New Housing Supply

Lord Mackinlay of Richborough Excerpts

Monday 5th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[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.

Coastal Communities

Lord Mackinlay of Richborough Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2022 Westminster Hall

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) for her excellent speech and for bringing forward this debate. I reiterate her request for a coastal Minister, as the issues we experience around the coast are unifying. As we look to level up this great country under the new Administration, I very much hope that we can move away from the north-south divide and level up around the coast.

The hon. Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) did not take my intervention, but I also represent a very beautiful coastal constituency and I have been concerned about water quality this summer. It is very important that we recognise the difference between algal blooms and sewage discharge. My constituency has not had sewage discharge this summer, but we have had significant algal blooms due to the heat.

I do not want to focus on sewage today. I want to use the opportunity of having the levelling-up Minister here to talk about coastal communities and the issues that are particularly prevalent in the Devon and Cornwall peninsula following the pandemic, with the immense shortage of affordable housing that our local residents can move into and purchase.

Our beautiful area has seen a surge in short-term holiday lets and the second homes market. I very much hope that the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport consultation on holiday lets registration goes ahead. I also hope that there are opportunities in the Minister’s Department to impose planning restrictions to reduce the number of holiday lets that come to market. When new properties are built, a change of use should be required if they are to become a short-term holiday let. Communities such as mine need homes for people to live and work in. We love our tourists and we would never want to stop them coming, but our housing market has got completely out of balance.

In North Devon, we are not the most productive, unfortunately, and our wages are really very low. Full-time workers in North Devon currently earn £13.29 per hour, while the south-west average is £14.67 and the Great Britain average is £15.65. Our property prices have shot up by over 22%. We are the second fastest growing property price area in the country, but our house building rate has not grown that much and the vast majority of what is being sold is going in the form of second homes or holiday lets. If this continues, we will no longer have coastal communities; we will have winter ghost towns. We need urgent intervention through the levelling-up White Paper to tackle the issue.

Ilfracombe in my constituency is regularly defined, unfortunately, as being home to the poorest wards in the whole of Devon, and among the 5% poorest wards in the entire country. The issues in towns such as Ilfracombe have been documented for decades, yet we seem unable to grasp the fact that these things are happening all the way around our coast. Each coastal MP will have similar stories to mine. Life expectancy for people in Ilfracombe is 10 years less than that for those in the south of the county.

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Selaine Saxby]

Unfortunately, I must not—

End of Eviction Moratorium

Lord Mackinlay of Richborough Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

The Government have honoured their promise to landlords and renters. That is why we introduced the most significant package of support in our history for people suffering from the emergency: £35 billion has helped over 9 million people on the furlough scheme. We have introduced the local housing allowance and increased it to the 30th percentile of local market rents, which will increase the annual income of those in receipt of it by some £600. The next steps accommodation programme is providing 3,000 new homes for those who have found themselves homeless, to make sure that they receive long-term help.

The hon. Lady says the Welsh Government have a plan. Well, we would all like to know what it is. They have announced some form of help, but not told us when it starts or what the amount is. We have made the rules in lockdown areas very clear. The Lord Chancellor has written to the association of bailiffs to make the position clear, and further guidance will be issued. We will continue to keep our measures under review, but we will also continue to support landlords and renters alike through this crisis.

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

There are 2.5 million landlords in this country. Most have just one property, often indebted, and for retired landlords it can form the backbone of their retirement income. Good landlords repair properties, get them back into use and provide millions of properties that would otherwise fall to the public and quasi sectors. Sadly, however, landlords are too often demonised. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is right and fair that we allow courts to exercise due discretion and sensitivity, as they always do, to decide on the correct pathways from now on?

[Christopher Pincher]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. Landlords in our country provide a valuable and important service to the many people who rent. Demonising landlords, forcing the good ones out of business, will result only in fewer properties available to rent, and it may result in more of those properties being rented out for Airbnb or by less scrupulous landlords, so he is absolutely right. We have tried to be fair to renters and to landlords; the package of measures that we introduced on 29 August is fair to both. It is important that those landlords who need access to justice are able to get it, that those landlords who are facing egregious rent arrears, antisocial behaviour and issues of domestic abuse are able to repossess their properties, while at the same time those people who through no fault of their own have got into difficulties because of the covid-19 epidemic are helped.