Housing

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pickles]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point and I shall come on to it in a few moments.

We have scrapped Labour’s regional spatial strategies, which enveloped the planning system in red tape and hindered local plan making. The number of planning appeals has fallen, meaning more local decision making and more decisions “right first time”.

At the same time, we have protected the environment. The latest official figures, produced last month, show that the number of homes built on the green belt is the lowest on record—four times lower than it was a quarter of a century ago. We have made it easier to get brownfield land back into use by allowing surplus office space to be converted into homes. A survey in September of just 15% of councils reported more than 260 different schemes under those new rights, but the Labour response, from Labour MPs and from members of the London Assembly, is to oppose those new homes.

We are not just backing large developers—we are supporting self-build by abolishing development taxes such as section 106 and the community infrastructure levy, getting the state off the backs of those who want to build their own homes. I hope that the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) will welcome that. Labour’s response has been silence, no doubt because Labour councils want to tax people to the hilt.

We need only to look at Labour’s policies, which we have heard about from the right hon. Member for Leeds Central. Labour has a five-year plan and has reinstated a national housing target of 200,000 homes a year. The previous Labour Government had a target of 240,000 homes a year, yet house building fell to its worst peacetime level since the 1920s. It is a little like the state targets for the tractors that failed to roll off the Ukrainian production lines.

How would Labour build new homes? I understand the Opposition have three policies. First, the shadow Housing Minister has called for five “new towns”. I remind her that the last Labour Prime Minister promised five new eco-towns in 2007, and then, when they were not built—perhaps in a silent, unconscious tribute to Nikita Khrushchev—increased the number from five to 10. Not a single house was built. Not one. The only thing that eco-towns built was resentment. Labour has simply dusted off and reheated its old policies under a different name. The Government are supporting locally led large scale development, with more than £500 million of investment. We have kick-started new homes in the likes of Cranbrook, Wokingham and Sherford, and Ebbsfleet will follow very soon.

Labour’s next policy is so-called land banking, as we have just heard, and is a solution to a problem that does not exist, according to the Office of Fair Trading, Savills and Kate Barker. Of the half a million units with outstanding planning permission, almost 90% have started or are working towards a start. The number of homes on stalled sites is just 59,000 units. The Get Britain Building investment fund, worth more than £500 million, is helping unlock those sites, and we have made things easier by enabling unrealistic section 106 agreements to be renegotiated, making such stalled sites viable—a move opposed every single time by the Labour party.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

In Stockton borough, planning permission for hundreds of houses on brownfield sites has existed for years, yet developers are not doing anything. Is it not time that they were helped and encouraged to build more homes on those sites by the idea that they might lose the land, as we suggest?

[Mr Pickles]

Perhaps we could nationalise them—[Interruption.] I thought that would get the hon. Member for Blyth Valley (Mr Campbell) excited. Perhaps we should confiscate the land. Perhaps we should use a North Korean solution and start arresting and executing them for failing to do that—[Interruption.] I am afraid that it is that rather daft rhetoric that will dry up all housing supply.

Labour’s policy of new development taxes and state confiscation of land would have the reverse effect of that desired, discouraging developers from complex land assembly projects. House builders will just let their planning permissions lapse or be more cautious about applying for permission in the first place. It is a recipe for fewer homes and a slower planning system.

Labour’s third policy is the right to grow, another Labour land grab to allow Labour councils to dump urban sprawl on their rural neighbours and rip up green belt protection. Labour cites the likes of Stevenage—we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland)—Oxford and York. In every case, the green belt is providing a green lung for those towns and cities and the Opposition want Labour councils with no democratic mandate to rip it up.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Cunningham]

My hon. Friend will have heard the Secretary of State’s rather tongue-in-cheek proposal to nationalise brownfield sites, which really do need development. At the same time, his Department is approving development on greenfield sites in the neighbouring constituency to mine. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should incentivise brownfield site development in order to get building done there instead?

[Gavin Shuker]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The pendulum has swung away from brownfield development as a result of this Government’s changes. That is why we should bring in a right to grow in conjunction with the pendulum swinging back towards using brownfield first. These things are not rocket science, but there is political ideology behind them. That is why the Secretary of State’s dismissal of our proposals was so short-sighted. We all recognise that we need more housing and further housing growth. That requires a mechanism that balances the requirements of local authorities to deliver for the people in their borough boundaries with the need to be good neighbours as well. Ministers are scaremongering about greenfield sites being used, but that would take place within the context of the existing national planning framework.

If we are to find a workable solution to many of the problems we face in allowing towns to expand, we will need to have an overall mechanism, but this Government have put in place a series of different mechanisms. They try one, try the other, try the next, change the rules, issue a press release and make an announcement, but we have not seen the delivery, and that is because it is hard to do this stuff. Bold political leadership is required to bring it about.