Helen Morgan – 2022 Speech on the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill
The speech made by Helen Morgan, the Liberal Democrat MP for North Shropshire, in the House of Commons on 13 December 2022.
I rise to speak to new clauses 20 and 40 and amendment 5, in my name. We all recognise that the UK has a housing crisis, with shortages of social, private rented and affordable housing, leaving many people in an insecure position. One problem is that that need often conflicts with concerns that local residents have about their own stretched public services. Amendment 5 would help to address local concerns by ensuring that the infrastructure levy is paid upfront before the point of occupation. Councils would be able to ensure that a local community could cope with the additional people moving in before they were there taking up school places and nursery places, rather than trying to solve the problem of service provision once it is too late.
The amendment would also enable councils to require financial bonds from developers to complete the basic infrastructure—roads, street lights and drainage—that is meant to be adopted, but often seems to be left undone. North Shropshire is plagued with unfinished road developments, and the amendment would allow those financial bonds to be put in place, which would avoid such situations.
I fear that the Bill misses the opportunity to ensure that, when we build new homes, we protect the environment. The Conservatives have allowed around 1 million new homes to be built since 2015, which are not as efficient as they would have been had the standards put in place under the coalition Government been retained. This is a missed environmental opportunity, and it means that homeowners are paying far more to heat their homes than they might otherwise have done. New clause 20 would bring forward the date of the future homes standard to January, which may be unrealistic in the circumstances, but I hope that the Minister will consider bringing it forward to save homebuyers money and to work towards our climate objectives.
New clause 40 would create a requirement to hold local referendums on fracking applications—to be paid for by the applicant—to protect communities from unwanted fossil fuel extraction. My constituents are unconvinced by the current moratorium given the flip-flopping this summer and the disastrous decision to give the go-ahead to a new coalmine last week.
Finally, I wish to mention the critical importance of the affordability of housing. We know, as many Members have discussed, that it is worse in some parts of the country than in others. The building of executive homes in the countryside will not help us deal with the problem of affordable housing. New clause 20 also enables local authorities to require new housing to be affordable and to define affordability in their area. It would also allow them to provide additional bus services so that people did not become reliant on cars.
In summary, I am worried about the things that are missing in the Bill, which we have discussed today, and I hope that the Minister will consider them. In my final few seconds, I apologise to the House for coughing and spluttering all the way through the debate.
