I will be brief as many colleagues are waiting to contribute. I will speak only to new Clause 40, which calls for a review of the standard method of assessing local housing need. A couple of colleagues have already mentioned aspects of it, but I will talk about it for three reasons: it puts too many housing development requirements on rural areas, rather than cities; in areas like mine there are physical constraints, such as national parks, which can cause difficulties; and, as specified in the new clause, the system needs to take account of different types of housing and their affordability.

First, the new formula means that too much housing is being put into rural areas, away from urban areas. As we have heard, in some parts of London and Birmingham targets are being reduced, but there has been a 50% uplift in housing numbers nationally and a 100% uplift in my Constituency. This is not a north-south issue; it is repeated in rural areas throughout the country, including in the far north-west and the far north-east. It does not correct what some people may think of as an historical imbalance, where all the developments are in towns and not in the country, because over the past couple of decades developments have been disproportionately in predominantly rural areas rather than predominantly urban areas. This is also bad for the Government’s growth agenda because, as the Resolution Foundation and others have pointed out, skewing development towards cities and towns is better for growth because of connectivity.

Secondly, I am concerned about physical constraints such as national parks. Development in a constituency such as mine, where over half the land area is inside a national park, creates particular issues in the areas just outside the national park. The Minister and his officials have been listening and they have been very helpful; I hope that they will continue to give the issue full consideration and that there will be a change.

Thirdly, a big thing that is included in the text of the new clause is about the mix in housing. New clause 40 states that the Secretary of State should

“review the standard method for assessing local housing need” and

“should consider different types of property” looking at the

“price per square metre rather than price per unit.”

In areas such as mine, and in many constituencies across the country, we want more affordable houses to be built, but that is not what the formula delivers because often—not exclusively, but disproportionately—it is more attractive to developers to build larger, five-bedroom executive houses. That, combined with the fact that overall new build homes trade at a premium to the existing housing stock, means that the unaffordability of an area gets worse as a result of the formula, not better.

The formula then reacts upon itself to say, “You are now a more unaffordable area—now give us more of these executive homes.” I do not think that is what Ministers want, so the new clause is a helpful proposal from the Opposition. I hope that Ministers will give it serious consideration, to ensure that the housing formula creates incentives for high-quality but lower-price housing. The new clause does not prejudge exactly how that should be done, but calls upon the Government to look again at the system. I know the Minister is a reflective Minister and I hope he will do just that.