Housing, Planning and the Green Belt

Debate between Toby Perkins and Mark Harper

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

That proposal sounds sensible. I am not familiar with the detail, but given what my hon. Friend sets out, it sounds like the local authority is focusing on demand. We will need significantly more of that if we are to meet demand in London.

My hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury put his finger on it when he spoke about housing demand. Clearly, compared with the situation when I was younger, we are much tougher with the loans that people can take out. When we look at what happened to the financial system after the banks made unwise lending decisions, such practice is probably very sensible, but it does make it more difficult for younger people to purchase houses. I welcome what the Government have done on the finance side of the argument, and two things are particularly welcome. The Help to Buy equity loan scheme is helping a significant number of young people who can afford a mortgage to be able to finance their deposit. It is not true to say, as some people do, that that only deals with the demand side of the equation, because it is of course only used for buying new houses. If we look at how house builders operate, we see that they build houses as they sell them. If we make it possible for a first-time buyer to purchase a home through the Help to Buy equity loan scheme, the house builder will then build more houses on that estate, as I have seen clearly in my constituency. Such practice helps on the demand side, which in turn generates housing supply.

I also welcome the introduction of the lifetime individual savings account, which enables younger people to save for a pension or a home, but I have one policy suggestion for the Minister. I am very supportive of our auto-enrolment policy to ensure that everybody saves for a pension, so will he consider whether we could apply auto-enrolment to lifetime ISAs? A young person going into the labour market would then find that their savings and their employer’s contributions would go into a lifetime ISA—at least that would be an option—so that the money could be used to fund either a pension or a home. If someone is a homeowner when they retire, they will not need such a significant pension, because they will not be paying rent on the home that they own. I think that that sensible proposal might make younger people keener to save for a deposit, because they would find it more affordable, so I urge the Minister to consider the suggestion.

I am grateful that the Government have said so much recently about the northern powerhouse. Given the location of my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury, I also welcome what the Secretary of State for Wales did with the Severn growth summit to encourage the development of what we might call a western powerhouse to create another centre of gravity for developing economic growth in Wales and the west country. It seems to me that one of the real problems is that we will not deal with the housing crisis simply by building more homes. London, for example, has high levels of immigration—23% of Londoners are non-UK born residents, and 156,000 migrants moved to London in 2016. Having listened to colleagues’ concerns about excessive house building in London, I argue that we cannot build our way out of the problem. A longer- term solution is to generate progress in the northern powerhouse—in transport infrastructure and development in that part of the country—and then generate development in what I might call the western powerhouse in the west of the country and Wales. We could also look at things such as the Cambridge-Milton Keynes-Oxford growth corridor, so that we actually see economic development spread more equitably across the United Kingdom. That would mean that rather than feeling the pressure to move to London, or to get a job or create a new business there, young people in many parts of the country would feel able to stay in their home towns and cities, or indeed to move to Manchester and the great cities of the north. That will happen if we create a powerhouse that is globally competitive, as London is.

[Toby Perkins]

I am much happier with where the right hon. Gentleman is finishing his speech than I was with his position six or seven minutes ago. It seems that London has doubled in size during my lifetime, but the major cities of the north have hardly changed. If the message that the Government get today is that we need continually to expand the size of London, I agree entirely that we will not build our way out of this problem, as we will just continue to feed that demand. The solution has to be investment in infrastructure and skills all around the country, not just focused on London.

[Mr Harper]

I am glad that I have cheered up the hon. Gentleman as my remarks have developed, and I hope that I have had that effect on at least one or two other colleagues. He is right that that is the answer. There is a regional housing problem in the United Kingdom. House prices in London and its surrounding areas are massively out of kilter with the rest of the country, and we can deal with some of that by building houses. We do need to increase the density of house building in London, so I welcomed what the Government said yesterday about building upwards, and having slightly increased housing densities and slightly higher rise properties—not massive, but perhaps with more storeys than a traditional two-storey property—but we also need to spread economic growth across the country.

People with housing challenges who live in London should be as supportive of investment in the northern powerhouse and other parts of the country—and in creating a great, globally competitive city in the north—as people who live in the north. Such investment would result in us sharing economic growth more equitably across the country. That is how we deal with the housing challenges that we face more fairly and equitably, and it would also help the whole country’s economic growth and make us more globally competitive.