Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2015-03-20
Topic: Housing
Hilary James Benn (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman is, of course, referring to the consequences of a global recession. [Hon. Members: "Ah!"] Well, it was a global recession. The Secretary of State made specific promises about what the Government were going to do and they have comprehensively failed The Lyons review says to communities, "In return for taking responsibility for building the homes that you need, we will give you the powers that you need when you identify sites." I have listened to debates in this House in which Members, particularly Government Members, have said, "We don’t understand it. We’ve identified sites, but the developers come along and say, ‘I don’t fancy building there. It’s not viable for me. I’m going to put in a planning application for that greenfield site over there.’" Up and down the country, that is happening. It is a great frustration for local authorities and citizens, because if they identify sites, the deal in return has to be that that is where the development will take place. If we are just dependent on the big house builders, we will never get to the figures that we need and it will undermine the public consent that, we all agree, is fundamental to making progress on house building We must say to local authorities, "Here’s a range of tools that you can use to ensure that the kind of homes you want get built in the places you have identified and go to the people who need them." That is why the one other thing that we will do is to give local authorities a planning power to say that in housing growth areas a percentage of the new homes that are built for sale should, in the first instance, be reserved for local first-time buyers. If we do that, we will turn quite a few nimbys into yimbys, because they will realise that their son or daughter, or their neighbour’s son or daughter, will have the chance to get one of those houses If we are to get to the target that we have set of 200,000 homes a year by 2020—I say to Ministers that surely their experience over the past four years has taught them that we will not do it by trying to put a bit more petrol into the old house building engine and cranking it up—there has to be a fundamental change in the way the house building market works Let me turn to economic evolution and growth. I acknowledge what the Secretary of State has done with deals for some cities—it would be churlish not to—but there is an unanswered question: if he and the Government are so committed to devolution, why has progress been so slow, patchy and piecemeal? Manchester aside, why have such limited powers been offered to a small number of large cities. Why, as the Local Government Chronicle put it yesterday, has DCLG "almost seemed peripheral, a bystander to the devolution debate" Why has Lord Kerslake, now free from the responsibilities of office, said—again in the Local Government Chronicle—that "it was only well into its fourth year that the government woke up to the benefits of devolution" I suspect there is plenty more where that came from. Why has the right hon. Gentleman stepped aside while the Chancellor and Deputy Prime Minister have had a row about whether powers can be devolved and whether we need a metro mayor? Perhaps he is not actually in charge of the policy What about the great counties of England? Until the Chancellor got up on Wednesday and finally adopted Labour’s policy on 100% retention of business rate income growth, which he said he would apply to Cambridge and Greater Manchester, the counties of England had frankly been ignored. The Secretary of State will be only too well aware of how angry his colleagues in the counties have been at his failure to stand up for them. It was noticeable last year that at the meeting of the County Councils Network—the great annual gathering of county councils—not a single DCLG Commons Minister could manage to clear their diaries to turn up to address what was mainly their party colleagues It is not a very long journey to Marlow—about an hour in the ministerial car—and I think the real reason is what happened to the Secretary of State the previous year at the 2013 conference. LocalGov.co.uk reported it thus: "Mr Pickles received a hostile reception at the conference…During questions, the Tory leader of Leicestershire, CC Nick Rushton, asked the secretary of state: ‘Why are you always so rude to us?— I am sure the Secretary of State remembers that well— "It’s about time you spoke up for us in Government.’" I sympathise with the Secretary of State because with friends like that who needs us on the Opposition Benches? It is the unfairness that makes people angry. The truth is that his Conservative colleagues in the counties know that they will get a better deal from a Labour Government than they have got from the Tory Government, and the same is true for the city regions.