Planning Decisions: Local Involvement

Simon Clarke Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2021 Commons Chamber

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

It is a pleasure to be called to speak today, because Britain needs more good homes. That is an undeniable fact. We witness it in the ever-increasing house prices right across our country. We witness it in the ever more cramped accommodation that too many families are forced to settle for. We witness it in the ever more expensive and dysfunctional rental market trap, which makes it so hard for so many people of my age to buy their first home.

The Government have sensible proposals on the table to allow communities to designate those areas that are appropriate for development and those that should be protected; to make building beautiful homes a top priority; to empower communities to set out the right design codes to ensure that new homes are in keeping with their surroundings; and to create an infrastructure levy to fund the new roads, schools and GP surgeries that these new developments need in order not to impose a detrimental effect on the existing community.



Like any constituency MP, I know just how hard it is to discuss matters relating to planning, but we are sent to this House to do the right thing for the country, and I am clear that this must mean cutting the ropes that are preventing us from building the homes that our people need. For too long, we have attempted to address what is fundamentally a supply-side problem with demand-side solutions. Frankly, that is the easier politics of the situation, though we owe it to the country to be honest that the fundamental issue is one of land supply. Even if someone is fortunate enough to own their own home, especially in the parts of the capital or the south where prices are so high, it is their children and grandchildren who are the victims of the impasse that our inefficient planning system has created.

We meet today in the shadow of the Chesham and Amersham by-election. I wish the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sarah Green) every success in her new role representing that constituency and welcome her to this House, but this was an election won in the very worst spirit of pandering to nimbyism, denying the growing social injustice that we are witnessing and privileging the interests of the haves over the have-nots in our society. This may be all right for the Liberal Democrats, whose long tradition of saying one thing locally and one thing nationally has reasserted itself; it may be all right for a desperate Labour party whose speeches collectively today have been nothing more than a terrible mixture of, frankly, hypocrisy and innuendo directed at those on the Government Benches; but it is not a choice open to my party.

To govern is to be sent here to make the tough choices on behalf of the nation, and we have to face the reality that there is nothing inevitable about the broken housing market that we have at the moment. It is broken because we have lacked the political courage to fix it. That needs to change. The Government have come forward with moderate and pragmatic proposals to unlock more land for housing while protecting the legitimate interests of existing communities and looking after their areas. It is high time for us to take this forward and build the homes that Britain needs.