Tory nimbys want to scrap housing targets. It is selfish and wicked and must be stopped
Robert Colvile
Saturday November 19 2022, 6.00pm GMT,
The Sunday Times
​
When you need to plug a £55 billion hole in the public finances, you don’t tend to make many friends. Despite the negative headlines, Jeremy Hunt did the best job he could last week of sharing and deferring the pain. It was bad. It could have been worse.
But there was one telltale exception. Amid all the freezing and slicing, one group alone got an extra handout, no questions asked: Britain’s pensioners. Whether you were a billionaire or former binman, there was an extra £300 to help with your bills — on top of a 10 per cent increase in the state pension, thanks to the triple lock. And when it came to spending, the focus was again on the elderly: the NHS and social care were the only public services apart from schools to get a significant chunk of cash.
You can understand why the NHS might need a bit more. But when it comes to the handouts, it’s a different story. Because pensioners aren’t poor. By any measure, they are the best-off in our society. That’s not surprising. If you’ve been working and saving for decades, you tend to end up with more assets. Those in their early sixties are on average nine times wealthier than those in their early thirties. Not least because three quarters of pensioners own their homes mortgage-free, and house prices in recent decades have shot up faster than a frisky jackrabbit.
But it’s not just about wealth. With no rent or mortgage to pay, many pensioners have higher disposable incomes than their working-age counterparts. Likewise, they are less likely to be in poverty. Yes, there are many poor OAPs. But, as a group, those over 65 are arguably the least likely to need extra handouts. Yet for some reason they keep getting more of them. And, to pay for that, younger generations are squeezed and squeezed. Just look at the marginal tax rates on graduates paying off their student loans.
It’s tempting to blame this on the Tory party rewarding its core vote. But pandering to pensioners is popular with everyone. Polls show rock-solid support for the triple lock, even though it is economically indefensible. And a recent survey for The Economist found a huge majority of both old and young favoured spending more on health and pensions rather than infrastructure and science, even though the growth generated by the latter is the only way to actually pay for the former.
By contrast, we appear to view the fact that it’s harder than ever for young people to afford a home as just one of those things. Blocking housing is seen by many (including many MPs) as a cause for celebration rather than a crime against the future. And there was barely a flicker of outrage as wealthy, elderly buy-to-let landlords exploited a sympathetic tax regime and rock-bottom interest rates to corner the housing market.
Now, this isn’t a new complaint. I’ve got on my hobby horse about this many times before. So why get back in the saddle?
Well, there are two big reasons. The first is that it really, really matters — more, perhaps, than anything else in politics. But the second is that a high-profile group of Tory MPs is attempting to make the imbalance between generations unimaginably worse.
On Wednesday the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill returns to the House of Commons. It contains a set of amendments proposed by Theresa Villiers, a former environment secretary, with the support of Iain Duncan Smith, Chris Grayling, Damian Green, John Redwood, Tracey Crouch, Alicia Kearns and others. The effect will be to eviscerate the planning system as we know it by making all housing targets set by Whitehall purely advisory and removing the existing presumption in favour of development — in other words, scrapping the two core policies that tell councils they have to build, and punish them for not doing so.
Those MPs will talk about how these proposals hand power back to communities, remove “Stalinist top-down targets”, halt the destruction of the countryside and all the rest of it. But that is pure flim-flam. Their actual effect would be to enshrine nimbyism as the governing principle of British society — to snap the levers that force councils to build, and leave every proposed development at the mercy of the propertied and privileged.
Yes, there is a case for greater local control of housebuilding. Michael Gove has made it repeatedly. The bill includes many good ideas to that end, not least “street votes”, which would allow communities to agree rules on extensions and development.
But the Villiers amendments destroy the existing system without erecting anything in its place. The think tank I run, the Centre for Policy Studies, recently suggested that under normal circumstances such proposals could cut the number of homes being built by 20 to 40 per cent. But these are not normal circumstances. The housing industry is already reeling from recession and interest rate rises. Already some are suggesting that the number of houses being built will fall by more than half next year. The Villiers plan would make the fall that much steeper, and any recovery far harder.
This may not matter to those who already own. Indeed, they may welcome the disappearance of the diggers. But it matters a very great deal to their children and grandchildren.These amendments take the biggest divide in our society and prise it wide open. They make the recession — and the accompanying austerity — far worse, given the contribution made by construction to GDP. They cost thousands of people their jobs. They prevent the building of affordable housing, which is funded by levies on private developments. They entrench the dominance of the large housebuilders. They are selfish. They are short-sighted. And they must be stopped.
Villiers has made clear she is not budging. Indeed, she is notorious for her obstinacy. But I implore any MPs tempted to support her to understand the full consequences. If you back these wicked proposals, you are spitting in the face of a generation — not to mention removing any prospect of its members ever becoming homeowners and voting Tory.
If you live in the constituency of one of the signatories, or an MP who is wavering on this, please, write to them. Explain politely how hard it is to rent. How difficult it is to get on the property ladder. How you or your loved ones couldn’t find a good home near where you grew up, or wanted to work. Ask them, beg them, to think again. It’s not too late to restore the balance between generations. But pretty soon it could be.
I suspect it’s also in no small part because it’s another metric they are failing against
> Because pensioners aren’t poor. By any measure, they are the best-off in our society.
I think there are two things at play.
First off, is a historical perception of the well-being of pensioners. I remember in the 90s, pensioners were oftentimes living on a financial knife’s edge. They needed help, and it was begrudgingly given to them. However, this group of pensioners is now dead and gone.
In their place is the boomer generation who, for all intents and purposes, are the wealthiest generation in existence. However, that perception of the long-suffering old granny remains in our popular consciousness.
Secondly, there’s a very-real aspect of no longer working. You can’t deal with anywhere near the same range of prices given that you are retired. Working people can, theoretically at least, change jobs or seek alternative employment to supplement their income.
The elderly can do neither.
> And a recent survey for The Economist found a huge majority of both old and young favoured spending more on health and pensions rather than infrastructure and science, even though the growth generated by the latter is the only way to actually pay for the former.
When you’re in a corner, and the options are:
1. Let some grannies freeze for future growth.
2. Don’t let some grannies freeze, compromising future growth.
The humane decision is pretty obvious. Most people don’t like the idea of some of the elderly who are doing poorly suffering in silence, and are more than happy to help those out. Part of the problem is that these measures are not gated, in any way. Someone needs to tell me why Dave and Jenny, who own 2 million-pound properties, 3 cars and go on golfing holidays, needs even a single fucking penny. It would be far better for the economy to means test some of these programs, despite the issues with means testing.
> And there was barely a flicker of outrage as wealthy, elderly buy-to-let landlords exploited a sympathetic tax regime and rock-bottom interest rates to corner the housing market.
I mean… yeah.
Time and time again, we see that the people most likely to vote are those in the 60+ age range. This means that politicians cater primarily to the 60+ age range. It’s sort of how it’s supposed to work: you cater to the needs and demands of your constituents. If your constituents are primarily elderly, have their own homes, and are relatively well off, then that’s who you’re going to pander to.
Not to mention the shear size of the baby boomer generation, which also gives it pretty unique political power.
This would somewhat be solved if young people actually bothered to go out and vote. Hard for politicians to gain power on the backs of wanting to specifically help younger people if younger people can’t be counted on at the ballot box.
> The effect will be to eviscerate the planning system as we know it by making all housing targets set by Whitehall purely advisory and removing the existing presumption in favour of development — in other words, scrapping the two core policies that tell councils they have to build, and punish them for not doing so.
Nothing here is surprising.
Again, if your voting base are home-owners, that voting base is going to do what it can to get the best deal for itself. If that includes eviserating the housing market to pump up the price of their assets for the remaining 20 years of their lives, then that’s what they’ll do.
> remove “Stalinist top-down targets”
You mean “some degree of planning.
Personally, the biggest fundamental flaw in modern democracy is the total political inability or unwillingness to plan mid-long term. And I understand why: you are rewarded for quick wins. But sometimes, things take more than an election cycle. A lot of good things require multiple election cycles to come to fruition, and everyone’s so very terrified of giving the other side a “win” that we’re calcified into inaction.
> But it matters a very great deal to their children and grandchildren.
They’ll just continue to call us stupid, lazy and entitled, and make mentions about how much a Costa’s coffee costs, or how we’re all so lucky because we have iPhones or something.
In my personal experience, few generations have been as aggressively self-serving, entitled, and completely incapable of introspection as my parent’s generation, at least one of my parents included in that group.
It’s all “oh, why don’t you just walk into that office with your CV and get your job, that’s how I did it!” and “when I was your age, I saved up for 10 months and managed to put aside enough cash to make a 20% downpayment on my first house! Kids these days spend all their money on iPhones and holidays!”
While not realizing that they have systematically taken advantage of public services, only to cut into them as soon as they had lost their usefulness to their generation, and then wonder why others can’t succeed where they had everything handed to them on a silver platter.
> They cost thousands of people their jobs.
Good thing they are already retired then, really, right?
Maybe those people can go and pick fruits! We need those now, right?
/s
> They prevent the building of affordable housing
Good thing they already own their own housing.
Guess the younger generation just really needs to cut out the avocados and Costas coffees!
/s
> not to mention removing any prospect of its members ever becoming homeowners and voting Tory.
A silver lining, I guess?
Hard to have a Tory majority pandering to the wealthiest in society when the wealthiest in society is made up of about 50 people who have consolidated all wealth into their greasy hands.
> Ask them, beg them, to think again. It’s not too late to restore the balance between generations. But pretty soon it could be.
I think the primary effect these things will have is to widen the already pretty large moat in terms of a dysfunctional relationship between boomers and later generations, specifically Millenials and GenZ.
Why pension payments are not means tested is beyond me, it’s a benefit, other benefits are means tested. I am not sure why this isn’t the default for pensions too.
ignore this guy – wrote boris manifesto – everything he says is big “we’re all trying to find the guy who did this” energy
I’ve been saying it for ages and if they don’t want to do it then they can fuck off. But they need to make a Hong Kong style economic zone somewhere in the north, easily fix the housing plughole with that.
> The Conservative Party want to cause as much damage to the country as possible before losing the next election.
7 comments
Tory nimbys want to scrap housing targets. It is selfish and wicked and must be stopped
Robert Colvile
Saturday November 19 2022, 6.00pm GMT,
The Sunday Times
​
When you need to plug a £55 billion hole in the public finances, you don’t tend to make many friends. Despite the negative headlines, Jeremy Hunt did the best job he could last week of sharing and deferring the pain. It was bad. It could have been worse.
But there was one telltale exception. Amid all the freezing and slicing, one group alone got an extra handout, no questions asked: Britain’s pensioners. Whether you were a billionaire or former binman, there was an extra £300 to help with your bills — on top of a 10 per cent increase in the state pension, thanks to the triple lock. And when it came to spending, the focus was again on the elderly: the NHS and social care were the only public services apart from schools to get a significant chunk of cash.
You can understand why the NHS might need a bit more. But when it comes to the handouts, it’s a different story. Because pensioners aren’t poor. By any measure, they are the best-off in our society. That’s not surprising. If you’ve been working and saving for decades, you tend to end up with more assets. Those in their early sixties are on average nine times wealthier than those in their early thirties. Not least because three quarters of pensioners own their homes mortgage-free, and house prices in recent decades have shot up faster than a frisky jackrabbit.
But it’s not just about wealth. With no rent or mortgage to pay, many pensioners have higher disposable incomes than their working-age counterparts. Likewise, they are less likely to be in poverty. Yes, there are many poor OAPs. But, as a group, those over 65 are arguably the least likely to need extra handouts. Yet for some reason they keep getting more of them. And, to pay for that, younger generations are squeezed and squeezed. Just look at the marginal tax rates on graduates paying off their student loans.
It’s tempting to blame this on the Tory party rewarding its core vote. But pandering to pensioners is popular with everyone. Polls show rock-solid support for the triple lock, even though it is economically indefensible. And a recent survey for The Economist found a huge majority of both old and young favoured spending more on health and pensions rather than infrastructure and science, even though the growth generated by the latter is the only way to actually pay for the former.
By contrast, we appear to view the fact that it’s harder than ever for young people to afford a home as just one of those things. Blocking housing is seen by many (including many MPs) as a cause for celebration rather than a crime against the future. And there was barely a flicker of outrage as wealthy, elderly buy-to-let landlords exploited a sympathetic tax regime and rock-bottom interest rates to corner the housing market.
Now, this isn’t a new complaint. I’ve got on my hobby horse about this many times before. So why get back in the saddle?
Well, there are two big reasons. The first is that it really, really matters — more, perhaps, than anything else in politics. But the second is that a high-profile group of Tory MPs is attempting to make the imbalance between generations unimaginably worse.
On Wednesday the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill returns to the House of Commons. It contains a set of amendments proposed by Theresa Villiers, a former environment secretary, with the support of Iain Duncan Smith, Chris Grayling, Damian Green, John Redwood, Tracey Crouch, Alicia Kearns and others. The effect will be to eviscerate the planning system as we know it by making all housing targets set by Whitehall purely advisory and removing the existing presumption in favour of development — in other words, scrapping the two core policies that tell councils they have to build, and punish them for not doing so.
Those MPs will talk about how these proposals hand power back to communities, remove “Stalinist top-down targets”, halt the destruction of the countryside and all the rest of it. But that is pure flim-flam. Their actual effect would be to enshrine nimbyism as the governing principle of British society — to snap the levers that force councils to build, and leave every proposed development at the mercy of the propertied and privileged.
Yes, there is a case for greater local control of housebuilding. Michael Gove has made it repeatedly. The bill includes many good ideas to that end, not least “street votes”, which would allow communities to agree rules on extensions and development.
But the Villiers amendments destroy the existing system without erecting anything in its place. The think tank I run, the Centre for Policy Studies, recently suggested that under normal circumstances such proposals could cut the number of homes being built by 20 to 40 per cent. But these are not normal circumstances. The housing industry is already reeling from recession and interest rate rises. Already some are suggesting that the number of houses being built will fall by more than half next year. The Villiers plan would make the fall that much steeper, and any recovery far harder.
This may not matter to those who already own. Indeed, they may welcome the disappearance of the diggers. But it matters a very great deal to their children and grandchildren.These amendments take the biggest divide in our society and prise it wide open. They make the recession — and the accompanying austerity — far worse, given the contribution made by construction to GDP. They cost thousands of people their jobs. They prevent the building of affordable housing, which is funded by levies on private developments. They entrench the dominance of the large housebuilders. They are selfish. They are short-sighted. And they must be stopped.
Villiers has made clear she is not budging. Indeed, she is notorious for her obstinacy. But I implore any MPs tempted to support her to understand the full consequences. If you back these wicked proposals, you are spitting in the face of a generation — not to mention removing any prospect of its members ever becoming homeowners and voting Tory.
If you live in the constituency of one of the signatories, or an MP who is wavering on this, please, write to them. Explain politely how hard it is to rent. How difficult it is to get on the property ladder. How you or your loved ones couldn’t find a good home near where you grew up, or wanted to work. Ask them, beg them, to think again. It’s not too late to restore the balance between generations. But pretty soon it could be.
I suspect it’s also in no small part because it’s another metric they are failing against
> Because pensioners aren’t poor. By any measure, they are the best-off in our society.
I think there are two things at play.
First off, is a historical perception of the well-being of pensioners. I remember in the 90s, pensioners were oftentimes living on a financial knife’s edge. They needed help, and it was begrudgingly given to them. However, this group of pensioners is now dead and gone.
In their place is the boomer generation who, for all intents and purposes, are the wealthiest generation in existence. However, that perception of the long-suffering old granny remains in our popular consciousness.
Secondly, there’s a very-real aspect of no longer working. You can’t deal with anywhere near the same range of prices given that you are retired. Working people can, theoretically at least, change jobs or seek alternative employment to supplement their income.
The elderly can do neither.
> And a recent survey for The Economist found a huge majority of both old and young favoured spending more on health and pensions rather than infrastructure and science, even though the growth generated by the latter is the only way to actually pay for the former.
When you’re in a corner, and the options are:
1. Let some grannies freeze for future growth.
2. Don’t let some grannies freeze, compromising future growth.
The humane decision is pretty obvious. Most people don’t like the idea of some of the elderly who are doing poorly suffering in silence, and are more than happy to help those out. Part of the problem is that these measures are not gated, in any way. Someone needs to tell me why Dave and Jenny, who own 2 million-pound properties, 3 cars and go on golfing holidays, needs even a single fucking penny. It would be far better for the economy to means test some of these programs, despite the issues with means testing.
> And there was barely a flicker of outrage as wealthy, elderly buy-to-let landlords exploited a sympathetic tax regime and rock-bottom interest rates to corner the housing market.
I mean… yeah.
Time and time again, we see that the people most likely to vote are those in the 60+ age range. This means that politicians cater primarily to the 60+ age range. It’s sort of how it’s supposed to work: you cater to the needs and demands of your constituents. If your constituents are primarily elderly, have their own homes, and are relatively well off, then that’s who you’re going to pander to.
Not to mention the shear size of the baby boomer generation, which also gives it pretty unique political power.
This would somewhat be solved if young people actually bothered to go out and vote. Hard for politicians to gain power on the backs of wanting to specifically help younger people if younger people can’t be counted on at the ballot box.
> The effect will be to eviscerate the planning system as we know it by making all housing targets set by Whitehall purely advisory and removing the existing presumption in favour of development — in other words, scrapping the two core policies that tell councils they have to build, and punish them for not doing so.
Nothing here is surprising.
Again, if your voting base are home-owners, that voting base is going to do what it can to get the best deal for itself. If that includes eviserating the housing market to pump up the price of their assets for the remaining 20 years of their lives, then that’s what they’ll do.
> remove “Stalinist top-down targets”
You mean “some degree of planning.
Personally, the biggest fundamental flaw in modern democracy is the total political inability or unwillingness to plan mid-long term. And I understand why: you are rewarded for quick wins. But sometimes, things take more than an election cycle. A lot of good things require multiple election cycles to come to fruition, and everyone’s so very terrified of giving the other side a “win” that we’re calcified into inaction.
> But it matters a very great deal to their children and grandchildren.
They’ll just continue to call us stupid, lazy and entitled, and make mentions about how much a Costa’s coffee costs, or how we’re all so lucky because we have iPhones or something.
In my personal experience, few generations have been as aggressively self-serving, entitled, and completely incapable of introspection as my parent’s generation, at least one of my parents included in that group.
It’s all “oh, why don’t you just walk into that office with your CV and get your job, that’s how I did it!” and “when I was your age, I saved up for 10 months and managed to put aside enough cash to make a 20% downpayment on my first house! Kids these days spend all their money on iPhones and holidays!”
While not realizing that they have systematically taken advantage of public services, only to cut into them as soon as they had lost their usefulness to their generation, and then wonder why others can’t succeed where they had everything handed to them on a silver platter.
> They cost thousands of people their jobs.
Good thing they are already retired then, really, right?
Maybe those people can go and pick fruits! We need those now, right?
/s
> They prevent the building of affordable housing
Good thing they already own their own housing.
Guess the younger generation just really needs to cut out the avocados and Costas coffees!
/s
> not to mention removing any prospect of its members ever becoming homeowners and voting Tory.
A silver lining, I guess?
Hard to have a Tory majority pandering to the wealthiest in society when the wealthiest in society is made up of about 50 people who have consolidated all wealth into their greasy hands.
> Ask them, beg them, to think again. It’s not too late to restore the balance between generations. But pretty soon it could be.
I think the primary effect these things will have is to widen the already pretty large moat in terms of a dysfunctional relationship between boomers and later generations, specifically Millenials and GenZ.
Why pension payments are not means tested is beyond me, it’s a benefit, other benefits are means tested. I am not sure why this isn’t the default for pensions too.
ignore this guy – wrote boris manifesto – everything he says is big “we’re all trying to find the guy who did this” energy
I’ve been saying it for ages and if they don’t want to do it then they can fuck off. But they need to make a Hong Kong style economic zone somewhere in the north, easily fix the housing plughole with that.
> The Conservative Party want to cause as much damage to the country as possible before losing the next election.