Planning and House Building

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Thursday 8th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

I say to the right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) that one thing has changed more frequently than the title of the Department, and that is the Housing Ministers themselves. In the past 10 years, we have had 10 Housing Ministers, five of them lasting less than six months. That suggests that the importance given to housing is not that great, but it is certainly the biggest issue for my constituents.

I would therefore like to be positive and suggest 10 things that the Government might want to take on board. No. 1: I know it may be contrary to some people’s view, but not all green belt is green. I do not mean the genuinely rolling fields, ancient woodland or areas of outstanding natural beauty; I am talking about the car washes, the waste plants and the scrublands that no one would ever dream of calling green. There are 19,334 hectares of unbuilt green-belt land within a 10-minute walk of London train stations, where there is enough space for 1 million new homes.

No. 2: it is time for the Government to say to councils, to the Ministry of Defence and to the NHS that it is mad to sell their land simply to the highest bidder. Instead, the first consideration for any piece of publicly owned land should be: can it be used for housing and can it be used for social housing?

No. 3: I am glad that the Government are now interested in modular homes, but there is a catch—they are not having them until 2030. Where is the ambition? Modular homes are cheaper, quicker to build, more efficient, and ready to go right now.

No. 4: it was reported last year that there are now more than 216,000 long-term empty properties in England. That is equivalent to 72% of the Government’s annual new homes target alone. Let us get some money out there and get those homes back into use.

No. 5: How can it be right that one in 10 adults owns a second home while four in 10 do not own their first? Even the stamp duty holiday is exacerbating that difference. It is not a sustainable future for our country or our democracy.

No. 6: we must deal with land bankers. In 2019, the FTSE 100 house building companies were sitting on a land bank of more than 300,000 plots between them. If we add in the rest—the FTSE 350 house building companies—then the collective land bank was a staggering 470,068 plots. Yet they completed just 86,685 homes in the previous year. Where is the punitive or preventive action on land banking?

No. 7: what about the reducing the proportion needed to buy into shared ownership, to let families and single people buy at 5%, 2% or 1% rather than the 20% floor, giving them the opportunity to buy and to get in on home ownership with a smaller deposit?

No. 8: why are we not incentivising the development of more specialist accommodation for the elderly, improving the options available for older people, while releasing some of the current housing stock?

No. 9: why are so many properties across our capital owned internationally, rather than by Londoners and people in this country? Let us take ideas from some other countries. I am really sorry; I am not going to get to No. 10, Madam Deputy Speaker—[Hon. Members: “Go on!”] All right!

No. 10: I have offered all these questions in a similar situation back in other debates. Everybody has good ideas, so let us just get on with it.