Richard Fuller

I would like to make it clear that I am speaking in an individual capacity as the Member of Parliament for North Bedfordshire. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) on her speech and on the extraordinarily human way in which she described her life in a new town. For people in North Bedfordshire, the hon. Lady’s testimony may be a timely one. I would like to draw the focus of the debate to the proposals for new new towns that are recommended by the Government’s new towns taskforce. Tempsford is a historic village in North Bedfordshire. It was the site of a decisive battle in 917 AD when the forces of King Edward the Elder stormed a Danish stronghold, killing the Danish King and effectively breaking Danish power in the region. It includes the former RAF Tempsford airfield, from which multiple special operations were flown to send people to help resistance movements in Nazi-occupied countries. It is a village of 234 households, comprising fewer than 500 people, and one that has been in two parts since the dualling of the A1 in 1962. It is also a village that, according to the report by the new towns taskforce, presents “a unique opportunity with potential to provide over 40,000 homes in a standalone greenfield settlement”. Tempsford is the largest of the proposed new towns and would turn this village of 500 people into a new town of at least 40,000 homes—that is 100,000-plus people. I want to take a few minutes, speaking in this individual capacity, to raise points that have been voiced by my constituents in recent meetings with residents, the parish council and local councillor, Adam Zerny. One of the questions, of course, is, “Why Tempsford? It’s not what we want—we don’t want this change,” and so on. That is an important issue for consideration, and we await the final decision of the Government on it. If that decision is made, the No. 1 source of scepticism is that much of Tempsford is a floodplain. There is a legitimate question about how the flood risk will be managed in any new town. Tempsford is a floodplain for both the River Ouse and the River Ivel. Sticking on the theme, local residents have for years dealt with a range of sewage overflow issues; I myself have been witness to a number of these incidents and have helped residents with them. This is important because the water company will obviously wish to improve this issue if we have a new town, so adequate funding must be available both to provide the necessary waste water and sewage water infrastructure and to solve the existing problems. As the Minister will be aware, the pressure on water resources in Bedfordshire is extensive. We are also the site of Universal Studios’ new theme park, which will attract between 8 million and 10 million people a year—the equivalent of an additional population of 50,000 in terms of water usage. The site is being developed over the next five years. The River Ouse is the one source of water running through this area, which contains both the theme park and the new town, so we need to make sure there is a plan for this river. Bedford borough council has set up the North Bedfordshire water management group, run by Paul Leinster, formerly of the Environment Agency. I encourage the Minister to meet him to discuss the issues of both Universal Studios and Tempsford. The Minister should also recognise that the proposal for this new town fits into a context of very rapid housing growth. Hon. Members should be aware that the number of households in Bedfordshire has been growing at two and a half times the national average for the past decade or more, meaning that we have already had a build-up of additional pressures on local services over the past 15 to 20 years. At the meeting held last week with the parish council and residents, the main issue other than the floodplain was the provision of local services, as people already do not have sufficient access to GP and transport services. Just a few miles away is the village of Northstowe, which is sort of the poster child for getting it wrong with local service provision. All the things the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch said should already be there were not there in Northstowe—there were no shops and no GPs for a number of years while residents were moving in. Obviously residents do not want to see that happen with Tempsford new town, if it comes forward. Tempsford is a village that still runs on oil heating—there is no other power supply. A number of residents were keen to understand whether solar and ground source heat pumps would be a prerequisite for housing in the new town. A key point for a village with a proposal for a new town of up to 100,000 people is, of course, its village identity and heritage, in particular around RAF Tempsford, and there is a lot of concern about one of the most important buildings there, Gibraltar Barn. Any plans must take account of that. My residents are also connected to nature and wildlife. They chose to live in a rural area, and they are proud of their rural environment—the head office of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is just 5 miles away from Tempsford. It is crucial, if the Government move ahead with this proposal, that we do whatever we can to maintain the nature and wildlife of the area. There are also questions about the adequacy of road networks and the type of employment. I will briefly cover a couple more areas. Professor Doug Clelland and Dr Nigel Moor, two independent planning experts, have completed research on Tempsford in the past two years and provided evidence to the House of Lords Built Environment Committee for its report “New Towns: Laying the Foundations”, relating to the footprint, scale and timeline. In the evidence, Professor Clelland and Dr Moor present a “compact centre” of 25,000 homes over 4.5 square miles with a footprint connecting St Neots to Sandy in an area between the A1 and the Great Northern rail line—an extensive area. There is also a wider footprint that could accommodate the building of an additional 15,000 homes in satellite developments stretching south from Tempsford to the village of Blunham and on to Great Barford, Wilden and Little Staughton then across to Hail Weston, including the villages of Staploe, Honeydon, Roxton, Potton, Everton and others, with a similar impact on the Cambridgeshire side of Tempsford. I do not expect Members to know all those villages, beautiful though they are; they are well worth visiting, and Members should do so. I simply want to ensure that local residents are aware of the scale of what might take place if this proposal goes ahead in North Bedfordshire and in parts of Cambridgeshire. I am not sure that local residents have internalised that. If the Government decided to move forward with these plans, there is a lot of work they would have to do, in particular with regard to the use of farmland, as this is a primary agricultural area. If I may, I will leave some questions with the Minister. First, the Government have a housing target of 1.5 million —personally, I am not sure they have got off to a particularly good start on that. That target may have an impact on the type of housing being built, so I would be interested to hear the Minister comment on that with regard to Tempsford. Secondly, I have mentioned that the housing growth in North Bedfordshire is two and a half times the national average. It is the Government’s position that new towns should not count in that total, but come on—we are already struggling to keep up. There is no way we can plop this additional amount of housing on top of that pace of growth and expect things not to break. Thirdly, will the Government’s specific social housing target apply in the context of these very large new towns? Fourthly, can I alert the Minister to the fact that the new town is potentially just one of six nationally significant infrastructure projects in Bedfordshire, two of which are directly within this footprint? One is the Black Cat roundabout, which is under way and will be completed, so that is fine. There is also a proposal for a large-scale solar farm of over 1,900 acres—that is the size of Gatwick airport and a bit more—within that satellite boundary. What on earth will happen with that? Clearly, it is a choice: we can do one or the other, but we cannot possibly do both. Local residents are keen to make sure that their voice is heard. I had a meeting with the civil servant who is dealing with this issue, for which I prepared some documents, and she was 100% on board with that— I can see that the Minister is nodding. My residents are clear about that. Once the decision is made, if Tempsford is one of the new towns, I would strongly encourage the ministerial team to come and visit, have a conversation with the villagers and listen to them, because there is so much that can be done. As the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch said, in the end this is about people. If the Government take people along with them at the start when they make that decision, they will set themselves up in a much better way.