Representation of the People Bill

Emily Thornberry Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 2nd March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed]

Yes, we have absolutely considered that and we will continue to keep under review the important matter that the hon. Gentleman raises.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the alarm that people feel about the idea of cryptocurrency getting into our democracy? Is there a ban on it in the Bill? If not, why not?

[Steve Reed]

As always, my right hon. Friend raises an important point. There are huge concerns about cryptocurrency, not least because we cannot track where the funding has come from. We have charged Sir Philip Rycroft with conducting a review into these matters. His recommendations will be incorporated into the Bill as it progresses through the House, so that we can tackle the matter properly.

The reason the Bill extends the vote to younger people, aged 16 and 17 years old, is simple: it is because young people are our nation’s future. The voting age has stood at 18 since it was lowered from 21 by the Representation of the People Act 1969. More recently, the Welsh Government lowered the voting age to 16 for Senedd elections in 2020 and for local elections in Wales in 2021. The Scottish Government lowered the voting age to 16 for the Scottish independence referendum in 2014, and subsequently for all devolved elections in Scotland. The change in the Bill will bring consistency to the voting age for all statutory elections across the United Kingdom.

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[Sir James Cleverly]

I will move on in a moment, but my hon. Friend makes an important point. If the Government’s contention is that auto-enrolment increases turnout, then turnout should be increased universally, or they risk being perceived as putting their thumb on the scales.

[Emily Thornberry]

I take objection to what the right hon. Gentleman is saying, because surely if someone is a citizen, they should be able to vote. It should be as easy as possible—as easy as breathing—to vote, because a citizen has a right to vote. Every attempt should be made to make voting easier, not more difficult. If automatic enrolment helps people to vote, that is what we should do. Of course we need to be careful about it, though, and one of the reasons why this is a rolling programme, rather than putting it in place everywhere on the same day, is presumably to ensure that it is done properly. In the end, we should all want the same thing; British citizens should be able to vote in British elections, and nothing should get in their way.

[Sir James Cleverly]

It is easy to vote. Everyone has the right to vote. The right hon. Lady says that voting should be as easy as breathing; she is advocating for the removal of all electoral limitations and restrictions, whether that is the need to show ID, to provide proof of address, or to register. [Interruption.] There you go; the mask has slipped. If we take democracy seriously, we should want everyone who has the right to vote to be able to vote, but nobody who does not have the right to vote to be able to vote. Otherwise, the democratic process is meaningless. Safeguards must be robust, verification must be clear, and pilots should be transparent. Integrity is strengthened by accuracy, not automation for its own sake.

As for voter ID, let us look at the facts. At the last general election the vast majority of those who sought to vote were able to do so successfully and immediately, and public confidence in polling integrity has increased, so why should we weaken the system by allowing bank cards without photographs to be used as ID? A name printed on a card is not an identity check, and I am not hearing that the Secretary of State is advocating the checking of PINs at the polling station. The risks are obvious, and, indeed, the Electoral Commission itself has raised concerns about the security and practicality of expanding the lists of acceptable IDs.

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[Sir Gavin Williamson]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valuable point; this concern could easily be addressed.

[Emily Thornberry]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Gavin Williamson]

I was hoping for the Secretary of State or his No. 2 on the Front Bench, but I will happily give way.

[Emily Thornberry]

Let me do the best I can. Is it seriously the right hon. Gentleman’s argument that a Labour Secretary of State might introduce auto-enrolment in areas where that will help Labour? Is he therefore saying that the more people who vote, the more Labour is helped? Is that his central argument?

[Sir Gavin Williamson]

No. It is important that the Bill does not define which areas will have auto-enrolment. In theory, constituencies or areas that have a greater propensity to vote Labour—or used to—could be prioritised. We would like clarity from the Secretary of State on this point, and I am happy to give way to him, so that he can provide it. In fairness, if every area of the country were to have auto-enrolment, that would reduce or eliminate the risk, but this is a concern. I hope that during the passage of the Bill, the Government will address that with absolute clarity.

The issue is not just the legislation; it is the perception of where the Government are going. The Secretary of State got himself into some difficulty when the Government were seen to be trying to take away the right of people to vote in local council elections. I am sure that he has a good heart and was acting with the best of intentions, but the perception was different.

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[Florence Eshalomi]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that important point. Many people think that there are too many barriers for them to join the electoral register, when we all know that it takes a matter of minutes. I always say that if the council can send you your council tax bill before you have even finished unpacking, why can they not register you to vote in time?

A healthy and accessible democracy is not just about representation; it is about holding decision makers accountable when they do not deliver on their promises. That is why it is really important that we get this Bill right. We all know that trust in politics is at an all-time low, so at the heart of this must be an acknowledgment that voting is a right, not a privilege. When barriers exist that make it harder for people to vote, we must remove them, and the last Government’s introduction of the voter ID system did just that—it disenfranchised legitimate voters from making their voices heard. We have all knocked on the doors of many people on polling day who did not have the opportunity to register for voter ID before polling day. I have spoken to young people who did not understand why their elderly relative could use their bus pass to vote, but they could not use their Zip card—make it make sense! It is right that we take steps to end personation, but they must be proportionate to the tragedy of legitimate voters being denied their votes, so I wholly support the Government’s measures to widen the scope of voter ID to include digital ID and more forms of ID. I would welcome the Minister outlining some of those changes, and would be grateful to know whether they will include young persons’ ID.

Most importantly, I am happy to see votes for 16-year-olds—I am a long-time, passionate advocate for votes at 16. Conservative Members may be aware that the former chair of the votes at 16 APPG was a former Father of the House. One of the longest-serving and oldest Members of this House was a keen and passionate advocate for votes at 16, so there are some Conservatives who support this measure. It is really important that we consider how to enfranchise young people. Think about all the 16-year-olds in 2010 who saw the coalition Government triple the cost of their tuition fees overnight, who could not vote when they turned 18 in 2012. We must think about how to make sure people who are planning for their future have a keen interest in, and are able to exercise, their right to vote.

[Emily Thornberry]

One thing about giving votes to youngsters at 16 is that there will be an election in their last two years at school, and politicians will be beating their way to the doors of these schools to go in and speak. Those young people will have an opportunity to learn about what they are voting for and how the structures work in a way that, frankly, their elders often do not know.

[Florence Eshalomi]

My right hon. Friend makes a valid and important point. We know that people who start voting at a young age will continue voting through the rest of their life. It is soul-destroying when we knock on the door of someone in their late 50s or 60s, and they say that they have never voted and do not think about voting. If we enfranchise these young people, the figures show that they will continue to vote throughout their adult life. It is important that we enfranchise more people and make sure that there are no barriers.

This legislation is not just about enfranchising people, but about ensuring fair representation. The Electoral Commission shows that as many as 8 million people are not correctly registered to vote, and that has a big impact on young people, people living in private rented accommodation, disabled people and recent home movers. It is important that we look at this issue. I welcome the Government’s proposals on automatic voter and direct voter registration. That is the right way to do it, and it will be important for the Government to outline how they will pilot the scheme. Can the Minister give assurances about when the pilots will happen and if preparation is happening? It is important that any successful pilot is implemented before the general election.

Can the Minister clarify how voter registration will impact different franchises for local and parliamentary elections? For example, will the system deal with qualifying EU nationals? We know that the scheme depends on when someone arrived and settled in the UK, or if someone is from one of the five countries with reciprocal voting rights agreements with the UK. Can the Minister outline how automatic voter registration will capture that?

Time is limited, but I welcome the fact that the Government have finally listened to my calls and those of many other Members in repealing the provision on the Electoral Commission strategy and policy statement. In 2000 the previous Labour Government set up the Electoral Commission as a guardian of our democracy, independent not just of that Government but of all future Governments. That independence is fundamental to restoring and keeping trust in our democracy, and it is right that we have no political interference in—

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[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

I have learned a great deal this evening, not least that, when we are debating legislation, Members should put in their name earlier than I clearly did.

I have the great honour of representing the people of Finsbury, and there is a great line of fantastic Members of Parliament before me, such as Chris Smith. Before that, there was Thomas Slingsby Duncombe, who in 1842 delivered to Parliament the Chartist petition with 3.3 million signatories, or one third of the adult population. We had huge demonstrations in Spa fields and Copenhagen fields to try to get the vote—unfortunately, just for men—but, nevertheless, that is how seriously we take democracy in Islington South and Finsbury.

However, 184 years later, I worry that I may be the MP who oversees the death of our democracy, and the reason I am so concerned—profoundly so—is foreign interference in our democracies. The Foreign Affairs Committee started looking at other countries—we thought this was just about other countries—and we visited many other places. I must tell hon. Members that the things we saw in Romania and Moldova would make their hair stand on end. However, this is not just in countries a long way away on the border with Russia, but in many others. I have spoken to people in Germany and France, and it is quite clear that there is an attempt to influence our democracies, and we are complacent—far too complacent.

We are very worried about that in the Foreign Affairs Committee, so we have taken the unusual step of asking domestic Ministers what they are doing about it. We are seeing patterns of behaviour and we are concerned that it is now happening in this country. It could blow up very quickly, not least in the next elections in May. The last thing we want is for those influencers to be there and then for us to somehow or other try to persuade the public, “Actually, you were unduly influenced.” Nobody will want to admit it once it has happened. We need to ensure we protect ourselves.

[Tom Rutland (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Lab)]

Many of my constituents have been in touch with me in recent months concerned about the impact of foreign money and foreign influence on our elections, particularly after the recent conviction of the former leader of Reform UK Wales for taking Russian bribes. I am sure those concerns will be shared by my right hon. Friend’s constituents. Will she join me in welcoming the measures in the Bill that will strengthen the rules on political donations, in particular the requirement that donations from companies must come from money made in the UK, rather than abroad?

[Emily Thornberry]

Well, the penny does seem have dropped—or the crypto-coin has dropped—but the Bill is not sufficient. That is why the Rycroft review is really important. It will come out at the end of the month and I ask the Minister to undertake to publish it when it is produced, because we are on a very tight timetable. The programme motion suggests that the Bill will leave the elected House on 23 April, so if there are changes to be made, they will be made by the unelected House of Lords, which is unfortunate. I ask business managers to consider that.

Currently, there are seven Departments dealing with disinformation. The test I have is the 1,300 bots from a Scottish background—they seem very interested in Scottish nationalism in Iran. I have been asking various Ministers to deal with them. Who is taking them down? Who is responsible for taking them down? Of the seven different Departments, who is doing that? Those bots are still there—although they may now have gone because of the recent bombing. Nevertheless, it is quite clear that that is an attempt at foreign influence in our democracy and I am very concerned about it. I asked the Minister of State at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office about it. He said he would look into it. As a result, I got three different letters from three different Departments all telling me three different things. We must consider this matter and ensure we tackle it properly. The Foreign Affairs Committee is producing an excellent report this month. I urge Ministers to read it, because it will contain recommendations which, unfortunately, I cannot go into today.

Finally, why are we allowing cryptocurrency into our democracy? Who wants to use cryptocurrency? Why can we not just use good old-fashioned cash, cheques and bank transfers like anybody else? Why do they need cryptocurrency? Because they want to cover up. It is the Russian currency of choice when it wants to bribe people. We know that from other countries and we know the way in which it is used. Just say no.

House Building: London

Emily Thornberry Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I salute my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) for initiating the debate.

The debate is timely given the decision last week, by the Government and City Hall, to lower targets for affordable housing in developments, in exchange for the granting of supposedly faster planning permission. That is a real concern. The briefing that we have received from Crisis demonstrates that more than 13,231 people were rough sleeping in London during the last year—a record high and a 10% increase on the previous year. Some 70,000 households, including 90,000 children, are in temporary accommodation. Not only is that bad for the families, but it is costing Londoners and the taxpayer something like £5 million a day in London. In particular, money is being spent on bed and breakfast accommodation, which is not only unsuitable for families but expensive for London authorities to bear. There are 336,366 households on social housing waiting lists in London. The crunch is whether this decision is actually going to deliver any improvement in social housing.

Before anyone starts talking about the previous Government or the former Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, I remind hon. Members, particularly newly elected Labour Members, that I tried to carry through a Bill on behalf of Boris Johnson to increase house building in London. We were blocked by the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), the hon. Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter), who is no longer in his place, and the hon. Member for Islington—I am not sure which.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

Me?

[Bob Blackman]

No, the other one: the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). That meant that whole sites in London were not developed to provide housing when they should have been.

Clearly we have a serious problem here. In my constituency, there is a planning application that has been outstanding, after having been reviewed at various times, for nearly 10 years. It would provide housing units that we desperately need, but the housing association refuses to develop it. It is now trying to sell the site again to further developers.

Our other problem in London is where developments have taken place. There have been developments such as Battersea power station, around Wembley stadium and other areas where housing has gone up, but that housing has not been sold to local people; it is been sold to developers or owners abroad, then rented out at exorbitant cost to local London people, who then have to apply for housing benefit and depend on welfare payments rather than having a home of their own. We have to conquer this.

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[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) on getting this slot. As he can see, the subject is close to the hearts of so many of us; more importantly, it is close to the hearts of our constituents.

In Islington, those who want affordable housing have to have social housing. Nothing else works. In Islington, we therefore need to have a policy to maximise social housing. People can rent privately, but the only way they can afford to rent privately is by renting out one room each: that means having a single person sleeping in the sitting room, and other single people sleeping in the bedrooms. We have lots of large, dark, sad tower blocks that were built under the Liberal Democrats, which have been bought for investment purposes and are not used. Their lights are off at night, nobody is on the voter register —they are just there, and they laugh at the 17,000 people on the waiting list in Islington who desperately need social housing. Those are Islington people who want to live in Islington, and there is no space for them.

Frankly, politics in Islington begins and ends with housing. We have some very rich people, some lucky people and some very poor people in Islington, but moving to Islington is impossible for an ordinary person. We have a vibrant community. We are a tiny community—Islington is one of the tiniest boroughs in Britain. Let me give hon. Members some stats about it: Bexley borough is four times bigger and Bromley borough is ten times bigger than Islington. The Minister is likely to say that 20% of something is better than 35% of nothing. I get that, but I do not think that one size fits all, particularly in little brave Islington.

Since the current Chief Secretary to the Treasury was in charge of housing in Islington, we have had a policy that 50% of all new developments need to be affordable. We say to the developer, “Fine. The land is expensive. You’re going to make a killing on the flats that you build. But half of them have to be for local people, which means that they have to be affordable, which means they have to be social, because nothing else is affordable in Islington. We will let you have half, but half of it has to be for us, and that is how it is.”

We have been doing that, and it has not meant that we have got nothing. Since 2020, seven schemes have gone through in Islington, which has resulted in nearly 1,000 affordable homes. That may not seem like a lot, but it is in somewhere as cramped as Islington where the opportunities are as few as we get. I have the least amount of green space of any MP in the whole of Britain. I have 120,000 people crammed into the seventh smallest constituency in the country. We have 15,000 people per kilometre. Our opportunities for development are limited.

I appreciate that it has recently become more difficult for local authorities to build by themselves, but until recently the joke was that if someone left their garage in the morning to drive to work, by the time they came back the local authority would have built a flat there. It is a political and social imperative to build as much housing for our people as we possibly can, and that is what we want to do. Unlike the Bromleys and the other boroughs, we have only little infill sites. We do not have big developments. Please do not give everybody instructions to do exactly the same thing because that is not going to work.

I ask that we look at what can be achieved and allow Islington to continue to insist on 50% so that when we do get our tiny little sites available for development, we can say to a developer, “You are very welcome. Welcome to Islington. We are headbangers. We have 17,000 people on the waiting list. You have to build half of it as affordable housing. You know that because we have been saying it for 15 years and we will continue to do so.” We would rather the Government did not undermine that so that we can continue to do it.

It is more difficult to get those developments, and it may be that those sites will take a bit longer to be developed. However, we would rather such tiny sites as we have be developed for social housing and local people and take a bit longer to develop than yet another great big tower block that is empty, dark and owned by people in China who have decided to build to buy a flat in Islington instead of a gold bar. That is the reality of housing in Islington.

I know that the Minister knows what I am talking about. I know that he is very thoughtful and an absolute expert in housing and wants to do exactly what we want. We know that the housing crisis can be solved only by building more housing. Absolutely—he has my full support on that. But we need to have housing that local people can live in. The reality of the economy in central and inner London is that we must have affordable housing. Otherwise people will continue to come.

Whenever I speak about housing in Islington, I try not to cherry-pick; I just talk about the last time someone spoke to me about housing. Someone spoke to me about housing on Saturday. I knocked on their door and there was a terrible noise. There was a child in the corridor screaming and screaming. Mum had her headphones on because the child is clearly autistic. She came to the door and said, “Emily, I’ve been to see you so many times and you just cannot get me rehoused, can you? There’s five of us in this one-bedroom flat.” That is the reality. That is why we have to build more social housing in Islington. That is how people live, and it is wrong. Our absolute priority must be to build more homes that families like that can live in.

[David Mundell (in the Chair)]

I call Peter Fortune, who I am sure will stick to the five-minute limit.

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[Danny Beales (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I thank the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) for securing this timely debate about Government support for house building in London.

House building is vital for growth, jobs and many businesses in our communities, big and small. However, it is much more than that, and we have heard from other hon. Members the testimony of constituents struggling with a broken housing system. When one in 50 Londoners is now in temporary accommodation, increasing to one in 21 children, that is a national scandal and requires urgent, emergency action.

I grew up in temporary accommodation—in bed and breakfasts and hotels—and know what that means. It is not just a statistic; it is not just a temporary house. It is a completely different life. The impacts for many can be quite scarring on their future. I welcome the Government’s sense of urgency in tackling this after 14 years of failure in the housing system.

[Emily Thornberry]

I did not know that about my hon. Friend, and I find it very interesting. Many of us who speak with passion about social housing do so because we grew up in social housing. I was saved because my family were made homeless and we were given a house by the council. My worry is that if a family made homeless come to see me now, their chance of getting a house from the council is vanishingly small.

[Danny Beales]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that contribution. It is true that many of my constituents tell me the story of turning up at the civic centre with a plastic bag of their belongings to be told there are no homes in Hillingdon. The best they can expect is temporary accommodation, often in communities far away, with no chance of returning.

The implications are significant: missed school opportunities, not being able to get to health appointments, and not keeping a job. Thousands of families are now being affected. There is also a financial impact on the local authorities in our constituencies: £5 million a day spent on temporary accommodation. The London boroughs’ homelessness budget was overspent by £330 million last year—double the previous year.

Let us be honest: the housing system in London isn’t working for anyone, whether a mortgage payer or a leaseholder. We have all heard the horror stories of increased mortgage payments since the Liz Truss mini-Budget, increased service charges and woes, first-time buyers locked out of the housing market, and private renters struggling with exponential rent increases.

I see social cohesion issues increasingly come to the fore in my borough. At the core, people feel that housing is increasingly inaccessible in the communities where they have grown up. That is not because anyone else is getting a council home, because they are not; it is because of a broken housing system that has not been fixed for decades. At the same time as increasing need, the rate of build-out with planning permissions has dropped to 10%. Thousands of homes are stalled; there were only 80 housing starts in Hillingdon in 2024-25. Whether it is the St Andrew’s site in Uxbridge, a concrete shell of a building laid derelict for two years, or the Morrison’s site in Yiewsley, also left derelict for years, with the council not determining the application, there is a need for urgency and action.

To move forward, investment is vital. We often talk about how expensive it is to act on housing. The truth is that we have spent a lot on housing but spent it in the wrong place. We have subsidised private landlords to the tune of many billions of pounds through housing benefit payments for years. It is right that the Government are shifting investment into the delivery of new homes. The record £39 billion investment, including £11 billion for London, is long overdue. When colleagues and I were building council homes, we were desperate to see such investment from the previous Government. Multi-year funding, stability and certainty on rent levels are also important steps forward.

I disagree that the mayor’s having powers on planning, and intervening in the local decision-making system, is wrong and to the detriment of house building. My borough —Tory-run Hillingdon—has one of the lowest levels of approval for housing delivery in the past 10 years: almost 50%, with one in two applications rejected. No wonder we have such a housing crisis in Hillingdon, when the local authority has not only failed to deliver itself but failed to support the private rented sector to deliver, too.

I welcome the Government’s commitment to reform the Building Safety Regulator, which was touched on quickly by Opposition Members. The introduction of the Building Safety Regulator and regime, although good in spirit, has been a disaster in practice. It has overwhelmingly clogged up the system of housing delivery. We had a debate here on that a couple of weeks ago, and I welcome the Government’s acceleration of reforms in that space.

To sum up, I fully support the Government going further and faster in their approach to delivering house building and unblocking the planning system. We need an interventionist approach from the Department where schemes—particularly large ones—are blocked and clogged up in the planning system. I would support the Department’s calling them in; referring them to the mayor or the Department; taking action to de-risk brownfield sites; and supporting developers to unlock blocked or half-delivered schemes. Londoners desperately need more genuinely affordable homes to buy or rent. I support the bold measures that the Minister and the Government have already taken. They have my full support in going further and faster.

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[Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell, and to take part in this debate about Government support for house building in London. As is the case for all hon. Members here today, this issue is of great importance to my constituents and to me, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) for securing this important debate. I also thank all hon. Members for their contributions.

London is Europe’s wealthiest city, one of the world’s most desirable destinations and the capital of our great country. I am deeply proud to have represented part of it for the past 28 years, having previously served for 23 years as a local councillor in a London borough—a period that overlapped with my 13 years as a London Assembly member—and been the Member of Parliament for the wonderful people of Orpington since 2019.

What we have seen in recent years in Greater London is a constantly worsening housing shortage, and a mayor seemingly completely incapable of tackling a problem that is spiralling out of control. Sir Sadiq Khan has been mayor for nearly 10 years, and continues to oversee one of the greatest housing failures this country has ever seen. I can remember sitting in the chamber at City Hall in his first year as mayor when he boasted about having negotiated the highest housing funding settlement in the history of the mayoralty. He was awarded £4.82 billion to deliver 116,000 affordable homes between 2016 and 2021, and a further £4 billion to deliver 35,000 affordable homes between 2021 and 2026. That is a total of £8.82 billion to deliver 151,000 homes in a decade between 2016 and 2026. Naturally, he gave no credit at all to the Conservative Government who gave him that money, but let us gloss over that.

Instead, let us focus on Sadiq Khan’s record. To date, 77,622 affordable homes have been completed from the two programmes—barely half of what was envisaged, with only six months to go. Including those programmes and other house building, in his almost decade-long tenure at City Hall, he has averaged 8,240 affordable homes per year. That compares with an average of 11,750 per year between 2008 and 2016 under his predecessor Boris Johnson. That is a 30% decrease under Sadiq Khan, despite what he boasted at the outset was the highest housing funding settlement in history.

The fact is that development has become so costly and over-regulated on Sadiq Khan’s watch that, incredibly, as my hon. Friends the Members for Old Bexley and Sidcup and for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune) pointed out, 80% of housing developments finished in London last year received planning permission under the London plan set out by Boris Johnson before he left office as Mayor of London in 2016, rather than under Sadiq Khan’s London plan.

[Emily Thornberry]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Gareth Bacon]

I am afraid I cannot, because we are under time pressure.

A report recently released by the Centre for Policy Studies described London as

“The City That Doesn’t Build”.

It is impossible not to agree with that when the mayor’s record is put under scrutiny. Under Sadiq Khan, housing starts have collapsed in London, with the number of private homes under construction set to slump to only 15,000 in 2027—a mere a quarter of what should be expected.

Analysis from the Centre for Policy Studies has shown that, over the last financial year, only 4,170 homes have been started in London, amounting to less than 5% of London’s 88,000 home target. In the first half of this year, that has hardly been improved on, with just 2,158 private housing starts, again versus a target of 88,000 per year. Those totals are disastrous. The mayor, the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister should be reversing those figures, not indulging or excusing them.

The picture becomes even worse when we look at affordable housing. Affordable homes had just 347 starts between April and June, which is around 15% of the total starts for 2023-24, and just 9% of the total starts in 2024-25. Prior to the general election last year, the Mayor of London was telling anyone who would listen that he needed £4.9 billion per year for the next 10 years to build affordable homes. The Government elected last July did not accede to his request. Given his appalling record over the past decade, I cannot say I entirely blame them for not trusting his ability to deliver.

At the last spending review in June, as has been mentioned, £11.7 billion was awarded for the next affordable housing programme, which will run from 2026 to 2036. At the last round of Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government questions, when I asked the Secretary of State what he was doing to hold the Mayor of London to account for his lamentable record of failure, he alluded to a pending announcement. As the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor) noted, a written ministerial statement was snuck out without fanfare a couple of weeks ago that announced temporary reforms to London house building to try to cover the mayor’s decade of failure.

Some of those proposals are welcome, including the sensible removal of elements that can constrain density, such as dual aspect and units around the core of a building, as well as some of the changes to the insistence on arbitrary and unviable affordable housing targets. However, it is deeply concerning that the Government are proposing to reward the mayor’s decade of failure by giving him more power to intervene on democratically elected local councils and take planning powers away from them.

Most worryingly, that gives the mayor considerable additional powers to concrete over the green belt. There is nothing in the statement about facilitating brownfield development, despite the CPRE report published last month that shows that Greater London has the capacity to deliver in excess of 462,000 new dwellings on brownfield land. The Minister is a very decent man; he is respected across the House, including by me. When we hear him speak in a few moments, I am sure he will give us invaluable insight into how the Government justify these shocking figures. However, to me, they are simply not doing enough to build or to hold the mayor to account for his failures.

The Home Builders Federation has written to the independent Office for Budget Responsibility to say that, without changes to boost affordability for first-time buyers and tax cuts, the Government will miss their national housing target. Another study by the planning and environmental consultancy Lanpro suggested that, at the present of rate of building, the Government would fall 860,000 homes short of their national target—that amounts to missing the target by 57%. Together, the Mayor of London and, more recently, the Government have shown that they are anti-business and anti-growth, with spending and borrowing rising, and with inflation at almost twice the target level, as well as anaemic growth, over-regulation and rising taxation curbing any chance of a housing recovery at every turn.

As I have outlined, this is being felt most in our capital city. I am deeply proud to be a Greater London MP, to have been the London Assembly member for Bexley and Bromley, to have been the Conservative leader at City Hall, to have been a London borough councillor, and to live and work in this great city. That is why I care so much about holding this Government—and specifically their shambolic colleague, the Mayor of London—to account for their abject failures to get house building in London to flourish. Action is sorely needed and desperately wanted. The Government need to do a lot more, and they need to do it now.

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[Matthew Pennycook]

As I have said, there will be consultation on the specifics of many parts of this package, but I will address his particular point about the new time-limited planning route. This route, which will be open for two years, will allow schemes on private land in London to proceed without a viability assessment, provided that they deliver at least 20% affordable housing—importantly, with a minimum of 60% social rent. To incentivise schemes to come forward on this basis, grant funding will be made available for homes above the first 10%, which will remain nil grant.

Crucially, a gainshare mechanism on schemes or phases of schemes not commenced by 31 March 2030 will ensure that, if market conditions improve, communities benefit too. In our view, that is a pragmatic, temporary measure to unlock delivery now, while maintaining our commitment to affordable housing in the long term. It will sit alongside the GLA’s existing fast-track route, which retains its 35% affordable housing threshold.

[Emily Thornberry]

Will the Minister give way?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I will give way in one second, because I am addressing my right hon. Friend’s point. She got to the nub of the issue, and she said that she recognises that 20% of something is better than 35% of nothing. There is obviously a judgment to be made about what the appropriate package is. We think we have come upon the right package, but it is important to say—again, I do not single her out in saying this—that Islington borough started 20 homes in 2024-25. It is not okay to say that we can wait for these schemes to come forward in the years to come and we can go slow. Such is the crisis that we do need to respond, and the guardrails we have put in place around this package will deliver, get those homes started and make sure that we see more social and affordable homes come forward.

[Emily Thornberry]

The Minister may know about the Barnsbury estate, which was due to be rebuilt but the building had to be stopped because suddenly we had to build a second staircase. If that had not happened, there would be many more starts in Islington. The biggest site coming is Moorfields, and our concern is that, if only a tiny proportion of that is social housing and the CIL money is cut, it will be a huge opportunity lost to Islington—the best opportunity that we have had for housing local people.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I recognise my right hon. Friend’s point. I cannot comment on specific applications, but it is important that I emphasise that applicants will be expected in the first instance to seek grant to maintain or increase the level of affordable housing in existing section 106 agreements. Only where that has been fully explored with the GLA, and has been demonstrated not to be possible, can schemes be renegotiated via a deed of variation with the aim of delivering at least the relevant level of affordable housing established in the new planning route, and on the same terms.

We are providing the mayor with new planning powers that expand his ability to intervene directly in applications of potential strategic importance in order to support housing delivery and maximise densities. Those powers are set out the policy statement that we published on 23 October. In response to the concerns raised around those specific powers, I think Londoners would expect, with the scale and severity of the housing crisis we have in our capital, the mayor to do everything he possibly can to ensure homes are not being ruled out without good reason on sites, and to ensure that sites are coming forward with appropriate density.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr French]

This has been a healthy cross-party debate, even if we have disagreed on some of the diagnosis. I thank the Minister for his response. I hope he will take away some of the points that have been raised on a constructive basis. I think we all agree that we have to get London building on brownfield again. People have a right to somewhere they can call home. I thank hon. Members for their contributions.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered Government support for housebuilding in London.

[Emily Thornberry]

On a point of order, Mr Mundell. I should have drawn the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I rent out my late mother’s flat. We bought it for her so that she could release our council house back to the council.

[David Mundell (in the Chair)]

Duly noted.

Building Safety and Resilience

Emily Thornberry Excerpts

Wednesday 11th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

I endorse what the Minister says about our hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts). I, too, had the great honour of serving on his Committee many years ago, and at that time the focus was very much on housing.

In relation to building safety in Islington, where we all live on top of each other in flats, in 2021 there were 31 dangerous blocks of flats, which was terrifying for my constituents, many of whom were in fact private tenants, not social housing tenants. We did an audit in my office, and have been pushing. We now have only four blocks left, but it ought to be put on the record how terrifying it was over the years for those local residents, who had to pay for fire watches, could not sell their flats, and did not know what was going to happen. I have not been known for praising the Department over the years, but we are very grateful in Islington South for the support that we have been given by the Department until now.

[Alex Norris]

The right hon. Lady has put that on the record. It speaks to my earlier point about the importance of political will in this space. If we just wait for something to happen, we are not going to see it. There needs to be political grip at the national and local level, and we will certainly play our role in that. On her point about what her constituents lived with, she would have been sitting on the Opposition Front Bench seven years ago—I was behind her—when everybody said, “Never again. What action can we take? No job is too big or small.” But that is not what happened. It was a huge broken promise to the British people—her constituents and beyond.