Westferry Printworks Development

Eleanor Laing Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed]

I respect the right hon. Gentleman’s experience in those matters, and of course there may well have been a need to move at speed. It is not so much the speed I am concerned about as what happened during that timeframe.

Westferry is not the only example of that kind of behaviour by the Secretary of State. Similar allegations were reported yesterday in The Times about a case in Surrey. There are fresh allegations just today that when Westminster City Council’s planning officers twice recommended refusal of the Secretary of State’s plans to refurbish his London home, Conservative councillors called it in and overruled their own officials for him, but, to my knowledge, nothing about that relationship was disclosed in any register of interests.

Westferry is not a one-off. It is part of a pattern of behaviour, and the questions do not stop with the Secretary of State. They reach right into No. 10 Downing Street to the Prime Minister. In his final days as Mayor of London, the Prime Minister pushed through an earlier version of the same development. He was photographed at numerous convivial meetings with Mr Desmond, but No. 10 has refused to answer perfectly legitimate questions about whether and how often the Prime Minister has met Mr Desmond since he took office and whether they discussed the scheme. We need to know.

Will the Secretary of State tell us whether any other Ministers or their officials contacted him about the scheme before he took his unlawful decision? Did he disclose those contacts to his officials as he is required to do? Honesty is the best disinfectant for the very bad smell that hangs around this decision. Today, the credibility of the planning system and of this Secretary of State hangs in the balance. We cannot allow the planning system to be auctioned off at Conservative party fundraising dinners. There cannot be one rule for the Conservatives and their billionaire donors, and another rule for everyone else. So I say to the Secretary of State: it is time to come clean. Publish the documents. Let us see what he was really up to and let us see if we are staring into a new era of Tory sleaze.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Before we continue this debate any further, let me say that hon. Members should be very careful about accusations made in this House. I am not suggesting that anything has been said that should not have been said—I would have stopped anyone saying anything that is not suitable for saying. I am just issuing a warning.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Stop shouting at the Minister. It is not how we do things here.

[Robert Jenrick]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

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[Sarah Jones]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Lady must sit down. She cannot be standing up in the Chamber. If the Secretary of State wants to give way, he will give way, and she must not heckle.

[Robert Jenrick]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I do not think they actually want to hear an explanation.

We only have to look to London, which faces some of the most acute housing pressures in the whole country, to see examples of what a lack of leadership and ambition means on the ground. Under the current Mayor of London, housing delivery has averaged just 37,000 a year, falling short of the existing London plan and well below the Mayor’s own assessment of housing need. The average price of a new build home in London has gone up by 12 times average earnings. The need for bold action was clear earlier this year, when I was left with no option but to directly intervene in the Mayor’s London plan. I do not apologise for doing that, for continuing to push for homes to be built in our capital city, as across the country, to meet our ambition as a Government to build 300,000 homes a year and to give young people, families and the most vulnerable people in our society the opportunity and security that previous generations enjoyed.

In that endeavour, it is right that we seek to make the most of existing sites, particularly in urban areas, with jobs, transport links and other amenities close by— brownfield sites such as the one we are discussing today. That is why we as a Government and I as Secretary of State have consistently taken pro-regeneration decisions, in order to turn those sites into homes and into employment opportunities. This development would have done that, but every time a do-nothing Labour council and a do-nothing Labour Mayor plays politics with homes and jobs it is ultimately people who miss out. They miss out on homes and they miss out on jobs. That matters, because as we come out of covid and we are trying to recover our economy, we should be thinking about the brickies and the plumbers, the van drivers, the labourers—the people whose jobs and livelihoods depend on these projects. We will get building. We will build ourselves out of this crisis and create the jobs that we need in this country.

I hope that the publication of these documents and my remarks today will go some way to putting an end to the innuendos and false accusations from the hon. Member for Croydon North. He might just address the big issues, upon which he has been conspicuously silent since taking office. His predecessor, the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), used to raise rough sleeping, how we were responding to covid, and pressures on local council finances. He used to be constructive. He also used to probe and hold the Government to account. I cannot say the same for the hon. Member for Croydon North. He lives on his Twitter account, and he lives for smears and innuendos, not substance. He might speak to substance, not just party politics.

[Robert Jenrick]

I will not; I am closing now.

This Government are determined to build the homes the country needs. We are determined to end rough sleeping, as the House will see today from the announcement of more than £100 million of funding to help local councils to provide better quality accommodation for the 15,000 rough sleepers that we have helped off the streets and protected from covid as a result of the pandemic. We will continue to help renters by reforming their rights and ensuring that they weather the economic storms to come as a result of the pandemic. We will promote beautiful, well-designed new communities, working with the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission to radically change the way in which we consider our planning system.

We will speed up and reform the planning system to get those homes built, to ensure that infrastructure is laid at pace and that developers, housing associations, councils and everyone who cares about the future of this country and the homes that people deserve to live in can move forward with confidence and certainty. And we will invest in more affordable homes through the largest affordable homes programme this country has seen in a decade, building hundreds of thousands of new homes of all types and tenures in all parts of the country, so that families in Tower Hamlets, in London and elsewhere in this country can live with dignity and security and pursue their dreams and the opportunity, which many of us in the House enjoy, to have a high-quality home of their own. That is what the British people expect, and that is what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and I intend to deliver.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Before I call the spokesman for the SNP, I should tell the House that we will have to have a time limit of four minutes on Back-Bench speeches, because, as is obvious in the Chamber, a great many people wish to speak and it might not be possible to fit in everyone who is on the speaking list. The time limit of course does not apply to Mr David Linden.

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[Mr Betts]

We talked about that yesterday. Yes, of course I said there was no evidence. I have not seen any evidence, and I repeated just now that I am not accusing anyone of wrongdoing, What I am saying is that perception and appearances in these matters are almost as important as the facts themselves.

Although the Secretary of State recognises that an informed and fair-minded person might come to the view that there was bias on his part in terms of the liability to the developer that was removed by his decision, did he at any point consider that an informed and fair-minded person might conclude that the events of the dinner could also lead to bias on his part? That seems crucial. If that is the case, when he reflects on the matter now, does he think that he might have done better had he decided not to take part in the decision-making process, once the developer had, quite wrongly—I repeat, the developer had, quite wrongly— tried to influence him at the dinner?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I am now delighted to call, to make his maiden speech, Mr Mark Eastwood.

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[Brendan Clarke-Smith]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The attitude towards developers in Tower Hamlets could be summed up well using the term from a local football club that “No one likes us, we don’t care”. Thankfully, this Government care. The Secretary of State says that we need to be building more homes and I agree. Yes, they must be the right sort of development in keeping with the area and of a reasonable size, but they need building and failure to do that is to fail all those people who need a home.

Today’s approach is scandalous. It is a smokescreen to deflect from Labour’s poor record and the public will not fall for it. This is a storm in a teacup. It is a matter of public record that Mr Desmond gave £100,000 to the Labour party in 2002 and, at the time, the Prime Minister said that there was no reason why Labour should not accept it. Mr Desmond has also had dinner with the Mayor of London and Members from the Opposition Benches.

The Secretary of State was absolutely correct in his assertion that, while fairness and due process were followed at all stages, it is important that there must be no perception of bias, and he was right to follow the ministerial code on this matter. This is a transparent and open Government who are not afraid to make decisions and to justify them. This development would provide 1,500 new homes and 282 affordable homes. It will also provide jobs at a time when our economy is looking to bounce back from the coronavirus.

This Government can be proud of their record on housing. Indeed, the Prime Minister built more affordable homes in two years as Mayor than the current Mayor managed in his whole first term. In Wales, just 12—yes, 12—council houses were built in the whole of 2019. That may be enough to house the entire Liberal Democrat group in this House, but it is woeful for the people of Wales. The hon. Member for Croydon North (Steve Reed) presided over the forced evictions of long-standing residents from housing co-operatives in Lambeth, but if we are not going to build any houses, where are these people going to live?

Last year, we built 241,000 homes, the highest level for 30 years. That is 1.5 million since 2010. The affordable homes programme has also delivered nearly half a million homes since 2010. I commend the Housing Minister for his recent work on this. This Government are really building for Britain and we stand by our record. If local authorities will not do their duty, then we will.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. As an hon. Member from the Opposition Benches has withdrawn from the debate, we will go straight to Simon Jupp.

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[Simon Jupp]

I am not going to give way.

Ministers involved in the planning process take advice from officials with full disclosure. The insistence from Opposition Members that a ministerial decision was taken after a circumstantial meeting is without basis and totally absurd. Above all, is not today’s debate a missed opportunity for the Opposition to discuss policy, not politics, and delivery in the housing system—something they failed to do time and time again? Should not the planning system be reformed to ensure that planned development for new homes, such as in Tower Hamlets, is encouraged rather than discouraged and not fudged around like it is by Opposition Members? Should we not modernise the planning system to make it easier for councils and developers to deliver more of the homes we need?

I am acutely aware that the Opposition have tried to hold this debate in a narrow political vacuum, but they would be wise to consider their own record when in power—although it was quite a while ago—and the real concerns of the country at large. The country expects us in this House to debate how to tackle the greatest economic and fiscal challenges of our lifetime, including how we are getting the economy going again, how we are safely relaxing restrictions and how we are protecting lives and livelihoods. Yet here the Opposition are trying to weaponise planning decisions to score petty political points—nul points.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I am not used to Members finishing early. I call Apsana Begum.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. After the next speaker, I will have to reduce the time limit to three minutes to try to allow as many people as possible to speak, but on four minutes, I call Nick Smith.

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[Olivia Blake]

I will not give way.

The research also found that 2.5 million people are in hidden households that they cannot afford to move out of; 1.7 million people are living in unsuitable accommodation; 1.4 million people live in poor-quality housing; and 400,000 people are homeless or at risk of homelessness. The Conservatives talk about the Labour party’s record, but we went on to fix poor-quality housing. Thousands of homes were upgraded under the Labour Government, and there was a low level of homelessness. We should be doing all we can to create better-quality, environmentally sustainable, affordable homes, given the dire situation.

It was more than reasonable for the planning inspector to say that 21% affordable housing in this scheme could be improved, as the Secretary of State agreed in his letter of approval. He admitted that the planning inspector was right:

“He agrees with the Inspector that, on the balance of the available evidence, it is likely that the scheme could provide more affordable housing and that 21% does not therefore represent the maximum reasonable amount of affordable housing within the terms of”

the London plan. The letter goes on to say that

“for the purpose of his assessment of the proposal…the Secretary of State proceeds on the basis that the maximum amount of affordable housing that could be reasonably delivered is uncertain, but may be up to 35%”.

Yet he still thought it was appropriate to approve the application. To make matters worse, he rushed it through 24 hours before the increase in the community infrastructure levy. The decision meant the council was losing £40 million towards affordable homes, at a time when local authorities up and down the country are already struggling to do this.

I want to mention briefly, if I may, Madam Deputy Speaker—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. No, the hon. Lady may not. She has exceeded her time, I am afraid.