Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Richard Bacon and Catherine West
Mr Bacon
Yes, there are far too few volume house builders. What we actually need is proper choice. I do not blame volume house builders for building when it is profitable to do so and not otherwise, but they can artificially restrict the supply of land and acquisition possibilities for others by not even buying the land, but by buying an option on the land. If they pay a farmer in my constituency £4,000 a year for 10 years for an option to buy the land, they can keep it off the market. The farmer can get 3.5 tonnes of winter barley or wheat off it so he is happy, and he gets the option money as well.
There is one thing that does not happen, however. A lady emailed me last year when my Bill was going through to say that she had spent five years looking for a piece of land, and that she was no further forward than she had been on the day she started. It seems as though, in this country, it will never be a middle-aged rite of passage to get a piece of land and build one’s own house, as it is in Germany.
Mr Bacon
I cannot give way. I am so sorry; I would love to, but there is no more time.
Germany has 20 million more people than us and one third of its land area is covered by forest, yet anyone who wants to buy a piece of land there can go along to their local council and say, “I would like a piece of land, please.” The reply will be, “Would you like a big one or a small one?” The smaller ones are disproportionately slightly subsidised by the big ones, which are disproportionately slightly more expensive. There is an equilibrium between the supply of land and those who want to buy it, so anyone can get a piece of land.
I have mentioned the fact that it is possible to construct a house for between £140,000 and £160,000. Through the community land trusts scheme, it is possible to remove from the equation the actual value of the land. There are many landowners who would happily come forward to help in rural areas such as mine in Norfolk if they thought that the land was not going to be used by a volume house builder to build on spec and then sell. The very fact that people use the word “spec”—as in “speculative”—is quite extraordinary. I was sitting next to a representative of a major house builder at a dinner recently, and I said, “We don’t talk about spec shoes or spec chairs. The very word ‘spec’ is pejorative. Why do you use it? Why aren’t you loved? You provide the dwelling places where people live their lives, rear their children, conceive their children and bring about the next generation. Given what you do, why are you not loved? Why do you call it ‘spec’?” He looked at me as though I was mad and said, “Well, I suppose we always have.”
We need a revolution in how we do this, and my simple plan is to put the customer at the centre of the equation. I know that that is old-fashioned and traditional. It might even sound simple, but it works for shoes, it works for chairs and it works for most things. There are many good measures in the Bill that will help to promote supply, including the registration of brownfield land, the reduction of uncertainty in the planning process, the simplification of compulsory purchases and the speeding up of neighbourhood planning.
Many of those measures are welcome, but the most welcome aspect of the Bill is the opportunity provided in chapter 2 to make it easier for a person to get a piece of land and build a house on it. That could affect everyone. It could have huge benefits for social cohesion, for skills and even for the prevention of reoffending. Stella Clarke in the Community Self-Build Agency in Bristol is getting young black men who were rioting 20 years ago to literally build their own stake in the community. We need a revolution in this country, and it is this Government who are going to bring it about.