Matthew Pennycook

I am just going to make a bit of progress. I am happy to give way later. As the hon. Member for St Ives knows from our recent discussions, despite agreeing with the Bill’s overarching intention, namely to support the housing needs of local people, the Government unfortunately cannot support it for the reasons I will set out in as much detail as I can in the time available to me. However, I want to reiterate from the outset that the Government recognise the acute need for social and affordable homes in rural and coastal communities. We understand and appreciate fully that many local authorities want more tools to bear down on excessive concentrations of second homes and short-term lets within them. As the hon. Gentleman set out in opening the debate, the Bill contains essentially two measures: one relating to land for affordable housing, and the other concerning planning controls in relation to second homes and short-term lets. I do not intend to exhaustively detail the Government’s position on each individual clause in the Bill. Instead, I will set out our position in respect of each of these measures, starting with land for affordable housing. Clauses 1 to 4 extend provisions around assets of community value and the community right to buy, so that they can apply to land for affordable housing. Clause 1 is the core operative clause in the group and we understand the intention behind it. We all want suitable land to provide affordable housing to meet identified local need. However, extending the assets of community value regime to allow vacant, substantially unused or materially underused land to be nominated because of its potential for affordable housing is not, in our view, a proportionate means of achieving that objective. The new community right to buy, enacted through our English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026, was carefully designed to balance the legitimate rights of property owners with the ability of communities to protect buildings and land that are important to them. Bringing potentially much larger quantities of land within the assets of community value framework could, in our view, increase interference with property rights in an unjustifiable way.