Building More Homes (Economic Affairs Committee Report) - Motion to Take Note

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 3:18 pm on 2 March 2017.

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Photo of Lord Layard Lord Layard Labour 3:18, 2 March 2017

I am grateful for that. I am a bit more hopeful about dealing with climate change by electrifying the economy with clean electricity rather than by failing to give people homes. I think that we can make progress without expecting people to go into ever more expensive properties. I was very encouraged by what the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, said about the green belt. It is true that attitudes are changing, and that is very helpful.

Of course, we understand that local authorities have political reasons for not wanting to give planning permission. We always remember how Aneurin Bevan got the National Health Service set up by stuffing doctors’ mouths with gold. It still seems to me that we ought to allow local authorities to have a higher fraction of the financial uplift that occurs when they give planning permission, and we should then insist that they use that for housing purposes. My colleague Professor Cheshire at the London School of Economics has suggested a levy on the final value of a completed development, combining that with the change in presumption that I referred to earlier. There are many areas in which these ideas can be explored. The committee took no view on these issues but it made a clear recommendation that the Government should examine these proposals. I hope that the Minister can confirm that his admirable colleague Mr Barwell will be doing that.

We should recognise that we are suffering from a self-inflicted wound. We have inflicted it on ourselves mainly through the way in which we have operated the planning laws. Other countries have much less of a problem because they have not done what we have done. It is a case of the triumph of the few over the many. The distributional impact of the planning system is one of the most powerful sources of inequality in our society, and I think that we will satisfy the needs of the many only if we are honest about the origins of our present situation.