Planning Decisions: Local Involvement

Chris Clarkson Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chris Clarkson (Heywood and Middleton) (Con)]

Like I think most Members, a substantial portion of my casework is on either planning or housing, so I am glad to participate in today’s debate. I would even say that I do not necessarily disagree with the thrust of it, although I ask Opposition Members whether they have actually spoken to any of their colleagues in local government.

[Christian Wakeford]

I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for giving way on this point. Does he agree that while Labour Members are expressing their faux outrage and are already attacking their inadvertently misleading attack ads, what they really need to do is turn lecture mode off and listening mode on?

[Chris Clarkson]

I thank my hon. Friend for his clairvoyance, because I was about to say that the lived experience does not necessarily match the rhetoric, and nowhere is that clearer than in Andy Burnham’s love letter to developers, the Greater Manchester spatial framework. As Labour authorities were scrambling over one another to designate as much green belt as possible for development, one in particular stood out: Rochdale Borough Council, which volunteered to build more homes than were allocated. In fact, in the first conversation that I ever had with the council leader, he told me that he wanted to build as many unaffordable homes as possible. We thought that we had killed off the plan when the Conservative group on Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council voted it down, but now Andy has simply repackaged it and is trying to force it through again. Apparently, that constitutes listening to people.

We know that planning is a hot-button issue. Several hon. Members have mentioned the by-election result. I honestly congratulate the new hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sarah Green): it is a privilege and an achievement to get here. I take some issue with the way she arrived here, though. On Thursday evening, when I was trudging the streets of Chesham, I had the following conversations at door after door: “Oh, yes, I am a Conservative—I always vote Conservative—but I voted for the Liberal Democrats this time because they’ve promised to stop all the house building,” and “I voted for the Liberal Democrats this time because they’re going to stop HS2.” This is a party that talks about social aspiration, but they are the sort of people who make sure that they are not in the house when the cleaner is coming; a party that talks about the environment, but with a Range Rover in the drive that only ever does the school run; a party led by a man who criticised former politicians for becoming lobbyists, but who was a highly paid lobbyist when he was a former politician; a party that describes itself as democratic while trying to overturn the single largest democratic exercise in British history.

The simple fact of the matter is that simply telling people what they want to hear will never get the job done. We cannot just talk the talk; we have to walk the walk. I am cautiously optimistic about the planning Bill. In particular, I want to make it easier to build on brownfield, because we have an abundance of it in my constituency and a severe shortage of good-quality, affordable homes. In closing, I lay down a challenge to my council, because it is very keen on building. Instead of carving up our green belt, will it listen to what people are saying locally, as colleagues in Westminster have asked, and start developing the brownfield now?