Gareth Bacon

I agree. It would be a great tragedy if the Government push on with their new towns policy and simply think that their brownfield passport will solve everything, because by having fewer developments on brownfield sites and some developments on greenfield sites, we will end up losing the precious green belt and still not delivering the amount of housing we need. That would be an own goal from the Government, so I hope they will take this point away and do something about it. The Government need to look further and faster at the proper development of brownfield land, rather than ripping up the green belt and steamrolling over local democracy, local voices and local communities. Recent history shows that this approach works. If the Government want to see urban regeneration or densification done right, they can follow Conservative examples and pursue brownfield first, not greenfield first, as the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Sir James Cleverly), highlighted at the Conservative party conference. The Government need look no further than the Olympic Park in east London—a brownfield site transformed into a superbly connected hub of housing, business, retail and leisure that was completed under Boris Johnson as the Conservative Mayor of London. It was the same with Canary Wharf under Margaret Thatcher and Michael Heseltine, when the old, dilapidated docks were completely regenerated, revitalised and reborn. Finally, as the Opposition mentioned in the final stages of the passage of the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, the Government should add to their growing pile of U-turns and reverse the damaging blows the Chancellor and the former Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), dealt to the housing market and the construction market through their unholy trinity of economic decline, tax hikes and cuts to demand-side housing policies. Only through a genuine brownfield-first approach and a reversal of the damage inflicted by No. 11 and the former Secretary of State will the Government succeed in protecting our countryside and get on to building real homes properly connected with the right facilities that people actually want.