappear—has itself criticised the Government's plans for the whole of the east of England as wholly inadequate in terms of infrastructure and transport.

I have several specific questions to ask. For some 20 or 30 years, Leighton Buzzard, my largest town, has been trying to get a community hospital. It is one of the largest towns in England not to have a hospital facility. I ask time and time again whether all the extra housing will mean that Leighton Buzzard gets a community hospital, but the answer I receive is no. The people of Leighton Buzzard think that the Government's promises are hollow.

A bypass is being built around Linslade. It has been planned for a long time and there is bitter controversy about it. I have problems with the route—I think that it is too close to Linslade—but what are plans for housing around it? All too often, new roads are used as an excuse to ram a massive amount of extra housing into areas where it is not appropriate.

Reference has also been made to the lack of local democracy. It is ridiculous that Members of Parliament are the only people able to hold a Minister to account about essentially local issues. Trust the people, please. Conservative councillors will get thrown out if they do not provide adequate housing for the families and young people in the districts that they represent. That will happen; it is how democracy works. What the Government are doing to local democracy is scandalous.

On the environmental front, there are massive concerns. Two Labour-dominated Select Committee reports have heavily criticised the Government's plans on the environmental and transport fronts. I noticed the headline in The Guardian of 14 October:

"Homes plan 'will swamp' countryside. Building 500,000 new houses risks water and roads crisis, says report."

The Government are being criticised from all sides—from the East of England regional assembly, The Guardian and elsewhere. Criticism is certainly not coming just from the Opposition Benches.

There is an alternative to the plans: scrapping regional planning and bringing back local control. We should not ram all the housing into four areas around London, but spread it more widely across the south-east and London. We should also, as my hon. Friend Mr. Sayeed said, consider rebalancing the whole of the infrastructure across the United Kingdom. We could also look at shared ownership, to bring housing affordability back to many of our constituents who have genuine difficulty getting on to the housing ladder in our constituencies.

I say to the Minister that there is very real anger and concern. Seventeen thousand people is only slightly fewer than elected me to this House in the first place. I hope that the Minister realises that.

I shall confine my remarks to a fraction of what I would have said if I had had the time. I am glad that Mr. Lidington has raised these issues, which are of great importance to his constituents, to mine and to many others, as can be seen from the number of people in the Chamber. He is right to express concerns about the delivery of the growth area and about infrastructure. I, too, wish to see the proper provision of road and rail investment. However, I also want proper provision of health and education services, police, leisure and jobs. All that has to go together. The balance between homes and jobs is crucial. If we get that right, we will be able to diminish reliance on commuting, which is one of the most unsustainable features of modern life.

The hon. Gentleman is honest about his views. He says that he supports some locally determined development, but that he does not support the growth area concept with its national and regional strategic dimension. I happen to think that those dimensions are crucial. Any Government would have to address them. Although I join the hon. Gentleman in wanting the necessary investment in infrastructure, I differ from him in principle because I support the growth area as the practical way of delivering what is needed.

I believe that the growth area is necessary in our part of the world to meet not only population growth, but the increase in the number of single households that means that household growth as a strong feature of modern life will continue. As my hon. Friend Dr. Starkey said, it is also needed to give more people the chance of an affordable home to buy or rent. There is a shortage of housing for rent and of social housing. We need more homes.

The truth is that many of the plans embraced within and enlarged on in the growth area are not new. This should not be seen just as a narrow party political battle, as too often it is, because that stops people listening to the serious issues that affect everyone's quality of life. Some of the plans have been around for a long time—in structure plans in Bedfordshire and Marston Vale, under different party political influences in the Government and in Bedfordshire county council. It is therefore unfortunate that there has been an attempt to stir up negative and emotional fears among local constituents. If we approached matters differently, our constituents would be willing to look at some of the issues—which I accept are difficult—and might see that doing nothing is not a solution. That was not quite what the hon. Member for Aylesbury said, but it is not a proper approach to say that growth can happen, but not in our area.

I see the growth area not as a threat, but as an opportunity. We would all be wise to look at it in that way. There are, of course, challenges and difficulties, but it should be an opportunity not just for the new communities that move in in the future, as is planned, but for the existing communities—the people whom we already represent. If we are to have new villages and towns in the area, that will put demands on the existing facilities, such as Bedford town centre, which needs to prepare. Indeed, those matters are being considered, and I am pleased that there are a number of initiatives—I am not pleased, however, that I do not have time to mention them now.

My hon. Friend Brian White mentioned that it is better to adopt a planned approach than to pretend that planning is not a good thing, which was the ideological position of the Conservative Government in the 1980s. At that time, development was delivered, but usually by councils refusing planning applications for housing estates and the applications then being granted on appeal, with the planning inspectorate having only a weak ability to add legal agreements. The conditions imposed were unsustainable and not balanced, and all sorts of opportunities were missed through that approach. I believe that the current approach is much more positive.

There needs to be leadership in difficult matters. People might initially say, "Oh, we don't want this", but we have to carry such matters through, even though sometimes that is not a popular or easy task. We have to do it for the benefit not only of those who are yet to come, but of those who are here already. We should take that important aspect into account when we consider planning.

In Bedfordshire we have some positive news on roads. In December, there was the announcement of the A421 dualling between the M1 and the A1, which is essential for the eastern part of the growth area. We have a refreshing initiative on the funding of the Bedford western bypass—a pump-priming agreement, with most of the money coming in later from the private sector. There is some disappointment—if my hon. Friend Mr. Hopkins had been able to speak today, I am sure that he would have mentioned it—about the east Luton corridor. That is very important for the region, for Luton post-Vauxhall and for the development of Luton airport. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister will acknowledge that disappointment and be prepared to think again.

My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, South-West mentioned the totally new approach to funding health services, which involves looking ahead rather than playing catch-up, as has been the traditional way. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will take on board that enlightened approach from the Department of Health, for which his Department has been working hard, and apply that approach to capital and revenue funding for education, police and leisure services.

I also ask my hon. Friend the Minister not to regard the concerns of residents about quality of life, environment and biodiversity as nimbyism. Nimbyism exists, but people are right to have concerns about quality of life, their economy and their environment. We are all entitled to have such concerns. Issues such as water supply must be taken seriously, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will address them today and on other occasions. This is an opportunity to be positive, not negative.

In a recent debate on the establishment of the West Northamptonshire urban development corporation, my position was surprisingly accurately and rather felicitously described by the Minister for Housing and Planning as one of pragmatic acquiescence. That same is true of the two district councils in south Northamptonshire and Daventry that I represent. We have an interest in making sure that, if development is coming to our area, there is a proper provision of infrastructure. That was emphasised by my hon. Friend Mr. Lidington in his masterly introduction to the topic; I merely re-emphasise it to the Minister today.

I wish to suggest a technique to the Minister. Each time there is an announcement, such as the recent welcome announcement about primary care services, it is important that Ministers not trip themselves up by not explaining how the additional need that they are creating by that announcement is designed to be met. They may give some thought to the idea of an annual expression of an infrastructure budget for the region that could be explained to people and which we can take to our constituents.

I now have some brief comments to make on some of the specific impacts that might not have received the attention that they should have received. They were not dealt with in the Department's initial planning, but still need to be taken into account. The first impact to which my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury referred was that of water resources. I return to that point because it is important to remember not only the capital cost, but the land budget for the provision of reservoirs and the whole process of planning and its acceptance.

I have an interest in the second impact of flood defence. Believe it or not, I was the Minister with responsibility for flood defence immediately prior to the present Minister at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. We have had lethal floods in Northampton, and our significant local problems will obviously be expanded by additional development. The Minister will be familiar with the study carried out by the Association of British Insurers entitled "Making Communities Sustainable". I have carried out a quick head count on its calculations in respect of the major towns in the region that we are discussing this afternoon. It suggests that more than 4,000 houses would be built

"in significant flood probability areas", which is something that will have to be taken into account.

My third observation concerns the supply of aggregates. The second draft of the Northamptonshire minerals local plan is under review and will be contentious. One of its aims is to protect the Nene valley, to which my hon. Friend, has referred, by moving into glacial deposits, which is highly difficult because of environmental sensitivity. Given that the new proposals are not explicitly keyed into the plan, the danger is that we will end up with both the exploitation of glacial deposits and further works in the Nene valley.

I have two final and more general points to make, one of which is prompted by my discussion about aggregates. My constituency has an immediate boundary with that of Dr. Starkey and my gravel deposits are next to her city. If we are considering the matter globally, it is a little difficult to see how such matters can be conducted in silos between the various local authorities, as if the rest of the region did not exist. I have merely flagged up the matter as a concern; it is certainly not an offer or a bid. I suffer such an experience bitterly and constantly. Being from the same long and thin county, the Minister and I both know that everything is on the boundary of somewhere. We cross three regions. There are other important regions such as the west midlands on my boundary. The Minister needs to assure us today and during his continuing dialogue with us that cross-regional issues are being dealt with properly.

Is not the point of my hon. Friend's argument the fact that so many concerns have been expressed and that it is the process by which the decisions have been reached as much as the individual decisions that have caused those concerns? More time and more consideration, as various reports have asked for, would do much to help the Government's case rather than doing it damage as is happening now.

My hon. Friend is, as ever, spot on. I shall conclude with a positive remark, which I offer to the Minister for nothing. I have—again in a previous capacity—some experience of national forest and community forest. I hope that, even within a structure that should not be driven by a huge planning mode, the Minister will consider, working with local authorities and the agencies that he has available, whether we can achieve some positive and fairly high-profile environmental impacts. I hope that he will also address the concerns that we all rightly share.

I congratulate Mr. Lidington on securing the debate. It is important that regional planning matters are fully debated. One of my criticisms is that, by and large, they are dealt with away from the public eye by quangos and other partly elected groups rather than by democratically elected groups. Pleasing him on that point is about as far as I am going to go.

My constituency is in glorious Devon, but I know the area that we are debating because I used to live in Oxford and my wife used to work in Aylesbury. We drove up to Aylesbury regularly and from there went to Northampton, where we had friends. I am not too sure whose constituency it is in, but I remember that there is a village called Hinton-in-the-Hedges. It is in a beautiful place and quite clearly Mr. Boswell—although he did not use this line—is trying to illustrate that soon it will no longer be Hinton-in-the-Hedges but Hinton-between-the-brick-walls.

Local people obviously have such fears when any development is proposed, but that is the point at which I begin to disagree with the Conservatives. They argue, "Leave it to our local authorities. Everything will be all right. If we do not provide housing for the homeless, the Conservative councillors will be thrown out." I have been in politics a long time and I know that it does not work as simply as that. When a development is planned, an action group is instantly formed to oppose it. In my constituency there are proposals for developments and an action group to oppose each one. I agree that most of them have valid arguments and I have ensured that their cases have been properly put. We have a vast amount of growth in our area and there is an argument that we do not need any more. Where there are action groups, the difficulties come with the fact that a few votes may be lost on the homelessness side but a lot more will be lost if one stands up and says, "I want to build houses on this green field", because the number of people affected is greater.

We are in part debating the decision-making process. Clearly, decisions should not be made by quangos. I do not believe that the Government have gone about their plans in the right manner or that there has been adequate consultation with the public and adequate public debate. Andrew Selous made a comment about regional assemblies. They are deeply flawed, but if we had democratically elected bodies where people could debate such matters on a regional or sub-regional basis, we could have full public consultation and proper debate and we could come to a democratic decision.

What about county councils?

Our party fought to ensure that county councils retained their voting and debating rights on planning matters, which the Government were going to take away from them.

When discussing infrastructure, the hon. Member for Aylesbury hit on a good phrase. We do things the wrong way round—back to front. Common sense and good planning dictate that we should put the infrastructure in and then build to it. Brian White made that point too. We do not do that—we say to developers, "We want to build some houses. We will allow you to build them and we will then charge you for section 106 agreements. You will pay us the money and we will then do the road improvements." That is a deeply corrupt and immoral way of dealing with the matter. It is also the wrong way round. If we want to develop an area, we should say what the infrastructure needs are, debate them, whether they be extra rail links or hospitals, and ensure that the investment is there to develop them. We cannot have the situation, which we have had too often in the past, in which development is allowed to continue without adequate schools, hospitals, roads or rail networks being built.

Dr. Starkey talked about plain English. We need community architects; we do not need developers who use only technicians. Plain English and proper community architects are very important.

I am delighted to follow Richard Younger-Ross because it gives me the opportunity to put on record a proper interpretation of what he said. He thinks that he knows better than the Members of Parliament present about what is better for their area. He wants a mechanism so he can impose his decision through an unelected regional chamber instead of leaving it to the local representatives who are democratically elected to serve their communities.

I will take a slight risk and mention my own constituency. I have a Conservative council in Colchester, which has provoked a major row by imposing a small-scale development of social housing in a village. That has caused a lot of controversy, but it is an example of a local council taking responsibility, as my hon. Friend Andrew Selous mentioned. If people are given the responsibility, they rise to it. However, what we are debating is not just one, but three regional assemblies—which underlines the ludicrousness of the process—imposing their will on the communities that they pretend to represent but do not because they are not democratically elected.

The regional agenda continues to be pursued by a Government who have had it roundly rejected in the north-east. They thought that that would be the area in which an elected regional assembly would be most popular, but it turned out to be deeply unpopular, rejected by 78 per cent. to 22 per cent. None the less, they are continuing to pursue regional structures so that central Government can take more and more decisions away from local communities. If there is one fundamental difference between the Government and the official Opposition, it is that they will carry on creating a regional bureaucracy so that Ministers and officials in Whitehall can impose their decisions on local communities, whereas we will scrap the lot, save the money and give the power back to local communities.

On a more conciliatory note, I shall briefly draw the threads of the debate together. I have not heard one hon. Member speak today who is not concerned about the issues facing their local communities. That includes a desire in all parties for social housing and proper development. I have heard no hon. Member say that they are against development in principle, and I advise the Minister against picking a fight with the Opposition over social housing. I could mention that the Conservative Government had a much better record on building social housing in England than the present Administration, but I will not mention that, because I want to concentrate on what unites us, which is that we are all fundamentally concerned about the same things. What divides us is the constitutional question of who decides.

Mr. Hall said that we can solve the problems only if there is leadership, but where does that leadership come from? Does it come from some eagle's lair at the top of a Government Department where a Minister and his officials decide, or do we look to try to create a society in which leadership comes from the local community? I am the first to accept that the trend of removing civic leadership from our communities has a long history, going back a hundred years in which the ability of communities and their elected councils to lead their communities and take decisions has been removed. There are stories of planning applications being turned down by local councils that are then overruled by public inquiry and a Minister's diktat—that is not the way forward. No other country in Europe sets national housing targets or creates a national planning framework in the same way as we do. We live in the most centralised country of all the European states, and if we are going to be—dare I say—a modern country, we need to consider radical decentralisation.

The flaw in the Barker process is glaringly obvious if we consider what it is: a Minister appointing an economist to plan where people should live and what sort of houses they should live in, based on a spurious analysis of the most vague collection of statistics. Not even Stalin would organise his agriculture or tractor production on that basis. Why should we have Gosplan for housing in the south of England and a housing policy based on expanding housing provision in the south and contracting it in the north in order to attract even more economic overheating in the south of England than we have at present? That is the rut that the Government have got themselves into. The next Conservative Government must give power back to local communities so that the society in which we choose to live reflects what our local communities want.

I congratulate Mr. Lidington on securing this extremely helpful debate. Thanks to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, there have been 11 contributions and interventions in a very short time, which is a measure of the importance that hon. Members attach to the issue.

I am sorry that the Conservative spokesman, Mr. Jenkin, decided to have another anti-regional rant. I remind him that the Conservative chair of the East of England regional assembly said that

"there will still be a requirement for effective regional planning functions, provision of democratic mandate for the regions and effective scrutiny of other regional bodies—a role in which the assembly and other chambers have shown themselves to be extremely competent."

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The lady in question was misquoted by the Local Government Chronicle. She wrote to the publication making that point.

That is not a point of order for me.

On the fundamental question of who decides, I was a county councillor before becoming a Member of Parliament. I remember the 7 per cent. cut in grants that we had to endure under a Tory Government. There was little decision making, other than on making cuts because of the failure of the Conservative Government to fund local authorities. The £35 billion cuts that the Conservatives announced will decimate council services or push council tax through the roof. I do not need to take lessons from the Conservatives on who decides and on support for local government.

Returning to the Milton Keynes and the south midlands growth area, let me try to deal with the important points raised by hon. Members. First, there has been a thorough democratic process of consultation over the past three or four years. I will not rehearse all the details, but it included an independent study by Roger Tym and Partners in 2002, which made it clear that the area had potential for growth. Other independent growth area assessments were published in 2003 for all the towns where it was recognised that there was potential for growth, including Aylesbury. There was a 12-week period of public consultation, ending in October 2003, on the regional assembly's draft planning document, and the independent panel was appointed to conduct an inquiry and a public examination of all aspects of the proposals. That took place over an unprecedented five weeks during March and April 2004. The independent panel report endorsed growth for Aylesbury and other towns and made recommendations.

The Deputy Prime Minister expects to publish the final sub-regional strategy and alterations to regional planning guidance in the spring. I am trying to point out, in a few seconds, that there has been substantial opportunity for the local authorities and communities in the area to express their concerns before the strategy is finalised. It will then be for local councils to produce detailed proposals to implement a sub-regional strategy through their local development documents. If we left it only to local authorities and did not have a sub-regional strategy, we would not be able to cope with the issue of boundaries between different local authorities. Mr. Boswell was absolutely right to suggest that we needed a regional or a sub-regional strategy to deal with boundaries and connections between different authorities within the growth area.

It is important that the growth area policy deals with the serious under-provision of housing—no one disagrees with that. Every hon. Member present has said that there is a lack of housing, especially affordable housing, in their constituency because of the high demand. The question is how we solve the problem. Do we let market forces do so, or adopt a planned approach that takes into account the need for sub-regional infrastructure?

Will my hon. Friend give way?

I give way to my hon. Friend Mr. Hopkins, because he did not have the opportunity to make a speech.

Does my hon. Friend accept that the market will not provide the houses that we need in Luton? It will provide large executive homes for people working in London, not thousands of council houses for the people of Luton to live in.

My hon. Friend is right: we are not going to meet the housing needs of the sons and daughters of the constituents represented by the Members of Parliament here today unless we deal with the problems of high demand and a lack of affordable housing.

Will the Minister give way?

No. The hon. Gentleman spoke in the debate.

There has been a systemic failure over the past 18 years and it is important that our approach puts that right. The idea that the strategy is only about growth in Milton Keynes and Northampton is clearly wrong. It is absolutely important to have adequate housing, good-quality jobs, and good infrastructure for all areas throughout the sub-region, to ensure that we build sustainable communities. That is the essence of what we are trying to achieve.

I shall pick up on two or three other key points raised in the debate. On health funding, there has been an amazing and important announcement from the Government in the past couple of weeks. There has been excellent news for health planning for my hon. Friend Dr. Starkey, taking into account projected population growth to meet both capital and revenue funding needs. That is an important step forward to ensure that our communities see that the infrastructure—health infrastructure in this case—is there to match the population growth that goes with housing and jobs.

The subject of the environment was highlighted, particularly by the hon. Member for Aylesbury. Let me be clear about that: there was extensive environmental assessment throughout the planning process. Indeed, it was a key feature of the process that I hurriedly sketched out a moment or two ago. The original studies that informed the strategy considered the possible impact of growth on the environment, and a sustainability appraisal was prepared alongside the development of the draft strategy. The five-week period of public examination in March and April last year considered possible impacts on the environment. Crucially, we are committed to protecting our countryside and green spaces. We looked at brownfield sites before greenfield sites and we examined how good design—an important point raised by one of my hon. Friends—and higher densities could reduce the land take of any growth.

We have already met our target of building 60 per cent. of additional or new housing on previously developed land, and densities are increasing in the south-east. It is important to point out that we have added 19,000 hectares of green belt since 1997 in Great Britain: that is a huge contribution. There are some green-belt reviews proposed in Bedfordshire—that is recognised—but if any green belt is lost, an equivalent area of green belt will be required to replace that loss. That is an important part of not allowing the markets to rule, but having a planned approach that delivers what our local communities want.

The hon. Gentleman also described concerns about whether it was fanciful to say that the developer contributions would arrive. The newly created delivery vehicles, such as those operating in Milton Keynes, are working on a more strategic approach to securing section 106 contributions. They are a key element of the planning process, ensuring that we capture from developers and from increases in the value of land opportunities to provide infrastructure. That will be developed in Milton Keynes through a long-term framework. Developers are actively participating in discussions, recognising the benefits of long-term certainty. We look forward to Milton Keynes and other areas realising the benefits of enhanced section 106 contributions towards infrastructure.

I realise that I have not been able to address all the points that hon. Members have raised. We are particularly keen to build sustainable communities. Our aim is not solely housing growth: we shall not repeat the mistakes of the 1960s, or ignore the problems of the 1980s. Our approach will build housing for the sons and daughters of our communities who need somewhere affordable to live, with education, health, and transport infrastructure provided alongside a planned approach to protect and preserve the environment. I believe that that is the best way forward.