Council of Europe

Debate between John Howell and Richard Bacon

Wednesday 15th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[John Howell]

I agree fully with right hon. Gentleman. I try my hardest to push that as leader of the delegation. It is essential to get across what the Council is about, how it can help, and the role it now plays in—I have to use this expression—a post-Brexit Britain. It plays a vital role in ensuring that we have good relations with parliamentarians in other parts of Europe.

I will conclude by saying that putting down written questions after each debate at the Council of Europe brings home how wide those debates are, and how they affect policy across Government. Debates that relate to the Foreign Office account for about 30%. The rest cover a range of Ministries, from the Department for Work and Pensions to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. I ask those questions I put to them to show the range of debates that we conduct, partly to ensure there is a written answer on record for the issues that have been discussed, and so that we understand what Government are doing. That is welcome, at least by members of the delegation, but we would welcome the Minister’s help in ensuring that the Government’s position can be put across when rapporteurs visit the country on behalf of the Council and need to see a Minister. I know that that is a pain, but without it the result does not look good and can leave us in an embarrassing position.

I am extremely grateful not just for the work of all members of the delegation—we try to operate on a genuinely cross-party basis wherever possible, and the number of Members here for the debate illustrates that—but for our utterly brilliant secretariat led by Nick Wright, to whom we would all like to pay our thanks.

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

Don’t forget Lord Foulkes.

[John Howell]

I will come to the other people. Finally, on behalf of the delegation, I would like to pay thanks to three people in Strasbourg: Alan Mitchell, the president of the committee for the prevention of torture; Tim Eicke, our judge at the Court, to whom we are grateful for getting to know us and for sharing with us his expertise and experience; and our permanent representative Sandy Moss, whose assistance and co-operation is second to none and has been particularly helpful for the delegation.

The Council of Europe is crucial for our relationship with wider Europe, particularly after Brexit. It sets out a method of co-operation that can alienate no one. It is a major part of our international diplomacy, and Russia’s departure offers us an opportunity to make real change. I look forward to what the Minister has to say.

Community Housing

Debate between John Howell and Richard Bacon

Thursday 12th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to lead this Adjournment debate, the subject of which is support for community housing—a phrase that comes from the 2019 Conservative manifesto, on which my Conservative colleagues and I fought the recent general election. The manifesto, perhaps for lack of space, conflates two of my life-favourite themes: first, giving people in local communities more real say over the housing that is to be built in their areas; and secondly, self-build housing. On the latter, I declare two interests: first, because what is now known as the Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Act 2015 started life as my private Member’s Bill; and secondly, because I am an ambassador for the Right to Build Task Force.

Under the heading “Community housing and self-build”—which I should emphasise for the sake of clarity are by no means entirely the same thing, although there is often an overlap—the Conservative manifesto helpfully states, on page 31:

“We will support community housing by helping people who want to build their own homes find plots of land and access the Help to Buy scheme.”

I could hold at least three separate Adjournment debates purely based on that one sentence—first, because there is a great deal to say about community housing and the very successful community housing fund; secondly, because there is also a great deal to say about helping people who want to build their own homes, either as individuals or as members of groups; and thirdly, because there is a great deal to say about the fact that the Help to Buy scheme unfairly and inadvertently excluded custom and self-build from its scope. Although that omission was acknowledged and recognised by the Government in 2014, it did not lead to any action being taken until the 2019 manifesto commitment, so in fact there has been an extended period of unfair competition from state-led intervention, subsidised by our tax-paying constituents, which effectively has operated against self-builders and in favour of large house builders, thus limiting supply and choice while reducing overall quality, sustainability and innovation.

However, I do not want to talk about that—first, because my right hon. Friend the Minister knows that I am a “glass half full” kind of guy, and there is much that is positive to talk about; and secondly, because my conversations with Ministers have convinced me that they are seized of that particular problem in relation to Help to Buy, which I hope will in due course be called “Help to Build”, and genuinely want to find a solution that works for self-builders rather than discriminates against them. In the limited time available, I will concentrate just on the first part of the sentence—namely, support for community housing.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

As my hon. Friend knows, I was the person who invented neighbourhood plans. I have a local plan in my home constituency for a town that has some land that it wishes to develop, but it is having enormous problems with the community land trust model in trying to do so. Does my hon. Friend think that that is typical of the problems of the community land trust route, or does he have a solution?

Housing and Social Security

Debate between John Howell and Richard Bacon

Thursday 22nd June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Deputy Speaker. I always think that a time limit is good for focusing the mind and generating extra productivity, so I will adhere to your strictures.

The Government said in their Queens’ Speech that they want to build more houses, which is an approach I strongly support. The title of the recent housing White Paper is “Fixing our broken housing market”—an important title and an admission of something that has been increasingly clear for many decades under Governments of all parties: our housing market simply does not work properly. The supply of housing does not rise to meet demand. [Interruption.] I see the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) nodding, and I am glad that he is nodding; I hope to persuade him of some of the solutions on which he is still resisting my charms. I am sure that I will get there over the course of this Parliament.

The fact is that our broken housing market is failing to meet aspirations. In effect, demand is unable to influence supply and drive volumes in the way that it does in markets that operate successfully. Some years ago in a Committee room upstairs, the presenter of “Grand Designs”, the famous Channel 4 television programme, told our all-party parliamentary group on self-build, custom and community housebuilding and place-making:

“The consumer has been on the receiving end of a pretty poor deal. We build some of the poorest, most expensive and smallest homes in Europe. That’s not something to celebrate.”

At the core of the housing debate is a key intellectual problem: is development good or bad? We often see the word “development” used as a pejorative term, yet the instinct that we all have to nest and to build a home is a response to one of our deepest human needs. Mr Deputy Speaker, if you were to go on a survival course, you would be taught that without food you would die within seven to 10 days and that without water you may last three days, but you can die without shelter in 20 minutes. However, we often talk about development, which means providing enough shelter for everyone, as if it is a bad thing.

During a general election debate, one of my opponents said that housing—although she admitted that it was necessary—was a “heavy price to pay”. I understand that language even if I disagree with it. The reason people so often speak about development in that way is because it is driven and brought forward in the wrong way. It should be obvious that without enough housing the chances of our children and grandchildren finding a home that they can actually afford are rapidly fading from view. In order to make “development” a good word, we have to have good development.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend accept that one way of driving forward house building is through neighbourhood plans? They are delivering more houses than originally set out by the district councils that instructed the building of houses.

[Mr Bacon]

I thank my hon. Friend for that and agree with him, although the caveat is that some developers are good at getting around neighbourhood plans, undermining their basis and confidence in them. The Government need to address that.

The key to getting the right kind of development is more choice and beauty. Now, that may sound airy-fairy, but it is the exact opposite, something which the Prince of Wales noted in his BIMBY or “Beauty-In-My-Back-Yard” campaign. We must have better, smarter, beautiful development that offers a wide range of real choices to consumers and is actively welcomed by existing communities, including the grandparents and parents who so often oppose development with arms folded saying, “We don’t want any houses in our area.” They want to see the next generation flourish and do well, and see their own grandchildren adequately housed. We must allow our communities greater voice and choice about what gets built, where it is built, what it looks like and who gets first chance to live there.