Construction Industry

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pro-development, pro-quality, pro-sustainability and, indeed, pro-countryside. Politically, housing is so unsexy it is rare for the leader of any political party to devote a major speech to the subject. On housebuilding methods, we are miles behind in the use of modern technology. I recall the Minister taking my then boss, my noble friend Lord Prescott, to the Building Research Establishment to see half a dozen modern methods in action. There are plenty to choose from across the housing price range and it was partly out of that process that the £60,000 house appeared. There can be much better quality control in a factory than on a building site although you do, of course, have to be very careful how the assembly takes place.

In 1984-85, the Duke of Edinburgh chaired an inquiry into British housing and I was present at its launch. A calculation was made that, given the existing housing stock, the rate of new building and the rate of demolition, the average home in Britain would have to last 800 years. When Kate Barker produced her report in 2004, the same calculation produced a figure of 1,200 years. I have seen more recent, unofficial, private calculations showing the figure is way above 1,200 years. It is worth pointing out that in EU member states the figures are around 25% to 50% of the UK figure because they invest more in replacement. It is clear that we are handing massive problems to future generations. We have relied for decades on the investment of the Victorians and we are so selfish that we are handing problems into the future. I feel very uneasy about that, from a moral point of view.

I am not in favour of leaving decisions to local communities. That is high-level political cowardice. The situation is so serious that, although we have to be considerate and listen to communities, the state we are in requires high-level decisions and tough central management across the electoral cycles. Local authorities of course have a key, massive strategic role, but they should never have been allowed to be landlords. In short, adult politics is required.

There are always arguments about land—that we are not making more of it. I am not so sure about that. Taking into account the capacity to build upwards and to build on stilts on the flood plains by design, there is extra capacity. It is quite easy. There are parts of the country where people have built on the flood plain because they know that it will flood. Their houses do not get damaged because the flooding has been planned for. The latest figures for England were given in Hansard on 15 July at col. WA 114. Our 10 national parks take up 9% of the land; we have 33 areas of outstanding natural beauty which take up 15% of the land; the green belt occupies 13% of the land; while urban and developed land, including gardens, occupies 9%. That adds up to 46%, leaving 54% of land as undesignated or farmland, and some of that 54% is much more environmentally significant than the green belt. By definition, there is no green belt in the national parks or areas of outstanding natural beauty.

A lot of green belt land is rubbish land from an environmental point of view as it is on the urban fringe—which is exactly the area where we should build because it already has the infrastructure for communities in place. We can designate more land for green belt: the previous Labour Government left more green belt land than they inherited because they designated more. We can still prevent linear development—which I am opposed to, as most people are. We can use the green belt to stop those areas joining up. However, we need to grow the existing urban areas. I remember saying as much when I was the shadow, and then the real, Housing Minister. It does not go down very well. You are met with the juvenile comment, “Oh, he wants to concrete over the Downs”. There is enough spare land. As I said, if we increased the percentage of urban developed land from 9% to 11% we could solve all the problems at a stroke, without affecting any of the areas we care about.

It is a great pity that Nick Boles—who was repeating some of my speeches—was moved and replaced by someone who speaks before he reads the facts. The new Minister should be required to read the four pages on the green belt in last Sunday’s Observer, and then to think about the issue, and then to speak. He should even be encouraged to think aloud.

I am not sucking up to my noble friend Lord Prescott but I pay a massive tribute to what he did when I worked with him. I still think that the framework in the 2003 Sustainable Communities Plan which he developed contains much of the answer. Designated growth areas should be sustainable but we should also encourage small developments in villages and hamlets. They should not be massive but they would relieve local pressures across the country.

Last month I was privileged to open six new affordable rent dwellings for Shropshire Housing Group at Onibury, a small parish between Ludlow and Craven Arms. It was a first-class location and demonstrated the high quality that the group has repeated elsewhere. The land for the six dwellings had come from a planning obligation resulting from a larger private development somewhere else. That is a provision which the Government are seeking to abolish as part of the Deregulation Bill. I said to the stakeholders that houses like those six should be among not only the 4,000 houses opened in Britain that week but also the new houses which would be opened in the following week and the week following that. That can be done and is vitally needed.

Of course we need to use planning, but changes are needed. I would move planning policy and operations to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and get it away from the housing and local government department. In the same way, the Deregulation Bill places a growth duty on non-economic regulators. It is perfectly possible to do that, as I know from my time at the Food Standards Agency. A non-economic regulator can still share the growth duty. I would put a growth duty on the planners to grow the housing stock. It can still be done in a democratic way and will cut through some of the many problems that we now have. We have to break the link between planning and the housing and communities local government mafia, and put it into the area where we really will get some growth.