Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Nesil Caliskan and Florence Eshalomi

Report stage
Monday 9th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall and Camberwell Green) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am mindful of what you say, Madam Deputy Speaker, and will try to keep my remarks short. I rise to speak to the amendments in my name. In this Report stage, I will briefly touch on why the Bill is so vital. It is fair to say that we all, as constituency MPs, have our frustrations with the planning system, but ultimately we must remember why this Bill matters. We are in the middle of a housing crisis. A generation of young people are spending more and more of their income on unaffordable private rents, while the dream of home ownership fades even further. We have 1.3 million households on local authority waiting lists for social housing and more than 165,000 children growing up in temporary accommodation. That figure has risen by 15% in the last year alone.

I am the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, and our first report looked at the lives of some of the children in temporary accommodation. What we found was truly shameful. Families are living in damp, cold and mouse-infested homes. Babies are not able to crawl or learn to walk because of a lack of floor space. Most shockingly, we found that temporary accommodation has been a contributing factor in the death of at least 74 children in the past five years.

[Nesil Caliskan (Barking) (Lab)]

As a fellow London Member of Parliament, I recognise everything that my hon. Friend has described. Was she surprised, as I was, to hear from the shadow Minister that the planning system is fine and should not change?

[Florence Eshalomi]

As I outlined in my opening comments, the planning system does not work. It is broken, just as we have a broken housing market and a housing crisis.

I mentioned the 74 children who died in the past five years; 58 were under the age of one. As Members of Parliament representing different parts of the country, we might disagree with aspects of developments in our constituencies, and we must not let developers off the hook when they often fail to deliver quality in new housing.