Housing: Long-term Plan

Debate between Tim Farron and Mims Davies

Tuesday 9th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron]

I would be very interested to look at the detail of that. I am also keen to recognise that we have to take the community with us, which takes bravery at every level. It sometimes seems that we have to tackle this issue, as Harold Macmillan bravely did in the 1950s, by not looking at it from an ideological point of view and by not scoring points. I would be pretty surprised if anybody on the Labour or Liberal Benches did that back in the 1950s. There are more people on the Liberal Democrat Benches today than there were on the Liberal Benches in the 1950s, which is progress. [Interruption.] There may have been three Members, depending on whether or not Megan Lloyd George had left by then.

The point is simply that if we are brave and do not look at this issue through an ideological prism—such as by saying that we can move forward only by having all social rented housing or by flogging off social rented housing—we can take people with us and minimise the number who will oppose us in the planning process. However, if we have a Government, as sadly we do, who look at this issue purely through an ideological prism, rather than by asking how we can solve the crisis, we will always land ourselves with opponents.

[Mims Davies (Eastleigh) (Con)]

I note the hon. Gentleman’s point about the long term. The lack of a local plan is a long-term issue in Eastleigh. The council, which is led by the Liberal Democrats, has not taken people with them and we have been without a plan for five, or nearly six, years. Lots of people are unhappy. On a party political point, for the council to allow the first options paper to come out on 23 December, when people were doing their Christmas shopping—he says that councils must take people with them on this important issue—was disingenuous at a local level.

[Tim Farron]

That is a staggering intervention from an hon. Lady who represents a constituency with one of the best housing records in the country. I remember taking part in the by-election in 2013—talk about bravery. It was brave of the council, led by a party that was defending a seat, to pass, weeks before polling day, exactly the sort of long-term local plan that she mentions because that was the right thing to do. For the next few days, Tory leaflets were full of criticisms of the Liberal Democrat administration for having the decency to build homes. She needs to look at her party’s previous election literature in the constituency that she temporarily represents.

It is time for the Government to take action. We cannot simply rely on the dysfunctional market to deliver the homes we need. Even in the boom years of 1997 to 2007, the market delivered at best only 148,000 new homes each year, which is far lower than the Macmillan—or the Liberal Democrat—standard. The problem we face is not a result of the recession; it is a structural problem that will be solved only by intervention. The current system works for those who have, but not for those who have not. Britain should be a place where affordable housing is available for all, to rent or to buy, no matter the circumstances of their birth, but Britain is not such a place. It is time to put ideology and party politics aside and to build the homes that Britain needs.