Keir Starmer on Housing (BBC Breakfast interview

I like to hear things from the Horse's mouth... so here you go! From Keir's own lips...

Susanna Reid: Right let’s talk to Sir Keir Starmer because he is accusing the Conservatives of killing the aspiration of homeowners for a whole generation. He’s making his speech today, but he’s here on the programme this morning.

Keir Starmer: Good morning.

Reid: Morning, how are you? You’re setting out plans to combat the housing crisis? What are you going to do?

Starmer: We are going to build more houses. The way I will put it in my speech this morning is that we are going to back the builders and not the blockers, because we understand the aspiration, the dream, of homeownership and the sense of security that it gives to working people to have a roof over their own head that is their own and they’ve been very badly let down by this government, which wasn’t building enough houses and then Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, gave in to his to own members and backbencher and took down the only targets that were realistically there, which means that now house building is going to plummet to the lowest levels since the WWII and that will kill the dream of house ownership, that dream of security, for so many people and we intend to turn that around. The first thing we’ll obviously have to do is reinstate the targets, but if that’s all we do, I don’t think that we’ll achieve the aspiration of enough houses for the people who want to own their own home, so we also want to mend what essentially a broken system to ensure that houses are built under the direction of local areas with development corporations as the driving vehicle, which will mean many, many houses being built and hopefully, bring down the price, when measured against wages.

Reid: Are you opening up the Green Belt to house building? You may have noticed in The Times that a government source has briefed the newspaper to highlight the fact that the Shadow Secretary from levelling up, Lisa Nandy in your Shadow cabinet, who’s also the Shadow Secretary for Housing, recently opposed the building for homes on Green Belt land in her own constituency.

Starmer: Yeah.

Reid: Is that the case? Is it easy to say from the pulpit of a national platform “We’re going to build more houses” but of course as soon as it becomes a local issue, your MPs tend to block it and they’re not builders, they're blockers.

Starmer: Look, I mean this is going to involve tough decisions, I’m not going to shy away from and let me take the question of the Green Belt head on because we all need to protect our fantastic countryside. When I was a kid, we went to the Lake District every year. I know the value of that countryside and we need to protect that. But there are two things that are very important. Firstly, we do build on bits of the green belt now and it’s about making sure that we build on the right bits of the Green Belt. And there are some decisions that are made which I think illustrate my point. In the southeast, housing was built on a playing field, rather than a car park because the car park was technically within the Green Belt. Now I just don’t think that’s sensible, so it’s not about saying we rip up any protection for the Green Belt. Of course we don’t want to do that. We all love the countryside and want to preserve that. But there are areas on the Green Belt where, if local areas direct properly, have the powers to do so, would be far more sensible.

Reid: Do you know this specific that Lisa Nandy, your shadow housing spokesperson, blocked, do you know what that issue was? Because there’s always going to be a reason why you wouldn’t want housing on Green Belt. It’s not always going to be about car parks. It’s often going to be about playing fields.

Starmer: I gave that example because there are bits of the Green Belt which I do think local areas should have the power to direct housing on, but of course we don’t want to rip up the protection for the Green Belt generally. But we do need to press on and have a sense of urgency here because-

Lewis: Do you have faith that local areas will actually want the building in their area, we won’t have a NIMBY issue? I mean, do you think we’ll be able to get enough houses through various different local areas to actually in practice make this work?

Starmer: I think there are a number of issues bound up in that. The answer is yes for this reason: at the moment, the decision about where housing is built is usually determined by those that own the land, who are often sitting on it for as long as possible to drive the value up, and developers. And actually not by local areas according to local need and I think if it’s by local areas according to need, then more sensible decisions can be made about where housing is. And of course, that is a decision about the Green Belt. It’s also a discussion about brownfield and it’s also a question about where it is. Near railway stations for example also enhances the infrastructure of a railway line, so that’s the first bit. The second bit is that I do think there’s an argument for saying that we should change the rules to allow local areas, local authorities, to club together rather than do it in individual small areas which does cause all sorts of localised problems, so this about reforming the system to make it work for house building. But I come back to where I started: that security of your own home. When I was growing up, my dad was a toolmaker, my mum was a nurse. We didn’t have a lot of money. Sometimes we couldn’t pay the bills. But we id have our own home and a mortgage of course. And that meant that I understood as a child growing up what security of having your own roof over your head meant. And many people watching this will understand that and that’s why they have the dream, the aspiration. Working people, working class people, have the aspiration of their own home because of that security and they are being very badly let down because that house building isn’t happening, it’s now going to drop off completely. You’ll see all the stat about how old you have to be before you’ve got any chance of really getting on the housing ladder.