Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Duncan Baker and Tim Farron

Report stage
Tuesday 13th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron]

I want more people to be able to have a home in the first place. In defending people’s right to have a second home, which we will come on to in a moment, we must remember that people’s right to a first home is even more important. The millions of people who have no home at all to call their own, and are desperately waiting on long waiting lists, are up against many people who have more than one home. That is an injustice that needs to be addressed. This particular set of amendments would give local authorities in communities such as Cumbria the ability to say to developers, “You may build here, but what you build must be sustainable, affordable and available for local people so there is a workforce and a local community.”

I want to move on to existing stock, and in particular to the comments made by the Minister earlier. My new clause 121 would make sure there is a separate planning category for short-term lets. That matters: because of the Government’s failure to scrap section 21 evictions, as they promised to do, over the past two years the long-term rented sector has collapsed. That has led to the expulsion of thousands of people from my community. There has been a 32% rise in holiday lets in just one year, and that is in the Lake district where there were already a huge number of them. Those houses are coming from local people evicted so their landlord can go to a short-term let, normally Airbnb, and therefore cash in, and there are no other places for those people to go and live so their kids are uprooted from the local school, and they have to give up their jobs and move many miles away, robbing our communities of life and of a workforce.

[Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman and I share similar constituency issues: in North Norfolk I have huge numbers of second homes and holiday properties, too. I know he has tabled his own amendments, but the Government have a very sensible amendment as well; does he not agree that we should back their amendment to start addressing the issue of people being turfed out of their homes because a landlord can earn five, six or seven times more by changing from a monthly let to a weekly holiday rental with not as much security? The right thing to do is to back the Government and try and help on this matter.

[Tim Farron]

I recently had a conversation with the Minister and am absolutely of the view that while Government amendment 119 does not go as far as mine, it is a step in the right direction. There is a sense of locking the stable door while the horses are well over the horizon—that is my great fear—but I will not seek to press my amendment to a Division, because I am going to trust the Government to do what they say they are going to do: to make sure there is a consultation and that they look at having new separate categories of planning use for short-term lets.

That matters in our communities where the workforce has been decimated because of the collapse of the long-term private rented sector into Airbnb. As a result, 63% of hospitality and tourism businesses in Cumbria are working below capacity; they are not meeting the demand that is there because there simply is not a workforce. We have over 30% of the beds in our hospitals in Cumbria blocked because there are not enough social care workers as there is nowhere for them to live, resulting in a gluing-up impact on our health service. There is an urgent need to take action, therefore. It should have been taken two years ago: the Government should have abolished section 21 evictions, as they promised, but it is better to do something now than not do it at all, so I am happy to accept Government amendment 119 and will not press mine. We will wait and see, and hold the Government to account to make sure they keep the promise they made.

We in the lakes and dales are proud to be a place that welcomes visitors and are proud of the fact that people choose to have holidays with us, and indeed have second homes. We must be very careful not to demonise people who we are delighted to welcome to come and visit us, but, as I alluded to earlier, if it is sometimes a battle between defending someone’s right to have a second home and defending families’ right to have a first, we must be on the side of the latter. We must be on the side of people in local communities who are squeezed out because of this. Some 20 million people visit the lakes every year, and we are proud that the tourism industry generates £3.5 billion in revenue for our local economy. We do not want to push people away, but we do want to secure the communities that underpin that economy.

That is why I will seek, with your permission, Mr Deputy Speaker, to move new clause 120 in my name, because the Government are not choosing to do anything adequate about second home ownership in this Bill. Over the last two years, 80% of all house sales in my communities have been into the second home market—people who buy a home and do not live in it. For instance, 50% of properties in Coniston are empty as second homes, as are 83% of properties in Elterwater. The impact on those communities and dozens of others around Cumbria is that we get lost communities. Without a full-time permanent population of sufficient size, communities lose their school, their pub, their bus service, their GP service, their post office, and the life of those communities. It is astonishing that despite being offered many opportunities in the Bill Committee and today the Government have not tackled this blight on our rural communities.

I plead with Conservative MPs, and particularly those in rural communities, to do the right thing by those communities and stand up for them by giving Cumbria and other parts of the country that are affected by second home ownership the right to control their housing stock. Give us that control and allow us to preserve the communities of the lakes, the dales and the rest of rural Britain. Please back new clause 120.

Environment Bill

Debate between Duncan Baker and Tim Farron

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 26th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron [V]]

On the air quality amendments, the targets in this Bill do not even meet those recommended by the World Health Organisation, as has been said by other Members. That should rightly alarm all of us, especially given that the UK has such a terrible track record in recent years. When we were a member of the EU, it fined us regularly for failing to meet the targets set at that point. Air quality standards are of the utmost importance, and for the Government to under aim and be under-ambitious here is deeply troubling. We are being asked to accept not only decreased air quality standards, but delayed standards, as this Bill is pushed back once again, after years of delay. Yet, tragically, we now increasingly see “poor air quality” cited as a cause of death on the death certificates of many, many people. As many colleagues from both sides of the House, have said, this is a matter of life and death, Delayed action at this time, in the hiatus between the strong targets and standards we had up to the end of 2020 and the point at which we get whatever standards we will get when this Bill is finally agreed, allows bad habits to build up and bed in, and it makes Britain’s poor air quality harder still to clear up.

On waste, the absence of plastic reduction targets beggars belief, given the rhetoric we have heard from many in the Government. The Conservative manifesto made a specific reference—a promise even—to

“ban the export of plastic waste”

to developing countries. The Government have broken that promise. So not only are they not tackling our plastic problem here at home, but we are adding to the plastic problem of poorer countries overseas.

My amendment 30 related to water quality. We simply want the Government to monitor the impact of the abstraction of water on biodiversity in chalk streams and in other waterways. This Bill does not do that, and it is a simple and obvious request. Only 14% of England’s rivers and lakes are in a good quality water position at the moment, so the need for this measure is clear.

So we see an unambitious Bill and a delay, which means even this poor ambition will be hard to bring to fruition, given that we will have to wait many months. This takes commitment to underachievement to new heights, undermining the quality of our environment and animal welfare. These are times when we need to be setting clear and ambitious targets if we are going to lead the world, but I am afraid that we are lagging far behind.

[Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)]

It has been a pleasure to serve on the Environmental Audit Committee and discuss a number of topics that form part of this landmark Environment Bill through our inquiries. Our Chair, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne), has campaigned tirelessly for better water quality and no doubt through his work we have in this Bill sewerage undertakers now being required to produce a statutory drainage and sewerage management plan to actively address environmental risks such as sewer overflows and their impact on water quality.

Without doubt, this Bill paves the way for the Government to continue putting the environment at the very heart of their decision making, with legally binding targets on biodiversity, air quality and waste efficiency just a few of a plethora of new ambitions. I was heartened by the Minister’s opening comments on plastic pollution and new clause 11. As an MP for 50 miles of stunning North Norfolk coast, I am glad that provisions in this Bill will help to reduce plastics on our beaches. This new clause would require the Secretary of State to set targets to reduce plastic pollution and reduce the volume of non-essential single-use plastic products sold. If plastic pollution continues at current rates, plastic in the oceans will outweigh fish by 2050. There is a strong public appetite for action: 63% of people want to reduce their consumption of plastic, and 77% want the Government to take more action to protect the ocean, so I am glad that this is being covered.