New Housing Supply

Simon Clarke Excerpts

Monday 5th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

It has been a genuine pleasure to be part of this evening’s debate, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) in his absence on securing it. I pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western) for what I thought was an exemplary speech, in which I really could not find anything to disagree with. I say that with deep admiration.

We must confront the stark reality that we are facing a severe shortfall in housing because of the policy choices of successive Governments, a dearth of political leadership at both local and national level, and a lack of honesty with the public about the consequences every time a Member of this House, a local councillor or a local campaign group celebrates blocking new homes. The Centre for Cities estimates that our shortfall is as great as 4.3 million homes. That crisis is stunting our economic growth, leaving young people without the space to start a family, and trapping renters in unsafe accommodation. At our aimed-for build rate of 300,000 homes a year, it would take us some 50 years to put that right, and we are not getting anywhere near that build rate.

Of course, historically we did much better. Home ownership was a moral mission for the Macmillan Government, and it may not have escaped the attention of Conservative Members that his achievements underpinned his huge election victory in 1959, in the way that Mrs Thatcher won huge support through her right-to-buy policy. The contrast with the 1960s could hardly be more stark: in that decade, we built 3.6 million homes, more than we have built in total since the turn of the century. We have created a supply and demand feedback loop of the worst possible kind.

I am afraid that I must take issue with the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) when she says that the planning system is not the problem. I am afraid that it is: that system is fundamentally broken. It is what is driving the fact that someone buying their first home now faces paying nine times their income for it. In the 1980s, the figure was just three times the average salary.

[Helen Morgan]

I would just like to clarify: it is not the only problem. We give planning permission for all these houses, but we do not build them. We need to address the build-out problem as well as the planning issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clarke]

I think the issue of land banking is something of a straw man in these debates, because I have never seen compelling evidence that it happens. I think the reality is that developers need a predictable land supply in order to have a programme of forward build, and that is what largely accounts for that question.

I do not want to make this a starkly political debate, but I am very conscious that it is often the hon. Lady’s party that is—I am afraid to say it—the worst offender when it comes to campaigning cynically against the development that we need. I refer colleagues across the House to the Chesham and Amersham by-election a few years ago to see just how detrimental that policy has been to the wider debate. Arguably, it was that election result that led to the disastrous removal of targets, which I think is what is driving tonight’s debate in the first place.

[Bob Seely]

My right hon. Friend talks about the planning system being the problem, not land banking per se. Does he accept the figures from Lichfields, which show that from getting planning permission, it takes eight and a half years for a first house to be built on a large housing estate, and that on average, a 2,000-home housing estate is built out by developers at a rate of 160 homes a year? It takes the best part of two decades to build out a 2,000-home housing estate. Is my right hon. Friend really saying that the development industry is not the problem?

[Mr Clarke]

I think it is much more about the developers seeking to make sure that they can sell the homes that they are building and about their having a supply of land predictably available to allow them to build into the future. Developers are obviously very constrained at the moment by the scarcity of supply.

The consequence of where we find ourselves is that, according to Schroders, the last time house prices were this expensive relative to earnings was 1876, the year that Victoria became Empress of India. That should make us all reflect on what kind of society we have become. Clearly, part of the problem is that we need to control immigration more strictly, and I strongly believe that the numbers announced just before recess were unsustainably high, but this is fundamentally a home-grown problem. Our society does not build the homes that we need to accommodate our existing population, and therefore we need to establish clear targets for housing supply. Doing so is not some kind of Stalinist five-year plan; it is the best way we have yet identified to prevent councils from backsliding on their responsibilities and caving in to what are often small, if noisy, pressure groups. It is my view that the regrettable decision taken by the Prime Minister last year to weaken those targets by removing their legal force was a mistake that has already had far-reaching consequences.

I am prepared to have a sensible debate about how we set our housing targets. We could change our approach and take as our starting point the existing occupied housing stock of an area and apply a rate at which it should be increased in line with the national house building target of 300,000 homes a year. Urban areas would see the highest levels of need, allowing a brownfield-focused policy, and no part of the country would be asked to contribute more than its fair share. This stock-led starting point for a standard method would remove the reliance on discredited housing projections, and it could be nuanced with carve-outs for AONBs, sites of special scientific interest and places with high concentrations of holiday lets or, indeed, where historic drivers of demand, such as university expansion, have ceased to exist.

One thing I would say is that we cannot insist that the green belt should be out of bounds wholly and completely, as the Prime Minister implied recently. The green belt was a 1940s mechanism to prevent urban expansion, pretty crudely drawn on the map. It is not—I repeat, not—a sophisticated environmental protection measure. It is, however, the beneficiary of effective branding. We have to raise awareness that about 11% of our brownfield land lies within the green belt and that 35% of the green belt is intensive agricultural land of minimal environmental significance. The public deserve to know that. Perhaps areas of the green belt that do not have genuine environmental value could be designated as orange or amber belt, capable of being developed in exchange for substitution elsewhere.

There are other things I could talk about. I could talk about the onerous nutrient neutrality rules, which are blocking huge swathes of housing from the Solent up to Darlington.

[The Minister of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Rachel Maclean)]

indicated assent.

[Mr Clarke]

I can see my hon. Friend the Minister nodding from the Front Bench. I urge the Government to act on this issue. There could be a grand bargain, whereby we carve house building out of the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017 in exchange for more robust action on the actual polluters—that is to say, our water companies and bad farming practice. I will say no more on that.

As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson), we need the appropriate infrastructure to make sure that new developments succeed. That is certainly something I want to see in Coulby Newham in my constituency, where new homes are in contemplation at scale. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) on the importance of aesthetics. We need to build beautifully to win the argument with communities that we can build well. I also agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden about new garden towns and cities. Where is the ambition that led to Welwyn Garden City or Milton Keynes? It is vital that we try to concentrate developments where they can make the most difference, which will often be around the capital.

My final point—I crave your indulgence on this, Madam Deputy Speaker—is that this is a cross-party issue. It is an area where we need to work together and not take cynical advantage where politicians or councils of the opposite party try to do the right thing, because it is the easiest campaign in the world to fight new house building, but it is against the interests of this country. We risk becoming a profoundly unequal society, fractured on the twin fault lines of low home ownership and unaffordable rents for cramped, undesirable properties. That is not progress. That is not something of which any of us can be proud. I do sense that the mood in the House is changing on this question. I profoundly hope that Government policy will follow suit.