Grey and Unpleasant Land: Developers-First Tories Attack ‘Wicked’ Opponents of Concreting Countryside

Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, wearing a hard hat and a hi-vis ja
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Oliver JJ Lane

Furious tempers are on show as a small band of Tory rebels attempt to amend the government’s flagship housebuilding bill, with detractors calling them “selfish and wicked” and defenders insisting on the primacy of local communities, not central government, when it comes to development.

The UK Parliament will vote Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill 2022-23 on Wednesday, including votes on a host of amendments proposed for the government’s flagship legislation by a small band of Tory rebels which includes many names which will be familiar to Brexiteers and those sympathetic to the more conservative part of the Conservative Party.

Locals the length and breadth of Britain already complain of housebuilding problems including “building on the green belt… unaffordable housing… Building on Areas of Natural Beauty, on flood plains, prime farmland and public parks and swamping of green spaces around villages are further all-too-common examples.” Critics want to see the law changed to give locals more power.

While the passage of bills, and amendments for them, coming and going is all part of the normal business of Parliament, just off the front pages a bitter war is brewing between Tory rebels fighting the corner of local communities for the right to fight off new housing developments imposed from above, and defenders of the party establishment trying to drive through more housebuilding at top speed.

Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) director Robert Colvile has called the proposals “wicked”, their author obstinate, and said those that support them are “spitting in the face” of young people.

The amendments to the bill are written by Theresa Villiers, a former cabinet minister who was one of the few senior Conservatives of the David Cameron era who backed Brexit. Among the ideas she puts forward to be adopted are that developers that deliberately fell protected trees can actually be punished, so that communities actually have a right to object and appeal against planning applications, and that building on brownfield rather than virgin greenfield land should be promoted.

Among the backers supporting the Villiers amendments are Bob Seely, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, and John Redwood.

Yet perhaps the amendments that have caused most anger is the abolition of mandatory housebuilding targets set by central government which make it difficult or impossible for local government to resist new housing developments which may be inappropriate for local areas but which are essentially enforced. As Villiers said on Times Radio on Monday in defence of her plan:

What the amendments do is to disapply centrally set housing targets. So the aim is to restore local decision-making. We have a situation at the moment where locally-elected councillors on planning committees are finding it harder and harder to turn down development they feel is inappropriate for the area — which may be environmentally damaging — because they face the risk that if they turn it down, an appeal could reverse that decision on the basis that this development, no matter how unsatisfactory it is, is needed to meet the targets.

Going to bat as a proxy for the government and the passage of an unmolested bill in a Times column, accompanying Twitter thread, and then appearance on television, Colvile made clear his objections in colourful language. The plan is “evil”, Colvile explains, because it scraps “the two core policies that tell councils they have to build, and punish them for not doing so”. Worse, it would “enshrine nimbyism” — a slur against people who object to developments for any reason — and in his estimation demolish the economy. Heavy stuff indeed.

It does seem ironic enough that a think tank founded to promote the principles of individualism and the free market by Margaret Thatcher in 1974 is instead acting as attack dog for “Stalinist” central building targets, aggressively rubbishing proponents of local control in the press.

The web of relationships involved here may go some way to explaining the sudden vitriol being poured onto senior and obviously conservative Members of Parliament. The Levelling-up Bill which stands to be amended here is the work of long-time Tory plotter Michael Gove, who is frequently associated with the CPS in a network of mutual support. CPS boss Colvile himself helped write the last Conservative Party manifesto in 2019 and the bullish words traded this week may be interpreted as an attempt to secure that legacy.

The construction industry, which probably stands to lose most from modifications to the forthcoming bill giving ordinary people more say, also figures here. Colvile has recently been appointed an advisor to the JCB group, a business building construction machinery whose chairman, Lord Bamford, is one of the most important donors to the Conservative Party. Lord Bamford also sits on the board of the CPS.

The relationship between construction equipment billionaire Lord Bamford and the Conservative Party is perhaps the apex of a considerable source of funding for Britain’s ruling party that may go some way to explain the hard reaction to attempts to modify a bill expressly intended to see more new houses built more quickly. As has been reported before, construction-related firms make up a considerable portion of the Conservative Party’s income, with a 2021 report noting a fifth of the Tories’ donations coming from the “residential property sector”.

A report in The Guardian on this relationship between the Conservatives, who have set Britain’s planning and housebuilding rules for over a decade, and the sector it is supposed to regulate, noted: “While it could not be conclusively proven that government decisions were shaped by this flow of money, such a reliance on housing-based donations created ‘a real risk of aggregative corruption’,”.

Criticism of such funding, while voiced by Labour, has of course been muted: the opposition party has its own web of influential donors and backers that it gains nothing by calling attention to.

None of this is to suggest any great conspiracy, of course, but rather to reflect on the simple existence of interest and allegiance which, while not at all hidden, are also not proudly paraded before the noses of voters. And none of this even touches on the less base interests of the Conservatives in housebuilding, that home ownership is well known to create Tory voters out of people.

None of this changes, of course, the fact the government has a considerable majority, and the hard-left parties which make up the remainder of parliament are unlikely to side with this band of Tory rebels on the vote. This makes the amendments being incorporated extremely unlikely. But as Colvile worries, any sizable rebellion at all is likely to spook the government and be an engine for change, no matter how slight.

Britain needs more houses, the mantra goes, because the government can fix the supply side of the equation by forcing local councils to build without having to look at the considerably more politically difficult demand side of things, which is a great engine driven by the sometimes hidden Tory policy of mass migration.

So Colvile, for all his animated panic, has little to worry about. Besides, Theresa Villiers — as she freely admits herself, saying “I am determined, as [Colvile] is, to see new homes delivered” — wants lots of houses built, just slightly differently. She is a Conservative MP, after all.

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