14:30 Damian Hinds (Conservative)

I want to talk about housing targets for rural England in general and for my constituency of East Hampshire in particular, and I want to talk about three dimensions. The first is the balance of development between urban areas and rural areas. There is a general point about the balance in the whole country, but it has particular significance in my area. With the new formula, there is too much emphasis on building in the countryside, which will be bad for economic growth and our decarbonisation agenda, and injurious to the countryside. I will ask the Government to look again at the formula.

That shift from urban to rural is a problem for multiple reasons. One of them is a big theme today: economic growth. I am sure the Minister has a lot of time for the think-tank the Resolution Foundation. Its analysis is that tilting development towards cities, because of the agglomeration effect and other factors, makes a material improvement to growth prospects. It is also important for another theme of the day. We talk about airport expansion and the tension between economic growth and decarbonisation. When housing moves towards the countryside, that is bad for decarbonisation, because the numbers are so high that houses have to be put everywhere and it is not possible to focus on the relatively small number of places that have good strategic transport links. That hardwires reliance on the motor car, which in constituencies such as mine means two cars per couple in a household.

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15:57 Damian Hinds (Conservative)

We also need to make sure that the balance is right between urban and rural areas. I hope the Minister will reflect further on some of what has been discussed today, which is not made as a nimby-type argument, but is about making sure we can maintain our countryside—that is important for town dwellers as well as for rural dwellers—and helping the Government to deliver on their correct objectives on economic growth and decarbonisation. Thank you, Ms Jardine, for presiding over the debate.

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