The Times - UK (2020-08-07)

Faith in the future is

winning over fear

Ed Conway

Page 24

audience at the Tory party fringe

meeting had come. The recession

will bite in retail, in hospitality, in the

consumer economy. It will bite too in

public spending, in health, education

and welfare. It will attack the

livelihoods and the incomes of the

people who live in the towns of

England rather than those who live

in the counties. The people who lent

their votes to the Conservative Party

at the general election last

December are likely to bear the

brunt. Mr Sunak might be popular at

the moment — and the chancellor

has been the only minister anywhere

near good enough to respond to

the crisis — but this popularity

cannot last.

In every parliament there is only

one question that really counts. This

time it is to what extent the public

will turn on the government for the

pain it’s about to suffer. Can

Labour pin the blame on the

government in the way that George

Osborne was, unfairly but rather

brilliantly, able to pin the blame for

the 2008 financial crisis on

Labour? Building more houses is the

sort of surrogate activity that

governments like to give them a

semblance of radicalism. But when

the jobs losses start, nobody will

even notice.

We need more than homes to level up Britain

Tory planning reforms are a welcome boost for housebuilding but ministers must focus on jobs to keep their election pledge

experience unemployment at a level

that has not been seen since

Margaret Thatcher’s government. If

more than 10 per cent of the

workforce are out of a job, any hope

of levelling up across the nation will

disappear.

This is the week in which Rishi

Sunak, the chancellor, has begun to

cut the subsidy he has been offering

employers to keep people on the

payroll. At the moment close to ten

million jobs are being protected by

the scheme, which is due to close at

the end of October. This is the point

at which there could be a tidal wave

of unemployment.

The location of this

unemployment will not, for the most

part, be in the places from which my

Rishi Sunak knows job losses will be

the Tories’ biggest political challenge

that all local objections are

overcome. That way, development

proceeds but existing residents are

adequately compensated.

The problem with these proposals

is not their ambition, which is

laudable, even though Tory nimbys

in the southeast of England will do

all they can to frustrate them. It is

that the government is over-selling

their importance. Levelling up, to

cite the aim of the Johnson

government, will not come through

investment in bricks and mortar; it

will come through investment in

people. Ministers should study

Labour’s Neighbourhood Renewal

Unit, which disbursed a lot of

public money during the late 1990s

and early 2000s. It aimed to

regenerate those places in the

Midlands and the north that are now

known as the red wall. If it had

worked as it was intended to do,

there would probably have been no

Brexit and they would still be

electing Labour MPs. A lot of money

was committed, plenty of buildings

went up, but not may lives were

changed.

This is the weakness of the

government’s approach — not that

it is too radical but that it is not

nearly radical enough. Levelling up

will require a new school

curriculum in which non-academic

education is given the same status

as going to university. It will require

expensive improvements to hospitals

and schools in poor areas. It will

require better childcare and a

solution to social care. There is not

much that is really blighted by

planning applications.

The defining question for the next

phase of British politics will be the

depth, but also the location, of the

recession. If the projections from

the Office for Budget Responsibility

are correct then Britain is about to

I

n the distant days when there

were party conferences, I used to

chair a regular Conservative

fringe event, hosted by a think

tank and sponsored by a

telephone company, about the siting

of mobile phone masts. I asked the

audience, mostly Tory activists from

the shires, who among them was

carrying a mobile phone. Almost all

hands were raised. Then I asked

which of them would be happy to

have a mobile phone mast within

sight of their home. Not a single

hand. This is the planning

predicament. Everybody wants new

houses and infrastructure, so long as

it is somewhere else.

The government is determined all

the same, in keeping with the prime

minister’s desire to “build, build,

build”, to loosen our restrictive

planning system. Boris Johnson’s

proposed reforms will curb the

ability of local politicians to slow

down plans that have received

initial approval. The requirements

for developers to include cheaper

housing on their sites will be

relaxed.

Land will be split into the three

categories of growth, renewal, and

preservation. Any school, shop or

office that meets local design

standards will be given an assumed

permission to develop in the first two

of these three categories. The aim

will be for each area to agree a

local plan in 30 months rather

than the present average of seven

years.

There are some valid criticisms of

the plans. The abolition of what are

known as Section 106 agreements

may reduce the already short

supply of social housing. The supply

of housing is, of course, one reason

that house prices and incomes do

not match but it is not the only

one. It is unlikely, even under this

more relaxed planning regime, that

Mr Johnson’s government will be

able to hit its target of building

300,000 houses a year. There is

more to slow building than just

sclerotic planning. It is worth

noting, too, that Robert Jenrick, the

housing secretary, ought to have

been dismissed for helping to

allow the Conservative donor

Richard Desmond to avoid the

community infrastructure levy on

developers, which is also now to be

abolished.

Despite this, the proposals do not

amount to what Labour called a

“developer’s charter”. Previous

governments of both main parties

have found the planning system to

be a blight on development. The

Blair government did its best, with

limited success, to accelerate

planning. Our historically

obstructive procedure is one reason

why Britain has a severe housing

shortage.

There has always been a case for

us to copy the French. It is only a

minor simplification to say that the

French decide where they want to

build and then the state turns up

with a large bag of money to ensure

Lots of buildings may

have gone up but not

many lives changed

The recession will hit

livelihoods and income

in England’s towns

Comment

@pcollinstimes

Philip

Collins

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