Affordable and Safe Housing for All

Catherine McKinnell Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris). My deepest condolences go out to all those affected by the tragic events in Heysham.

There is a real sense that the current planning system and the Government’s new proposals do not have people at their heart. Newcastle Great Park in my constituency, which already has 2,000 homes, will see more than 4,500 homes once it is complete. Some of those estates have stood for more than a decade now without the kind of amenities that most people take for granted, such as GPs, dentists, public transport links, schools or even local shops. The current system is clearly flawed, with residents feeling that their rights come a firm second to those of developers who seem to increase the size of developments and miss targets for delivery of services and infrastructure with few consequences, and residents pay the price.

The Government’s new proposals will only make the situation worse, reducing local input and giving developers even more of a free hand. I am deeply concerned about the long-term failure to deliver on infrastructure and local facilities, which has been so problematic in Newcastle Great Park; it could be replicated across swathes of Newcastle’s Outer West where many thousands of homes are already being built and thousands more are in the pipeline.

The scale and pace of housing development across the Outer West of Newcastle feel overwhelming for constituents who are contacting me. The Government’s decision to impose a 35% increase on the housing supply in our city is, understandably, causing considerable alarm. I therefore urge the Government not to go down the path of further deregulation, but to look at ways of incentivising more genuinely affordable homes and supporting the installation of infrastructure and community facilities at an early stage of development. New developments must be more than a collection of houses: they must build communities.

Speaking of communities, one of the Government’s ambitions in the Gracious Speech is for us to emerge from the pandemic a healthier, more resilient country, but the reality is that our gyms and leisure centres are under threat of closure after taking heavy losses over the past 14 months. In Newcastle, we are concerned about the future of West Denton pool, which closed when the first national lockdown began and has yet to reopen. There is no lifeline for such facilities in the Government’s legislative programme. The communities that the pool serves already suffer from health inequalities and I worry that we are seeing an emerging perverse pattern, whereby sports and leisure facilities in the areas with the biggest existing health inequalities are the ones at greatest risk of closure. We have seen this pattern emerge up and down the country. The nation’s health is far too important to be left to a postcode lottery. If we want to emerge from this crisis a healthier country, the Government need to invest now in health and fitness for all communities.

So much is missing from the Government’s agenda. There is no meaningful progress on social care reform, despite the Prime Minister’s clear promises. There is a failure to grasp the educational inequalities that have been exacerbated by the pandemic and a real lack of urgency in addressing them. There is nothing in the leasehold reform Bill to support existing leaseholders who have been misled about the property that they bought. The promised employment Bill to extend and protect workers’ rights is absent. This is a Government who neglect social care, education recovery and employment rights, yet they have no problem finding space in their legislative programme for laws that make it harder for low-income and minority groups to vote. That tells us everything we need to know about the values and priorities of this Government.