Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Jack Lopresti Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2023 Commons Chamber

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

I will focus my brief remarks on supporting the announcements made in the Budget relating to the Government’s commitments on defence spending, and on how the Budget also underpins the UK’s place in the world and supports our veterans.

Defence of the realm and the security of our people is the first responsibility of any Government. However, as the Chancellor has stated,

“our return to growth has direct”—

positive—

“consequences for our role on the global stage.”—[Official Report, 15 March 2023; Vol. 729, c. 844.]

The £11 billion increase in our defence budget over the next five years is a significant investment to ensure the protection of our values of freedom, democracy and an international rules-based order. That £11 billion comes on top of the record £24 billion increase announced in 2020, which was the largest increase since the cold war. This funding will enable us to continue to modernise our military and help ensure that our armed forces have the resources they need to meet the evolving threats we face today. The package of funding for the Ministry of Defence includes an additional £2 billion next year and £3 billion the year after. This funding will also help to replenish and bolster vital ammunition stocks, modernise the UK’s nuclear enterprise and fund the next phase of the AUKUS submarine programme.

Although I am delighted with the increase in defence spending, I join some of my colleagues in urging the Government to commit to spending even more on defence in due course. I understand the budgetary constraints, especially after the support we gave during the pandemic and the help we have given to deal with the rise in energy costs, but I saw for myself only a few weeks ago in Ukraine some of the destruction inflicted by the Russians, so I can say that deterrent is cheaper than conflict and then reconstruction.

I am pleased to see our Government leading Europe in supporting Ukraine with military aid, with at least £2.3 billion this year, at least matching what we spent last year. We are providing more military support to Ukraine than any other country in Europe, and this is support that Ukraine desperately needs. The UK remains the second largest spender on defence in NATO, after the United States, and we were the first large European country to commit to spending 2% of GDP on defence. The proposed increase to 2.5% shows our continued commitment to being a leading defender of democracy and providing help to people who are standing up to those who threaten it.

I welcome the package of £30 million to increase the capacity of the Office for Veterans’ Affairs, which will help veterans with injuries returning from their service and increase the availability of housing for veterans. It will help to ensure that our veterans receive the support they need to transition back into civilian life and live their lives to the fullest.

The impact of all this investment on the broader economy is huge. The commitment to increase defence spending will create much more certainty for the 390,000 defence jobs across the UK, many of which are high paying and highly skilled, in places such as my constituency. The MOD is the largest provider of apprenticeships in the country. It supports more than 90,000 apprenticeships in subjects as diverse as cyber, engineering and healthcare. I support the introduction of a new kind of apprenticeship known as a “returnership”, targeted at the over-50s who want to return to work. Returnerships will operate alongside skills boot camps and sector-based work academies. They will be incredibly useful for those who wish to change career and in encouraging some of our over-50s back to the workplace.

The Budget not only increases our ability to defend ourselves, sustaining our credibility and our place in the world; it will also help to create many more high-tech, high-skilled jobs, so that we can continue to preserve and enhance our sovereign defence manufacturing capability as well as defending ourselves.

Budget Resolutions

Jack Lopresti Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2021 Commons Chamber

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

To truly level up, we must address many aspects of people’s lives by implementing measures that contribute to equality of opportunity and of health and wellbeing, and, of course, deliver the benefits of prosperity for all the country. I am delighted that the Government and the Chancellor have so thoroughly addressed these things with a range of initiatives and investments in the Budget that will enable us to truly build back better post-pandemic.

Our home lives and the environment in which we live impact us all greatly. The Government are investing unprecedented amounts of money in housing, including in the new £11.5-billion affordable housing programme, as part of the ambition to deliver 300,000 new homes a year by the mid-2020s. Alongside that, the Government’s 95% mortgage guarantee scheme goes further still, to help first-time buyers secure a mortgage, with a deposit requirement of just 5%. That will enable many people to buy their own home who were previously unable to. Opportunity, aspiration and social mobility go right to the heart of the values and principles of my party.

Even though we have reduced rough sleeping by a third, we must do more. The additional funding of £640 million a year represents an 85% increase compared with 2019, enough to make sure that fewer people are sleeping rough than at any time in the past decade.

On brownfield sites, I was also very pleased to see the £300-million locally led grant funding to unlock smaller brownfield sites, including the £75-million brownfield land release fund to help to unlock locally authority-owned land. Some £57 million of the fund has recently been allocated, with my council, South Gloucestershire Council, receiving £2 million and Bristol City Council receiving just under £200,000. To complement these new communities, the Chancellor also announced a £1.5 billion regeneration fund to improve transport links and other community facilities.

The Chancellor’s announcement in the Budget that the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors will benefit from a 50% discount on business rates will be music to many people’s ears. That will incentivise and assist this important sector of our economy, culture, recreation and overall wellbeing. Although this will be very welcome across the whole of the UK, it will certainly complement a number of developments and regeneration projects in my Filton and Bradley Stoke constituency, including, for example, the impressive YTL arena complex and the new Filton north railway station which collectively will provide a 17,000-capacity concert area, leisure facilities and other employment opportunities, and is due to open its doors in 2024.

Such regeneration projects not only demonstrate the Government’s commitment to building back better and improving transport and connectivity, but play a key part in improving overall wellbeing and enhancing equality of opportunity and aspiration across the country. I am proud that my constituency contains some of the world’s leading defence and aerospace companies, such as Airbus, Rolls-Royce and GKN, so I was delighted by my right hon. Friend’s Budget statement, which confirmed that the Government recognise the need for and benefit of investing even more in innovation and maintaining the target of £22 billion investment in R&D.

I am delighted by the announcement that we will have major transport infrastructure improvements in my constituency and that the west of England will benefit from the £540-million investment in local transport projects. My right hon. Friend stated in last week’s Budget:

“Infrastructure connects our country, drives productivity”—[Official Report, 27 October 2021; Vol. 702, c. 279.]—

That will enable us to level up.

This Budget demonstrates that, on the Government side of the House, there is a commitment and a determination to deliver the people’s priorities and enhance aspiration and opportunity, which will deliver prosperity, social mobility and wellbeing across our whole nation.

Affordable Housing in the South-West

Jack Lopresti Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Westminster Hall

[David Warburton]

My hon. Friend makes a tremendously apposite point. It is a very good point indeed. The answer is yes, we do: the demand is such that the supply is always going to be vastly outstripped by it, so we need to look at other measures. I hope that when the planning Bill comes forward, it will help us towards that route and show that there are other opportunities out there.

The region’s job market has been among the worst hit by the pandemic, sitting alongside the rocketing house prices that I have mentioned, with affordability only expected to worsen. That means overcrowding, homelessness and a generation of young people unable to move out of their parents’ home or live near their workplace.

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this very important and timely debate. Does he agree that part of the problem is that there seems to be a culture of Members of Parliament across the House instinctively opposing planning applications for new homes? It seems to be in the DNA of some of them. In fact, we should get excited, especially as Conservatives, and be enthusiastic about the opportunity, aspiration and hope that a new home provides. Obviously, we have a very great social need.

[David Warburton]

My hon. Friend makes a tremendously good point. It is important that planning applications are seen in the round. As I will go on to describe, we need to maintain the beauty and special qualities of our rural towns and villages, while at the same time providing the homes that people so badly need.

In 2019-20, the total housing stock in England increased by about 244,000 homes. The number of new homes each year has indeed been growing for several years, but still not quickly enough to meet the demand. Estimates put the number of new homes needed at up to 345,000 per year. That means 42,000 new homes are needed each year in the south-west alone, and yet we are building fewer than half the homes required to plug the gap. We must do more, not only to match supply to demand but crucially to ensure that new homes are genuinely affordable and built where they are needed most—and, yes, that does mean protecting our rural villages from overdevelopment.

As Mrs Thatcher said, borrowing the words of the Scottish Unionist Noel Skelton, Britain should be a “property-owning democracy”. Back in the 1960s, when the Government were building more than 300,000 new houses a year, that ambition was achievable, but the same is not true today. Annual supply needs to increase by a further 23% by the mid-2020s to meet the Government’s own housing target, and by another 39% to reach the National Housing Federation’s recommendations.

There is general agreement that we need more homes, but there is less agreement, both in politics and in the housing industry, about how best to achieve that step change. I believe that there are three key areas where the Government and industry can work together to meet housing need. The first is public sector land reform. Priority for public land sales should change from maximising cash to the provision of public housing.

Secondly, we must adequately invest in building new affordable and sustainable homes where they are needed, creating jobs across construction and the supply chain and building the confidence of consumers, investors and developers. The recent £8.6 billion funding allocation from the affordable homes programme is a good start, but it does not cover the long-term funding gap and the structural barriers that have to be addressed.

Thirdly, there needs to be greater flexibility in the delivery of affordable homes. The most effective way to do that would be for the Government to allow developers to decide what tenure their homes should be on completion of a property so that we generate solutions that respond to the latest local need and allow the building of the right homes to continue in all economic conditions.

Planning Decisions: Local Involvement

Jack Lopresti Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2021 Commons Chamber

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

In the last year, the Government have built roughly 244,000 additional homes for our people, the highest number for 33 years. While that is good news, in my view it is merely a step in the right direction. Even if we achieve the target of 300,000 additional homes a year in this Parliament, it will be nowhere near enough to even begin addressing the housing crisis.

In my constituency, as I have said before in the House, the average house price is around £300,000, which is nine times the average salary. It is absurd that most young people today cannot even aspire to get on the property ladder unless they have family help or inherit some money. It is not morally right and it is not sustainable, and this is not just about private ownership. According to Shelter, which I met a couple of weeks ago and am doing some work with, there are hundreds of thousands of people stuck in temporary accommodation across the country. Even in my constituency, the local council’s Homechoice website says:

“There is a severe shortage of homes in the South Gloucestershire area. Most applicants on the Housing Register will have to wait a long time for re-housing and many will not be re-housed at all.”

It is therefore absolutely vital that we increase supply.

The Government are investing £11.5 billion to unlock affordable homes across the country, but to really increase supply we have to reform and speed up the planning process, which is precisely what the Government are trying to do. We must make the system faster, simpler and more modern in order to deliver what we need. We have to make it accessible, using modern technology and data to make it much more efficient. That is why I am again disappointed to hear colleagues from all parts of the House trying to pre-emptively kill any reform to score political points and shore up support from people in their constituencies who are already on the housing ladder. We cannot keep using the excuse about the wrong houses in the wrong places to justify saying no to any new development.

These reforms will make planning and building simpler and more transparent. We need to make building homes on a much larger scale easier for everyone, from the smallest local builder to the largest social housing corporation. We have to plan to get the diggers moving, but we cannot ignore the fact that the green belt is strangling housing growth in some of our cities. There are many areas of our country that should be protected, but less than roughly 10% of the land available is built on, so we have space. We can build new towns, and we need to be more open-minded about what solutions might look.

As I have said before, the housing crisis is shredding the social contract. We risk condemning an entire generation of young people to a huge amount of student debt and no prospect whatsoever of ever owning their own home, and with renting becoming ever more unaffordable, to being stuck in shared housing for the foreseeable future. This must go beyond narrow party politics. This is our duty, as somebody said earlier. We are elected to come here and make tough decisions, but the right decisions, so we must increase supply and reform the planning system, so that we can build enough homes for all our people for the future.

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.

Housing and Planning

Jack Lopresti Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2020 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles. In the time I have, I will address some broader aspects of housing policy.

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.”

Those are sentiments I completely agree with. I wonder why politicians realised that then, whereas many seem to have forgotten it today. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Minister on his promotion, but the fact that he is the 10th Housing Minister in the past 10 years perhaps offers an interesting perspective on the order of national priorities.

Centre for Policy Studies’ analysis shows that the 2010s saw the fewest new houses built in England since the second world war, but 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 both political persuasions in the past few decades to address the housing challenge—indeed, crisis—means that the simple laws of supply and demand push house prices even higher. The House of Commons Library suggests that the national average house price hovers around the £250,000 mark.

In a new development in my constituency, the new town of Charlton Hayes, a new three-bedroom end-terrace house now fetches more than £330,000, while a four-bedroom family home costs more than £400,000. This is simply unsustainable. My constituency is by many measures prosperous; unemployment is under 1.5% and weekly earnings substantially outstrip both the regional and national average. However, in terms of affordability, that house in Charlton Hayes costing a third of a million pounds is 10 times the average annual wage for the area.

What I call the housing crisis relates not only to the private sector but to the overall lack of housing generally, including council housing and social housing; there is a chronic shortage of homes for our people. We must consider the crucial value of social housing, which provides homes for families and for key workers, many on low incomes, who are needed if our communities are to flourish.

It is time that many of us in this House started taking responsibility for the situation that has evolved. Too many hon. Members have allowed themselves to be turned into nimbys. Even in the Minister’s Department, the Minister for Local Government and Homelessness, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall), my constituency neighbour, does not seem to believe in building homes and has made a virtue of opposing all local development in his constituency. How many hon. Members have churned out election leaflet after election leaflet advocating the need for local homes that local people can afford and then opposed just about every single planning application that has come forward in order to court the support of those fortunate enough to already be on the property ladder?

In the post-war era, Britain faced a similar housing crisis, and a Conservative Government solved it. Macmillan oversaw a housebuilding programme that built 2.8 million homes in the 1950s and 3.6 million in the 1960s. That is the scale on which we have to act today. As the working-class son of immigrants, one of the many reasons I became a Conservative was because of the aspiration that our party promoted and believed in. Our party also understood the pride people took in home ownership and the benefits thereof. John Major, in his first speech to our party conference as Prime Minister in 1991, called it

“the power to choose the right to own.”

What are we offering some of our young people today? Some £50,000 of student debt and a room in a shared house if they are lucky.

I have witnessed colleagues rejoice as local housing supply plans for my local council area were consigned to the bin. We were told that the council would now have to come up with a new plan. Do they realise the time that will take and the cost of making those huge applications, and that, within the often several-year timespans involved, political control of the council may have changed, and the whole process may have to start all over again?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)]

I certainly will do that, Sir Charles, and it is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

It is also a great pleasure to follow my old friend the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), and to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O'Brien) on securing this important debate, and I also thank him for the entirely unsolicited testimonial that he gave me at the start of his remarks. I also thank and congratulate all right hon. and hon. Members for their presence today. The number of colleagues from across the House who have attended the debate is testament to Member’s interest in and concern about this important topic. I thank them all for being here.

I will now address some of the important points raised by hon. Members. I am conscious that I do not have a huge amount of time, so if I am not able to address them all, I certainly contract to meet with or write directly to those I miss, to ensure that we cover all the points that have been raised today effectively.

One of the key issues, raised by a number of colleagues, is unfair practices in the leasehold market. Let me say that those practices have no place in a modern housing market, and neither do excessive ground rents, which exploit consumers, who get nothing in return. That is why we are reforming the system so that it is fairer to leaseholders.

In December 2019, we announced that we would move forward with legislation on leasehold reform, reaffirming our commitment to making the system fairer and more transparent. The Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall), will have more to say about that as the Minister responsible for that legislation; I shall certainly relay to him the concerns that Members from all parties have raised in the debate today.

I also agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough that we want to minimise the effect of inappropriate access routes for construction vehicles by encouraging temporary access routes that should ideally be delivered through voluntary arrangements. We have all faced the issue in our constituencies; I have faced it specifically with respect to wagons building the High Speed 2 railway line. I hope that I can give my hon. Friend some reassurance that we have legislated for local authorities and other acquiring bodies to compulsorily purchase land temporarily under the Neighbourhood Planning Act 2017, and we are engaging with the sector on how best to implement those powers.

It is important that breaches of planning conditions are tackled by local planning enforcement teams, given that conditions are often imposed by councils to make a development acceptable to local people. That is why we have provided nearly £2 million of funding this year to help to strengthen enforcement teams in 37 local authorities, and we have also updated the National Association of Planning Enforcement’s practical handbook to help.

We will also outline further measures to help to improve local authority enforcement in the forthcoming planning White Paper, so I hope that Members will forbear and bear with me as that White Paper is released. I hope that that satisfies colleagues about some of the concerns that my hon. Friend raised.

[Jack Lopresti]

Does the Minister agree that our party needs to end the obsession with the green belt? Does he also accept that if we leave house building to local councils, houses will not get built in anywhere near the numbers that we need?

[Christopher Pincher]

The green belt is very important. We need to ensure that green spaces are protected, and that we have beautiful spaces in which we can all live. We also need to ensure that local plans are up to date and fit for purpose, in order to ensure that the houses that people want and need can be built.

That brings me rather nicely to my fundamental point. We all know that this country does not have enough homes. That is why we need a more agile and flexible planning system. KPMG and Shelter have both reported that simply to meet rising future demand, a minimum of a quarter of a million new homes will be needed every year. The median house price in England is eight times higher than median gross annual earnings; in London, it is 12.3 times higher.

We have to be bold and ambitious in our vision for the future of planning and house building in England. That is why, in January 2018, we set up Homes England as our housing accelerator, to intervene in the market and drive a step change in housing delivery. We have an unwavering commitment to enable the housing market to deliver at least 300,000 new homes a year by the mid-2020s, and a million homes by the end of this Parliament. I am pleased that the latest figures show that last year housing supply, which has been growing year on year, increased by more than 241,000, to the highest level in the last 31 years.

Hinckley National Rail Freight Interchange

Jack Lopresti Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2020 Westminster Hall

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

Looking at the overall picture, will there not be an environmental benefit in getting freight off roads and on to rail, and should a study be done to try to demonstrate that?

[Alberto Costa]

I entirely agree. Government policy is to reduce HGV traffic by moving freight off our principal road arteries and on to rail, but the concern about this specific proposal is that developers often propose a purported rail freight head development when all they want is a very large logistics park. We must be ultra-cautious that this particular development is not just a front for yet another large-scale logistics park.

British House Building Industry

Jack Lopresti Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Siobhain McDonagh]

The social and financial cost of homelessness far exceeds what we spend on temporary accommodation, which was £1 billion of taxpayers’ money last year—every £1 of it badly spent. Some 6,980 families in my constituency are trapped in bed and breakfast accommodation, having been there longer than the six-week legal limit, including 810 children. Others are stuck in hostels far away from their schools, families and friends.

Some of my constituents are housed, at least temporarily, in Connect House, a warehouse on the busiest south London industrial estate. For anybody who wants to see what Connect House looks like, please have a look at the video on my Twitter account.

I am just crawling through my speech, because I see more and more people here.

Other families who have come to see me are on the ever-expanding waiting list, with 1.2 million families across our country now waiting for a place to call home—1.2 million. Just 6,464 new social homes were built in 2017-18, the second lowest number on record. At that rate, it could take 172 years to give a socially rented home to everyone on the current waiting list. That is utterly appalling when we compare those figures with the 150,000 social homes delivered each year in the mid-1960s or the 203,000 council homes that the Government delivered in 1953. It has been done before and we all know that we can do it again.

In Merton, where my constituency is based, 10,000 families are on the housing waiting list, with lettings for just 2.5% of them in 2018-19. What hope can I give the other 97.5% that they will ever find a place to go? I would like to provide statistics on home ownership but, again, I will move on to some of the other data in my speech.

The statistics and the stories that I have detailed this afternoon should provide thoroughly fertile ground for the British house building industry to get on and build, but its record does not match the potential. Here is the reality: our country’s housing target is 300,000 new homes a year—a figure that has not been reached, as we have already identified, since 1969, when councils and housing associations were building new homes. England is now on course for the worst decade for house building since the second world war.

I would like to look specifically at the performance of the leading house building companies in our country. To the best of my understanding, the figures are all correct as of June. In the last financial year, just 86,685 homes were completed by the 10 FTSE 350 house building companies, despite an extraordinary collective pre-tax profit of more than £5.37 billion. That is a mind-boggling figure, which is better understood when broken down.

Let us start with the four FTSE 100 housing companies: Barratt, Persimmon, Taylor Wimpey and Berkeley. In the most recent financial year, Barratt completed just 17,579 homes—slightly more than Persimmon, which finished 16,449 homes, with profits of £1.1 billion, of which half was down to public subsidy through the Government’s Help to Buy scheme. Taylor Wimpey came third with 15,275 homes completed but, in fourth place, despite an astonishing pre-tax profit of £934.9 million, is Berkeley homes, which completed a pitiful 3,894 homes. Together, those four companies collected a pre-tax profit of an unimaginable £3.68 billion, despite completing just 53,198 homes—less than 18% of the Government’s house building target.

What went wrong? Did they perhaps just not have the land to build the houses? Those four companies are sitting on a land bank of more than 300,000 plots between them. If we add in the rest of the FTSE 350 house building companies—Bellway, Bovis, Countryside, Crest Nicholson, Galliford and Redrow—the collective land bank is a staggering 470,068 plots, yet they completed 86,685 homes between them.

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

I congratulate the hon. Lady on her excellent speech, with which I broadly agree. Does she agree that while, from a moral point of view, we obviously need to build more houses in the public and private sectors, we also need to radically reform the planning system, which takes far too long and is a big roadblock to getting the homes we need for people?

[Siobhain McDonagh]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman and would love an opportunity to have a debate about planning law, building on the green belt and other matters. I could speak at great length about them, but I will not because I want to allow other people to get in.

I would like Members to focus their attention on pay. Some of the figures are staggering. Let me be clear: I am new Labour to the core. I have no problem with successful business people earning a lot of money, but what happens in this sector goes beyond earning a fair day’s money. I was furious to see that, almost exclusively on the back of the British taxpayer through Help to Buy, Persimmon awarded its former chief executive Jeff Fairburn a staggering £75 million bonus, despite an appalling record of utterly substandard homes. How can that be right or fair?

Housing and Home Ownership

Jack Lopresti Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Neil O'Brien]

The hon. Lady has a very interesting idea, but I am not familiar with that measure. I will have to go away and look at it.

Outside of the cities, we generally build right up to existing developments. I see that in my constituency.

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

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and bringing this crucial debate to the House. Does he agree that unless we radically reform our local planning system, we will never get the planning applications through and the houses built that we need? We need to build in huge numbers—more than the Government are proposing at the moment.

[Neil O'Brien]

I utterly agree; I was about to make that very point. At the moment, we infill bits on the edges of every village and town. We are effectively building in the places that annoy people the most, so we do not build enough homes, as my hon. Friend said. When we do that, we cannot keep up with the infrastructure needs of these places, because it is physically impossible. Perhaps the primary school is on too small a plot or we cannot widen a road that has become a rat run because there is not enough money to meet infrastructure needs.

Previously, we did things very differently. There was the new towns programme: those new towns now house more than 2 million people very successfully. They are fast-growing places. Mrs Thatcher created docklands in London and Liverpool, and the model was roughly the same for both. A development corporation would buy land cheap at existing low values. It would assemble the land, install the infrastructure and sell on that land for uplifted values, therefore paying for itself. That model has been used successfully all over the world.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jack Lopresti Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I must say to the Minister that on Saturday at the Buckingham literary festival I met one of his constituents, and I told the constituent that the hon. Gentleman was a clever fellow.

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

19. What steps are the Government taking to speed up the local planning process and make it more about delivering affordable housing and new homes than about narrow local or petty partisan politics?

[Dominic Raab]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for your kind words.

Through the changes that we are making to the national planning policy framework, we want to streamline the process to get homes built and, particularly through our emphasis on the housing delivery test, to make sure that homes are built for the next generation.