Kemi Badenoch MP's speaking in the King's Speech Debate on Planning, Greenbelt and Rural Affairs as Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government on the 19th July 2024.
Planning, the Green Belt and Rural Affairs
Thank you Mr. Speaker
It is a delight to be back at the despatch box. I've been looking forward to standing opposite the Right Honourable Lady for a very, very long time.
She and I have never really met, certainly never spoken to each other despite being in this house together for seven years.
We have some things in common, not much.
We were both born in 1980, though I’m older (and wiser) than she is.
People often think we’re both much younger than we really are because we’ve got such great skin and good hair
And we’re both known as being quite feisty.
So I’m really pleased to be able to congratulate her on her elevation, to Secretary of State and Deputy Prime Minister.
This is a phenomenal achievement, and she will be a great inspiration to young people, but particularly young women in many communities across the country.
And I think that's a wonderful thing. That's the sort of Britain we are…where people who grow up from all walk of life can reach the top. It’s an extraordinary story, dare I say, of CONSERVATIVE success.
Unlike me, she grew up under a Conservative government. With a welfare state that provided a safety net, a strong economy and opportunity, while I mostly grew up under a socialist military government that delivered many of the policies I’ve heard her promote when she was sitting on this side of the house.
She may not credit Conservatives for what she has achieved, but we’ll be taking some of that credit anyway.
So I’d like to extend a very warm welcome to her on her first outing as a minister in the chamber, because it’s only going to be downhill from here.
You see the thing is I’ve been a Secretary of State before, and after five years as a minister, you learn a thing or two about government that you never can in Opposition.
I’ve been there, done it and I can tell the Right Honourable Lady, that she has been stitched up.
It is quite clear that the bills and policies from the King’s Speech she’s just referenced have not been written by her, but by the chancellor and the chancellor’s advisers. We all know this because we watched the Member for Leeds West announce them in far more detail in her speech last week!
All the stuff the Secretary of State worked on in opposition like her new deal for workers, has been taken off her and given to the Business Secretary!
I am sorry to tell the Rt Hon Lady that her colleagues, the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and their many advisers have written a manifesto and made promises that are not deliverable and they've hung them around her neck and said “Angie, you go out there, and you sell it”.
I’m sad to see her many of her shadow team not sitting beside her as ministers. They worked for free, grinding in opposition for years, only to watch the children of the chosen ones, get the ministerial cars and salaries before their maiden speeches are written - wow.
Sue Gray was a lot nicer to me when she worked in my department.
I think we know who’s in charge, and it’s not the Rt Hon Lady.
She's been stitched up. They've made her the fall guy.
They’ve promised one and a half million houses by the end of this parliament. That’s over 800 houses per day, and we’re already two weeks in. And as she goes on, day after day, she's going to realise that a backlog is building, and there's no way out.
But I want her to know that I’m here for her. I'll be here to hold her hand and walk her through what is likely to be a very difficult time. I may even give her some tips, because having worked in that department, I know what needs to be done.
I know what we should have done that we didn’t do. And I know that they’re going to make the same mistakes.
It's not that one and a half million homes by the end of this Parliament is unachievable…it’s that it's going to require the sort of systemic change, which they are not ready for.
I know they’re not ready because of how they voted in the last parliament, and how they campaigned in their own constituencies. I'm not going to read out the long list of all of the Cabinet members who’ve been opposing planning in their back yard, including the Housing Minister.
Many have been thinking that they'd get into government and concrete over lots of Tory constituencies. Three weeks ago, just 15% of the greenbelt was in labour constituencies, now it's 50%. These aren’t Tory constituencies now, they are Labour.
So Mr. Speaker I would say to members opposite, “they are now your voters and your electorate, and you're going to have to tell them that you're going to do something that many of you promised locally that you would never do, not that long ago.”
But it mostly won’t be the problem of the cabinet who will look after themselves, It'll be the backbenchers - all those bright shiny faces I see sitting behind the Rt Hon Lady, who are really excited to be here. They haven't started getting those angry emails we’ve been replying to for fourteen years. Many of those voters on whom their narrow, and slim majorities now rely will be writing to them.
So in the spirit of sisterly support, I'm going to let her know what's going to happen over the next few weeks and months - and they’re looking so nervous right now.
She’ll get a period of consultation. That's going to take this long. And then she’s gonna have to respond to that consultation. And that'll take this long, assuming that nothing goes wrong with either of those processes. So now, we've reached December/January and six months have passed and that, is ten percent of the parliament where you haven't built any extra homes at this point. So at this point, she’ll be running 500 homes behind the target Every. Single. Day. And they wouldn’t have started building properly!
And as it becomes clear, in these new Labour constituencies (for which congratulations), these new Labour constituencies in the Greenbelt, as it becomes clear to their voters what's happening, those MPs are going to receive a lot more emails. I mean a LOT more. They’re going to want a lot of public meetings, because they will know that the decisions which she announced, are now being taken out of local hands and made by central government, and the only way that they can register their concer, is by appealing to their local MPs who will all be appealing to her.
But this is what being in power is. Government is about making difficult decisions. Opposition is easy. We've been watching Labour do it for fourteen years.
They have spent all that time telling the people of this country that they will do better. So here’s the record they’re going to have to beat.
Conservative Record.
- We built a million new homes in the course of the last parliament – while safeguarding the greenbelt.
- Two and a half million since 2010, despite COVID.
- We delivered nearly 700,000 new affordable homes - over 172,000 of those were for social rent.
- We put in place the eleven-and-a-half billion pound affordable homes program.
Does she know yet if the chancellor will give her up to eleven-and-a-half billion pounds? She’s going to need a lot more than that if she’s going to beat our record.
Labour's record:
Let’s not forget what Labour did just last year. We had a majority in this house, but not in the other place, where they whipped Labour Lords to vote against an amendment on nutrient neutrality using new Brexit powers, to unlock 160,000 homes. We legislated for that and they blocked it. Destructive opposition. Are they going to reverse that decision? I have a feeling they won’t.
And that’s why I am worried about the Rt Hon Lady. Is she going to face down her backbenchers? Or will Labour carry on not doing the things that you have to do in order to build homes.
Let’s look at the Labour record. In the year to June 2009 when they were last in government, they only built 75,000 new homes. The lowest level of house building since the 1920s.
And what are they doing where they currently are in government?
In London, Sadiq Khan has failed to hit his own targets, beginning just 21,000 new homes in 2022, despite us giving him pots and pots of money to deliver a target of 52,000 homes annually. We were forced to intervene on his house building failures. Why hasn’t built on all those car parks which she talked about in her speech.
In Wales, the Labour administration promised to deliver 20,000 new homes for social rent by 2026. They've barely delivered a quarter.
The Rt Hon Lady may pretend building homes is easy, but Labour know it's not easy, because they failed in London and they failed in Wales and they are already making new mistakes.
We all know immigration increases housing demand.
Just this week, we heard that they’re going to be fast tracking 90,000 illegal immigrants who already landed here. If they are permitted to stay, they will require permanent housing.
We put the Rwanda scheme in place to limit illegal immigration. They’ve scrapped it. With no plans whatsoever to tackle the problem, has she got 90,000 homes ready for the people the Home Secretary is going to be fast tracking through?
If not, she’s already 90,000 homes down on the target the Prime Minister has set for her.
That is why I am feeling very generous towards the Right Honourable Lady, because she has been stitched up, and she's going to need some friends, and I want her to know that we're here all here for her.
Some people think opposition is all about throwing mud across the chamber…or calling your opponents scum, but often it's about saying “I told you so”.
I want to reassure the Rt Hon Lady that I will be here to say “I told you so” when these targets are missed.
Lib Dems
We of course will be a constructive opposition, we want to see homes built, in the right places, with the right infrastructure. We’re here to help. I doubt the same can be said of the biggest local NIMBYs in the country, the Liberal Democrats. There are many more of them now, you wouldn’t know but there are. Usually elected on promises not to allow any building anywhere in their communities. In the last parliament, I watched them oppose planning reforms on permitted development. Reforms that would allow better use of land that was already in use.
It'll be very interesting to see how they square their NIMBY tendencies with their manifesto promises, but then again…saying one thing and doing another has never bothered the Lib Dems. She’s not going to get any help from them - but we’re here for her.
I've heard some of Labour's plans, introducing mandatory targets while introducing new regulatory costs that won’t work. Without tax-payer funding their affordable housing targets become unviable. Where’s the money going to come from?
The mandate they want to enforce implies a consequence for missing the target. What will that consequence be for local councils? Are they going to scrap the neighbourhood plans communities have put together to deliver more homes? What will those newly won councils say when they're forced to do things they promised that they would not do just eight weeks ago?
All we have heard from Labour is mechanisms for overriding local-decision making, to identify the land for development and grant permissions. That’s fine, but Identifying land doesn’t mean that homes or infrastructure will be built.
So I look forward to second reading of her bill, where she will have to explain the plans that the Chancellor and her spads have written up for the Rt Hon Lady, and she can tell us in great, technical detail, how they will be delivered. Although I suspect she will leave the tricky stuff to her junior ministers.
We Conservatives may not be as many as we used to be, but we still know all the stuff that we learned over fourteen years as we delivered two and a half million homes.
We know where the difficulties are.
We know the technicalities, she is just learning.
We're going to be ready and waiting to show that she and her party have made promises they cannot keep, and in many cases have no idea what they are doing.
To conclude
To conclude, Mr Speaker, Labour have a tough act to follow, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and I’m pleased to see they have been copying and pasting many of the policies we had in government.
We introduced Metro mayor's with substantial powers, now they are announcing that they’re going to do more.
We put billions of levelling-up funding into communities and back to those Metro mayors like Ben Houchen in Teeside. We hope Labour will follow this.
In the latest local government finance settlement. We made £64.7 billion pounds available for local authorities. A seven-and-a-half increase in cash terms. Will Labour top that, rather than just moving money from one part of the country to another?
We would like to see them get the Holocaust Memorial bill which we started, on to the statute books as the Prime Minister promised and we will support them in that.
We must do right by our Jewish communities. We provided record levels of funding to protect them from harm and extremism.
We took decisive action to tackle growing sectarianism, and are disappointed not to see any mention of how Labour will continue this in the King’s Speech.
This election we saw independent MPs win seats off Labour on the back of sectarianism and integration failures. A problem Labour continually denies exists even as we are watching riots in Leeds.
It is time to put the childish displays and fake outrage of opposition away. The Rt Hon Lady will need to get very serious, very quickly, and where she has the right ambition, we will do what we can to support her in facing down those members sitting behind her who still don’t get it
