New Pylons: East Anglia

Debate between Richard Bacon and James Cartlidge

Tuesday 19th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I reiterate the condolences of my colleagues to my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) on his loss. That was a brilliant speech by my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), and I associate myself with nearly everything that nearly everyone has said. I am smiling at my constituency neighbour—my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill)—whose constituency is behind Tesco and Morrisons in my constituency. We are neighbours, but if I were to go a few hundred yards to the east, my neighbour is a different Member of Parliament. I know Wortham Ling well—I walk my dogs near there.

I am interested in two aspects of this important debate. First, planning permission cannot be assumed and therefore a route cannot be assumed. I may have misinterpreted this, but that appeared to have come as a bit of a surprise to the Minister. He certainly looked round in alarm when one of my colleagues made that point. The second aspect is about time. My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex mentioned judicial review. I do not want to repeat anything that has been said, but it is clear in the development in recent years of English administrative law—common law—that there is a law of consultation known as the Gunning principles, which are set out clearly and helpfully by the Local Government Association. There are four principles and they derive from a case in which Judge Stephen Sedley was in charge of the court: Regina v. Brent London Borough Council, ex parte Gunning—that is why they are called the Gunning principles. They are now clearly established and applied by the courts.

The first principle is that the proposals are still at a formative stage. The second is that there is sufficient information to give intelligent consideration. The third is that there is adequate time for consideration and response. The fourth, which has become increasingly important in recent cases, as opposed to earlier cases where the first three principles were given more weight, is that

“‘conscientious consideration’ must be given to the consultation responses before a decision is made”.

My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) made a point about time. He said that “there must be no holdup” in the development of offshore wind. Amen to that—we all agree. The one way we can be absolutely sure there will be a huge holdup is if the lawyers get hold of this. If the Minister wants to be bogged down in judicial review and legal battles for years to come with no progress towards our net zero targets, all he has to do is ignore what all of us are saying, and I guarantee that that is where he will end up.

[James Cartlidge]

There is another email about the reasoning for the eastern link, and another reason was given was about the speed of delivery of an offshore link against the speed of building pylons. It says:

“The subsea link between Torness in East Lothian and Hawthorn Pit in County Durham needs to be in place by 2027. The link between Peterhead in Aberdeenshire and Drax in North Yorkshire is needed by 2029. While onshore AC overhead line options were considered, those were discounted because they would not be deliverable in the timescales that were required.”

Does that not show that going undersea can actually be quicker?

Housing: Long-term Plan

Debate between Richard Bacon and James Cartlidge

Tuesday 9th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), because her leader at Westminster, the right hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson), was one of the sponsors of my Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Bill, which became law on 26 March 2015.

If the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) thinks I am going to talk about self-build and custom house building, I would not want to disappoint her. There are many good reasons for engaging in self-build and custom house building, and I will come to them shortly.

First, however, we have to analyse why so many Opposition Members—I have listened to them drone on for a long time—appear to think that the current housing system is, give or take, more or less, in reasonably good shape and that it just needs a few tweaks, give or take, more or less, to sort it out. The truth is that our housing system—the one we have endured for 50 years— is intellectually, socially and morally bankrupt. It is intellectually bankrupt because the supply of housing does not rise to meet demand—the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead could not give me a reason why, but she accepted that that was the case. It is socially bankrupt because not having enough housing is so extraordinarily divisive and limits opportunities. Finally, it is morally bankrupt because it is a disgrace that a rich country such as ours cannot supply enough decent housing for everyone to have somewhere to live, and that, in a country where the vast majority of people want to own their own house, homeownership is going down rather than up. This Government are starting to address these problems with the radical solutions that will make the difference.

The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), did not talk about self-build at all, although his motion refers to it. Yet that is by far the most radical suggestion in the Housing and Planning Bill, which amends the Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Act to take it further. Under the Act, local authorities will have an obligation that cuts in on 1 April this year to maintain a register of people who want to develop their own self-build project—individuals or groups of individuals. The Bill, which is currently in the other place, will place an obligation on local authorities—I do not think most of them have realised this yet, to be honest—to provide serviced plots commensurate with the demand as evidenced on their registers.

[James Cartlidge]

My hon. Friend speaks with great passion on this issue, and that is wonderful. If councils take these lists seriously, will not that offer the opportunity that, when significant development sites come up, whole areas can be set aside for self-build?

[Mr Bacon]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The only thing I would question is his use of the word “if”. Councils have a legal obligation to take the lists seriously. A planning inspector would be quite right to find a local plan unsound if it failed to contain provision for serviced plots commensurate with demand as evidenced on the register.

When Councillor Barry Wood, the leader of Cherwell District Council came to our self-build summit in Downing Street last month, he talked about one of the sites in the National Audit Office report that the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead mentioned, which has 109,500 potential houses. I spent some time explaining to the permanent secretary of the Department that our constituents liked living in real houses rather than potential houses. The list is a bit distorted, because on some of that land nothing has happened at all, and on some of it a great deal has happened. There are 1,900 serviced plots in Bicester, at Graven Hill. Anybody can look at that scheme by going to gravenhill.co.uk. Once it gets off the ground, as Councillor Wood explained in his presentation, it will make a significant difference to the marketplace because people will start looking at it and saying, “They have that in their area—why can’t we have it in ours?”

Housing

Debate between Richard Bacon and James Cartlidge

Tuesday 15th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bacon]

I understand that. It is a very good reason for not being in the Chamber. I enjoyed the right hon. Gentleman’s speech, particularly the reference to the money inherited from Labour. There was no money. I do not think he got the memo written by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) that played a significant part in the general election. The Prime Minister carried it round with him the whole time. The memo said that there was no money.

We have been facing not five, but 50 years of failure from all Governments, who have worked on the flawed assumption that only the Government can solve the problem. For 50 years Government have been part of the problem, getting in the way of the supply of housing being allowed to rise to meet demand. We saw quite a lot of finger-wagging from the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne, but we heard nothing in the way of solutions. I listened to Opposition MPs carefully for many weeks in the Housing and Planning Bill Committee and I heard a lot of whingeing, but no real solutions. It is as if they have never asked themselves why the supply does not rise to meet demand. We do not talk about the shoe crisis, the jeans crisis, the DVD crisis or the chair crisis. Everyone in this Chamber is wearing a pair of shoes—including you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and if I may say so, yours are very nice shoes.

[James Cartlidge]

I cannot see them.

[Mr Bacon]

My hon. Friend should move along a bit. They are very nice.

No one says we need a national shoe service in order to solve the problem. We have a broken model, and it is this Government who are seeking to fix it. What I find so depressing from the Labour Benches is the paucity of ideas, the sheer paucity of radicalism. Almost every amendment proposed from the Opposition Benches during the Committee stage of the Housing and Planning Bill would have had the effect of slowing things down—sand in the gears, a spanner in the works. Labour Members do not seem to recognise that they are seeking to make the central problem—the problem of supply—even worse.

Last week Kevin McCloud addressed the all-party self-build, custom-build and independent house building group at our No. 10 summit, and I am very pleased that he was able to do so. He said:

“The consumer has been on the receiving end of a pretty poor deal. We build some of the poorest, most expensive and smallest houses in Europe. That’s not something to celebrate.”

Yet according to Ipsos MORI, 53% of the adult population would like to build a house at some point, 30% would like to do so in the next five years, and more than 1 million people would like to buy a site and start in the next 12 months. This can be done at scale. Adri Duivesteijn in Almere in the Netherlands has proved that it can be done, with serviced plots for over 3,000 dwellings. Cherwell District Council is now doing it in Oxfordshire, with over 1,900 serviced plots. This is the way to help supply rise to meet demand, putting the customer at the centre. Chapter 2 of the Housing and Planning Bill, on self-build and custom house building, will make that happen. The right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne did not mention chapter 2 or self-build and custom house building.

There are very legitimate reasons why local authorities might want to have and maintain affordable housing. In my view, they could and should use some of their £22 billion of reserves to establish, promote and grow mutual housing co-operatives for affordable rent. That is completely normal in Berlin, where it is called genossenschaften, and elsewhere on the continent. These arrangements are not relevant in terms of right to buy because they involve people entering into contracts with each other to form part of a co-operative. I thought there was a thing called the Co-operative party, but we heard nothing about this in the Bill Committee; I was the one talking about it. Interestingly, the local authority leader who showed the most interest in it when asked about in-perpetuity social rents in big cities was the Conservative leader of Westminster council, Philippa Roe, who said very seriously, yet with a gleam in her eye, “Yes, we’re looking at that.” From Labour Members, I am afraid we heard nothing.

We need vision and imagination, and the Bill will make that easier to achieve. Instead of building the most poorly performing, most expensive and smallest homes in Europe, we should do things differently. We should use our imagination and our knowledge to make the best places that we can, with the best-performing homes that we know how to build, in the most beautiful surroundings that we know how to create, where people will be able to find an education, find the skills they need for life, find a job they enjoy, perhaps start their own business, put down roots, build a house or have someone build a house to their own design, raise a family, and be part of a community. These are all normal human aspirations. We have to make it normal to achieve them, so that housing supply rises to meet demand here in this country, just as it does in the rest of Europe. That is the vision that we should pursue, and this Government, with the Housing and Planning Bill, will make it happen.