Housing

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pickles]

Perhaps we could nationalise them—[Interruption.] I thought that would get the hon. Member for Blyth Valley (Mr Campbell) excited. Perhaps we should confiscate the land. Perhaps we should use a North Korean solution and start arresting and executing them for failing to do that—[Interruption.] I am afraid that it is that rather daft rhetoric that will dry up all housing supply.

Labour’s policy of new development taxes and state confiscation of land would have the reverse effect of that desired, discouraging developers from complex land assembly projects. House builders will just let their planning permissions lapse or be more cautious about applying for permission in the first place. It is a recipe for fewer homes and a slower planning system.

Labour’s third policy is the right to grow, another Labour land grab to allow Labour councils to dump urban sprawl on their rural neighbours and rip up green belt protection. Labour cites the likes of Stevenage—we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland)—Oxford and York. In every case, the green belt is providing a green lung for those towns and cities and the Opposition want Labour councils with no democratic mandate to rip it up.

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way, not least because he missed Luton off his list of places that Labour has suggested might need a right to grow. In the period running through to 2030, Luton borough requires about 30,000 new homes to keep up with population demand but can only build about 6,000 within the borough. What should Luton do?

[Mr Pickles]

They should begin to talk to their neighbouring authorities, and stop trying to bully North Hertfordshire council—I have had an opportunity to meet that council—and using terror tactics and being extremely unpleasant. It is the return of Stalinist top-down planning, and the biggest threat to the green belt that the country faces.

Labour’s policies are like buses: you wait for years, then three come along at once. It has even asked Sir Michael Lyons to come up with a couple more. Under the Labour Government, Sir Michael was paid £400,000 for his last review of Department for Communities and Local Government policy, so I hope that the Labour party is getting him at a cheaper rate. For all Labour’s lame attempts at policy making, we can see what Labour would be like in reality, as my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) suggested. In Wales, where housing is devolved, Labour runs the Administration, and its record on housing there is a disaster. According to the National House-Building Council, while new home registrations are up in England, they have fallen successively in Wales. Labour has hit the housing market with extra red tape, adding £13,000 to the cost of a new home with measures ranging from building regulations, to fire sprinklers and waste site management plans. House builders Redrow say that owing to the burden of regulation:

“Wales is the most difficult area in the UK in which to operate”.

Persimmon Homes has pulled out of development in south Wales and the construction firm Watkin Jones has shifted its development to England rather than Wales.

Labour failed to support the housing market, and has belatedly introduced a help to buy equity loan scheme. Watkin Jones said that

“it is difficult to comprehend why the Welsh Assembly Government are failing to recognise the importance of following the UK Government’s lead in getting much needed homes built.”

The Welsh Government, true to Labour form, have slashed right to buy. In microcosm, this is the real face of Labour: high tax, high regulation, the enemy of the free market, and the enemy of aspiration.

I have outlined how the coalition Government’s long-term economic plan is turning the housing market around, but there is more to do to build more homes to meet demand and deal with demographic change. The next spending round will see a further £23 billion of public and private investment in affordable housing. We are looking at further reforms to the housing revenue account to help councils build more homes. Our £1 billion build to rent fund is bringing institutional investment into the private rented sector—something that no Government have achieved before. Further change of use reforms will make it easier for redundant and under-used buildings to be converted to housing. We will deliver fairness in social housing by ending taxpayer subsidies to high-income social tenants—people like Bob Crow.

Our economic plan is for the long term. Contrary to the doom and gloom of the Labour party, which wants to talk our nation down, our economy is on the mend, thanks to the hard work of the British people, and thanks to tough decisions to tackle the deficit left by Labour and to clean up their mess. Our policy is firing up the kilns, bringing the brickies on site, and getting Britain building again. I urge right hon. and hon. Members to reject the Labour motion, and I commend the Government’s housing record to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Like me, many Members, particularly those on the Labour Benches but perhaps others as well, will have had the experience of knocking on doors in our constituencies, peeking behind the door and seeing people living in terrible squalor in poor private sector rental accommodation in the hands of their landlords. When we talk about housing, we are not just talking about building new family homes, important though that is; it is also incredibly important to realise that a lack of housing supply hits the most vulnerable the most.

I want to say a few words about the place where I live, was born, grew up, went to school, and now represent—Luton—and why I believe that it is time for radical action. In Luton, through to 2030, we will require some 23,500 to 33,500 new dwellings. That is an enormous number. It points to the fact that Luton is a town with a young population and large families and has a large population that has increased through the migration of successive generations. It has always had to look just beyond its boundaries in order to expand. That process has ground to a halt, and we are facing serious challenges.

There is limited capacity regarding developable land in Luton. We reckon we could squeeze in about 6,000 homes in the next 15 to 20 years, but we have to balance that against other competing needs. What is the point of a house without a job to go with it? How do we provide good-quality green space? We have a massive problem with primary school allocation that will become a massive problem with secondary school allocation. We need to build new schools, let alone new houses. This is where the challenge arises, and I can appreciate it because I hear about it in many of the places that I visit. I am a Labour activist, and I sometimes share the frustration about our record in government in delivering more homes. However, people forget that, from 1997 to 2010 across the six counties in the east of England, we built the equivalent of a seventh county in terms of housing, and that was still not enough to keep up with the demand that existed.

It is important that we have new towns, garden cities, and so on, but, particularly in the south-east of England, we need to grapple with the problem whereby towns feel that they are unable to expand when we know that there is a great social need for them to do so. That is why I welcome the proposals made by Labour Front Benchers on the right to grow, which would give local authorities powers that they otherwise would not have. It is very different from a top-down solution such as the former regional spatial strategies that set a specific target. We need a new arbitration body to enable discussions between local authorities to take place, but also, crucially, to reach a conclusion whereby we agree together what we need to build and how we are going to build it.

[Alex Cunningham]

My hon. Friend will have heard the Secretary of State’s rather tongue-in-cheek proposal to nationalise brownfield sites, which really do need development. At the same time, his Department is approving development on greenfield sites in the neighbouring constituency to mine. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should incentivise brownfield site development in order to get building done there instead?

[Gavin Shuker]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The pendulum has swung away from brownfield development as a result of this Government’s changes. That is why we should bring in a right to grow in conjunction with the pendulum swinging back towards using brownfield first. These things are not rocket science, but there is political ideology behind them. That is why the Secretary of State’s dismissal of our proposals was so short-sighted. We all recognise that we need more housing and further housing growth. That requires a mechanism that balances the requirements of local authorities to deliver for the people in their borough boundaries with the need to be good neighbours as well. Ministers are scaremongering about greenfield sites being used, but that would take place within the context of the existing national planning framework.

If we are to find a workable solution to many of the problems we face in allowing towns to expand, we will need to have an overall mechanism, but this Government have put in place a series of different mechanisms. They try one, try the other, try the next, change the rules, issue a press release and make an announcement, but we have not seen the delivery, and that is because it is hard to do this stuff. Bold political leadership is required to bring it about.