Stewart Jackson MP: Is it time for a land tax in the Budget on builders who won't build?

Stewart Jackson is the Member of Parliament for Peterborough and was Shadow Regeneration Minister 2008-10. Follow Stewart on Twitter.  

Superficially, it is good news that figures released this week show that the number of planning approvals for new homes granted in the final quarter of last year was 62% higher than the year before, according to the Home Builders Federation's latest Housing Pipeline report.

In the three month period to December 2012, local authorities granted approvals for 45,041 new homes in England, 33% up on the previous quarter and the highest quarterly number since Quarter 1 in  2008. However, the Home Builders Federation says that the number is still short of the 60,000 required each quarter but the increase is significant as it points to potential improvement in the planning system since the introduction of the National Planning Policy Framework in March 2012, which I strongly supported.

The Localism Act 2011 has had a positive impact on the housing market supply side: Clearly, the liberalisation of the planning regime, via policies such as the abolition of regional spatial strategies and regional planning targets, encouraging developers to renegotiate Section 106 planning gain obligations, neighbourhood development plans and the New Homes Bonus have all made a positive contribution. The mortgage market seems also to be more responsive, with new products for intermediate as well as outright sale and the number of weekly reservations under the government’s NewBuy scheme doubling to 130 so far this year.

Stewart Jackson MP: We need to stop fighting each other - corrosively and arrogantly - and start fighting Labour

Stewart Jackson is the Member of Parliament for Peterborough. Follow Stewart on Twitter.

At the outset, I should make it clear I am speaking for myself (and no-one else), and I always have done. I don’t seek to apologise for or admonish any individuals.

I believe that healthy debate is essential for a healthy party, but that doesn’t mean I am in favour of airing dirty laundry in public. That is why I am frustrated that reports of last Wednesday’s rather grumpy 1922 meeting have become public. The behaviour of some of my colleagues went way beyond rudeness and incivility. It did none of us any favours - which is why what happened in that meeting should not be repeated.

But what that meeting indicated is that the Parliamentary Party is clearly divided on several issues - and David Cameron’s leadership in particular. He is under pressure because he is perceived by a good number as "not a team player", and because of frustration at the constant sense of compromise created by being in coalition. In turn, this criticism causes those who feel the need to defend Mr Cameron "at all costs" - to accept no criticism of him as valid, with the attacks from both sides often becoming personal.

History teaches us is that divided parties lose elections, although I know John Redwood might disagree with this analysis. If a party is not comfortable with itself, then the country is not going to trust it with power. Unity is therefore fundamental to winning elections, and even more important than having a charismatic leader, or the perfect set of policies. This is something which many folk at the moment seem to have forgotten, and we need to rediscover the ability to disagree, without tearing ourselves to shreds. Part of that is being able to vent and articulate concerns without fear of being shouted down by other colleagues.

Stewart Jackson MP: Why the Liberal Democrats would be mad to renege on their pledge to support boundary changes

Stewart Jackson is the Member of Parliament for Peterborough.

Now you'd expect me to be the last person in the world whom Liberal Democrats would take any notice of, following my coining of the term "Curse of Clegg" in PMQs last week. It's fair to say that I did embellish a serious point about an immigration loophole with a certain choice description, reflecting the frustration many Conservative MPs feel at their Coalition colleague's "differentiation" strategy - or put simply - rubbishing the Tories at every opportunity and taking the credit for "good" policies and distancing themselves from the less popular but invariably courageous and right ones.

Recently, there have been dark mutterings from "senior Liberal Democrats" that the quid pro quofor the Conservative Parliamentary Party supporting the AV Referendum last May, a key element in the Voting Systems and Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2011, was no longer to be fairer and more equal Parliamentary boundaries being in place for the 2015 General Election but was in fact now reform of the House of Lords. Indeed Lord Oakshott, very much on the conspiratorial Tory-loathing wing of the the Lib Dems, even openly and rather petulantly threatened to welsh (sic) on the deal on television last week.

So would it be a good idea for our Coalition colleagues to break a solemn pledge when the Parliamentary Order for the boundary changes come before to the Commons and Lords, probably in about May 2013

Stewart Jackson MP: The National Planning Policy Framework is an integral part of this Government’s growth and regeneration strategy - it must not be eviscerated by hysteria and misinformation

Stewart Jackson is the Member of Parliament for Peterborough and is a Vice President of the Local Government Association and was an Opposition Spokesman on Regeneration from 2008-10.

Just before Christmas, Planning Minister Greg Clark MP, published the Government’s response to the DCLG’s Select Committee report on the draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) which, together with evidence he gave the Committee in October and a sustained campaign of misinformation and exaggeration by the likes of the National Trust and the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) and their allies at the Daily Telegraph, has prompted further media speculation of another Government “u-turn” - when it finally responds to further public consultation, now delayed but expected in April.

It might be wise to examine the context in which the Government is bringing forward this document and to nail a few pervasive myths.

It is certainly not a back of the envelope policy document. Bob Neill MP and John Howell MP spent many months in opposition engaging with, listening to and debating with planning professionals, charities, local authorities, developers and other key stakeholders, prior to the launch of their “Open Source Planning” Green Paper in February 2010. The idea that the Government’s advisory group on the NPPF was captured by and dominated by housebuilders is a myth. It had a variety of members - planners, people from local government and even a representative of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds!

The document was and is substantially about not just simplifying and slimming down national planning policy guidelines but also a much needed and demonstrable commitment by the Government to localism: the principal role of the local planning authority and local development frameworks will be central to the NPPF. Quite rightly, local government was fed up with the rigidities of John Prescott’s Regional Spatial Strategies and density targets and proscriptive policies on issues like social housing targets, which led to, amongst other things, a lamentable rise in substandard build quality and 117,000 homes constructed in the flood plain in Labour’s first two terms in government.  

Stewart Jackson MP: The Government cannot afford another "cast iron guarantee" moment

Stewart Jackson is MP for Peterborough.

The decision by Downing Street, seemingly to rebuke Iain Duncan Smith and repudiate the comments he made on Sky News on Sunday, to the effect that a Franco-German drive towards a tighter and more integrationist fiscal union should merit the active support of the British people, will worry and depress most mainsteam Eurosceptics within the Parliamentary Conservative Party, the wider party and the electorate. Not least because it suggests that Number 10 lacks a coherent plan to repatriate powers back to our Parliament and our government.

Iain Duncan Smith is of course right. We stand at a crossroads which will see our relationship with the European Union potentially and fundamentally alter to our detriment for the foreseeable future. Are the British people not able to be trusted to pass judgement on what Daniel Hannan MEP calls an “indebted and dwindling customs union” as it sets off for a destination which will inevitably mean a shift of power and influence from the UK to a new European political and economic entity over which they will have no democratic sanction?

As Bill Cash has remarked, it’s like agreeing to a trip on a ferry that’s roped to a tug and then finding you’re tethered to an aircraft carrier!

Stewart Jackson MP: Pragmatism and consensus is the lifeblood of this Coalition - but do Conservatives really want Liberal Democrat activists to have a veto even on matters of conscience?

Stewart Jackson is MP for Peterborough and served in the Opposition Whips Office in 2007/8.

Goodness knows, it's tough being a supporter of the Coalition Government and a Conservative MP at the moment, whether you're a backbencher, a Minister or like me, part of the euphemistically-named "payroll vote" as a PPS.

It's not just the normal political cycle, as tough decisions need to be made and vested interests are challenged, which brings unpopularity from the wider electorate and tough questions from your own constituents and party activists - but it's the contrived fractiousness of our Coalition partners the Liberal Democrats especially in the run up to conference season, which inevitably stretches the bonds of loyalty and circumspection amongst the vast bulk of our Parliamentary Party.

We don't mind being traduced as "extreme", "backward looking", "right wing", "xenophobic" or any number of choice epithets by our erstwhile Lib Dem friends, because we have our eyes on the big prizes - deficit reduction and desperately needed reforms in education, health and welfare - even if we have had to sideline issues that are dear to our hearts, for the common good of the country: A British Bill of Rights, repatriating powers from the European Union, inheritance tax cuts, support for the family in the tax system, amongst other policies upon which we were all elected in May 2010.

We don't mind our Lib Dem Parliamentary colleagues developing the shtick for the media that they have "saved the UK from the Tory Party."

If we Conservatives were on a 10% poll rating, maybe we'd do the same?

Stewart Jackson MP: We mustn’t let our children’s futures suffer as a result of Labour’s policy of uncontrolled immigration

Stewart Jackson is MP for Peterborough.

Naturally, the Coalition Government is rightly focused on a wide front in terms of areas desperately requiring urgent remedial efforts – not least growing our economy and paying down our unprecedented national debt, as well as tackling the scourge of welfare dependency - and wider public service reform. We do not have the luxury of wasting our precious intellectual capital or legislative time as the Blair Government did from 1997 to 2001.

For many, the issue of immigration – or more precisely the matter of Labour’s appalling legacy of uncontrolled and misguided mass migration – may seem to be in a category marked as “job done” or certainly “work in progress”.

What’s the problem, people say? We now have a cap on non-EU migrants, introducing mandatory English language proficiency for family members and we’re toughening up procedures to remove those people who have overstayed and we’re cracking down on those individuals on bogus courses with student visas.

What of European Union migration? We were told by the Labour Government in 2003 that fewer than 20,000 individuals from EU states would travel to the UK to settle and work. Many people, such as myself, were highly sceptical of these estimates – as were the majority of European Union member states, who wisely imposed a 7-year moratorium on the implementation of the 2004 Free Movement Directive (due to expire in April this year).
 
In the event, we were right to be concerned.

Stewart Jackson MP: Our Housing Policies are bold but are they enough?

Stewart Jackson MP was Shadow Minister for Communities and Local Government 2008-10 and is Vice President of the Local Government Association and a member of the Board of Management of the New Local Government Network.

It's certainly the case that the DCLG Ministerial team have hit the ground running since the General Election. Eric Pickles and his colleagues have set the agenda and made the weather in local government - and left Labour floundering in their wake.

The commitment to localism runs through each announcement as a defining ideology, consistent with Eric's long held philosophy.

Last week's announcement on council tax revaluations (there won't be any!) follows hard on from announcements on getting rid of street clutter, spending transparency and superfluous bye-laws, scrapping the Regional Spatial Strategies, the Standards Board, Tenants Services Authority and the Audit Commission, tackling garden grabbing and wasteful public sector lobbying as well as relaunching a national swaps scheme for social housing tenants and reviewing "local connections" in housing allocations.

If ever there was a round peg in a round hole then it's Housing Minister Grant Shapps. Not only is he completely on top of his brief but he's a fluent and persuasive advocate for a more active and pragmatic approach to homelessness and a good media performer to boot.

Which is just as well... because the housing brief will be one of the most challenging portfolios both for the department and for our government.

House building in 2009 was at its lowest level since 1924 and its clear to even the most blinkered Labour partisan that the Regional Spatial Strategies failed to get even close to their building targets in every year bar one since 1997. As Conservatives, we should be concerned too, that the tide is ebbing on owner occupation and that last week's figures on Right to Buy showed that RTB sales were the lowest ever, at just 3,100 units last year.

Stewart Jackson MP: Ed Balls is a cynic and opportunist on EU migration - but Conservatives would be unwise to shoot the messenger when his message is right

Stewart Jackson is MP for Peterborough and was Shadow Minister for Communities and Local Government between 2008 and 2010.

Having sat in the House of Commons since 2005, I have watched Ed Balls with a mixture of fascination and admiration. He is many things – brusque, fiercely partisan, a class warrior and a bruiser. One thing he is not is stupid. Nor is he Alf Garnett.

His Road to Damascus recantation of the last Labour Government’s policy on EU migration whilst superficially risky, in that it might very well alienate a key element of Labour Party members in the current leadership contest, is nevertheless carefully calibrated. It is aimed at an even more important Labour demographic: the previously rock-ribbed constituency of white working class C2/DE electors, without whom Labour cannot win another Parliamentary majority and form a government. These were the disaffected folk who very nearly cost Ed Balls his seat and his career in the Morley and Outwood constituency on 6th May.

Ed’s mea culpa is undoubtedly belated and hypocritical, as neither he, nor his patron Gordon Brown, sought to stay Tony Blair’s hand in pursuing the foolish and costly policy of complete adherence to the European Union’s Free Movement Directive in 2004 - a policy eschewed by wiser EU leaders in France, Germany, Spain and Italy, amongst others, rightly for fear of the impact on their own labour markets.

I declare an interest. My constituency has seen one of the highest levels of EU migration in the UK in the last six years – without my constituents ever being asked whether or not they approved of this policy and without being provided the resources to ameliorate the huge impact on public services – especially housing, policing, health and education – of this unprecedented level of social and economic change.

Stewart Jackson MP: Exposing Labour's insidious transfer of powers to new quangos and bureaucrats

Stewart Jackson is MP for Peterborough and Shadow Minister for Communities and Local Government

It's probably true to say that the prospect of the forthcoming passage of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill in Parliament, will hardly set the voters' pulses racing and is probably of only marginal interest to a small number of people even in local government and the construction industry.

It's certainly the case that on one level the Bill represents the scrappy afterthoughts of a tired, fag end Labour administration - merely paying lip service to real, demonstrable local accountability, engagement with communities and the need to reinvigorate civic life at local government level.

The widespread ridicule which Hazel Blears attracted at the publication of the Government's White Paper in July - "Free doughnuts if you turn up to vote" - represented the nemesis of Labour's failed local government agenda of red tape, compulsion, centralisation, form filling, duplication and endless performance assessments since 1997.

Perhaps the very opaqueness and vacuity of the Bill - or so it appears - is designed to obscure the continuing insidious transfer of powers from democratically elected local councillors to government-appointed bureaucrats. Labour have no wish to learn the lessons of the emphatic "no" vote in the North East regional referendum in 2004 and the more recent overwhelming rejection of congestion charging in Greater Manchester before Christmas.

Stewart Jackson MP: Why we Conservatives must not allow Labour to outflank us on immigration

Stewart Jackson is Member of Parliament for Peterborough

Perhaps even only a few months ago, the received wisdom in genteel political circles was that only the obsessive or the cranky talked about mass migration and its impact on the United Kingdom. Modernist opinion formers in political parties and the media told us that we flogged it to death at the General Election and little good did it do us. True, up to a point.

Personally, I do not consider myself anything other than a mainstream, modern and compassionate Conservative. But I have to admit to being angry.

Angry at this Government's lies and obfuscation, angry at their disdain for the views of my local residents and angry at what their policies have done to parts of my constituency. John Reid's talk of a "mature debate" is nonsense - imbued as it is with opportunistic cynicism.

I have lost count of the dishonest, patronising and evasive answers I have received from Ministers in Parliamentary Questions and including at my Adjournment Debate on the subject on 14th July (see
my website)

Most recent polls show that by a long way Conservative policies on immigration are preferred to those of the Labour Party and we are trusted more on this issue. Conservative supporters have tended to regard this state of affairs as a given - an issue that we can "bank" before we turn our attention to other more comfortable and "easier" policy areas.