Contribution
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Hobhouse. I thank the hon. Member for Horsham (John Milne) and congratulate him on securing this important debate.
I am afraid this is just another example of the two-tier society that this Government are presiding over. We have had two-tier taxes and two-tier justice and now we have two-tier targets. That is the reality, and it militates against the basic British principle of fairness. I will go through the numbers in a second, but Labour’s own council leaders have called the Minister’s targets unrealistic and impossible to achieve. The leader of West Lancashire council used exactly those words: “impossible and unrealistic”. The targets are unachievable.
I am in no way, shape or form a nimby. Unlike 15 of the Minister’s colleagues in the Cabinet, I have never objected to any developments in my constituency as a Member of Parliament or as a member of the public. I am absolutely on the side of young people who want to get on the housing ladder and those on lower incomes seeking affordable homes. The only way to deliver that is to deliver more homes. I am not against the Minister’s 1.5 million target, but it will be very challenging. We should look at the data: over the last 10 years we were in office, average net housing additions were 207,000 a year. That was the highest level for 50 years—even higher than in the 1970s, because we were knocking down an awful lot of houses back then.
The targets have been driven by the change from assessment of housing formations to a measure of stock already delivered in an area, with a multiplier on top for affordability, but they are totally unfair. London has seen an 11% decrease in its target, Leicester a 32% decrease and Birmingham a 38% decrease. Coventry has seen a 55% decrease in its housing target, yet the neighbouring authority of North Warwickshire has had a 123% increase. That is despite the fact that North Warwickshire, like my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) said of his authority, has over-delivered on its housing targets. Nuneaton, another bordering authority that is over-delivering, has had a 75% increase in its housing target compared with Coventry.
I am trying not to be too parochial but in my neck of the woods, York, which has been under-delivering massively against its housing target for years and years, and had not had a local plan since 1956—it has just got one in place, thank God—has seen a 19% increase, yet neighbouring North Yorkshire, which is my local authority, has had a 199% increase, despite significant over-delivery.
Of Members who have spoken in the debate, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire has had a 100% increase in his area; the hon. Member for Horsham a 48% increase; the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) a 63% increase; the hon. Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller) a 72% increase; and the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley) a 66% increase. I like the Minister and we get on very well, but his authority in Nottingham has had a 32% decrease. How can that be fair? It is against the basic principle of fairness. Yes, there is a 50% increase in delivery across the board, but why have some targets been decreased and others massively increased? That is simply unfair.
Those are not anecdotal cases. Based on information from the House of Commons Library, across the board, mainly rural areas are seeing an average 71% increase and urban areas an average 15.6% increase. On top of that there is the duty to co-operate and strategic planning, which is likely to see even more houses going into rural areas. There is no justification for that unfairness. It also sits against the principle that the Government say they adopt, as we did, of a brownfield-first approach.
Brownfield development is the least controversial approach, and it is what we would all like to see, but it is complex and costly, particularly in a world of increased costs of delivery. Over the past few years, developers have seen a 40% increase in costs of building. On top of that is the building safety levy, the Building Safety Regulator, biodiversity net gain, the future homes standard, section 106, the community infrastructure levy and the remediation of brownfield sites. Those things, and the Government’s policy on grey belt, will mean that more and more development will be pushed from urban areas into greenfield and green belt.
What the Government are doing with the national planning policy framework cannot be divorced from the Planning and Infrastructure Bill and the Trojan horse that they called grey belt. What they sold to the public as being a few former garage forecourts or wasteland is far from that. It is greenfield and green belt. The Minister cannot shake his head. There used to be protections between villages to stop them merging, and they have gone. There used to be protections to stop villages merging into towns, and they have gone. This is not about grey belt; it is a fundamental change to green belt.
Of course, this is not about targets. It would be pointless to have this debate and just talk about targets—we have to talk about delivery. The 1.5 million homes are a huge ask. The reality is that to hit that target for England, for the rest of this Parliament, delivery will need to hit not 207,000 a year, which we averaged, but 375,000 a year. That is a 180% increase—a doubling.