Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Thornhill

Committee stage
Thursday 11th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Banner, described Amendment 184 as compelling, and I entirely agree with him. In the interests of time, that is all I will say on that amendment.

I will briefly speak to Amendment 218, taking us back some time to the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, who has already introduced the idea of a review of land value capture. I am going to brandish a historical figure in defence of this suggestion. It may surprise the Benches to my right, because I am going to start by saying that I agree with Winston Churchill. That is not a phrase that I bring out very often, but I do in this context. In 1909, he said that

“the landlord who happens to own a plot of land on the outskirts or at the centre of one of our great cities … sits still and does nothing. Roads are made, streets are made, railway services are improved, electric light turns night into day, electric trams glide swiftly to and fro, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains—and all while the landlord sits still … To not one of those improvements does the land monopolist, as a land monopolist, contribute, and yet by every one of them the value of his land is sensibly enhanced”.

That was identified more than a century ago, but it exactly addresses the issue that still exists and that we have not come to deal with.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

He was a Liberal then.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Okay—I am not going to get that far into the history.

I declare an interest in that land value tax is a long-term Green Party policy and one that I am very happy to talk about at length, but I am not going to do that because it is not what this amendment would do. However, it is worth thinking about the fact that the problem with how we tax land goes back a very long way. There was a royal commission on the housing of the working classes set up in 1885; it was the first time that an inquiry had referred to land value taxation—it was called site value rating then—and it said that this would be a better way to solve a housing crisis. These are issues that we have been wrestling with and failing to solve for a very long time.

My final point is that this amendment by itself would not deal with the crunching, terrible elephant-in-the-room issue of council tax, but it would start to provide the Government with a way to open up these issues. This is all regarded as too politically difficult, too challenging and too complicated to explain—I know what it is like to try to explain land value tax in 15 seconds, because it is a challenge. We are now 35 years on from when council tax was created. It was an emergency crunch measure created by the Treasury after the political disaster of the poll tax. It is a deeply regressive tax. Someone living in a home worth £100,000 pays an effective tax rate five times as high as someone in a £1 million property. The average net council tax is only 2.7 times higher for the top 10% of properties than for the bottom 10%. This is something that we have to address. This amendment would not address all, or even the bulk, of it, but it would start to inch us into a space where we could tackle some issues that desperately need to be tackled.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Thornhill

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

It would certainly put more pressure on the council to allow that, which I think they should.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

The noble Baroness talked about people who would not dream of participating. It is also worth stressing that certain people would not be able to participate because of disabilities, caring responsibilities and other reasons. In fact, given the responsibilities the Government have in terms of protected characteristics, surely that would make the argument for this amendment.