Planning Decisions: Local Involvement — House of Commons, 2021-06-21
Topic: Housing
Robert Edward Jenrick (Conservative, Centre-right): The Opposition called this debate today to divide us, but I do not think they have succeeded. What we have heard, time and again, across the House is a very high degree of consensus. Member after Member, from either side of the House, queued up to say that this country needs to build more houses. Some said we have a housing crisis. Some said we have a generational duty to help young people and those on low incomes to enjoy the dream of home ownership, which so many of us—the vast majority of people in this House—have already achieved and are enjoying. Member after Member, including almost every contribution from the Labour party, queued up to say that the current planning system does not work. Some made extremely good and important points. The hon. Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) said that the single biggest issue she hears from her constituents on is the planning system and how it is failing to address the needs of her constituents. Yet we also heard from the Labour Front-Bench team an argument that we should do absolutely nothing—that we should not take forward any ambitious plans to reform the planning system at all The shadow Secretary of State spoke for nine minutes but said absolutely nothing. All he has managed to achieve with this debate has been to shine a light on the Labour party’s own derisory record on housing. Let us not forget that this Government, back in 2010, inherited levels of house building at the lowest they had been since the 1920s. Those of us who are just about old enough to remember that time recall when John Prescott was Secretary of State in my Department and they recall his flagrant disregard for the green belt, the needs of local communities and local democracy, with his failed approach to regional planning, which we scrapped when we came to power Those of us who see what Labour is doing today see how damaging and feeble their policies are. If we look at Wales, we see that, despite the rhetoric we heard today, the Labour party is developing 12 council houses—for the whole of Wales. In Croydon, the Labour borough represented by the shadow Housing Secretary and run by his closest friends and cronies, the local council has gone bankrupt and its housing company, Brick by Brick, has taken tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money and has failed to deliver a single home. Its social housing stock is so disgracefully Dickensian that the housing regulator has in recent weeks condemned it. What has the hon. Gentleman said? He has said nothing at all. His Twitter account, which he loves to use to criticise the Conservative party, has fallen as silent as that of Donald Trump—he has said absolutely nothing. So we will take no lectures from the Labour party We also heard from the Lib Dems, who have mysteriously gone AWOL now, at the end of the debate. Days after winning a by-election, saying that they would campaign to ditch the planning Bill, they could not even be bothered to turn up to the end of the debate. We have heard the appalling, rank hypocrisy of the Liberal Democrats throughout this debate. Their leader went on TV at the weekend to declare himself a "yimby", but that is very different from what he was saying to people on the doorsteps of Buckinghamshire in recent weeks. It is better to describe him and his party, in the term of my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), as a "banana"—build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything Except in practice that is not what some Liberal Democrat councils do. The two Lib Dem Members who did turn up to speak in this debate, the hon. Members for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) and for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), both represent areas with Liberal Democrat councils that are building twice the number of homes that the Government are asking them to build. I do not criticise those Liberal Democrat councils for trying to build homes, but if anyone is objectively concreting over the green belt or greenfield land, it is those councils that are choosing to build twice the number of homes that the Conservative Government are asking them to build Of course, it was the Liberal Democrat leader who voted consistently for HS2 and, when we were in coalition, voted for every one of this Conservative Government’s planning Bills from 2010 until he lost his seat in 2015, so the speeches from the Opposition Front Bench and the Liberal Democrats were, I am afraid, just embarrassing. Nothing was more emblematic of that than the graphic put out by the Labour party this afternoon, which showed some properties in the Cotswolds that Labour had taken from an article in a newspaper with the headline "Why £10 million country estates are the new £5 million estates". How out of touch is that? We on this side of the House do want to build homes. We do want to help young people on to the housing ladder, and we do care about homelessness and rough sleeping, and tackling intergenerational unfairness As I said at the beginning of my speech, a great deal united the House in this debate, and six themes emerged, all of which are fortunately the chapters—the pillars—of the planning reform Bill. First is our united desire to see greater environmental protection—our categoric insistence that the green belt must be protected, in a way that the Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester, who is doing more than any other person in this country to build upon the green belt, does not seem to understand. We will enshrine those principles in the Bill Secondly, we will ensure that the Bill means a massive improvement in the quality and design of properties. We will bring forward the ideas of Sir Roger Scruton’s Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, so that new homes in this country are built to a dramatically higher standard.