Sophy Ridge on Sunday Interview with Gavin Barwell MP, Housing Minister, 5.02.17

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SOPHY RIDGE ON SUNDAY, SKY NEWS

SOPHY RIDGE: This week the government is going to set out its big plan to try and solve the housing crisis which it says is definitely not going to end the same way as the last government’s plan to solve the housing crisis.  Well I’ve been to meet the Housing Minister, Gavin Barwell, in his Croydon constituency.   So what is the government going to do?  I put those concerns to local MP and Housing Minister, Gavin Barwell.

GAVIN BARWELL: We have had a problem for 30 or 40 years where we’ve not been building enough homes in this country, that’s the fundamental solution and whether you are looking to buy a home or looking to rent a home, housing has become more and more unaffordable.  The consequence of that is for ordinary working people finding it harder and harder to get by so the fundamental thing we’re going to do in the White Paper on Tuesday is set out a plan to get this country building the homes that we desperately need.

SR: You talk about building more homes but successive governments have said exactly the same thing, why should we believe you this time?

GAVIN BARWELL: Well I think they should wait and see the results of the action.  I can understand the scepticism but I would say three things: first of all, if you look at our record since 2010 when we took over, house building in this country was at the lowest level since the 1920s, we’ve got it up now to 190,000 a year, not good enough but a lot of progress.  Secondly, we’re doubling the capital budget on housing, the Chancellor gave us a lot more money in the autumn statement but thirdly, I hope that when people see the White Paper they’ll see that it is trying to tackle this problem from every angle, looking at how do we get more land released, how do we speed up when someone gets planning permission actually getting spades in the ground and getting the homes built and what can we do to diversify the market?  Because at the moment we are far too dependent on a small number of large developers so we are trying to tackle every area of the problem.

SR: So you are still standing by that target to build a million homes by 2020?

GAVIN BARWELL: Yes that’s a clear target that we have and if you look at what we achieved in 2015/16 we were at 190,000 a year, so we were just behind where we need to be and this White Paper is going to set out an ambitious package to try and get the levels of house building higher still.  

SR: Well it is going to have to be ambitious if you are going to hit that target, what are you prepared to do?  Are you prepared to build on greenbelt land?

GAVIN BARWELL: Look, I think there is no one silver bullet solution here if you are going to solve this problem, if there was an easy answer to it, one of the previous governments over the last 30 or 40 years would have found it so what you actually need is a lot of different policies tackling this issue at every angle and that’s what the White Paper is going to do …

SR: So on the greenbelt then?

GAVIN BARWELL: On the greenbelt actually we had a clear manifesto commitment there to protect the greenbelt, the policy is very clear which is that you should only take land out of the greenbelt in exceptional circumstances so I think the reasonable thing to say to councils is that you should look at every other option in terms of where homes should be built because people value the greenbelt but the package is going to be ambitious and the Prime Minister was very clear when she stood outside Number 10 Downing Street that she wants to build a country that works for everyone and you can only do that if you fix our broken housing market.

SR: It does sound like you are not prepared to go into battle with the councils over building on greenbelt.

GAVIN BARWELL: Well I don’t think you have to take huge amounts of land out of the greenbelt to solve this problem, the greenbelt is 13% of the country so there is a lot of land out there we can build on.  We can look to see what we can do to make better use of the land we’ve already got, if you look behind me here you can see a new development that’s going up on what was previously brownfield vacant land, so can we get land that was previously being used back into active use?  There are lots of other things we can do and I think it is a slightly false choice that’s being portrayed here, that the only way to solve the housing problem that we have in this country is to build on huge swathes of the greenbelt, we don’t need to do that.

SR: We’ve spent a lot of time talking about people buying their own homes but this isn’t just about helping middle class kids get on the housing ladder, the housing crisis is also about rent so what are you going to do about that?

GAVIN BARWELL: Two things there, first of all it is not just middle class kids who want to own their own home, so the government should rightly do everything it can to help people that work hard get on the ladder whether they are from a middle class or a working class background but you are absolutely right, if you want a housing policy that works for everyone you’ve got to have something to say to those people that are renting as well as those people that want to own and there’s a really good package in the White Paper around that, to try and make rented accommodation more affordable by increasing the supply of rented accommodation and also taking action against letting agent fees which are a major barrier when people move but also trying to make it more secure.  Most of the private sector tenancies we have in this country are just for six months and what we want to do is get new institutional investment into the private rented sector that offers longer family friendly tenancies and we want to work both with big financial institutions but also those housing associations that build market rented housing to do that and the White Paper has got a lot to say about that.

SR: Construction is an industry that relies heavily on EU workers, aren’t we going to need more of these people not less if you do want to build all these new homes?  After Brexit are you prepared to look at visa programmes to encourage more construction workers into the UK?

GAVIN BARWELL: So you’re quite right, we are going to need lots more people in this industry to build the homes we need and I think we’ve got to look at range of ways of doing that so first of all we need to do a much better job in our schools and colleges of promoting construction as an industry and we also have got to look at what more industry can do to train people up, the new apprenticeship levy that’s coming in.  We’ve also got to look at changing the way we build homes in this country, so looking at modern methods of construction that require different skills and are not so labour intensive, that can be part of the solution but then yes, absolutely, if having done all of those things we’re short of skills then our new immigration policy as we leave the EU needs to make sure we can bring in the skills we need.

SR: Housing Minister, Gavin Barwell, there.