Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 8th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I cannot comment on a specific planning application for reasons that the hon. Gentleman knows well, but I appreciate the strength of his point and will ask the Minister for Housing to engage with him more closely on both that specific issue and the broader policy points that he raised.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

As the Secretary of State knows, York also has a Liberal Democrat-run council, and the challenge we have is that the council is not building the tenure of housing that my local residents can afford either to rent or to buy. So how will this legislation really shift the dial on affordability?

[Michael Gove]

I have a lot of sympathy for the hon. Lady and the situation in which she finds herself. I know that she is a doughty champion for York—it is a beautiful city, and a potential home for the House of Lords if it does not want to move to Stoke—and that York needs the right type of housing and commercial investment. I look forward to working with her and with Homes England, and also to consider what we can do in the Bill to deal with some of the consequences of some of her constituents foolishly having voted for Liberal Democrats at the local level.

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[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

The purpose of power is to bring transformation, with transformation of communities delivering transformation of life chances. When we get that moment to bring forward legislation to tackle the burning injustices perpetuated throughout our communities, where 14.5 million people live in poverty, one third of them children, we expect Government to make the bold interventions to ensure that everyone has a sustainable home to call their own; that public land is used for public good, delivering the homes people need and can afford to live in, rather than seeing investors further their wealth; and that we build houses and high streets together to ensure that the local community is served.

I welcome the opportunity to auction off empty units to ensure that our high streets become vibrant again, and I urge the Government to look further at ensuring that spaces above shops are utilised, not just for business, but for start-ups, creatives and social enterprises and as incubator and accelerator spaces, such as those the University of York is investing in. The Government have failed to level up power between communities and vested interests in this Bill, or to provide the framework to shift the entrenched planning injustices and tilt planning towards the needs of our communities. With this Bill, we still have landowners marking time against profits and developers continuing to extract wealth from investments while denying house seekers the right to a home.

That brings me to the challenge before us. We need to get the pecking order right with housing, putting social housing at the heart of what needs to be developed, and then bringing on affordable housing so that house seekers can have the home they long for. That is what Nye Bevan did when he developed his “homes fit for heroes”, putting the power in the hands of municipal authorities and giving them the permissions and powers to build. We must learn from that in order to build to need again. I think everyone in this debate ultimately wants to ensure that we get the right tenure, in the right places, at the right price for our communities. This Bill simply does not tick that box, so we know there is more to come in terms of amendments to the Bill to make sure that that happens.

Without having value defined in the infrastructure levy, it is hard to assess the benefit it will bring. I trust that the Minister will say more about that. Take York-based Persimmon: last year it generated £3.61 billion in revenue and made just shy of £1 billion in pre-tax profits. A robust levy must demand more from those large developers, so that those who make the greatest profits contribute the most, whereas small developers have greater opportunities to grow their businesses. We need to capacity-build as well as to see a strong social return. The problem is that when addressing housing need, the Government start with numbers, not numbers combined with tenure. Their starting point is therefore market value housing, which house seekers simply cannot afford. In my city of York, we are seeing those homes turning into second homes and Airbnbs, stripping out the opportunity for people to have a home they can call their own. We need to ensure that this Bill also addresses the scourge of Airbnbs, which are shooting up everywhere.

If the starting point is first to build social housing to meet needs and ensure that house seekers get the homes that they need, this Bill will do its job. At the moment, it needs further revision, and I trust the Minister will listen to that.

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[Stuart Andrew]

The hon. Member knows that I cannot comment on individual plans. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) would be the first to apply for an urgent question asking me to explain why I prejudged a local plan. What I would say, in general terms, is that it is clear that local authorities can argue the constraints that they may have, and his local authority may be planning to do that; I do not know.

Let me move on, because I am conscious of time. I turn to second homes, because, if I did not, my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby), as well as my hon. Friends the Members for St Ives (Derek Thomas) and for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson) and others, would be rather angry with me. We have put provisions in the Bill to try to help on that, and I know that she wants us to go further. I have made a commitment to come down to the south-west to hold a series of roundtables and see the issues for myself. We will see what else can be done as we go through the Bill’s passage.

[Rachael Maskell]

In addition to second homes, we have the challenge of Airbnbs, which of course the Bill does not mention, and yet they are blighting our communities as they take out existing stock and dominate new stock that is being built. Will the Minister look again—it is urgent—to put an amendment into the Bill to address that serious issue?

[Stuart Andrew]

In fact, I had a meeting just this morning to talk about that very issue. I will report back in due course, if that is okay.