Homes and Planning Bill

Ben Maguire Excerpts

Friday 13th November 2026 Commons Chamber

[Andrew George]

There are 25,000 people on the housing waiting list in Cornwall, and the surveys that I and others have carried out professionally indicate that that is the tip of the iceberg. There are many people who do not put their name on the waiting list because they know that it is a complete waste of time, as they stand very little chance.

[Ben Maguire (North Cornwall) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is making a fantastic speech about the issue, which he is passionate about and has spent his life campaigning on. The Government Members saying that Cornwall needs to build more were clearly not listening when he said that Cornwall has an exemplary record of building houses. In the Chapelfields development in my constituency, 10 affordable homes were put aside for local residents. The developer has now effectively bullied the registered provider out of providing those homes for local residents—and guess what? They are back on the open market. Does my hon. Friend agree that these massive housebuilding targets are meaningless unless they are focused on local residents who need the housing?

[Andrew George]

I strongly agree. Planning consultants will often say privately that when an affordable element is required within the planning permission, developers will often go to their local authority with two viability assessments—one that they show the local authority with violins and a sob story, and another in their back pocket that has substantial profits for themselves. As a result, the portion of affordable homes delivered on many of the open market-led sites often diminishes to none at all. It is a system where, I am afraid, cynicism has succeeded, and I wish the Government well in trying to bear down on the problem.

My speech has taken a long time because of the number of interventions I have taken. We have had an interesting debate, but I will bring my remarks to a close by reminding the Minister that this policy not only has the support of the local Labour party, but it was also supported by the Conservatives in the past, although I do not know where they are on that at the moment. It has been implemented by the Labour party in Wales. Indeed, I will quote the Minister, who said on 20 January last year, in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), that

“the previous Government consulted on making short-term lets a different use class, but did not consult on second homes becoming a use class. As part of our wider consideration about the additional powers we might give local authorities, I am more than happy to have a conversation”—[Official Report, 20 January 2025; Vol. 760, c. 713.]

on that issue. This was obviously in his mind at the time, and I do not know why it is not now, because it would certainly assist local communities.

I believe that the Bill represents a range of modest measures—necessarily modest because it is a private Member’s Bill—that would be available to communities to address serious housing problems. The second part of the Bill would particularly apply in those areas where there is high pressure for holiday and second homes, and I urge hon. Members and the Minister to think again and to back the Bill.

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[Samantha Dixon]

I acknowledge the hon. Member’s points and I am sure that the Minister will respond to them in due course.

The hon. Member for St Ives is right to highlight the rapid growth in short-term lets in our communities. Chester has a strong heritage and leisure industry that attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists every year, and the growth of our visitor economy has risen in step with the number of short-term lets. In Chester, and many other communities across the country, the proliferation of short-term lets has the potential to erode the supply of housing in the private rented sector. In turn, that may drive up rents for hard-pressed families. It is right that this issue is given the attention we are giving it today. Short-term lets certainly have their place in a vibrant tourism economy across the UK. Indeed, I am proud that Sykes Holiday Cottages, a company that takes its responsibilities in this area seriously, is headquartered in my constituency.

None the less, the growth in this sector must not come at the expense of our local communities. In the light of that, I was pleased to hear the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport reconfirm the Government’s commitment to the regulation of short-term lets, providing local leaders the power to balance local need for affordable housing while still benefiting from tourism in their areas. The short-term lets register will take decisive steps in an area that the Bill seeks to regulate. I am sure we will hear from the Minister for Housing and Planning about this in due course. I know that he has spent a substantial amount of time with the hon. Member for St Ives discussing this particular issue.

[Ben Maguire]

Let me just pick up the point about the registration scheme. Cornish MPs have met the Minister for Tourism and Sport, and, as we understand it, the scheme will start out as a voluntary one, so holiday lets can voluntarily register themselves. There is currently a data issue, as local authorities cannot even access data on a specific level to see the scale of the problem in some of our constituencies.

[Samantha Dixon]

I acknowledge the hon. Member’s point. As I said, I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister of State is listening and will respond to those points in due course.

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[Steve Yemm (Mansfield) (Lab)]

I want to start by recognising the excellent intentions behind the Bill and the importance of ensuring that local people have access to decent and affordable homes. I am sure the whole House shares these ambitions with the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George), and they are ones that this Government are also committed to delivering.

However, having considered the Bill and the Government’s assessment of its proposals, I find it difficult to support. I believe the fundamental problem is that much of what the hon. Member for St Ives seeks to achieve is either covered by existing powers or being addressed through legislation that is already before Parliament, or it can be delivered through the Government’s existing housing programmes, without the need for further primary legislation.

[Ben Maguire]

Can the hon. Member please point me to specific Government legislation, either currently before the House or upcoming, that addresses the things that have been described by the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George), such as the issue with second homes and holiday lets, which has really added fuel to the fire of the housing crisis?

[Steve Yemm]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention; I will give him a number of examples. The Government are already strengthening the ability of local authorities to work with communities through neighbourhood planning and existing planning powers. We already have the Social Housing Bill going through Parliament, which will address issues to do with the disposal of social housing assets. There are also changes to the types of intermediate housing that can receive Government funding. I question what further value this Bill would deliver.

I appreciate that second homes and holiday lets are significant issues in some parts of the country, particularly coastal and rural areas, and for communities in the south-west of England. But they are in no way a defining feature of the housing market in my constituency of Mansfield, and nor do they reflect the challenges facing my constituents, which are really very different.

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[Ben Maguire (North Cornwall) (LD)]

It is a great privilege to rise to speak in full and fulsome support of my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George), to whom I would like to pay a brief tribute. He has spent many years campaigning on this issue with such passion and dedication. Even when he took a brief sabbatical from this place, he carried on that passion and dedication, and was determined to pursue the measures he has laid before the House today. So I pay tribute to him and thank him.

Seeing my hon. Friend’s dedication to people in Cornwall has been an inspiration for me as a young person coming into politics in Cornwall. Like him, I grew up in Cornwall and felt that I had no option but to move away when I turned 18, because it seemed that there were simply no opportunities for a career or further education, but also no kind of hope of affording my own home and raising a family in Cornwall. It is therefore an immense privilege that I have managed to return to North Cornwall as its Member of Parliament.

The measures my hon. Friend proposes today are, unfortunately, not new. We have been talking about these issues in this Chamber for decades. In fact, one of my predecessors, the former hon. Member for North Cornwall, John Pardoe, who some hon. Members may remember, in 1966 described our area as “neglected” and

“exporting a mass of young people.”—[Official Report, 25 April 1966; Vol. 727, c. 623.]

He said: “The tragedy facing so many of the people I represent is the knowledge that the stock of housing on which they must rely—namely, the housing provided by the local authorities—is rapidly declining.”

Paul Tyler, his successor, in 1974 said:

“The housing shortage is now a major social evil once again.” —[Official Report, 12 March 1974; Vol. 870, c. 144.]

My most recent Liberal Democrat predecessor, Dan Rogerson, in 2005 quite simply said:

“North Cornwall has more second homes than council houses”. —[Official Report, 18 May 2005; Vol. 434, c. 214.]

Yet here we are again. It almost feels like groundhog day, debating once again the abject failure of successive Governments to build enough affordable and social homes for local people in Cornwall that they can actually afford to rent and live in. We just continually see inaction from Government after Government.

[Noah Law]

I certainly appreciate that progress has been slow over the decades, but does the hon. Gentleman recognise that, given the changes to allow a second home council tax premium and the Labour Government’s position on stamp duty for second homes, there is some light at the end of the tunnel on this long journey to ensuring that second home owners pay their fair share? Will he call on the Liberal Democrat council locally to make an economic impact study of what those changes have done to the housing market locally?

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[Ben Maguire]

Apologies, I did not quite catch the hon. Gentleman’s last point, but on the stamp duty point I was proud to walk with him through the Lobby in support of that. Unfortunately, that was a very incremental change, which I know from anecdotal experience has not deterred a single person from turning a residential property into a second home. I think it was something like a 2% increase. I suspect that many house buyers paying for a £1.5 million or £2 million home will not balk at the thought of an extra 1% or 2% stamp duty. Of course, I welcome the measure and I agree with him that these are the kinds of steps that need to be taken.

[Noah Law]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ben Maguire]

Perhaps in the hon. Gentleman’s next intervention he could explain why he will not be supporting the specific provisions in the Bill, which he knows as well as I do would benefit his constituents extremely in areas such as St Austell and Newquay, who for decades have struggled to get on the housing ladder or rent a home, because they are all being put up for holiday lets and second homes.

[Noah Law]

I reiterate that we need to see data on the impact of the measures the Labour Government have overseen. Anecdotes are one thing, but I think we are starting to see a change in the behaviour of second home owners as a result of the changes.

[Ben Maguire]

I would be pleased if the hon. Gentleman brought that data to the House. I must admit that I am struggling with some of the opposition to the Bill from Labour Members. We have heard that it is not radical enough, and that we need to build more homes. The hon. Gentleman said he wanted data; well, I have a stat: between 1961 and 2011, Cornwall’s population almost tripled, and during the 2000s, Cornwall built 770 homes for every 1,000 new residents, which was double the national average of 377 at the time.

We are not short of homes or houses in Cornwall. We have record—[Interruption.] I hear the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Patrick Spencer) chuntering from a sedentary position; I am happy to give way. We are not short of residential properties, which are being built every year, but, as I highlighted in my intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives, many of those homes, once built, are rapidly turned into second homes and holiday lets, and the local authority has no control.

I warmly welcome the measures in the Bill. I thought there was consensus in the House on giving local areas the choice and the powers to make decisions for certain parts of the country—for example, towns and villages in my North Cornwall constituency such as St Minver Lowlands, which has 71% non-first homes, or St Merryn, which has 60% non-first homes. Other Members have highlighted the impact on community life, school staffing, nurseries and other local facilities. I warmly welcome my hon. Friend’s attempt to take forward this legislation to give local people, local authorities and local areas decision-making powers where there are far too many second homes compared with affordable first homes for local people. We should give those areas the right to choose and the power to balance the market.

As my hon. Friend said, we are not against second home owners, and we are certainly not against holiday let owners—they are an important part of the accommodation mix for the tourism industry in Cornwall—but may I humbly suggest that if the proportion gets to over 70% it is possibly too much? Despite the massive house building numbers I mentioned, Cornwall’s housing register list has over 25,000 families who cannot find a safe and warm place to live. I suggest that in those specific areas we give local people, local authorities and local councils the chance to decide how many and where any holiday lets and second homes might be appropriate.

My hon. Friend, along with some Government Members, touched on the council tax loophole, whereby if holiday homes can be easily flipped to holiday lets, they qualify for business rates and, often, small business rate relief, so they do not pay double council tax and they pay no business rates at all. In fact, they do not pay any tax, full stop. I would welcome the Minister’s thoughts on that loophole which, as I understand it, can be backdated several years.

On infrastructure, Cornwall is, as has been mentioned, very good at meeting our house building targets, and we have built thousands of homes. Unfortunately, as I have explained, they do not always end up in the hands of local residents, as they should. But in Cornwall, as well as a housing crisis we now have an infrastructure crisis. In my town of Bodmin—the largest in my constituency—the surgery is operating at 160% of capacity, yet we cannot get a new surgery building past the local integrated care board. We have part but not full funding, and yet by 2030 Bodmin will see 3,500 more homes built. Unless new homes come with infrastructure, we are storing up enormous issues for our local residents.

I would really welcome the Housing Minister explaining the very ambitious house building targets. As I say, if those houses are for local residents who really need them, I am fully supportive, but I have highlighted the issues around those arbitrary targets.

[Matthew Pennycook]

As has been mentioned—I say to the hon. Gentleman again—one of the most effective ways in which communities can shape development in their area is to have up-to-date local plans in place. Cornwall’s local plan was adopted in 2016 and, again, the infrastructure funding statement alongside that, which is so important, is out of date. Cornwall is now taking steps to get an up-to-date plan in place, but it is very late in the day.

[Ben Maguire]

I thank the Minister for that intervention. He knows as well as I do that it takes years to put together neighbourhood plans, and lots of those were disregarded when the new legislation came forward. I hope that he will say something on that. As we move forward with our Cornish devolution deal, perhaps something can come with that.

I want briefly to take the rare opportunity to praise the Conservative Government—I am not often found doing so in the House, and I will have to caveat this carefully. Just before the general election—I leave it to hon. Members to consider the cynicism of this and how likely they felt it was that they would be returned to enact the measures—they proposed much of what my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives does in his Bill in requiring planning permission when a residential property is turned into a holiday let. I must admit that I am extremely frustrated and disappointed to see the Labour Government not taking that on.

[Sean Woodcock (Banbury) (Lab)]

It is lovely to see the coalition making a comeback in the Chamber. My reason for opposing the Bill is that, during the coalition in particular, local authority planning capacity was totally gutted. Councillors have no capacity to do this. Local authorities such as Lib Dem-led Cherwell in my constituency are in special measures because of their failures to deal with planning, so the idea of giving them more stuff to decide on is ludicrous when we have a housing crisis. Does the hon. Member not see that logic?

[Ben Maguire]

The hon. Member makes a good point. Of course, his Government have centralised planning policy, so my councillors in North Cornwall have virtually no say about planning applications, be they on infrastructure or affordable homes. When I was reaching out cross-party, what a contrast those cheap political points are. By the way, I work well with my Cornish Labour colleagues for the good of Cornwall and would happily work with Conservative Members and hon. Members across the House to make positive changes for my constituents.

I really emphasise that these measures are already being taken in other parts of the United Kingdom: we saw the Labour Government in Wales introduce much of what my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives seeks. Finally, I re-emphasise my commitment to people in my constituency such as Sarah and Frank, who live in Rock and have been sofa-surfing for nine months because they cannot afford to rent anywhere. As was said earlier, when we look on Rightmove for rental accommodation, we see little available, because—guess what?—it is much more profitable to put properties on Airbnb or let them as holiday accommodation. We need to bear those people in mind when we vote—although, given the Government’s opposition to the Bill, we may not get a chance to vote for it today.

I hope that today is not the end of the conversation. I mentioned my predecessor from the ’60s, who talked about how acute this issue is in Cornwall, and we have heard similar from hon. Members who represent other parts of the country. I hope that the Minister is listening and that he will finally take action on an issue that has gone on for decades. We have heard various proposals along the way, but we have never seen the action that we need to regulate the housing sector and ensure that our local residents can afford a safe and warm home.

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[Michelle Scrogham]

I absolutely agree that this Government’s interventions and funding will make those changes. This Bill, though, creates additional expectations, without addressing the problem of delivery.

The Liberal Democrats were not powerless observers during the worsening of our housing crisis; they spent five years in government. They sat at the Cabinet table, and they voted for coalition Budgets. They supported policies that saw local government funding slashed and planning departments across the country stretched ever more thinly. If they believed that local communities needed stronger powers to bring forward affordable housing sites, why did they not legislate for that when they were in office? The truth is that too often the Liberal Democrats seek to campaign against the consequences of decisions that they helped to make in government.

This Labour Government are pursuing a comprehensive strategy to tackle the housing crisis. We have committed to delivering 1.5 million social homes over this Parliament. At the 2025 spending review, the Government confirmed £39 billion in funding over the next 10 years, as has been mentioned. This provides the certainty needed for providers to plan ambitious housing development projects over the next 10 years.

[Ben Maguire]

I still fail to understand what measures the hon. Member’s Government are taking to tackle second homes and holiday lets, which, as so many hon. Members have explained, are adding fuel to the fire of the housing crisis. I welcome the social housing measures, but what is specifically being done in that area?

[Michelle Scrogham]

I welcome the hon. Member’s intervention. This Government have brought in the powers to increase taxes to tackle that issue. In my area, Liberal Democrat-run Westmorland and Furness council has benefited from that tax by several hundred million pounds. What worries me, though, is that the council has not actually tackled the heart of the problem. Nearly 8,000 households in my constituency are waiting for affordable houses, and there are 3,500 long-term empty homes. If the Liberal Democrats really wanted to get serious about fixing the situation, we have given them the tools to do so, yet Liberal Democrat-run Westmorland and Furness council has failed to do that. My area has the fifth highest number of long-term empty homes in England. We have given councils the tools, so I would suggest that the Liberal Democrats talk to their colleagues and perhaps press for some changes.

We are taking action to ensure that local authorities have the regulatory and financial powers to deliver on these commitments. We are reforming the national planning policy framework, restoring mandatory housing targets for local authorities and addressing concerns that the planning permission application process is too lengthy, complex and time consuming. The Government are devolving powers over spending on house building to regional mayors and combined authorities, so that they have greater power to address regional house shortages. We are enabling councils to retain 100% of the receipts from right-to-buy sales and allowing them to channel the money directly back into house building—something I am incredibly passionate about.

By reducing barriers, we are getting Britain building again. Although I respect the intentions behind the Bill, I do not believe that it provides the scale of reform necessary to meet the building challenge faced by this country, and nor can I ignore the irony of taking lectures from a party that had five years in government to address many of these issues and failed to do so. For those reasons, I cannot support the Bill. Instead, I back this Government’s programme to deliver the social and affordable homes that Britain needs.

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[Matthew Pennycook]

I have always found that Liberal Democrats operate like a sort of franchise system around the country, where responsibility for individual decisions is not taken at the national level. I encourage Liberal Democrat Members to talk to their colleagues in those parts of the country where they are not acting along the lines that they have been advocating for today.

[Ben Maguire]

Will the Minister give way on that point?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I am just going to make a bit of progress. I am happy to give way later.

As the hon. Member for St Ives knows from our recent discussions, despite agreeing with the Bill’s overarching intention, namely to support the housing needs of local people, the Government unfortunately cannot support it for the reasons I will set out in as much detail as I can in the time available to me. However, I want to reiterate from the outset that the Government recognise the acute need for social and affordable homes in rural and coastal communities. We understand and appreciate fully that many local authorities want more tools to bear down on excessive concentrations of second homes and short-term lets within them.

As the hon. Gentleman set out in opening the debate, the Bill contains essentially two measures: one relating to land for affordable housing, and the other concerning planning controls in relation to second homes and short-term lets. I do not intend to exhaustively detail the Government’s position on each individual clause in the Bill. Instead, I will set out our position in respect of each of these measures, starting with land for affordable housing.

Clauses 1 to 4 extend provisions around assets of community value and the community right to buy, so that they can apply to land for affordable housing. Clause 1 is the core operative clause in the group and we understand the intention behind it. We all want suitable land to provide affordable housing to meet identified local need. However, extending the assets of community value regime to allow vacant, substantially unused or materially underused land to be nominated because of its potential for affordable housing is not, in our view, a proportionate means of achieving that objective.

The new community right to buy, enacted through our English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026, was carefully designed to balance the legitimate rights of property owners with the ability of communities to protect buildings and land that are important to them. Bringing potentially much larger quantities of land within the assets of community value framework could, in our view, increase interference with property rights in an unjustifiable way.