ConservativeHome's Interviews

Grant Shapps MP answers your questions

Grant Shapps, Shadow Minister for Housing, answers the questions you asked here (sorry for the delay).

NigelC: Is the Green Belt safe under the Conservatives? Labour talk about maintaining the total acreage by compensatory additions when one site is redesignated for building. This defeats the purpose of the Green belt in containing urban sprawl and encouraging urban regeneration. Do the Conservatives recognise the real benefits the Green Belt brings in forcing hard planning decisions for our towns and cities? 

Yes we will rigorously protect the Green Belt and won’t pull the wool over people’s eyes by saying that we’re enlarging it, whilst simultaneously deleting parts and creating new green belt where there’s no real development pressure. The only caveat to this very firm policy would be if local people wanted to use Green Belt for a community based facility. I’m thinking here of the kind of development that may well provide a community sports facility on Green Belt in my own constituency. This would be subject to all the safeguards that you would expect, including final sign-off by the Secretary of State. The message would be simple though. We’ll protect the Green Belt and we won’t play tricks by deleting one part and creating it elsewhere in the country.

Secondly will the Conservatives abolish regional plans (whether drawn up by regional assemblies or regional development agencies) and return to county structure plans and district local plans?

Yes. We’ll scrap the Regional Assemblies, as the Government have now said that they will do. But rather than giving those powers to the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs), we will hand the powers to Local Authorities either at Parish, District or County level as appropriate.

Our entire approach to planning will emphasise bottom up, rather than top down and so it’s only natural for decision making to happen through incentivised local communities, rather than because Whitehall knows best.

The public are savvy. They understand that the power of locally elected Councillors has been diminished over the years and none more so because of the growth of Regional Quangos. Last year I completed a piece of research which demonstrated that the cost of Regional Government, by which I mean just administering it, had hit £1m per day. Centrally inspired, unelected and pen-pushingly bureaucratic, this regional approach to governing us uniquely distant from everyday lives. We’ll scrap this structure and in the process give people good reasons to go out and vote for local councillors who will once again have real power over what happens in our own communities.

Any questions for Grant Shapps?

Grant Shapps is Shadow Housing Minister, attending the Shadow Cabinet, and MP for Welwyn Hatfield, a seat he first fought in 2001. In the 1997 General Election Grant challenged the Liberal Democrat Simon Hughes MP in his North Southwark & Bermondsey seat.

Grant was a member of the Public Administration Select Committee between May 2005 and spring 2007. In December 2005, he was appointed as a Vice Chairman of the Conservative Party, with responsibility for campaigning (including parliamentary by-elections) and in July 2007 Grant was promoted to Shadow Housing Minister.

Grant was born in Hertfordshire in 1968.  He was educated at Watford Grammar, before studying Business & Finance at Manchester in the late 1980s. In 1990, Grant founded his own printing company at the age of just 21. Originally started as a small printing shop, PrintHouse Corporation has grown into a major commercial design, print & web development company.

Grant married Belinda in 1997. The couple live in Welwyn Hatfield and play an active role in the community. They have a young boy named Hadley and baby twins, born April 2004, called Tabytha and Noa. Grant holds a pilot's licence and enjoys general aviation as a pastime.

If you have any questions for Grant please leave them in the thread below.