Affordable and Safe Housing for All

Jack Lopresti Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell).

On principle, we need a planning agenda that is community-led, levelling up-led, flexible, thoughtful and environmental. If the planning Bill is about those values, I will support it; those values are good Conservative aims and I recommend them to Ministers and their special advisers. However, I have a couple of caveats. I do not believe that Ministers have made the case for why we need to scrap the current system rather than reform it. We are better off improving what we have. To seek revolutionary change rather than evolutionary change is un-Conservative and more likely to result in failed policy, unforeseen outcomes and, frankly, disenfranchised and irritated constituents.

Specifically, when it comes to the plan to strip away local democracy in individual planning applications, there is going to be considerable disquiet. The plan threatens to give our opponents throughout England a rallying cry of “Save local democracy from the Tories”. That is a very bad position for us to be in. The system is already weighted far too much in favour of developers.

Let me give an unfortunate example from the Island. AEW, a multibillion-pound property firm, bought a site, Ryde ice rink, a few years ago. The firm fell out with the community group that was using it, kicked them out and finished skating on the Island, meaning all the kids have had to go to the mainland. AEW’s tactics have been to sweat our council to allow a change of use—it has gamed the system to make more money by achieving a change of use. Its behaviour has been utterly wretched—the firm is little more than white-collar bully boys who care little about Ryde, my community and the Island more generally. When asked to do something about it, the firm boasts about its exceptionally expensive lawyers—it is part boast, part legal intimidation of Isle of Wight Council and, presumably, me. Under the current system, as imperfect and in need of reform as it is, we can fight these dreadful, arrogant people, in the hope that they will eventually give up, get fed up when they do not get change of use and, frankly, go forth and multiply. I am genuinely worried that under the new system communities like Ryde will not have a voice in what is happening to the property—especially significant property—in their patch, and it is ethically questionable companies like AEW that will profit.

Many Government Members and, I am sure, Opposition Members have a lot of ideas, and I strongly advise the Government and Ministers to engage with us, because we are only too keen to come up with workable ideas that get the planning Bill through and deliver for our communities. In the one minute I have remaining, I will rattle through some of those ideas.

As the excellent Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) said, we must introduce a “use it or lose it” system for land-banking, because 1 million land-banked properties is a scandal. Secondly, for future development, there must be a meaningful start-by date or the developer loses permission to build. They must start paying council tax on a given date in the future, and if they have not built the properties, they must pay the council tax anyway.

Thirdly, if we are serious about our environmental agenda, we must lift VAT on brownfield sites and slap VAT on greenfield sites. We can then use the VAT from greenfield sites to equal out the equation, equal out the economics, equal out the true environmental and social costs and double down on brownfield sites. Fourthly, we must give councils more permission to make compulsory purchases. There are 600 long-term empty properties on the Isle of Wight alone; we could be using every single one of those. Fifthly, we must provide a legal requirement for brownfield sites.

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

My hon. Friend’s constituency is not an area that I know well, but could he tell me what realistic prospects there are for young people to buy their own home there?

[Bob Seely]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I am aware of what you just said about timing, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will go on for no more than another 30 seconds. There is not enough—we badly need affordable development, and that is what I want to see on the Island. What we do not need is speculative, low-density greenfield development that is not built for Islanders but is built for second home owners, is bad for our community and is dreadful for our visitor economy.

Seventhly, we must ban, except in exceptional circumstances, low-density greenfield development. Let us close speculative loopholes that allow people to game the system and introduce a character test that is applicable for planning applications. Out of respect to others, I will leave it there.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

The crisis of unaffordable housing is shredding our social contract. What are we actually offering some of our young people today—£50,000-worth of student debt and a room in a shared house, if they are lucky? In the new town of Charlton Hayes in my south-west constituency of Filton and Bradley Stoke, a new build three-bedroom terraced house now costs more than £330,000. In 1995, the average house price in my constituency was £53,000, which was approximately 2.75 times the average annual salary. Now the average house price is about £293,000, which is more than nine times the average salary. Of course I welcome the Government’s commitment to build 300,000 new homes a year by the mid-2020s, but it does not go far enough; we need to be bolder and more ambitious.

Shelter has said that we will need 2 million more social homes in 10 years to match the growing need. I welcome the £12 billion of investment in affordable housing over the next five years, and the unlocking of £38 billion of public and private affordable housing investment. Moves to speed up the planning process will also help, but the manifesto on which my party fought and won the 1951 general election stated:

“Housing is the first of the social services. It is also one of the keys to increased productivity. Work, family life, health and education are all undermined by overcrowded homes. Therefore a Conservative and Unionist Government will give housing a priority second only to national defence.”

I could not agree more.

At the launch of our 2015 manifesto, David Cameron said that

“Conservatives have committed to building a property-owning democracy for generations”.

However, analysis by the Centre for Policy Studies shows that in the decade following 2010, the fewest new houses were built in England since the second world war. The same could have been said for the 2000s, the 1990s and probably every decade before that for the past half-century. The inability of Governments of all political persuasions in the past few decades to address the housing crisis means that the simple laws of supply and demand push house prices even further.

I have to say that too many colleagues across the House have made a virtue of opposing much needed housing development anywhere in their own areas. How many hon. Members churn out leaflet after leaflet making pronouncements that we need affordable local homes for local people, but then oppose just about every single planning application in their constituencies, using excuses like, “They’re the wrong type of houses” or “They’re in the wrong place”?

In the post-war era, Britain faced a similar housing crisis and a Conservative Government solved it. Harold Macmillan oversaw a programme that built 2.8 million homes in the 1950s and 3.6 million in the 1960s. That is the sort of ambition that we should have today.