New Housing Supply

Andrew Western Excerpts

Monday 5th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Western (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) on securing this important debate and on setting out many of the arguments that I hope to advance in my contribution.

The statistics speak for themselves: more people living with parents for longer; more people private renting, unable to get on the housing ladder; lower rates of home ownership; and adults aged between 35 and 45 now three times more likely to be renting than 20 years ago. The system is broken, the symptoms are many, but the root cause is always a lack of housing supply. This is basic supply and demand, and we must take the action needed to address what is a spiralling crisis.

I speak out on this issue because I have been there. I understand it and I know that millions of young people are suffering because we are not building enough homes. In short, my lived experience makes me a “yimby”, as the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) called it—yes-in-my-backyard, pro-housing, pro-development and cognisant of the economic potential that house building brings. I want to see us build it now and build it all: social, affordable and unaffordable, even. All can play their part in tackling the housing crisis.

So what must we do to get things moving? Quick wins to deliver more housing supply would include the restoration of mandatory housing targets to at least the 300,000 previously committed to by the Government and ideally more; but beyond overarching targets, we must stand by the requirement for councils to show a five-year supply of land, and ensure that local plans are still required to be evidence-based and open to challenge from a planning inspector. Failure to do so allows local authorities throughout the country to under-provide consistently if they wish to do so. That is a scandal, and enabling it to happen would be an abdication of the Government’s basic duty to provide a safe and secure home for all.

What of new ideas to improve housing delivery? We should give urgent consideration to the introduction of a “builder’s remedy” in areas where no credible local plan exists. If a local authority is unwilling to play its part in tackling the national housing crisis, central Government must step in and compel it to do so. The builder’s remedy is not new; it has been around in the United States since the early 1980s, when the California State Legislature passed the Housing Accountability Act 1982. Such a measure in the UK would ensure that local authorities agreed to a compliant housing element in their local plan documents. If they did not do so, their development controls would be restricted, and development would be not just centrally determined, but determined under far less stringent requirements.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

There may be something in what the hon. Gentleman is saying. However, following a planning appeal in Goring, in my constituency, the inspector said that even if every bit of grass in the whole town were built on, the council would still not be able to meet the Government’s theoretical target—and that would mean no green gaps at all between habitations. Would the hon. Gentleman allow exceptions to his general proposal?

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Western]

Given that this is a multi-layered and complex process, I am not certain that I would. I would be looking into questions such as housing density, and considering other flexible options that we could adopt to deliver that result, alongside broader reforms of the planning system. If we are to tackle the housing crisis credibly, we must look at planning reform as well as the supply of land. I will say more about that shortly.

Those are the quick wins—including the builder’s remedy—but what of the sustainable longer-term changes that we need to plan effectively for greater housing delivery? There are two key elements: reforming the planning system, and increasing the supply of land. First, we must accept that our 76-year-old discretionary planning system is not fit for purpose. The Town and Country Planning Act 1947 should be scrapped, because it stymies development. Perfectly acceptable applications are rejected on the flimsiest of grounds if there is local opposition, often coming from those making their feelings known from the safety and security of a comfortable home of their own. What should replace that planning system? We must shift away from a discretionary system to one that is rules-based, underpinned by a flexible zoning code, and determined nationally for local implementation. Land would be allocated for certain uses, and if a compliant application for the usage deemed appropriate for that land was received, it would be automatically approved. The system would be clear, fair, even-handed and efficient.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a fascinating speech, and a powerful case. Does he agree that as part of reform of the planning system, developers should be encouraged to build on existing brownfield sites in towns and cities? Many such areas are very large and could contain a large amount of housing, and many English towns and cities have relatively low density and a great deal of brownfield land.

[Andrew Western]

I entirely agree. I am in no way opposed to increasing density, and, indeed, unlocking the more than 1 million homes that currently have planning permission on brownfield sites. However, that alone will not resolve the issue. In comparison with our European neighbours, we are short of some 4.3 million homes per capita, so there is more to do than simply increasing density on brownfield land, although there is a potential for up to 1.5 million additional units.

Of course, even a reformed planning system needs adequate land supply. There are few issues thornier than this, but the fact is that whatever the density, whatever the tenure type and whichever way we cut the cake, there are not enough brownfield sites in urban areas to meet our housing need. We have to be honest about that, and we fail future generations when we are not. It is for this reason that I believe we must now look to the green belt for additional land capacity.

One option would be to provide brownfield land within the green belt for development, as my colleagues on the Opposition Front Bench propose. I would support that in a heartbeat, but a more radical option—to which the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden alluded in connection with the use of garden cities—would be to allow all green-belt land within 1 mile of a commuter railway station, and not subject to any other protections, to be used for housing. Such a move could deliver between 1.9 million and 2.1 million homes in locations where people actually want to live: on the outskirts of major conurbations, with the connectivity enabling them to take advantage of all that that offers. However, the point about protections is important, because with either of these options, national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty, sites of special scientific interest and green spaces with protections would be left untouched. Our genuine natural beauty would be preserved, rather than the artificial construct that is the green belt—in truth, less a green belt than an urban choke.

That is how we should drive the delivery of new housing. We need testing housing targets, five-year land supply, sound local plans and a builder’s remedy now, planning reform, flexible zoning and strategically managed building on the green belt in the long term. None of this is easy, but if we are to tackle generational inequality, uphold the promise that each generation should do better than the last, deliver rapid economic growth and ensure that everyone has access to a safe and secure home of their own, we must meet this challenge regardless. We have a unique opportunity to side with the builders, not the blockers, and to truly start planning for growth. I am, and always will be, proudly Labour and proudly yimby, but I am proudest of all that it is now clear that a Labour Government will respond to this unprecedented challenge and deliver the new housing that our country so desperately needs.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

Very little has been said about the reason we have such demand for housing and the problems with planning at the moment. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) mentioned that the population is 10 million greater than in 1997. In this last year alone, we had net migration of 606,000. If we multiply that for the next 26 years, without population growth of excess births over deaths, that is a population of at least 15 million more over the next 26 years. If the deficit in the number of houses required today is 4.1 million, it will only get worse.

One wonders where the new people coming into the country—the 606,000 just last year and the big number the year before that—are actually living. Students are one issue. They may be in halls of residence, but many people will be joining family in the UK and friends perhaps, and they will not have found their feet yet. We also have to think about the existing population who are trying to leave home for the first time. Where will they live? We managed to accommodate some 170,000 from Ukraine over the last year, but that was almost an example of sofa-surfing. If people stay, they will want to find their feet in their own accommodation, which will not be shared HMO-type high-density accommodation, so we are building up an even bigger problem. No one has even discussed whether we will ever have enough builders and building materials to build out those numbers. My argument is one of supply of people and how we go about solving this issue.

[Andrew Western]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Craig Mackinlay]

I want to make progress; we have very little time this evening.

We need to reduce immigration. We need to take measures to reduce internal relocation, which does happen within the country. That is very much on the levelling-up agenda. No one would be more pleased than I, living in the south-east, if populations relocated up towards Carlisle and elsewhere. I would be absolutely delighted with that. Do we need to encourage families? We live differently these days. In times of old—perhaps I do look to the past—families stayed together. They lived together in multigenerational units, not least looking after each other as they got older. That is quite a norm in European countries. We may have to build prolifically and that is what we have been discussing this evening. Where do we build? We are all nimbys in one way or another and it is not surprising that most people in the country are. The property they own is likely to be either their biggest asset in life, or, more than likely, the biggest liability in terms of what they owe on it, so they do not want what they have purchased and created in their own communities to be at all tainted, and I do not blame people for thinking that way.

If I reflect on some sites across my constituency—we all have such sites—when there is a proposed development, there is always a great deal of opposition. In Preston, a village in my constituency, there was an old transport site. There was huge opposition while it was being built out. In Ash, another village, there was huge opposition when a development called Harfleet Gardens was being built out. But sometimes these smaller villages need extra development to make them credible-size villages, where one can support the shop, the pub, the chemist and everything else. So there is a sweet spot and I think most people recognise that.

I am in favour of brownfield development wherever and whenever it can happen, but a lot of new builds end up looking exactly the same, as described by many Members this evening, not least my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse). Instead of solving a problem, they often create one.

I want to concentrate on putting our existing housing stock to best use, by using the tax system. Why do we not consider a downsizing relief for stamp duty? That would liberate some bigger houses that widows and widowers may be living in that are not perfect for them by any standard—expensive to heat, high council tax and all the rest of it. But when they look at the stamp duty cost of downsizing, particularly in higher cost areas, older people know the value of money and will say, “I’m simply not paying that, so I’ll stay where I am”—in the wrong accommodation and in the wrong place as their needs change.

Most importantly, there is an issue of capital gains tax. We are stopping people getting rid of second homes. A number of studies have been carried out of how many second homes there might be in the country. Rather than penalise people with increasing council tax and saying, “We know best. We aren’t going to allow you to have a second home—how dare you?”, I would rather create a tax system in which people are encouraged to get rid of their second home.

I am in practice as a chartered accountant, and I have had a number of cases of a client coming through the door, newly widowed, who has said that they would like to get rid of their second home. It might be in Devon, Kent or anywhere else. They are often smaller properties in the right places, where communities are complaining that they have been hollowed out because there is no settled community. They come to an accountant like me and say, “We’ve had this home since 1980. It cost us £20,000. I’d like to get rid of it.” I have to tell them, “You can’t get rid of that. You’ll face a 28% capital gains tax charge and then, if that cash is in your account and the natural happens in due course and you pass away, you will face an inheritance tax charge on the cash in your account. If you are not in a taxable estate, the value if you keep that property will simply be uplifted for your family, completely free of tax.”

We are binding up hundreds of thousands of second properties in the right places because of the tax trap. That could be hundreds of thousands of houses—perhaps whole years’ worth of the development that we are looking for, in the right places, simply because we are not brave enough. We are frightened of what the Opposition might say. We have talked a lot about cross-House unity. Surely, at times such as this, we should use the tax system to liberate homes and save some green belt or green areas that always cause problems, not least from the Lib Dems at election time. Let us work together and maximise the properties that we have. That would be a sincere step in the right direction.

I am taking a slightly different tack this evening. We have to look at the number of people—that is very much an immigration case—but let us use the properties we have, by using the tax system. That does not need one new build, one new builder or one new development. Let us do that first.