Housing

Debate between Hilary Benn and Nick Raynsford

Wednesday 8th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

As the hon. Lady may be aware, the Lyons commission established by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition is looking at that question. Labour councils are outdoing Conservative authorities in building new council houses because of the reforms to the housing revenue account the last Labour Government put in place.

[Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend rightly highlights the extraordinary story of the new homes bonus. The one thing he has not mentioned is the cost. Because it is a cumulative bonus that works over six years, the commitments that have already been made involve expenditure commitments of over £7 billion. Is it not extraordinary that a Government are committing to £7 billion-plus of expenditure on a policy that the NAO does not see having any effect and the Housing Minister does not believe acts as the incentive it is supposed to be?

[Hilary Benn]

My right hon. Friend makes an overwhelmingly powerful case. That is the problem with the new homes bonus and that is why we are urging the Government to think again about it. Indeed, when the Chancellor tried to persuade the Treasury Committee that the Government’s actions were going to boost supply, the Treasury Committee said the arguments being made were “unconvincing”.

I shall turn now to the Help to Buy scheme. I said in answer to an earlier intervention that we support measures to assist people in realising their dream of home ownership, but if one of the consequences is that house prices move further and further out of people’s reach, there will be a problem. We cannot boost demand for housing, which is what Help to Buy is doing, if we do not also increase the supply. There is a growing list of voices expressing concern about the scheme, the latest of which belongs to someone who happens to sit at the Cabinet table with the Secretary of State. I refer, of course, to the Business Secretary. Talking recently about the state of the economy, he said that

“we risk it being derailed by a housing bubble…It’s not my job to tell the Bank of England what to do, but I get a sense that the Governor of the Bank does understand this is a serious problem.”

Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Hilary Benn and Nick Raynsford

Monday 5th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Raynsford]

I have been following my right hon. Friend’s remarks with considerable interest. Does he think it significant that the ministerial team surrounding the Minister is entirely different from the one that sat with him in the early period, when he was formulating the national planning policy framework? Might that also be an indication of what has happened in Government?

[Hilary Benn]

That is an extremely interesting suggestion by my right hon. Friend, and only those on the Government Front Bench can say whether that is the case or not.

Clauses 2 and 3, which I do not think the Secretary of State mentioned, would allow the planning inspectorate to award costs. What is the purpose of this? Perhaps the Minister could say when he winds up. How can he assure us that it will not turn into a tax on local democratic decision making? Why should the Planning Inspectorate want to impose costs of its own volition, when developers can already ask it to do so under the law as it currently stands?

National Planning Policy Framework

Debate between Hilary Benn and Nick Raynsford

Thursday 20th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

I have given way a number of times already, and I am anxious to make progress.

Given the primacy of the sustainable development presumption in policy, given that so much flows from it, and given that no one in the House wants development at any price, the Government need to get the definition of sustainable development right. The Environmental Audit Committee has already made clear its view on which definition should be used. As the Minister will know, in a report published in March, it called for the inclusion of the five internationally recognised principles of sustainable development that were set out in the 2005 sustainable development strategy, which, as I recall, the then Opposition supported at the time, as I do now.

I listened carefully to the argument presented by the Minister today, and I hope that the Government will bear it in mind when they produce their revised draft, because there is a risk that in the absence of a complete definition, there will be more argument about what the term means. The last Government, with support from the then Opposition, replaced the original Brundtland definition with the 2005 definition, and I was not persuaded by what the Minister said about why that should not endure in time. If we stick with it, it will be well understood and enduring.

[Mr Raynsford]

I strongly agree with what my right hon. Friend is saying. Does he agree with me that it is necessary not only to have a proper and full definition of sustainable development, but to establish a link between it and the operational principles that govern the handling of planning applications? That point was made very well by the Town and Country Planning Association in its submission. The absence of operational principles allowing implementation of the overall definition is one of the greatest weaknesses of the current NPPF draft.

[Hilary Benn]

I agree with my right hon. Friend. I am sure that the revised draft will be a slightly longer document, but the existence of a bit more material sometimes assists decisions in the planning process rather than making them more difficult.

I do not know whether the Minister has seen the CPRE legal opinion, issued by a respected planning QC, but it addresses this very point about the definition of sustainable development. The QC argues that

“there is an ambiguity which permeates the NPPF, and which is likely to lead to uncertainty in its application, with a consequent increase in the number of appeals.”

None of us wants that. This serves as a powerful argument that the Minister should reflect on possible changes, as he has undertaken to do.

Business of the House (Thursday)

Debate between Hilary Benn and Nick Raynsford

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

The point that my hon. Friend has just made illustrates clearly why we need more time tomorrow to examine the position of the Liberal Democrats, in all their splendour.

[Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

Is there not a wider and more profound issue at stake here? It relates to legislation, or changes in the law, that are railroaded through this House without adequate time for debate, and what happens when the public outside do not believe that this House has been doing its job properly and scrutinising those changes in the law. When such legislation—the classic example of which was the poll tax—is carried, it will never command the support of the public and the public will never believe that it is being instituted for the right reasons. Are the Government not in real danger of repeating the disaster of the poll tax with this ill-conceived, railroaded piece of legislation on tuition fees?

[Hilary Benn]

My right hon. Friend speaks with unique authority and force on that subject. He is giving the House a very clear warning, because if people do not feel that the House of Commons—their elected representatives—has been given adequate time to debate this very profound change, they will be even more angry than they are already.