Nick Boles
Main Page: Nick Boles (Independent - Grantham and Stamford)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Nick Boles)
This has been an illuminating and at times arresting debate. We have witnessed a near domestic in the household of the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) and the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck). The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) has tantalised us with talk of an amendment that seemingly never was, and the contribution by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns) had, I fear, the absolute opposite of his desired effect because it made us all want to move to his constituency and put ourselves on the list of the excellent Chelmer housing authority.
My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) spoke movingly about the particular issues facing areas that are attractive to people who want second homes. He sits next to my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), who will have similar issues in the beautiful end of the country that he represents. I hope that both my hon. Friends will be able to explore the potential for community land trusts to provide a form of housing for sale that can be secured in permanence for people on typical average local incomes.
I believe that the best contribution in this debate came from the Chair of the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government. He enjoined us all to recognise that we as a country, one Government after another, have been building too few homes for 30 years. He urged us to put aside debates about statistics—endlessly tedious debates, I might add—and instead to focus on a long-term cross-party strategy to correct our common failure. It will be hard—not least because the hon. Member for Corby (Andy Sawford) fired quite a few political bullets over the Dispatch Box in his winding-up speech—but I am going to try to follow the injunction of the distinguished Select Committee Chair. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman makes the point that this is the first time I have tried to do that. I feel that is a little harsh. But I promise not to do it again.
To build houses, we need a few basic things. As everyone has pointed out, the first thing we need more than anything is land. I am delighted that this Government have done the hard work of reforming planning policy to create the national planning policy framework, and I am even more delighted that the Labour party has agreed not to scrap it and to continue to work within that framework.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) is about to leave his seat, let me say that I am very pleased that the Mayor of London and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer have announced housing zones, working on ideas drawn up by the excellent organisation, Shelter, to bring forward brownfield sites in areas of desperate housing need. I look forward to a successful housing zone in my hon. Friend’s Enfield constituency.
I am delighted that the Chancellor is spearheading the right to build—a proposal included in the Budget—which is intended to provide small blocks of land for thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands or even millions of people who would rather not rely on a big house builder, but want to get on, hire a local builder and an architect and build themselves a house—and they often find that they can get it built a good deal cheaper, too. Again, I am glad that the Opposition have indicated their support for this initiative.
Proposals to bring forward land, then, are the first key step. I believe that this Government have done a lot, although it is taking a long time to come through—longer than any of us would have wanted to deliver the houses we need. It is right and proper that we have that as part of our long-term strategy.
The second thing we need is lots and lots of different institutions building homes. Sadly, as a result of the crash—I shall not get into the debate about where it came from; there was a crash and it was one of the worst this country has ever faced—where 5,000 firms were building between one and 10 houses a year in 2007, a few years later, there were fewer than 3,000 such firms. We have thus seen a collapse in the small and medium-sized builder market.
Every Member has talked about the falling off of council house building. I do not believe that any of us should be ideological about this issue. I want as many institutions that have the money and want to build houses to be able to do so. That is why I welcome the relaxation of the HRA borrowing cap announced by the Chancellor, for which bids are now being sought.
We need institutions to be able to get working capital in order to buy the land and to carry the land on their balance sheet while they are working through the planning process. That is why the Government have introduced a builder’s finance fund, and I am glad that the Opposition also have proposals to provide finance for small and medium-sized builders. In that long-term strategy, as well as a common approach on bringing forward land, there can be a common approach on ensuring that as many institutions as possible and as many individuals as possible are able to get on and build houses.
In addition, we need people who want to buy houses to be able to get mortgages. I am afraid that that is another thing that was entirely devastated by the crash. It was devastated perhaps for good reasons, with the banks, having over-extended themselves by lending people too much money off slightly flaky asset values and having gotten themselves into terrible problems, having to retrench and pull back their balance sheets to rebuild their equity reserves. As a result, for love nor money, people could not get a 95% mortgage—unless their daddy was very rich, in which case the mortgage probably was not needed in the first place. That explains why this Government have brought forward Help to Buy.
I know that the Opposition like to snipe about Help to Buy, but there is no question about it. Every house builder in the country will say that they are building again because they have people to sell to who are able to get mortgages. That is why I trust that once the heat of the election has subsided, the Opposition will acknowledge that Help to Buy is a key part of the long-term strategy for house building.
Notwithstanding my attempts to be bipartisan and ecumenical, I shall be urging my hon. Friends to oppose the motion. My reason for doing so is simply this: in the Opposition motion, there are some glib proposals, which I hope might work, but I fear that Opposition Members have not thought them through and that they might do more harm than good.
There is the proposal, simply named, for a “right to grow”. We heard a complaint about the duty to co-operate—the complaint that it involved endless conversations—but, when challenged on whether the “right to grow” meant a right just to impose, the Opposition said “No, of course there will be consultations.” What are consultations? Consultations are exactly the conversations that are happening as a result of the duty to co-operate. The boroughs surrounding Oxford have got together with the city of Oxford to produce a joint housing market study, so that they can understand jointly what their needs are and decide jointly how they will meet them. That is the duty to co-operate in action. Either we continue that approach, or we become more heavy-handed and we impose. I think it important to be honest: the right to grow certainly sounds more like an imposition, and I fear that those who apply it will find that they are building resentment, not houses.
I am troubled, too, by the glib approach to garden cities. The Government have been very clear about the fact that they are dying for local authorities to come forward with proposals for large new settlements which we could help to fund with a mixture of guarantees and other support, and which would deliver substantial amounts of new housing. We have made that plain for many, many years, but I have to say that we have not been overwhelmed with proposals as yet. The one place from which we did receive a proposal is the one place where we are providing that support: Ebbsfleet, where both local authorities want a garden city and absolutely see the need for it, and where we have responded by arranging for an urban development corporation to provide it.
The Opposition policy on garden cities means one of two things. Either it means that local authorities are invited to come forward with proposals for new garden settlements, in which case it is precisely the same as the Government’s current policy, or it means a proposal for Sir Michael Lyons—or some other distinguished gentleman or lady—to get out his red marker pen, look at a map of England, and start drawing his own maps of where those garden cities will go. It must be one or the other. Either it is a voluntary process in which local authorities—
Nick Boles
Oh, it is in between! Everything is “in between” when the detail becomes awkward, but the detail is the responsibility of Government. We cannot smoosh around the words and hide among the vagaries when we are in government, which is why that policy, too, is a dangerous one.
There is also the proposal to confiscate land from builders who do not build. There is nothing more frustrating for any of us than to see a site that has had planning permission for a while not being built out, but it is important that we ask ourselves what the fundamental reasons are for that. Usually, it is because the site will not make money if it is built out and sold on now. We must also ask ourselves this: what will be the result of our saying to builders “We are going to force you to build out, or else we will take the land away from you”? I fear—and not as a result of any ideological prejudices—that there will be fewer applications for planning permission and fewer houses for which development is proposed, and that we will have made the problem worse.
The Chairman of the Select Committee is right. On either side of the House, we have not yet succeeded in solving this problem. We must work together to establish a long-term strategy in order to do so, but I do not believe that the proposals in the Opposition motion will achieve that, and I therefore urge the House to reject it.
Question put.