Low-Cost housing
Debate between John Penrose and Cheryl Gillan(7 years, 2 months ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is giving a very powerful speech so I am loth to interrupt him. He mentioned the international comparisons and Kensington and Chelsea, but I think he is missing the suburbs. I represent a suburban seat. He said that housing is the single biggest bill, but it is also the single biggest issue in surgeries. I had a candidate stand against me as a “no to tall buildings” person. His slogan was, “We want to be living in Acton, not in Manhattan.” Has the hon. Gentleman had similar experiences as a constituency MP? People just do not like these buildings; they crowd out light and are not in keeping with the suburban landscape.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)
Order. May I remind Members that interventions are supposed to be short and not too discursive?
John Penrose
The hon. Lady just gave a classic example of this instinctive British fear. I have discovered that in general if people see a beautiful building that is well-designed and moderately, but not too enormously, tall—Manhattan being an example of where things are incredibly tall—many of those concerns are greatly reduced. The taller something is the more impact it has on everybody else for miles and miles around and therefore the greater care we have to take. There is a middle ground that I will talk about in a minute, which will provide us with a great deal of building and housing opportunity to reduce the cost of housing without having to make everywhere look like Manhattan, if I can put it that way.
The hon. Lady’s intervention leads me to say that we need to throw off these mental shackles—these 50-year-old emotional architectural scars—and instead count the blessings of building up, not out.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)
Can I check that the hon. Gentleman is not giving way?
John Penrose
I have finished my remarks.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered low cost housing.