Low-Cost housing

John Penrose Excerpts

Wednesday 8th February 2017 Westminster Hall

[John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered low cost housing.

It is good to have you looking after us this morning, Mrs Gillan. It is also good to see the departmental Whip in her place—she is a fully-fledged Minister in her own right anyway. As a former Whip, I feel it is always good to see a Whip temporarily released from the office’s vow of omerta and allowed to show their knowledge of the area they cover for the Whips Office.

Housing, whether rent or mortgage payments, is probably the single biggest monthly bill that most of us face and because we have not, as a country, built enough new houses for decades, no matter who has been in Government, the costs have been getting steadily steeper. The result is less living space, longer commutes, less cash left over at the end of each month for other things and, overall, a lower quality of life for all of us. We need to increase the number of new homes that are built and yesterday’s welcome White Paper contains some important steps towards that goal. Most important, from my point of view, were the ideas to make it easier to build up, not out, in urban areas—greater housing density, in the jargon.

Anyone walking around most British town centres, passing train stations or high street shops, should look upwards. The chances are that they will mostly see fresh air—skyline. British towns and cities are some of the most low-rise in Europe, which seems bonkers for a country that is also one of the most crowded. Much of this is self-inflicted. For many Brits taller buildings create instant mental images of 1960s brutalist concrete tower blocks on sink estates—the backdrops for gritty dramas of social decay from left-wing film auteurs. This mental trope has had some real-world consequences for the country too because it means that we are, as a society, instinctively resistant to anyone who proposes building upwards. So let me sing a fierce anthem of praise for taller buildings—not necessarily brutalist tower blocks, although they have their admirers, but for elegant, well-proportioned apartment blocks and terraces where the design stands the test of time.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and apologise for interrupting him as he gets to the chorus of his eloquent speech. He talks about the need to build upwards. Does he agree—he has alluded to the ’60s-style connotations that building upwards has for many people—that we need to have planning forethought in terms of what buildings will be like in 20 or 30 years’ time so that we do not repeat the mistakes of the 1950s and 1960s?

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[John Penrose]

That is absolutely right. There are some people who, from a purely aesthetic point of view, love brutalist concrete architecture and rather more who dislike it a lot. For most of the rest of us, one of the crucial tests is not merely the aesthetics but whether this stuff remains liveable, not only in the first few years after it is built but over many generations. Another is whether it is therefore acceptable to the rest of the community. It is not just a question of what somewhere is like to live in as a location; it also has an impact on other people as they walk past.

As the hon. Gentleman said, it depends on how the design stands the test of time. There are places such as four or five-storey Regency terraces and Victorian town houses, which people still want to live in and walk past a century or two after they were built, or their slightly taller and more modern equivalents, which provide trendy new city centre living space for young professionals or well-designed retirement homes for older folk. We do not need to be scared of these buildings. One of the densest urban areas in Britain is Kensington and Chelsea, which is hardly a byword for inner-city decay. Elegant continental cities such as Paris and Madrid are far denser than almost anywhere in Britain too.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is giving a very powerful speech so I am loth to interrupt him. He mentioned the international comparisons and Kensington and Chelsea, but I think he is missing the suburbs. I represent a suburban seat. He said that housing is the single biggest bill, but it is also the single biggest issue in surgeries. I had a candidate stand against me as a “no to tall buildings” person. His slogan was, “We want to be living in Acton, not in Manhattan.” Has the hon. Gentleman had similar experiences as a constituency MP? People just do not like these buildings; they crowd out light and are not in keeping with the suburban landscape.

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)]

Order. May I remind Members that interventions are supposed to be short and not too discursive?

[John Penrose]

The hon. Lady just gave a classic example of this instinctive British fear. I have discovered that in general if people see a beautiful building that is well-designed and moderately, but not too enormously, tall—Manhattan being an example of where things are incredibly tall—many of those concerns are greatly reduced. The taller something is the more impact it has on everybody else for miles and miles around and therefore the greater care we have to take. There is a middle ground that I will talk about in a minute, which will provide us with a great deal of building and housing opportunity to reduce the cost of housing without having to make everywhere look like Manhattan, if I can put it that way.

The hon. Lady’s intervention leads me to say that we need to throw off these mental shackles—these 50-year-old emotional architectural scars—and instead count the blessings of building up, not out.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing forward this important issue of how we better utilise our space. He will know—I am sure this is the case in his constituency, as it is in mine—that people have the opportunity to live above shops. That is a special scheme brought in by local councils and local departments and is a way of utilising the space that is there. Does he agree that that is one method for addressing the issue of low-cost housing?

[John Penrose]

That is a very good example—a classic example—of the kind of thing we need to look at. Many British high streets are two storeys, or perhaps three storeys, tall. Not only are those upper storeys lightly used, and in some cases unused, but there are two or three further storeys of fresh air above them that could be developed into housing as well. The crucial point that was made yesterday in the White Paper, but has been more broadly accepted for years, is that the only way to bring down the overall cost of housing in this country is by increasing the supply. We have to make sure that more of this stuff is built and finding those right, convenient locations near social and physical infrastructure is crucial. I will expand on that point a little more in a minute, but the hon. Gentleman has touched on a particularly good example.

I was about to number the blessings of building up, not out and I shall now carry on doing so. First, it will attract much needed new investment to regenerate and save tired or rundown town and city centres, bringing fresh life, a broader mix of businesses and longer trading hours to high streets that—as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned—are suffering under the twin attack of out-of-town shopping centres and online retailers.

Secondly, building up, not out could help break the stranglehold of large house building firms over the number of new homes that are built. Those firms tend to focus on larger sites, whether greenfield or in towns, and rarely pick up smaller plots where an individual bungalow or two-storey shop could be redeveloped into four or even eight smart new apartments on the same site. By releasing lots of overlooked smaller urban plots we can create a fast-growing cadre of insurgent new developers, adding much needed new capacity and competition to the sector and its supply chains and speeding up the too comfortable, cosily slow rate at which the big firms currently convert their land banks and planning permissions into completed homes.

Thirdly, building up, not out will reduce urban sprawl by cutting the pressure from builders to concrete over green fields and green belts at the edges of towns and villages across the country. Given the strain and pressure on our green spaces, they should be our last building resort, not our first. Fourthly, it will cut commuting by allowing people to live closer to work, shops and other community hubs from libraries to GP surgeries. The reductions in emissions, and the effects on both our quality of life and the wider environment, will be very significant indeed.

Finally, building up, not out would release huge numbers of new urban house building sites to solve the housing shortage. As the Secretary of State said yesterday in his new White Paper, the only way to make homes more affordable for everybody is to build a lot more of them. Whether we are talking about renting or buying, the basic laws of price and demand mean that the prices will never stabilise, much less fall, unless the supply of housing increases dramatically.

[Dr Daniel Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. He is making very good points, and I agree with him about the Government’s welcome White Paper yesterday on improving the housing supply. Does he agree that one of the challenges can sometimes be the fairly entrenched, long-held concerns that people raise locally about higher properties? Incentives are needed in the system to encourage local authorities to give planning consents if we are going to overcome some of the problems.

[John Penrose]

I agree with my hon. Friend for two reasons. When taller buildings excite the kind of Manhattan-ish concerns that we just heard about from the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq), there clearly has to be careful consideration and community buy-in, because they have such a profound, wide-scale impact on local views and local infrastructure. Smaller and more modest proposals—I will talk about those in more detail in a minute—are much more absorbable and go much more with the grain of local things, so they may well not need a huge number of extra permissions and incentives, beyond the fact that they provide an opportunity for individual landowners to make a contribution and perhaps to increase the value of their particular site. I will expand on that, and perhaps if my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) is not completely convinced, he will intervene later.

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on obtaining the debate. I am glad to hear that he is talking about building up rather than out, given that in the past we have built on the green belt, destroying our environment. Does he agree that no matter what form of building there is, it is vital that the infrastructure is correct, because we have faced major problems in our cities from flooding over the past few years?

[John Penrose]

I absolutely agree. One advantage of building up rather than out in existing urban environments is that an awful lot of infrastructure is in place anyway. Less brand-new infrastructure needs to be constructed as a result. Other problems come from building in urban environments—for example, existing infrastructure may be put under strain and need to be expanded in some way—but flood defences are a good example of where the effects are perfectly scalable. When a flood defence wall has been built, an awful lot more can be built behind it. The flood defence wall does not need to be upgraded just because more has been built behind it, even though it may need to be upgraded when it wears out in 50 years’ time. I thank the hon. Gentleman for that very good example.

As I was saying, prices will never stabilise, still less fall, unless the supply of housing increases dramatically. Cheaper homes are one of the cheapest, simplest, most effective ways of raising living standards for everyone and, by making our available cash go further, of improving the country’s economic productivity.

In the 1970s and ’80s, our towns and cities were places without an economic purpose. Their industrial manufacturing centres were dead, social problems multiplied as jobs dried up and people left in droves. But now, urban living in towns and cities is fashionable again, because, even in our highly connected, distance-defying online world, it turns out that there is huge value in people clustering together. Ideas flow more freely; skills and knowledge too. Firms in similar sectors create clusters that feed off their neighbours’ energy, hire each other’s staff and drive each other on. Building up, not out helps those things to happen more easily, so more wealth can be created. It is greener and cheaper, and it makes us richer and improves our quality of life, so clearly, the idea’s time has come.

To their eternal credit, I think the Government get that. The new White Paper has much to say about developing smaller sites of half a hectare or less, and subdividing large sites so that smaller developers can get in on the act as well. Local development orders and area-wide design codes, which streamline planning permission if people want to build particular pre-approved types or styles of property in a specified area, make a strong showing too. There is a range of new permitted development rights, which allow everyone from hospitals to brownfield site owners to build without all the red tape, heartache and uncertainty of getting planning permission.

[Dr Huq]

From a design point of view, I completely get the hon. Gentleman’s argument, but how would he inject affordability? The rate in London has been at up to 80% of market rates, and units in high-rise buildings in my constituency seem to be bought off-plan by people at property fairs in Singapore and by Russian oligarchs—the lights are always off—so how would he make that link and build affordability in?

[John Penrose]

The hon. Lady tempts me into a slightly wider area of discussion than the one I was focusing on. However, my broad point at least is that we will not be able to make all housing more affordable, whether that is for those on lower or middle incomes, unless we dramatically increase the supply of new homes of whatever tenure—whether we are talking about homes for rent or for buying. Only by doing that over the longer term will we manage to reduce the cost of housing for everybody at all income levels. The hon. Lady might like to propose some additional measures and, if so, I am sure that she will make some remarks later to turbo-charge some other opportunities for those on lower incomes as well. However, as a starting point and a fundamental, we are kidding ourselves if we think we can get away without increasing the overall level of new homes that are being created in the first place.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. One aspect concerns me slightly about the London model: is there not a risk that people being allowed to build upwards will lead to the creation of single town houses that have become much larger, therefore creating half-a-million-pound houses rather than low-cost housing, which is the thrust of the argument?

[John Penrose]

If demand is unsatisfied in any part of the housing market—whether at the top or bottom end—that will spill across. If people are looking for a particular size of house—if their family is growing and they need a three-bedroom house as opposed to a two-bedroom house—and they cannot find one, the demand will spill over into other areas of the housing market. Demand will drive up price, no matter what, and that will knock on through to other areas of the housing market. The hon. Gentleman is right that there are hotspots in the housing market—geographically and in terms of kinds and sizes of house and tenures—where this problem is particularly acute, but we cannot afford to be that choosy. We need to build an awful lot more of all kinds of houses if we are to reduce prices. Some of the hotspots may well apply to people on lower incomes and, at that point, we should be doing something about it, but that should not be to the exclusion of everything else; otherwise the knock-on effects will still be felt throughout the tenure range.

With what I have said in mind, I would like to take up the offer in the White Paper and make a formal submission to the consultation that the Minister launched yesterday. I want to make a concrete proposal—please forgive the pun—for a new permitted development right to add to the suite that the Government suggested. The right would allow small-scale additions to town and city centre properties when the final result is still below the treeline or other buildings in the same block. Converting existing shops or offices would still require planning permission, but building new apartments within those height limits above them, or above existing housing, would not. It would not apply to substantial new buildings or major developments, nor to listed heritage buildings or conservation zones.

That measure is safe, sensible and proportionate and should not scare anyone—certainly not those worried about Manhattan-style buildings. It would offer a little piece of freedom from the cold and clammy hand of bureaucracy: a chance for every householder to help solve the nation’s housing problems by extending the size, and value, of their property by adding extra bedrooms or perhaps an entire apartment on top of what is there already. It would provide an opportunity for energy and ideas to have their head, without being diverted, amended or discouraged by official objections, rooted in the very British fear of any building that is taller than two storeys high.

Without the measure, officialdom will be too slow to change. They will not be forced to look upwards, and will carry on thinking the same way as they have for the last 50 years. We need change immediately, not at some distant future time. Without a shock—a stimulus—and some creative development yeast, the White Paper’s dough will never rise. Many valuable town and city centre sites will continue to be ignored.

The new permitted development right could be that stimulus—that little piece of freedom. It could be a creative spark that lights the blue touch paper of Britain’s stodgy, slow-paced, cosily comfortable housing market so that it takes off like a rocket. It would improve our economy and our quality of life, make our homes more affordable and reduce development pressure on greenfield and green belt sites. I hope the Minister will agree.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Gillan. As a Back Bencher, it is certainly unusual for me to be second in the speaking order.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) on securing the debate. He has campaigned on this issue and raised it in Parliament before, so it is clearly something that he is keen to see progress. I agree in principle with much of what he said about ensuring vibrancy in main streets at night. If that can be done by building upwards above shops, that is a good thing, but in the long run we really need to be careful. I have already touched on my concerns that the proposal might open the door for the construction of large town houses without delivering low-cost housing, which is the thrust of this debate. I am also slightly concerned that there may be a rush by too many people to do it. We need to ensure that the right controls are in place, including building standards and building controls, and that the processes can be inspected. Clearly some low-rise buildings were only ever designed to be low-rise buildings, even though they may be adjacent to higher buildings.

[John Penrose]

Just to clarify, nothing in the proposals that I have made today would affect building control or building regulations. Clearly we would need all the usual checks to ensure that buildings will stay up and be safe once they have been constructed.

[Alan Brown]

I fully accept that. I know that is the premise; I am just saying that we need to ensure that the resources are there to keep an eye on things. We have heard stories about properties in London getting built in the rear of gardens and so on, which is done without planning consent or building standards consent. It is a question of ensuring that procedures are properly followed. Foundations need to be checked and may need to be strengthened, and buildings that are structurally tied to adjoining buildings need proper structural design. I recognise the hon. Gentleman’s good point about controls, listed buildings and exemptions, and I agree that a controlled method of allowing building up can work.

Let me return to low-cost housing, which is the title of this debate. We need to do more to make low-cost housing available. I welcome the UK Government’s White Paper, but neither I nor my party think it goes far enough. As was raised yesterday, the elephant in the room for low-cost housing is the right-to-buy model. In the long run, the extended right-to-buy model for social housing will eat into the availability of low-cost housing. Subsidies from the public sector to allow people to buy properties use money that could otherwise be going directly into stimulating housing growth or be put towards brownfield development. Members have raised concerns about building outwards and eating into the green belt. Clearly brownfield regeneration is a good thing, especially in the urban environment. The money being taken out of the system for right to buy could be put to better use, either directly for building new social housing or for stimulating new brownfield development.

By ending right to buy, the Scottish Government have protected 15,500 properties that would otherwise have been sold from stock. Quite often, houses that are sold end up in the buy-to-let market, which pushes rents up because social rents are always cheaper than private rents, and that has an impact on the housing benefit bill. Again, that means more money from the public purse that could otherwise be going towards housing.

The Scottish Government are making a record investment in council house building. I request that the UK Government consider going back to that model and funding the construction of public housing. Because there is no right to buy for housing in Scotland, housing associations have more confidence to build housing. They can also get subsidies from the Scottish Government. The Scottish Government delivered 30,000 affordable homes in the last Parliament and have a target of 50,000 for this Parliament.

I recognise that the White Paper targets affordable homes, but the argument goes full circle: for the UK Government to deliver affordable homes, they need to put public money to the best possible use, not subsidise the purchase of properties for people who already have one and who do not need a discount to become a homeowner. I know that a lot of people have aspirations to become homeowners, but the No. 1 thing is to ensure that there are enough homes for everybody. We can look to further drive home ownership once there are enough homes for everybody, but once that happens the market will even out and we will not see the continued push on prices.

The hon. Gentleman said that there would be controls on listed buildings. My other concern is that we would need tight controls on the aesthetics of buildings to ensure that they blended in with the surrounding environment. Where there are permitted development rights rather than planning controls, there still need to be tight guidelines.

[John Penrose]

May I press the hon. Gentleman a little on that point? I take his point with respect to areas that have a homogeneous architectural style and that therefore have conservation of one kind or another, but not areas that have no such homogeneous style and no conservation control or anything like it. Most British cities are a hotch-potch of things built over several centuries, and that is fine. I am concerned that he is trying to create a sort of clammy bureaucratic control where historically there has been none and everyone has been happy with the outcome.

[Alan Brown]

I take the hon. Gentleman’s point. Perhaps, as always, the truth is somewhere in the middle. However, I would have real concerns if people were just able to throw up these buildings. There could be real issues with the materials used, with long-term maintenance and with the aesthetics of buildings. For instance, if people use the wrong materials for wood fascias and do not maintain them, they become a real eyesore in the long run. I am just putting that out there; I think those issues should be considered within permitted development rights. Local areas might not have a completely homogeneous style; as he says, cities may have developed as a hotch-potch, but that is not always an attractive look, and if we do not watch out, it can become even less attractive. Clearly that is not the desire behind the hon. Gentleman’s proposal, but I conclude by congratulating him on advancing it.

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[Ruth Cadbury]

My hon. Friend and constituency neighbour is absolutely right. I have experienced that in my own constituency. We still have newly built homes that are never let, because they are seen as nothing more than an investment, and many of them are very high in price.

As I have said, the latest affordable housing statistics have fallen to their lowest levels in 24 years. Of course I welcome any credible initiatives to provide low-cost housing, but where is the evidence that this well-meaning initiative to extend permitted development rights, which the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare has discussed today, will actually deliver low-cost housing?

Between February and April in 2016, the Government consulted jointly with the Mayor of London on proposals to deliver more homes in London by allowing a limited number of additional storeys on existing buildings through a permitted development right, local development orders or development plan policies, which is exactly what the hon. Gentleman is seeking. That was part of the Government’s commitment to explore how more homes could be built on brownfield land, in order to reduce the pressure on greenfield or metropolitan open land. The Government summary of the responses that they received to that proposal says:

“More than half of those were not supportive of the proposal, with a one-size-fits-all permitted development right approach considered unworkable. While it was noted that it could support town centres and deliver more homes, it was recognised that the complex prior approval that would be required to protect neighbours and the character and amenity of an area would result in a permitted development right that is no less onerous than a planning application.”

Specifically, a couple of the consultees—the Planning Officers Society and Historic England—did not support the proposals. I am well aware that the British Property Federation welcomed them.

[John Penrose]

I just wish to clarify something for the hon. Lady. I have read the document she is quoting and learned of the concerns surrounding the proposed permitted development right, which has been consulted on already, but my proposal is different. It starts from the same place, but is designed to avoid the criticisms that were levelled, which she has rightly pointed out. I have endeavoured to modify my proposal in a way that will allow it to sidestep those issues.

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[Ruth Cadbury]

Having been a councillor myself for many, many years, I am well aware of that pressure, which is why we have the appeals system—it is why we have that check and balance. Let us remember that one can only get away with refusing a planning application if the refusal is made on good planning grounds. Officers are there to advise councillors, and if councillors ignore officers, the application will go to appeal, and, if it is a good application that was refused for the wrong reasons, the Planning Inspectorate will overturn the refusal and the application will be granted.

The planning system is there for a reason. It is there to protect communities and ensure good development. It ensures that there are appropriate facilities, amenities, space standards, parking provision and so on. When permitted development rights are extended, a lot of that is lost. I am sure that the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare does not want to see a load of high-rise buildings going up that do not meet basic standards and do not provide a basic quality of life for the people living in those dwellings and in surrounding dwellings.

[John Penrose]

I repeat that I am not proposing huge high-rise dwellings at all; I am proposing things that can be built up to the height of the local treeline, for example, which is four or five storeys at the most. I gently say to the hon. Lady that if the planning system works so bleedin’ brilliantly, we would have four or five-storey developments in market towns and seaside towns around the country, but we do not. I doubt very strongly that that is because communities everywhere have roundly decided that they cannot live with anything taller than two storeys. I suspect that it is because there is a chilling effect. People are being discouraged from putting such applications in because of officialdom knocking them back all the time.

[Ruth Cadbury]

With the greatest respect to the hon. Gentleman, I believe he was in the same meeting as me last week, where we talked about converting empty space above flats into residential. In that interesting and informative roundtable, we heard that there is a whole host of barriers to converting empty space above shops, and the same applies to the proposal to increase heights. The planning system was not suggested as the main barrier. There are other barriers, such as structural ones, security ones, issues of funding and whether it is worth the cost. Except in very high-price property areas, such as those that my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) and I represent, it is just not worth landowners’ while to do it. There is a range of barriers.

No one denies that enabling more homes in town centres is a good thing for the life and vibrancy of those town centres. I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment, but the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare could do better than blaming the planning system for the lack of delivery. The planning system can deliver what he wants now. He has brought no evidence that this little tweak of the planning system will deliver more housing, let alone more affordable housing. He has made circumstantial links between more supply, of which the proposal would provide a tiny amount, and a crashing fall in housing prices. There is no evidence.

We have seen problems when permitted development rights are extended, such as with the coalition Government’s policy, which has now been enshrined permanently, of allowing employment space to be converted into residential without planning permission. In Hounslow—I represent half of the borough—we have seen poor-quality housing, poor space standards, inadequate parking and issues with everything from refuse disposal to access. That policy is not providing good-quality housing or affordable housing.

The other extension of permitted development rights that was enacted under the coalition Government allowed homeowners to extend the rear of their homes by 6 metres, rather than the 3 metres it had been previously. Those developments have a massive impact on the neighbours. That is why we have to be careful about extending permitted development rights, and the Opposition do not support such extensions.

Building can be done at height with good design, but there is no reason why that cannot be done through the normal, transparent and accountable planning application process. In the years I was a planning committee member—some of those were as chair—we granted many applications for increasing the height of buildings and homes or for building new higher ones. We refused some terrible applications. The system allows for that to happen. We have a massive housing shortage in west London, but the prices are high enough that it is worth the developers’ while. We saw the applications; we approved the good ones and refused the bad ones. The market in west London is doing exactly what the hon. Gentleman desires.

[John Penrose]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way yet again. She is being very generous and kind. I gently say to her that the London economic microclimate is not typical of the rest of Britain. I am rather reassured by some of the things she has said about what is happening in parts of London and how these things are being handled, but I do not think those incentives, processes or habits of mind among councils and council officials are broadly spread across the country.

[Ruth Cadbury]

In which case, the hon. Gentleman is effectively admitting that it is not the planning system that is the problem, but the state of the property market and other barriers to development. The market in west London is doing exactly what he wants, and I suggest he looks elsewhere for the cause of the problem and, therefore, for the solution.

The hon. Gentleman wants beautiful buildings; that is why a planning system is needed. He is proposing a solution that removes local oversight, but there is no evidence it will work and it could create unintended consequences. Furthermore, his proposal does not address the subject of the debate: low-cost housing. I am almost inclined to dissent when the Question is put at the end of the debate as to whether we have considered low-cost housing, but I will leave that for then.

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[John Penrose]

I would like to extend my thanks to everybody who participated in this debate, in particular my hon. Friend the Minister—and Whip—for responding so constructively and helpfully. As she said, the timing of this debate was slightly fortuitous. As everyone here will appreciate, when we put in for debates we have little control over precisely when our names will come up, so I had no idea that it would take place 24 hours after the publication of the housing White Paper.

As the Minister said, I have been campaigning on this issue for some time, so this is at least partially a celebration of victory, because I am pleased to say that the Government have listened. There is a great deal in the White Paper about building up, not out, and it contains some very welcome steps. The Government deserve full credit for taking some major steps in the right direction. Therefore, my modest proposal, as the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) called it, is a final flourish or a final capstone—a residual step to ensure that it is done well and fully, rather than only partially. I think I am very close to the summit of achieving what we need to do, and I want to take this final step. This is, at least in part, a celebration of victory as much as a request for further activity.

I want to pick up on the Minister’s comments about there being a slightly miserable tone to the debate. She is absolutely right that there is no silver bullet to this problem, but it is perhaps a little reductive to say that because one particular proposal—in this case, my final step—does not solve all the complicated, deep-rooted and long-lasting housing problems that this country faces, it should therefore be opposed. If we let the best be the enemy of the good, we will get nowhere. This is a far broader issue than we can possibly cover in one debate, but I am pleased to say that we will make some progress.

I will finish on this point, which I direct to the Labour party and the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth in particular. My hon. Friend the Minister said there was a cultural divide over tall buildings, but I think that in this Chamber there has been a cultural divide over the approach to regulation, too. I accept that the planning permission and planning regulation process plays an important role in preventing substandard building and inappropriate large-scale building—the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth was right to point all those things out. However, when it comes to regulating our fellow citizens in a free society, the burden of proof is on us to show why what we are doing to take away their freedoms is right, not on them to explain why they should have them back. Therefore, if I have a modest suggestion for an extension of those freedoms—a rolling back that will not impact on the broader points that the planning system is rightly geared to prevent abuses of—then it is up to us to justify why that should not happen. The burden of proof should be on us.

[Ruth Cadbury]

rose—

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)]

Can I check that the hon. Gentleman is not giving way?

[John Penrose]

I have finished my remarks.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered low cost housing.