IN PUBLIC policy, it was a week when a well prepared back-bencher led the review on not one, but two of the Government’s flagship housing policy consultations, ‘the algorithm’ and ‘the vision’, backed by a majority’s-worth of Conservative colleagues.
Thunderclouds building
With shockingly awful consequences, the consultations ran over summer and with the ministry’s determined reluctance to publish the actual housing numbers themselves, it’s been down to Local Authorities to galvanise political action.
Matters came to a boil when backbencher Bob Seely (Con, Isle of Wight) won the opportunity to lead a debate on current government policy.
Aside from all the back-bench debates on Brexit during a minority government, it’s difficult to recall the last time a back-bencher led a debate holding the government to account on a significant policy matter.
The Wight stuff
Bob Seely’s motion called on the Government to delay the algorithm for housing numbers until after Parliament had debated the matter as part of the planning reforms, rather than have it brought in by ministerial diktat as Robert Jenrick had proposed.
Describing the matter of ‘levelling up’as being more like ‘concreting out’ Mr Seely has committed the entirely pardonable sin of showing ministerial doublespeak for what it is – a further hollowing out of ‘the north’ accompanied by even more in ‘the south’; reduced numbers of houses for the cities, increased building in suburbia and the countryside.
After laying waste to some of the sillier consequences, he delivered suggestions as to what good might look like, including a package of measures “to change the incentives” by setting up local taxes and powers to encourage truly sustainable development.
A slaughter followed …
Literally. Because it was Andy Slaughter (Lab, Hammersmith) who was first to lay into the proposed extensions of government aided malpractice to make affordable homes even scarcer and with even less local democratic control than today.
Second to speak was Theresa May (Con, Maidenhead) who gave an excellent speech on the borough’s behalf and who also allowed an intervention from James Sunderland (Con, Bracknell) thus helping him add to Wokingham’s case.
Circa 40 MPs later, there was little doubtas to parliament’s sentiment.
Deaf ears?
When Christopher Pinscher (the ‘Housing’ bit of MHCLG) rose to speak, he was in praise of the Government’s wisdom and past record as you’d expect.
The ‘standard method’ of calculating the number of homes (introduced in 2018) had been badly let down by existing adopted local plans.
As regards planning consultancy Lichfield’s housing numbers Mr Pincher said “all the figures that are bandied about in the media, some of which were quoted in the House today, are entirely speculative”.
As MHCLG confirmed in writing to this paper on August 10, “The 2018 table was published alongside the previous consultation for indicative purposes only to help readers interpret the practical implications of the new policy proposals.
“There are no plans to republish this table”.
However, the minister left this fact out of his summary.
Ministerial mischief
Locally and before the debate, the Right Honourable Robert Jenrick as the minister for MHCLG provided a written reply to Sir John Redwood’s enquiry as to the government’s approach on Planning Reform.
In it, Mr Jenrick appears to say that he’s changing a few bits and bobs of some previously announced policies.
However I’ve yet to discover whether they’d had any parliamentary scrutiny / debate before being introduced.
So it looks like the minister is on track to ‘reform reforms better’, or ‘make matters worse’ depending on your point of view.
Marr-ed again
Thanks to the interview on the Andrew Marr show, Mr Jenrick admitted that Mr Berry had approved the funds for Newark while Mr Jenrick had approved the funds for Darwen.
Andrew Marr put it more simply when he summarised it as “so you decided that Jake Berry’s constituency got money and Jake Berry decided your constituency got money”.
As the transcript and the video both show, things got worse before end of the programme.
The last word
In a Government best described as ‘distracted’, it’s possible that “build back better” will turn out at some future date to have had nothing to do with construction at all.
But it could be another three word mantra like ’take back control’; ‘get Brexit done’; or ‘oven-ready deal’: it sounds wonderful, looks awful. It was a long week.
