Labour is 'ignoring concerns of local communities' in drive for new homes, Hollinrake claims

GB News

The Shadow Levelling-Up Secretary has launched a scathing attack on the Government's housing strategy, accusing ministers of disregarding local communities' wishes in their push to increase home building.Kevin Hollinrake told GB News that the Government was "hollowing out communities" by redirecting housing targets away from urban areas towards greenfield and greenbelt sites.FULL STORY HERE.

Transcript

00:00Let's cross live now to Westminster and talk to the shadow secretary for levelling up,

00:04Kevin Hollenrake. Kevin, good morning. Thank you for joining us this morning. I understand

00:11that you are concerned about the government's housing targets, whether or not they may reach

00:17them, but also how they are planning to develop housing across the country. Can you explain

00:22more? It's how they are doing it. Delivering houses isn't just a numbers game, it's also

00:30about pride of place. What the government is doing is hollowing out communities. It's moving

00:37these housing targets from the urban areas into green field sites and green belt sites,

00:43which isn't where the communities are now. At the same time as well, the overriding protections

00:48that we put in place to make sure we deliver new housing alongside good nature conservation.

00:55We are conservatives and we conserve, and that's not what's happening. Once you've concreted

01:00over a badger set, those badgers are finished forever. You may be able to replace them elsewhere.

01:08This is what the government is planning to do with Natural England taking responsibility

01:12for relocating those kind of nature sites. Kevin, I'm sure many people will share your

01:17concern for badgers. But people are even more concerned about people. And the fact is that

01:23over the last 10, 15 years, sadly, far too few houses have been built. Far too many people

01:29have come to this country. And now the pressure on housing is so great that we just need to

01:33build. And really, is adding more barriers to building going to help?

01:39Well, we've shown you can do both. During the last 10 years in office, we had record numbers

01:45of housing delivery, an average of 207,000 net additions, which is highest for 50 years.

01:50At the same time, putting in place very important environmental protections, because people just

01:55don't want to live in a house. They want to live in a home. And homes depend upon their communities,

02:00but also the balance with nature. You can do these two things together. We're not against

02:05all the plans the government's making. We're not against a higher target for homes. We just want

02:10to make sure those homes are of high quality, not these soulless homes. And what they're looking to

02:16do, the way they're going to do this, typical of a Labour government, they're looking to completely

02:21override local opposition by saying that local elected councillors won't have a vote on the

02:26majority of planning applications. We think that is totally wrong and we'll oppose those measures.

02:31It's very interesting what you raised there about the natural world, Kevin. BBC at the moment,

02:38they're running a series called Spring Watch. And what they're doing is they're hiding cameras

02:42in people's back gardens in a town. And you would be amazed to see the amount of wildlife that exists

02:50in your back garden and my back garden. Badgers, foxes, the whole lot, owls, they're all there.

02:56Exactly. And we want to retain that kind of biodiversity and improve upon it. And we've

03:03shown you can do this. We legislated for this on the Environment Act, including biodiversity net gain,

03:09which is all deliverable. It's right to make those regulations more easy to comply with,

03:15so you get more rapid housing development. But the right kind of houses, the right kind of design,

03:20and that's something else Angela Rayne has done. We have something called the Office for Place,

03:25which is requiring developers to build beautiful, so beautiful housing estates with trees and open

03:31spaces full of biodiversity. These are the right things to do that developers could comply with.

03:38There are some changes that need to be made, and we support some of those changes around constantly

03:44challenging by judicial review, for example. But nevertheless, it should not be either or.

03:49Kevin, there's a big story on the front of the sun today about the amount of money that this country is

03:54now spending on asylum hotels. And actually, if you take the full taxes paid by nearly 600,000 people,

04:00it consumes that entire sum of taxation. Should the last government have pushed much harder to get

04:07the Rwanda plan over the line? Oh, my God. I mean, they blocked it every term. As you know,

04:14you were there at the time. They voted against Rwanda 132 times. But the Conservatives had a majority?

04:21Which was deterring people coming over that border. The Conservatives had a majority?

04:24Well, we don't have a Conservative majority in the Lords, as you know, which was the biggest problem,

04:30Miriam. 132 times in the Lords, those measures were opposed. We finally passed that legislation.

04:36It meant for the first time we detained illegal migrants with pending their removal to Rwanda.

04:42The first thing Labour do when they come into office is completely scrap those plans,

04:47which means more people are coming to the UK. The number's at record levels,

04:51and we're seen as an easy touch by the international community that's on the move. That can't be the case.

04:58You've got to have a deterrence, as well as making sure that we have legal migration under control.

05:05We've got to have that illegal migration under control as well. You cannot do that without that

05:09kind of Rwanda deterrence. What about the deterrence President Trump's introducing in LA?

05:18My God, there's a worry in scenes. But to be fair, I don't think it's right that

05:22foreign governments can comment on our domestic situation in terms of what's going in the UK.

05:27We probably shouldn't do the same with other countries. But there are parallels, aren't there?

05:31I mean, we know that we've got big problems in this country, not just with illegal migrants,

05:36as we've been talking about, but people who have overstayed their visas. Some estimates reckon

05:40that there are as many as a million people in this country that shouldn't be here. What would the

05:44Conservatives do to remove those people, to enforce the law, as people rightly expect, if not to copy

05:50what Trump is attempting? Yeah, I agree with that. Those people shouldn't be here. We should

05:57have a better system of making sure we can check on people who are overstayed visas. But also,

06:02foreign national offenders. You know, we brought forward the deportation bill, which says every

06:07single foreign national offender will be removed from this country. That's about around 20,000 people.

06:13That's a big job. We're committed to doing it. It's absolutely right that we're doing those kind

06:17of things. So, yes, it's right to say we've got our own problems and we're keen to fix them.

06:22Okay. Kevin, got to leave it there. Thank you for your time this morning. Appreciate it.

06:27And look after your badgers. Cheers. Thank you very much.

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