Andrew George

Indeed. There are many ways in which Ministers need to look at our whole housing planning system. It operates almost as if local needs were an inconvenient afterthought. Despite tinkering at the edges of the planning system, successive Governments have left it so that it still rewards land value speculators more than council or charitable housing providers; puts developer profit—which can be set at a level of 20% when valuation of developments is undertaken—before affordable homes; and turns a blind eye to the transfer of thousands of homes intended for permanent occupancy into property investment portfolios as second homes for recreational and holiday use. I want to reflect on the speeches of my two constituency neighbours, the hon. Members for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham) and for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon). I put on record my strong support for the case they made for investment in Cornwall’s desperately needed social and affordable housing stock. This week’s announcement of further investment in social and affordable homes—I am sure the Minister will repeat it—is of course welcome. It is on top of the £39 billion in the social and affordable homes programme that was announced last year. However, those investments are dwarfed by the billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money gifted through various tax reliefs and loopholes, and by private capital that, in my part of the world, drives investment into holiday lets created when local tenants are evicted to make way for that investment. It is bad enough that such tax subsidies are granted at all, but not all those subsidies—which local authorities are obliged to grant—are compensated for by the Treasury. That contributes to a growing black hole in local government finances and leads to cuts in essential local services. I am bound to take this opportunity to draw attention to the fact that I was fortunate in the private Member’s Bill ballot. My Homes and Planning Bill will come before Parliament again on Friday 13 November. I hope that all those who spoke in this debate and their colleagues will come along to support the Bill, as it stands a good chance of being enacted. It provides the tools with which the Government and local communities can deliver the kind of affordable homes that we have been talking about, which are desperately needed. Our housing system is a shameful display of just how wide the growing inequality is in this country. We need to understand better why the planning and housing policies of successive Governments have failed. As the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire articulately put it, planning policies are based on house building targets, but they have not delivered. Policy designers seem to have overlooked the fact that house building targets are merely a means to an end—the end being, of course, to meet housing need. My own area of Cornwall is a classic example of an area where planning policy has failed. It is one of the fastest growing places in the United Kingdom; indeed, in the last 60 years, it has almost trebled its housing stock. And yet over that same period the housing problems of local people have got worse, as we have already heard from my constituency neighbours, the hon. Members for Truro and Falmouth, and for Camborne and Redruth. So we know that simply having house building—particularly if it is building the wrong type of housing, which is simply for wealthy people or for investment purposes—does not actually help to meet housing needs. The housing policy of this Government—like, to be fair, the housing policies of successive Governments—is based on a delusion that private developers are prepared to collude with Government to drive down the price of their finished product. Local authorities should be given the option to set targets to meet local need, rather than simply being told to go out and build homes, and to allow those homes to be built. Indeed, what the Government have done has made matters worse, although I am sure that it was done with the best intentions. As the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire implied, perhaps Ministers became so sidetracked or distracted by, or even obsessed with, facing down anti-development nimbys—rightly; of course they should do that—that they did not consider that imposing unachievable house building targets overnight on local authorities might become counterproductive, because 18 months ago local authorities suddenly found themselves unable to demonstrate that they had carefully identified and consulted on a sufficient five-year land supply. As a result of that, development opportunities on the edges of our communities, instead of being delivered under a rural exceptions policy for affordable homes, are now being granted by planning inspectors, because there is not a five-year land supply for unaffordable homes. So, we have lost that opportunity and the policy has been totally counterproductive. The purpose of my private Member’s Bill is to give communities the right to buy, so that a community asset becomes land or buildings that could help a community to deliver affordable homes. This is community-led housing of the type that my hon. Friend the Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden), for example, has talked about. Also, there should be new planning limits on second homes and holiday homes, so that someone would have to apply for planning permission to convert a property from a permanent home to a holiday home or second home. I hope that Government Members will come along on 13 November to support my private Member’s Bill, because the Minister for Housing and Planning, the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook)—he is obviously not here in Westminster Hall today because he is engaged with the Social Housing Bill, which is very relevant to our debate today—has indicated that he is unable to support my Bill. Consequently, we have a debate on our hands. The Liberal Democrats would increase the building of new and affordable and social homes, and we would make sure, on a number of fronts, to make homes warmer and cheaper and easier to heat, with a 10-year emergency upgrade programme to ensure that all new homes are zero carbon, as well as giving control of right to buy to local authorities, which will be enabled to vary discounts based on local need, or—as a last resort—to suspend the right to buy all together. In view of the short time I have left, I will not list all the policies that would deliver the utopia that a Liberal Democrat Government would undoubtedly deliver as far as housing is concerned. However, I will urge the Minister, particularly as we have the vehicle of the Social Housing Bill in Committee at the moment, to take heed of what his colleagues have said to him this afternoon and to accept amendments to improve that Bill.