Homes and Planning Bill

John Lamont Excerpts

Friday 13th November 2026 Commons Chamber

[John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) on doing so well in the private Member’s Bill ballot and on bringing forward this Bill. He first brought his Affordable Homes Bill to this House back in 2014. While we have many differences on what the remedies to this challenge might be, his persistence on this issue deserves respect.

As the House knows, the planning provisions in this Bill would not apply in Scotland, where housing and planning are devolved to the Scottish Government, but the problems that it tries to tackle do not stop at the border. Families in the Scottish Borders face the same struggle as those in west Cornwall. Young people cannot find a home in the town that they grew up in, and key workers cannot live where they work. Communities need new homes, but they find the system stacked against them. I will use this debate to set out what that looks like in the Scottish Borders and the lessons that it holds for both Governments.

Let me start with the scale of the problem. In 2024, the Scottish Parliament declared a national housing emergency. More than two years on, the figures continue to head in the wrong direction. In the year to March 2026, some 17,268 new homes were completed in Scotland, almost 2,000 fewer than in the year before. Completions of affordable homes fell to their lowest level in a decade. In the year to June, social sector completions were at their lowest level since 2007. The SNP Scottish Government have promised 110,000 affordable homes by 2032. By the end of June this year, 36,518 had been delivered—barely a third of that target. Shelter Scotland, the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations and the Chartered Institute of Housing say that Scotland needs almost 15,700 social and affordable homes every single year, but less than half of that number are being delivered.

Behind those numbers are real families. At the end of September last year, some 10,480 children in Scotland were left living in temporary accommodation. That is more than 10,000 children without a safe, reliable and stable place to call home. It does not have to be that way. When the SNP Government cut the affordable housing budget in 2024, housing associations and councils explicitly warned them of the serious consequences of that decision. They were right, but their warning went ignored at the time, and while funding has since been restored, we cannot get back the years wasted or the projects stalled or abandoned.

[Dr Arthur]

I want to add a little bit of detail for the people who still think that the SNP-Green Government, as they were, were somehow virtuous. The cut that the hon. Member refers to was 26% of the affordable housing budget. It was absolutely incredible. The 2007 date is very important, because that was the year in which the SNP Government first came to power, and housing starts and completions are lower today than they were back then. Is that not an absolute disgrace?

[John Lamont]

I agree. What the SNP Scottish Government have done to housing in Scotland is an absolute scandal, and it is affecting the hon. Member’s constituency, just as it affects my own.

I want to dwell a bit on how the national picture has been felt in my constituency. Scottish Borders council has declared a local housing emergency, which is not a phrase any council uses lightly. I pay tribute to my local housing associations in the borders— Eildon, Berwickshire Housing Association, Scottish Borders Housing Association and Waverley. Since the council transferred its housing stock, they have been the only providers of social rented homes in the borders, and they build homes of real quality. However, looking at last year’s figures, it is just not enough.

The Scottish Government allocated £16.2 million to the borders for affordable housing, yet only £10.8 million of that was actually spent. Just 94 affordable homes were delivered against a target of 141. When the money allocated to fix the housing crisis cannot be spent, something in the system is broken. Maybe it is the availability of land, maybe it is the cost of building in rural areas, or maybe it is the inability of planning and infrastructure to keep up; most likely, it is all of them. Those are the questions that I am going to keep pursuing, in order to get answers.

That brings me to rural housing. Too many national housing programmes are designed with cities and big towns in mind. In a village in Berwickshire or in the Teviot valley, a development is six or 10 homes, not 600. There are fewer contractors, connecting to water and electricity costs more, and the cost of building each home is higher. Too often, the numbers simply do not stack up. Rural communities need support for small sites and small local builders. They need backing for community-led housing, and they need flexibility for homes tied to local jobs—farm workers, care staff and people working in tourism and hospitality, whose employers cannot recruit because there is nowhere for staff to live. Without those homes, young people leave, the school rolls fall, the bus service is cut, and the shops close. Housing is not just about bricks and mortar; it is about the future of rural communities.

The Bill puts a particular focus on second homes. I understand why—in parts of Cornwall, the concentration of second homes is extraordinary—but I want to offer a slightly different perspective from the Scottish Borders. I am not opposed to second homes. In many of our smaller and more isolated communities, second home owners are a lifeline. They shop in the village store, eat in the local pub, hire local tradespeople, and support businesses that would otherwise struggle through the quieter months. Many have deep family roots in the borders, and many go on to make them their permanent home. Second homes already make a contribution in the Scottish Borders: Scottish Borders council charges a council tax premium on them, and uses that money to help fund affordable housing and bring empty homes back into use.

As such, I suggest that the answer is a balance. Where second homes become so concentrated that a community is hollowed out, councils should have the tools to act, but in the borders, the main problem is not too many second homes—it is too few new homes. Blaming second home owners is easy; building the homes we need is harder, and that is the task in front of us.

[Andrew George]

I do not think anyone is blaming the individuals. Indeed, I acknowledge that second home owners bring a great deal to their local communities, and many are strong champions and supporters of local initiatives in the way that the hon. Member describes. The purpose of this Bill is simply to give affected communities the power to, if they choose—only if they choose—cap numbers where they think second home ownership might get out of hand.

[John Lamont]

The hon. Member makes an important point, but I think this is about balance. We do not want to stigmatise many of the people coming into rural communities, who are keeping the village shop open and the local tradesmen going during the harder months. I believe there is a balance to be reached. Many councils, and certainly those in Scotland, already have the powers to allow that balance to be reached, such as the second home council tax premium. I think we need to be careful about the language we use regarding second home owners.

That leads me to the planning system. Builders in Scotland say that a shrinking supply of land and poor viability are behind the fall in house building. Planning departments are under-resourced, and decision making takes too long. In the Borders, there is a particular pressure that I want the House to understand: the sheer volume of large electricity infrastructure projects. Wind farms, battery storage, data centres and grid upgrades that have resulted in massive pylons coming across the border—these have all made the Borders the epicentre for the expansion of the energy network.

Most large wind farms are decided by Scottish Ministers through the energy consents unit, not by the council, but the council must still assess each application, respond as a consultee, work through the environmental information and answer to local residents. These applications are often vast and complex. In the past year alone, the council’s planning committee has had to consider proposals such as Scawd Law and Glenburnie. When the council objects, Ministers can and do override it, as they did at Ditcher Law, where the council has now been forced to take legal action to review the Government’s decision.

All of this falls on a planning service that has had little extra support from the Scottish Government. Every hour that a planning officer spends on a 200-metre turbine is an hour not spent on an application for six family homes in a Borders village. If the Scottish Government want councils to deliver their energy ambitions, they must properly supply and resource the planning departments to do the work, and they must also give local communities a proper say.

My final point relates to infrastructure. In my experience, communities are not against new homes; what they are against are new homes without the GP appointments, school places, roads, water and drainage that go with them. Put the infrastructure in first and we win the consent for the homes. In the Borders, that means transport, properly staffed rural schools and nurseries, bus services to all parts of the Borders, well-resourced GP practices and roads without potholes.

The hon. Member for St Ives is absolutely right to raise these issues. Whether it is in Cornwall or the Scottish Borders, the message is the same: people need homes they can afford in the communities they love. That means building more homes. It means a planning system with the resources to do its job, it means recognising that rural areas are different, and it means putting infrastructure in first. The Scottish Government must do better by their rural communities. I will keep pressing them, as I hope the UK Government will, to act on behalf of the families across the Scottish Borders who simply want a place to call home.