Housing

Robert Neill Excerpts

Wednesday 5th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I start by warmly welcoming the Minister for Housing, my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk), to his new job and to a Department that I hope he will enjoy. It is an important job that he takes on, and I assure him that his task will be made easier by the support of an outstanding Secretary of State— I regard it is a matter of great pride to have worked with him for the past two years. So I wish my hon. Friend well. I know that he will continue the work the Government have already done.

With respect to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), who was always a courteous and affable opponent, I must say that there was more than a little collective amnesia in his speech and in the interventions from Opposition Members. I refer to collective amnesia because of the Labour party’s persistent failure over 15 or more years—throughout its time in government—to deliver on housing. I include in that its under-delivery of affordable housing. The net result was the lowest amount of house building in peacetime since the ’20s and—this is particularly troubling—a decline of about 421,000 in the amount of social rented stock available.

The Opposition showed collective amnesia in their assertion that we should place faith in local councils. I agree with that, but the Labour Government trammelled the ability of local authorities to take decisions on planning matters that were in the interest of and reflected the needs and priorities of their local communities. They also showed collective amnesia over the failure of their dirigiste, top-down, target-imposed system for delivering housing on the ground, and over the sometimes perverse impact that unduly rigid adherence to targets for affordable housing and other planning obligations had on the delivery of viable sites.

My hon. Friend the Minister knows that the Government have already started the important work of building greater flexibility into section 106 agreements. I hope that he will continue that work, because it is important to bringing forward more sites and keeping them viable.

[Mr Raynsford]

May I express my sadness that the hon. Gentleman is no longer on the Front Bench? I did not always agree with him in that role, but he was always a courteous and good Minister, and we miss him. However, may I also ask him to direct his claims of amnesia towards himself? He will recall from the debates on the Localism Act 2011 that, contrary to what he has said, under the last Government the output of new homes, according to the measure that his Department used to use to record the figure—and correctly so; that is, net additions to the housing stock—rose year on year until the recession, to 200,000 net additions in 2007. When does he expect the present Government to get anywhere near 200,000 net additions to the stock?

[Robert Neill]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his comments. It is always a pleasure to exchange arguments with him. He must bear in mind the reduction in affordable homes of about 250,000 over that period. Whatever his intentions, the fact is that there was a consistent under-supply throughout the Labour Government, and we are now reaping the consequence.

[Angela Smith]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Robert Neill]

I have given way once and time is short, as I am sure the hon. Lady will understand.

The important point is that the current Government have started on the important task of rebalancing the planning system. I was privileged to undertake that work with my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) and it gives a strong basis for policy going forward. It was ludicrous that we had such a complex system of planning and, allied to that, the top-down imposition of targets, which were a positive impediment to growth, not least because they set communities against appropriate growth. That created a system of tension and antagonism, which the national planning policy framework rightly seeks to remove.

The final point that I should like to make in that context—and which I know my hon. Friend the Minister will take on board—is that we must look at planning and housing policy holistically. We should look at the interactions between housing policy and planning policy, and also at the need to give local authorities incentives to support sustainable growth—for example, through the way in which we are reforming the funding of local government finance. All three are parts of the same equation, if I may put it that way, and I hope that my hon. Friend will feel able to build on the work started in the Localism Act 2011 and the Local Government Finance Bill; I do not know whether he will inherit it, but I assure him that he will find it cheerful bedtime reading.

The reality is that this Government are removing blockages in the system. My hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) rightly referred to the change at Eastern Quarry. That project had indeed stalled; it is also something that, in my responsibilities for the Thames Gateway, I had some involvement in, together with my right hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps). I should also say that the realism shown by the Conservative-controlled local authority of Dartford council was a major help. However, the irony is that the system we inherited from Labour did not allow willing parties to come together and renegotiate an agreement to produce a more realistic reflection of current market conditions. Our Government gave them that flexibility; they took advantage of it and now those homes will be delivered. Indeed, the first homes will be delivered this year, which I hope will be a matter of pride to everyone associated with the project.

I also hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will continue to build on the work that we have already seen with the Growing Places fund. There will be sound arguments to consider if in due course we are able to roll it out further, into the type of revolving infrastructure funds that have been talked about by informed sources in many parts of the industry. I also hope that he will continue to look at refinements to the operation of the community infrastructure levy—the CIL—so that it is a positive incentive to development and brings a genuine benefit to local communities. Again, however, we should look at some of the technical detail. For example, there are some excellent schemes, such as the one developed by Pocket in London, that do not require any public subsidy, yet they can face difficulties because they do not count as affordable housing under the CIL rules in the same way that they do under planning policy.

Those are some small but important matters that I hope my hon. Friend the Minister will take on board. I know him to be an enthusiastic Minister and a good colleague. I assure him that I shall be more than happy to support him in everything he does and I wish him well.