New Housing Supply

David Davis Excerpts

Monday 5th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of delivering new housing supply.

One of the critical issues facing our constituents today is housing. Whether it is young people struggling to get on the property ladder, tenants having to put up with high rents and substandard housing, or families who cannot afford an adequately sized home, across the political divide we are all acutely aware of the growing crisis we face. Seven out of 10 voters think that there is a national housing crisis. Housing is a top issue for millennials. After the first and second world wars, there were campaigns for homes “fit for heroes.” What we need now is a campaign for homes fit for a new generation.

It is worth pausing for a moment to reflect on why home ownership is so important. I think we all believe in the ideal of a property-owning democracy. MPs in every party will understand that buying your first home is a huge milestone in life. We all understand that having your own space and somewhere to call home is incredibly valuable. It gives people a stake in society and a sense that they control their own life. Ownership also provides much greater security than the rental market, which is especially difficult at the moment. It is not right that huge numbers of people, including families with young children, have to keep moving or are insecure and unable to properly put down roots anywhere. That is bad for all of us and undermines our collective sense of community.

House prices have reached unaffordable levels because, as is fairly evident, we have a housing shortage. The average home costs about £285,000. In London, where the picture is even more stark, the average cost is an enormous £523,000. Over the last 25 years, housing affordability has worsened in every single local authority across England, and younger people most acutely feel the impact of the crisis.

In my lifetime, the number of young families trying to buy a house has virtually halved. When I first bought a house, the average house cost three times the average income. Now it is between eight and nine times the average wage. In the last decade, over half of first-time buyers have had to rely on some kind of help from their parents. The increasing need to rely on the bank of mum and dad is widening the inequality gap and further eroding social mobility in the UK. The crisis is forcing those who cannot rely on well-off parents to fork out thousands of pounds more in rent, to stay at their family home for longer and to delay their plans to start a family.

Even those who can afford a home are getting less for their money. Since 1970, the average size of a living room in a new build property has declined by a total of 27%. The average floor space of homes has declined by almost 20% in that time. We need not only to build more houses but to build them better. Our constituents deserve and, rightly, expect both quantity and quality.

Obviously, housing is a matter of supply and demand. Let us deal with demand first. Since the mid-90s, the nation’s population has grown by between 9 million and 10 million, principally because of immigration. Governments of all persuasions—I am making this deliberately a non-party matter—have failed to build the homes required to meet that increased demand. The result has been a huge backlog in housing need—probably of 3 million or 4 million, although I have seen all sorts of estimates. Clearing that backlog and meeting new annual demand would require us to create several hundreds of thousands of homes every year for decades to come, which, again, all Governments have failed to do.

On the face of it, the answer is simple: build more houses. But with our planning system, that is far easier said than done. The real question is not whether to build, but where to build, and not just because demand is higher in some places than in others. All of us have run into vested interest groups who oppose new build estates. Often those groups can have legitimately held and valid concerns about overdevelopment, the impact on local amenities and infrastructure, or the concreting over of local countryside.

If we want to attack this problem properly, we should not see nimbys as irrational or selfish. Indeed, their feelings are entirely understandable. A home is probably the most significant investment that a family will ever make. So-called nimbys quite rightly want their children to grow up in a decent home in a good-quality neighbourhood. If someone has moved to a rural or semi-rural area, already facing stretched public services or congested roads, they will not wish to see their idyllic new home engulfed by rapid and substantial urban sprawl, or local infrastructure placed under unnecessary or additional stress.

[John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is making a powerful case and is absolutely right in the way he is laying out the problem and how people see it. Is he aware not just of nimbyism but of yimbyism—the “yes, in my backyard” movement? It says that many people are willing to accept densification, particularly in British towns, to see more investment in town centres and to breathe life back into those towns, both socially and economically. That goes with the grain of what people want and also cuts housing costs, both to rent and to buy.

[Mr Davis]

I agree entirely. It is slightly separate from the main thrust of my argument, but my hon. Friend is exactly right. One of the issues is quality of community, which is addressed directly by what he just said.

How do we get around the nimby problem in its conventional sense? I believe that a large part of the answer is garden towns and villages. It is not a new proposal but a tried and tested policy, albeit with some tweaks to deliver it in the 21st century. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay) has spoken about it before, as have I, and there have been Policy Exchange think-tank papers on it. It is not that new, but it is worth resurrecting. In the 20th century, the garden city movement resulted in the creation of towns such as Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City, now populated by around 30,000 and 40,000 people in each case. Those new garden towns and cities were great successes. What is the measure of that? Nearly 3 million people live in the 32 towns created under the New Towns Acts 1946. Reviving these ideas will hold the key to solving much of the housing crisis.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for a really fascinating speech and hope that the debate will be of equal quality. There is an issue with density. Garden cities are a fantastic idea, whether Hampstead garden suburb, Welwyn Garden City or the others, but we have some of the lowest density cities in the world. We are a small country with a high-density per-kilometre population compared with elsewhere in the world. How does he square that circle with the high-quality environment that he wants to see?

[Mr Davis]

Part of that fits in with what my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) said, but I will deal with the point about the high density of the population in a moment.

Let us talk about the politics of nimbyism. Today, in a village in my constituency, a small development of 100 homes would generate thousands of objections. That is inevitably what happens. A garden town could deliver tens of thousands of homes and, if put in the right place, would probably generate a few hundred objections. I will talk about how to minimise that, too. Such a scheme would be fruitless unless we can ensure that new developments generate the funding they need to become places where people actually want to live. That is key.

Part of the problem with the existing process is that a mass of potential funding for infrastructure can quickly disappear, captured not by the local community but by landowners and developers. As soon as a hectare of farming land gets planning permission, its value will shoot up roughly a hundredfold. That is the order of magnitude. It goes from £21,000 for the average hectare of agricultural land to an enormous average residential land value of £2.1 million per hectare—that is outside of London. However, the vast majority of that will go to the landowner and the developer. About 27% will be captured by the state, mostly by the Treasury—that is over and above the money brought in by section 106 agreements.

There is no guarantee that money will be spent locally. Indeed, there is almost a guarantee that it will not be spent locally—I am looking at my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke), a former Treasury Minister, as I say that. This system starves local communities of funding that could pay for necessary infrastructure within the development, such as schools, roads, train stations, GPs and hospitals, fibre optics or cycle lanes—you name it—or even funding that could pay for larger and cheaper homes, which comes to the point about density. The result is piecemeal development around existing settlements that lacks the proper amenities to cope.

The solution lies with the example I have referred to already, set during the 20th century. The construction of new towns was centred around radical but effective legislation that allowed new town development corporations to buy large tracts of land at their existing use value. That meant that when buying up farmland for garden towns, the corporations paid the agricultural use price rather than the hope value, or hypothetical market price. I want to propose a slightly more sophisticated approach, because I do not really like expropriation—I am a Conservative, remember. We will have to have some sort of compulsory purchase, but there should be a proper compensation for that.

Consider an example of a 1,000 hectare garden town, a little smaller than Welwyn Garden City. Purchasing 1,000 hectares of land at agricultural value would cost £21 million, but as soon as it has planning permission the value would rise to £2.1 billion—remember that number. There is no change to the underlying land usefulness and no work undertaken—that is just a change of planning permission. But a Government-created garden town development corporation might pay the existing owners, let’s say, 10% of the development value. That is still £210 million, so we are now talking about a pretty rich farmer. That is ten times the existing use value and a profit for him of £190 million, but it still leaves £1.9 billion of uncaptured asset value. That £1.9 billion surplus can be used to invest in the town’s infrastructure, schools, medical centres, parks, pedestrian walkways, high-speed optical links, and road and rail connections.

[Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I commend the right hon. Gentleman on securing the debate; he is making some very important points. Does he agree that part of the success of the new towns was around the provision of social housing and that there needs to be a substantial programme of that within the programme that he is setting out to the House this evening?

[Mr Davis]

Frankly, I see nothing difficult about that, because I am talking about creating communities that have been designed. When communities are designed, all sorts of social structures are created. I will come back to the detail in a minute, but I do not have a problem with anything that the right hon. Gentleman mentioned.

As I say, the design is done as a single entity. Unlike the chaotic marginal extensions and infills of current development, we can ensure the developments are well designed. We know how to build successful communities— we have plenty of evidence. We know how to design out crime. We know how to separate traffic from pedestrian ways and cycle-to-school routes. If we select locations properly, we can ensure links that facilitate getting to work, shopping and entertainment.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

I admire my right hon. Friend’s ambition in looking to achieve such large new towns. In my remarks, I will argue that we are probably better off looking at sustainable extensions to existing communities, although I admire his ambition. Does he not recognise that we have tried this with eco-towns, no more than 20 years ago? Not a single one succeeded. There was so much opposition that I fear his laudable aims will not be realised.

[Mr Davis]

Well, that is the rest of the argument. My aim is to create a well-designed town, which is attractive to live in. I looked around my own part of the world and I thought, “I can see where they would go.” I am not going to say it publicly as I do not want to change the land values, but I could certainly see that.

These developments would be built in areas of comparatively low population. They will not be on top of an existing town, as my hon. Friend describes, so they can, to a large extent, sidestep the nimby problem. Even in cases where there is a hamlet near to a proposed site, considering the size of the surplus, it could be used to buy out those who are objecting, with a small premium on the existing market price, a little bit of help with moving and the payment being tax free. That would minimise the nimby problem.

It is not as though we are short of space for these new developments. As my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) said, we often hear that the UK is full or that further development risks damaging our beautiful countryside. I am afraid I do not agree with such arguments. My hon. Friend has been in a helicopter more times than I have, so he will know that if he flies from London to York or Hereford to York, or wherever he likes, if he looks out of the window he will see that unless passing over a major conurbation, it is like looking at a golf course. Only 8.7% of England is developed; in Scotland, it would be a tiny fraction.

[Bob Seely]

My right hon. Friend may find that that figure is disputed. When we look at motorway service stations and urban lighting, we see that urban sprawl means the number is significantly greater than 8.7%. That number represents a very narrow definition and there are people who would at least double it.

[Mr Davis]

Like all mathematicians, as I am, I always treat numbers carefully. My hon. Friend might note that I said, “Look out of the window of a helicopter.” If he does that, he will see what I am talking about—large amounts of free tracts of land. I am talking about not just any old land, but land near motorways, railway hubs or the old Beeching railway lines, if we wanted to rebuild some of those. There are a whole series of places where we could put people.

It is not just a numbers game either. As the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) and others have said, new communities need to have character. They need to be attractive to all sorts of members of society. Garden villages and towns make that possible. I am not necessarily trying to introduce another policy aim, but instead of shoehorning new houses into any nook and cranny we can find in existing settlements, we can build good-quality, spacious homes in new developments.

[Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

On that point, will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Davis]

I have to stop there as I have nearly finished. We can build good-quality, spacious homes in new developments—well-designed homes in well-designed communities. Learning from previous development of garden villages and new towns, we can avoid past mistakes and build attractive, pleasant places that people will genuinely want to call home. In many ways, this is a matter of property rights. What we are aiming for is the best balance of affordability, ambition and respect for local residents of any mass house building proposal currently on the table. They are based on a proven model of success. Let’s get building.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

As colleagues will see, this is a very well subscribed debate. If we are to get everybody in, that requires speeches of seven minutes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Davis]

The extraordinary importance of this issue is measured by the sheer number of people here, and not just the quantity but the quality. We have had ministerial experience, local government experience, professional experience and even APPG chair experience. I deliberately chose the subject “delivering new housing supply” so that it was as wide as possible, but it is notable that we have had complete unity on the aim of closing the gap in supply. We have had a massive multiplicity of ideas, all of which are necessary, frankly. If we are to deliver a proper property-owning democracy to the next generation, we have to use everything that we have heard today. I thank everybody for their contributions.

[Vicky Ford]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. When I spoke earlier, I should perhaps have referred to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as I am an unpaid member of the board of the legendary Essex Cricket. I hope that Members will forgive me and that the record can be corrected.

Voter ID

David Davis Excerpts

Thursday 27th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Maclean]

I find it interesting that the hon. Gentleman has sought to rehash arguments that we have already had numerous times in this place, and I find it surprising that his party is not committed to protecting the sanctity of the ballot box. The reason we have had to introduce this legislation is the absolute fiasco that we have seen unfolding in Tower Hamlets and Birmingham over the years. We need to protect the sanctity of the ballot box, and that is what we are doing. We are introducing a number of measures to collect the data that will enable us to conduct the detailed analysis that is required by the legislation and by the electorate, and that is the right way of doing things.

May I ask why, if the Labour party is so opposed to voter ID, it requires ID for all its candidate selection meetings? Why have Labour Members stated time and again that they know full well that most people in this country have a valid form of ID? What is good enough for candidate selection in the Labour party should be good enough for our local elections.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I must tell the Minister that I am very uncomfortable with this policy. She is right to say that Tower Hamlets and other parts of the country are having problems, but they are principally about postal votes rather than personation. We have had one conviction in a decade in this context. The Electoral Commission said that the pilot was not big enough for conclusions to be drawn, although there was a reduction of up to 6% in turnout. In Northern Ireland, which the Minister cited, there was, according to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, a 2.3% reduction. I am afraid the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) had a valid point. Will the Minister please write to everyone, not just the hon. Gentleman, giving proper answers to his questions?

[Rachel Maclean]

Pilots have been conducted on a number of occasions in, I think, Woking and Pendle. A thorough study was carried out, and we found no evidence of turnout being lowered. We also observed very high engagement with the new processes. The forms of ID that were available were very clearly communicated to people. What is more, this policy intervention has served the purpose of raising public confidence in the sanctity of the electoral process, and I think we should all welcome that.

PSNI Policy: Journalists’ Data Obtained under Warrant

David Davis Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. You are right: I have provided a copy of what I have to say, and I will stick to it religiously throughout the debate. I commiserate with my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office, who has to answer me. He seems to be the Minister for receiving hospital passes from me in the past few months, one way or another.

The issue today is very serious. Twenty-five years ago, on 18 June 1994, a crowd of locals gathered at O’Toole’s pub in Loughinisland in County Down, Northern Ireland, to watch the Republic of Ireland play Italy in the World Cup. Shortly after Ireland scored the winning goal, two members of the Ulster Volunteer Force burst into the pub with automatic assault rifles and sprayed bullets across the bar. Six people were murdered and five more were badly injured in a brutal sectarian attack by loyalist paramilitaries. The people were targeted because they were Catholic. It is known as the Loughinisland massacre and has gone down as one the darkest moments in the Northern Irish troubles. It was an atrocity that shocked even those who lived among sectarian violence day in and day out. At the time, it was described by the media as brutal, inhuman, barbaric, callous slaughter, and it was worldwide news. The families of the victims received condolence letters from the Queen and from the Pope.

The Royal Ulster Constabulary’s investigation, however, was marked by a litany of missed opportunities to gather and examine evidence. The morning after the shooting, the police found the getaway car abandoned in a field in the nearby town of Ballynahinch, but they failed to examine the field properly. They left the car wide open to the elements before it could be fully examined, and they destroyed the car only 10 months later. The murder weapons were found in another field only 10 miles from O’Toole’s bar. The police recovered ample DNA evidence from the rifles, but they failed to follow that up on investigation. The police also had informants embedded in the UVF who were involved in the procurement and distribution of arms, but, again, the police failed to follow up.

The investigation was such a failure that it prompted the victims’ families to call for the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland to look into it in 2006. In his damning report, the ombudsman concluded that

“corrupt relationships existed between members of the Security Forces in South Down and the UVF Unit, to whom police attributed the murders at Loughinisland. The failure by police to investigate the veracity of intelligence that those responsible had been ‘warned’ by a police officer of their imminent arrest is inexcusable.”

It is clear that the investigation was a case of both incompetence and collusion, and those responsible for this heinous crime have never been arrested, charged or prosecuted.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I appreciate that the right hon. Gentleman takes a special interest in journalistic freedom and civil liberties, and I have already shown him a copy of this intervention. May I respectfully direct him to the work of another journalist, Mark Rainey, who writes in the Belfast News Letter? Mr Rainey ran a most illuminating series of articles about the officers involved in the investigation of the wicked and heinous murders at Loughinisland, writing that

“almost all of the original concerns about the actions of police—which helped spark the fresh ombudsman investigation in 2012—have now been dismissed as bogus or unjustified, including the erroneous identification of the alleged getaway driver claimed to be a police agent.”

[Mr Davis]

As well as my interest in press freedom, I share with the hon. Gentleman a long-standing interest in the affairs of Northern Ireland throughout the whole course of the troubles, as he well knows. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to his gallant service in the Ulster Defence Regiment right at the height of the troubles and the difficult times, so we are in the same place on this. I have the greatest respect for the original RUC and now the Police Service of Northern Ireland. All the officers serving in those forces are brave, and the vast majority are absolutely determined to see justice delivered, but on this occasion, there is a different view put by the ombudsman, and I think I have to treat that as the overriding judgment. This is not the main point that I want to make today, but I urge the Government and the PSNI to reopen the original investigation into Loughinisland to ensure that it is done to everybody’s satisfaction this time.

Thirteen years on from the brutal assault, two Northern Irish journalists, Barry McCaffrey and Trevor Birney, exposed the truth. In a remarkably hard-hitting documentary called “No Stone Unturned” released in September 2017, they told a story of the victims of the massacre and their families, shining a light on the collusion and incompetence at the heart of the investigation and naming those suspected of being responsible. Like countless journalists have done over the years, they got their information from an anonymous leak. In a plain unmarked envelope, Barry McCaffrey was sent an unredacted Police Ombudsman’s report naming the suspects and detailing the evidence behind the allegation of police cover-up. It found collusion between the RUC and the UVF, incompetence and a cover-up of the true events, and for the first time, it named those whom the police believed to be responsible for the brutal murders. What started as a hard-hitting documentary on a huge event in Irish history would now become a dramatic exposé of the failure of policing.

It was of course an investigative journalist’s dream leak, but, even so, during the film’s pre-publication and editing process, the journalists offered the named suspects a right of reply, which was not taken up. They also informed the ombudsman of the suspects the film would name. The ombudsman passed that information on to the PSNI. They wanted to be sure the PSNI was informed in case there was any concern for the safety of the suspects or in case the police had any other compelling reason why the film should not be released. They received no response.

When the documentary was released in 2017, it was well regarded by both communities in Northern Ireland, and in July 2019 it was nominated for an Emmy in the “outstanding investigative documentary” category. But a year after it was broadcast, Barry McCaffrey and Trevor Birney were arrested on extraordinary charges by the PSNI. For simply doing their jobs, they were arrested and charged with suspected theft, handling stolen goods, breaches of the Official Secrets Act and breaches of data protection rules. The PSNI’s action was extraordinarily heavy-handed; some 100 armed officers turned up at their homes at seven in the morning while their families were eating breakfast. The police arrested the journalists in front of their wives and children. Then the police searched their homes and offices, and seized their phones, laptops and hard drives. They even seized the phones of Barry and Trevor’s children. Now the police hold a huge amount of very personal data belonging to these journalists and their families.

Imagine if the same had happened to the journalists who published leaks from the National Security Council on Chinese involvement in the 5G network, an issue that really did have an impact on national security; or the leaked diplomatic telegrams from Sir Kim Darroch; or the leaked Yellowhammer documents last month—there rightly would have been a national uproar. All those leaks were uncomfortable for the state, but that is precisely what journalism is for: to hold those with power and authority to account, and force them to answer for their decisions.

Barry McCaffrey and Trevor Birney had the courage to challenge this outrageous intrusion into press freedom in the Northern Irish courts. In June, the High Court quashed the search warrants used to search the properties and seize the electronic equipment—I was in the Court. Sir Declan Morgan, the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, handed down a damning indictment of the police’s conduct and in defence of a free press. He struck down the search warrants as unlawful. He went on to say the journalists acted in a

“perfectly proper manner with a view to protecting their sources in a lawful way.”

The Court rightly stood up for the fundamental principle of press freedom and protected these journalists from a misguided attempt by the police to prevent their own embarrassment. If this warrant had been allowed to stand, it would have had a hugely chilling effect on investigative journalism across the whole country—the whole United Kingdom. A truly free press must be able to stand up to the state and the establishment without fear of reprisal. It must be able to expose uncomfortable truths and ask tough questions. That is what this case represents, but it is sadly now back in the courts.

Following the quashing of the warrants, the PSNI had to be hauled back before the Court again to have the journalists’ property returned. Again, the Court ruled in the journalists’ favour, and the police duly complied. But the police now insist on retaining the data taken from the phones and computers seized from the journalists. So far, everything I have said is in the public domain. However, as you said at the beginning, Mr Deputy Speaker, I am precluded by sub judice rules from discussing the particular issues currently before the Court in this case. It must be said that this is a judge-only hearing heard by the Lord Chief Justice, so there is little risk of any undue influence. Nevertheless, I will comply with the rules.

Data retention by the police throughout the UK has been a long-running issue—from DNA to fingerprints, from biometric data to personal electronic data. These issues often face tension between civil liberties, individual privacy and the demands of the police. For example, when someone is arrested, it is commonly the case that their phone data is held long after the person is released and exonerated. We all understand that a certain amount of data retention is necessary for fighting crime, but by definition this data should be about guilty people committing crimes; as far as possible, we should avoid retaining the data of innocent people. On the rare occasions when that proves necessary, it should be under the strict control of the courts and its use strictly limited.

Without very good reason, data from innocent journalists should never be kept. It surely cannot be right for police to store data obtained from a warrant that has been ruled unlawful. I therefore urge the Home Office and the Northern Ireland Office to keep a close eye on the development of the Loughinisland case and, when it is adjudicated, review the policies on data acquisition and retention for the PSNI and other police forces throughout the country. This issue is not confined to Northern Ireland, so it will impact investigative journalists and whistleblowers across the whole country. Whistleblowers will see such cases, feel intimidated and think that the information they give to journalists is subject to capture and inspection by the police or other agencies of the state. Press freedom is at the core of our democratic system, and it must be protected.