My speech on New Towns ( PS I have always opposed high levels of inward migration and explained the costs and impact of high migration on housing. This speech is in the context of current government policy)
My Lords, in 2004 the Labour Government were struggling with a shortage of homes and rising housing costs, so I offered some published advice on how, for example, they could initiate the construction of a new garden city by the Thames. I provisionally called it Thames Reach—it was in the Ebbsfleet area—as an example of how it would be easier to get consent to something bold and visionary which included infrastructure and formed complete communities than to just keep on adding piecemeal to existing communities who often did not like the stresses and strains that could create. It did not appeal to the then Labour Government, but the incoming Conservative Government later took other advice and decided on
Ebbsfleet Garden City, and that is now well under way, with a development corporation to do it. I am very pleased they did it, and I think it is an example of what can be achieved.
Like others in this debate, I would like to see more passion, enthusiasm, urgency, force and development. The Government made a mighty promise to our country of 1.5 million houses in five years. The last Government were achieving around a million; they hit their targets. The Labour Opposition were quite right to say that they were not that stretching, and they came up with this stretching target. But I have got news for Ministers: two years in, they are miles off the pace. They will not even hit the pace of the outgoing Conservative Government. They need to make a big shift in what they are trying to achieve.
I would also like to hear more about how it can be based in some fine traditions of British development, and the formation of British communities. Someone I revere as one of our great entrepreneurial designers, Josiah Wedgwood, in some ways started it with above-average housing for the skilled workers that he recruited, trained, and wished to retain, in a village called Etruria. What a good idea to give them an improvement in living standards as part of the package.
That was carried on by other great entrepreneurs and rich families. Go and visit Bournville and Port Sunlight; are Ministers not proud of these? They were great achievements, with wonderful architecture, countryside in the development, people with gardens, sporting facilities that they could use, communal facilities that they could go and enjoy, a community that was built around a place of work that they were proud of, and that paid them decent wages and looked after them. This spread out more widely, as we have heard from others, in post-war developments, when you had the development of garden cities, with Welwyn and so forth taking off. So there is a tradition that we can build on, and the Government could show more passion, and a bit more continuity in British life, drawing on the things we can be proud of: how normal skilled workers got access to much better housing, started to live in communities and then went on to become owners, which is also extremely important for democratising capital and spreading wealth more widely.
The Government should also look at what works to break down resistance, because we have a paradox in public opinion in this country. The public think that we should build more houses, but most of the public do not think any of the houses should be built anywhere near them. I represented a constituency which always had one of the fastest rates of new house building foisted on it by successive Governments: the constituency of Wokingham. So successful was it that they kept having to break bits off from my constituency to form new ones, as we had so many people coming into the patch. I had to be the chief nimby, but you can see that I am not a nimby. We need to build houses. Construction is a great thing. But I did have to represent the perfectly genuine view that, if you took too many of our green fields and green gaps between settlements, you destroyed the community and changed the nature of the fabric of the local area. We were being asked to take too much, too quickly.
I also shared the view that we were not getting access to the funds and projects for the infrastructure. We were inviting people in when there was not electricity, water, enough pipes to take the dirty water away, or enough drained land, so the new houses flooded almost as soon as people moved into them. It was a disgrace that we did not plan it properly.
So I urge the Government to put more emphasis on new cities and towns, to accept the conclusions of the report that you plan them in advance and, above all, that you put the facilities in first.
June 11, 2026
I agree that if you build houses there has to be an existing infrastructure there to support the development in the form of power, water,drainage,effluent treatment as well as schools, surgeries,shops,and other community facilities.
However I have to question whether we need housing in the volumes that are currently proposed.The issue over housing seems to have become a political ‘point scoring’ exercise in order to satisfy those that are either on a housing waiting list or in the market for a home or in need of ‘affordable’ accommodation whatever that means.However we never see the figures that support the need or demand for millions more houses which are currently ruining the green belt that has been so well protected over the years.
We hear there are massive waiting lists for houses.Is that true?
Where is the demand coming from, who are we building for and is already consented land being developed before new sites come forward into the planning system.
Could the housing demand be met by converting existing retail premises, that are fast becoming redundant, to residential which the Conservatives legislated for and are there brown field sites that could meet a lot of the demand .The easy option is to blitz the countryside with more and more houses putting more pressure on local infrastructure, services and utilities.
The figures need to be reviewed to ensure the numbers and types of property being built meets demand and should take into account the falling birth rate, the increasing age profile of the UK and death rate, currently vacant property which could be bought and refurbished, and those emigrating.
There seems to be a general political statement going on that the UK needs more houses;Where’s the proof.
June 11, 2026
Converting existing properties and brownfield sites still needs infrastructure.
We just need fewer people, stop feeding the GDP monster. We only need growth to fuel spending on our recently arrived guests.
Fewer benefits, less tax required.
June 11, 2026
I think one of the pressures is the cost of housing relative to the income of prospective homeowners. It used to be 3x salary mortgages; it is now 10x salary. The price of homes is influenced mainly by the price of land (supply and demand) but also by regulations on building, which have increased by green requirements, and by tax (the iniquitous stamp duty). An increased supply with removal of tax and some regulations will bring prices down and enable young families to own their own homes.
June 11, 2026
If the size of mortgages were managed doen house prices would follow, since you can’t pay what you can’t finance, and sellers gave to accept that or have no sale. It would need to be done gradually to avoid creating a crash, and best done by keeping nominal prices stable while allowing inflation to etode real value.
June 11, 2026
Now the big pushback has started there will be less need for new houses. Watching Belfast it’s obvious the Genie is out of the bottle and there’s no putting it back. We don’t need more houses, we need less people and that’s the only solution.
Here in the East Midlands it seems every nook and cranny is having shoddy houses built, the majority taken by a certain cohort. This is breeding resentment by locals who’ve been on the housing list for years
It’s not going to end well
June 11, 2026
Grand schemes exercise a malign attraction to socialists, though they are incompetent at seeing them through to conclusion. We already have one bedroom per head in UK. It would cost less to encourage redistribution according to need than to build whole cities more.
June 11, 2026
I live alone in a 4 bedroom detached. If it wasn’t for the penal rated of stamp duty I would downsize but it’s not happening. We should be incentivised to move but Marxists don’t understand this.
June 11, 2026
Labour might suggest that homes with high ceilings could install a couple of aerial bunks in each room to allow everyone to be accommodated.
June 11, 2026
would be better to encourage vast numbers of immigrants to return from where they came, then we wouldn’t need as many houses. remove passports and ILR who have been given them just for working here, or family of someone who was. remove from asylum seekers who came here from safe countries. remove from people who people who came in on a marriage visa to someone with parents who also came in on marriage visas. remove from people who openly hate the UK and its native people.
June 11, 2026
remove passports & ILR from people given them for marrying their cousins…
June 11, 2026
Good morning.
The cost of moving house is too expensive. This discourages people living in homes that are larger than their needs to sell and create more housing stock. We also need to preclude foreign people buying homes that are under £1.5 million. Homes under that amount should be for British people only !
We must also consider building Social Housing in locations like Scotland where there is more space and land is cheaper. We must also stop allowing Council to provide Social Housing for non-British citizens.
Finally STOP ALL IMMIGRATION into the UK.
Do the above and you will soon find out that you do not need to build many houses at all.
June 11, 2026
My thoughts too.
Look at the problem as too much demand rather than too little supply.
Locals in rural areas find themslves priced out of the housing market by wealthy people buying the cottages as second homes or holiday lets. Put a stop to that. I don’t blame the elderly sellers though, they need as much money as possible to afford care home fees.
In a country that already doesn’t grow enough food to feed its population, we don’t need more people.
As we are supposed to be saving the planet, we shouldn’t be clearing woodland for housing.
Can High Street shops be converted to housing, as their original purpose seems to have disappeared?
June 11, 2026
Leave Scotland as it is. We should build more social housing in the Cotswolds, thus rubbing the noses of the left in diversity.
June 11, 2026
the probate office takes way too long to do its job, so houses stand empty because nobody is allowed to sell them when someone dies.
June 11, 2026
For this we also need lower interest rates and some som growth in job so people can pay their rents or mortgages. But will anyone rent to people anymore given the new landlord mugging legal framework,
This governments agenda is borrow as much as we can, increase tax rates, then waste it so ever higher interest rates and a doom loop, negative growth and negative tax take agenda.
June 11, 2026
Lower interest rates just feed higher house prices. We probably need higher rates to stabilise prices
June 11, 2026
We need to ratchet down LTV and earnings multiple limits. People face too much debt – student loans and mortgages crowd out spending on raising families and saving for a pension. Too much borrowing is sourced abroad through the banking system, and then snaffled by government in taxes. They privatise a large chunk of borrowing for government spending via this mechanism.
June 12, 2026
Indeed and, more often than not, student debt for virtually worthless degrees. Even doctor’s often fail to repay you need about £100k of earnings to pay more than just interest on perhaps £100 k of students debt. Qualified NHS doctors start on £39k qualified lawyer can start on £189k after less training and with less student debt. Surely something wrong here!
It is reported the Lady Hallet has “earned” circs £1 m for the evil sick joke that was the Covid inquiry.
Conclusions should have been lockdowns did net harm, vaccines did net harm, test and trace pointless over £600 billion far worse than wasted! Well done Boris, Sunak and their dire “experts” Whittey and the MHRA. They should also have demanded immediate release of the raw statistics broken down by vaccine status! This would have proved the above!
June 11, 2026
Personally I would prefer to see no more housing built in England, particularly on Englands green fields.
So rather than building houses. Stop immigration and remove the supposed need for all these homes.
June 11, 2026
The indigenous population is shrinking – do we really need 1.5 million new houses or is there a better more environmentally friendly solution to the problem?
As ever government solutions come to the problem from the wrong angle.
June 11, 2026
A valid idea
I’ve always said that not enough is made of the vast open spaces that exist in Scotland and Wales, and even some of the Scottish islands – we should make better use of the resources we have, scattered as they might be, but most people feel that England is already full.
New towns are not always perfect and some give the subject a bad name, but they can grow organically, especially if their basic infrastructure and design is sound.
The workers who create the new town should be invited to live there, and while a certain amount of cheap housing is always required, we shouldn’t be building new slums.
June 11, 2026
The regular pattern now:
Atrocity.
Condemn in weakest terms possible.
Calls for calm.
Angry scenes.
Family of victims used by state nudge unit to put out statement that they clearly didn’t write, and would not have agreed to if they were not so emotionally vulnerable.
Excessive use of law on protesters, while rapists and violent thugs causing the atrocities get minimal sentences.
New laws limiting everyone’s freedom and free speech.
Ignore problem that caused atrocity.
Democracy is not working.
Lets have mass deportations, the people never agreed to this nonsense.
While we are at it lets reopen the North Sea for oil and gas, lets restart heavy industry, do the blooming obvious.
June 11, 2026
In Carlisle, the Labour controlled Council, despite making a pigs eat of current house building schemes, jumped at the opportunity to have a “Garden Village”. As a consequence they are now to start Phase 1 a 200 home adjoining the already City Boundry. There have been numerous complaints regarding lack of School places with no plans for building new, road congestion etc etc but like all Labour Politicians, they turn deaf toward views that don’t match their own. What with this and illegal immigrant housing, this once nice City has turned into a nightmare for its local residents. I totally give up with what’s going on in our country all in the name of an ideology that’s proven disastrous.
June 11, 2026
We do not need more houses. The county of Kent is permanently losing countless thousands of acres of productive farmland in the Garden of England to vast new housing estates – which are being fast-tracked by the awful Reform controlled county council, against the wishes of local people
We should just stop the immigration of people from alien cultures and religions who do not wish to become British. Some of them are allowed “up to” four wives. Of course, they cannot work having so many children to look after and so they are on the welfare gravy train, claiming benefits for “anxiety”
We have enough new towns, like Bury and Oldham and Birmingham and Rochdale and Gravesend who are majority populated by second and third generation immigrants from the new commonwealth
June 11, 2026
I think we need to see a better analysis of the demand for housing, before setting targets. The target of 1.5m homes is just political play. What type of homes? What tenure? Where?
My home is on the market but it has not sold. It suggests that providing homes does not necessarily mean they are of any practical benefit to anyone.
I would guess that, as well as new towns, we will need to reinvent the local Council Estate that every small community had back in the 1960s.
We also need to reduce regulation that strangles the housing sector. From planning and building regulations, legislation pushing up the cost of buying, selling and moving, legislation pushing up the cost of letting and renting etc – it’s all got too onerous, too intrusive and too much.
June 11, 2026
In Belfast, one of the houses displaying a sold sign was merely a few doors away from other homes that had been burnt out in the current conflict. Neighbours and neighbourhoods are as important as a comfortable home, and sometimes more so. The conveyancing process is drawn out allowing time to assess, but environments can change unexpectedly and rapidly for the worse.
June 11, 2026
Does the Country need! 1.5 million homes, or is that just the expected amount of criminal entry we anticipate welcoming in?
June 11, 2026
Someone else gets it!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/06/11/britain-needs-wealth-creation-not-tax-war-on-billionaires/
Tax is now just money removed from the economy. As of June 2026 Arm Holdings has a market cap of £244.95 Billion. In 2016 when PM May facilitated kicking out the Country it was just £24 billion. The growth was predictable, it was nothing special for them and those that work their. It has grown 10 times in value, it feeds revenue into another domain, its a loss to the Exchequer.
June 11, 2026
Wow, someone in the UK Parliament appears to understand and actualy ‘get it’.
Suggesting that ARM the firm, at one time considered the crown jewel of UK tech and the AI set up ‘Deep Mind’. Both strategically important to the UK’s security and safety shouldn’t have been allowed to fall into Foreign hands.
Looked at another way the Countries that have gained ownership and their earnings would never ever allow a Foreign Business to gain control. The UK Parliament on the other hand loves kicking our important security and safety assets out of the UK.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd0mg79ggm0o
As often stated here and elsewhere the enemy of the UK and its people are already here.
June 11, 2026
It would not be necessary to build 1.5m new houses if we did not have mass immigration. It is not houses we need to build but prisons.
Reply Of course. I have consistently opposed mass migration and explained the high costs of low and no income migrants . This speech is about how our government needs to work given its views on migration and its housing pledge.
June 11, 2026
How to throw money and security down the drain – a UK Parliament speciality
As of June 2026 Arm Holdings has a market cap of £244.95 Billion. In 2016 when PM May facilitated kicking out the Country it was just £24 billion.
The point, ARM, was a UK strategic security facility, not only for communications but crucial to the defence and safety of the UK . That was the position in 2016, today it is more so the Worlds new Drone Weapons all rely on Arm Cortex-A processes.
The UK Parliament knows how to expel earners, may be the just don’t like success or it an illustration of how much the hate the nation and its people
June 11, 2026
There is a basic flaw in the idea the UK needs ever more housing. The flaw is this.
We only need more housing because the government refuses to limit the population increase caused by immigration.
If the natural population were allowed to reduce as has been happening since the 1970s the population in the UK today would be closer to 50 million than the 70 million plus we actually have.
The benefit of allowing natural population decline is, it is gradual and can be managed.
The need for yet more towns and more urban sprawl would be removed, if the native population had been allowed to decline, Instead we have the exact opposite.
When will state planners get a grip of what is actually causing the unending problems with housing costs, social upheaval and worse in our society? When will the so called authorities stop destroying the green and pleasant native lands of the UK?
We don’t actually need more houses we need better balance in our population planning.
June 11, 2026
Good comments Rod; comments which I fully agree with
June 11, 2026
Your final paragraph stresses the need for a proper plan, and that seems to have been missing from the start; the 1.5 million target was almost certainly chosen just because it was clearly dramatically more that what came before it, without any other serious thought. This would be in line with most other actions from this Government which entered office without, apparently, having given any prior consideration to what it might have to do and how best to achieve it. Most of its fiscal actions look as if they have been designed to hinder rather than incentivise what it says it wants to do. The effects on house building have been catastrophic, particularly within the M25 envelope, where new starts have pretty well ground to a halt.
June 11, 2026
Most of us don’t want 1.5 million more homes. We want the unrelenting increase in our population to stop. Politicians over the last few decades have ruined our country. Immigration continues at an unsustainable level. A government report out last week shows that 38.0% of pupils are now from a minority ethnic background. At this pace, the indigenous population will become a minority in my lifetime. Then the discrimination against white people will really start, and nothing will be able to stop it. I fear for the future of my family.
June 11, 2026
Spot on Christine
June 11, 2026
Our island is densely populated and is already grossly overcrowded. Large nos of people are being added from overseas; many illegally. Labour describes immigration as heavily reducing, but what they refer to is merely the RATE of increase. The numbers are being added to every year, so the total is INCREASING.
It took 300,000 years of history for the world population to reach 1 billion in 1804. By 1999 it increased six fold to 6 billion. Just 23 years later it increased to 8 billion.
The space and resources every new person consumes may soon exceed Earth’s finite resources. Adding 1.5 million homes will add to concreting over the UK. In due course each person may be rationed to a fixed number of blades of grass unless the growth is halted.
June 11, 2026
In the real World, the real World of Business. All the large house Builders have ‘land-banks’ with the majority having planning approval already in place to take care of housing needs for the next 10 years. Or at least the housing needs of the indigenous population.
They only build when they can sell, and sell at the price that allows funding for their ‘land-bank’ to be replenished. It is commercial suicide not to take this position. They love the taxpayer subsidising house purchases, schemes such as taxpayer money being handed to first time buyers. They love low interest rates and so on. Above all they will follow the economy, if there is money in the economy they will build.
The UK Parliament has cancelled the economy, they have removed its ‘seed corn’, the UK Parliament has grabbed what they can in taxes to fund personal egotistical projects that don’t cause’ an economy. Let’s get real this UK Parliament ‘hates’ the UK and its People the more they can damage it the better, the more they can cause division, discrimination and destruction the better. That is Socialism in a ‘nutshell’
June 11, 2026
I see lots of immigrants are quickly moving out of Northern Ireland, many are currently in the North West of England having got ferries out. Wonder where they will end up. Apparently they are too scared to stay in Northern Ireland.
June 11, 2026
We don’t need more houses, we need less immigration
However if Miliband gets his way, they’d all be in working class housing estates in England, made from straw, powered by solar, imported energy (metered) and rain water ….I do wonder if he’s an honorary member of ‘The Club of Rome’
June 11, 2026
Off Topic.
Defence Secretary John Healey has resigned from Keir Starmer’s government.
He tells the prime minister the defence investment plan “falls well short of what is required for defence and the country at this dangerous time”.
The most resounding resignation and the clearest opinion of direction Starmer is headed.
June 11, 2026
@Mickey Taking
There is no solution other than a General Election. Anyone now appointed to Defence, will be consigning themselves to a backwater of a non-existent job – no money no purpose!
Kier Starmer is a limp failure at every level, his prime motivation for staying is to ensure his mates get paid for him pushing the Chagos deal through, all hope of blocking that now lay with those in the HoL. That alone is a £35 billion spend that comes from the defence budget
Ed Miliband gives the impression of being the one in charge. He can squander taxpayers’ money by sending it to China for equipment that can be had in the UK. He then props up Nationalised Industries in Foreign domains by using UK money to pay over the odds for energy – but no one is allowed to question his motives! He has a free reign. As reported in recent days there is a large amount of Civil Servants that WFH, a large chunk on a beach abroad, and of those abroad 40 odd% work in Ed Milibands dept. But Starmer’s crew just keep feeding him.
We need a General Election now. But all the while Kier Starmer tells himself he is doing wonders for the UK and keeping his promises he will stay, he is to chicken even to test his own ego for a fact and let the people confirm they support him
June 11, 2026
In Starmer’s defence ”’He’s getting on with the job”’
June 11, 2026
I was lucky to work in Port Sunlight in the 1970s s can attest to the village like ambience of the blend of well planned “Town and Country” layout and local facilities . It had a Post office, Shop, Rail station within walking distance from the main entrance and it’s own Hotel / Pub (closed Sunday per Quaker founder, Lord Leverhume).
Modern housing lacks this community approach and needs T&C planning desperately for a balanced approach to avoid a barnacle or carbungle as the then Prince Charles described a new building in 1984 which challenged the planning consensus.
Many new developments reflect Design by Computers/ Robots unlike by real world people sadly.
June 11, 2026
Sakara Gold never fails to expose his/her/it’s idiocy.As has been pointed out plans for housing development
are many years in the making and approval.There is no such thing as fast tracking except in the rare event
of an emergency.Kent County Council became Reform Controlled on 1/5/25 ending 30 years of Conservative control.So kindly do us all a favour and if you have to point your bent little accusative digit POINT it in
the right direction.
June 11, 2026
Quite a few demonstrations up and down the country tonight, the usual pro Palestine ones are being policed softly softly despite causing massive disruption to everyone.
The anti violent immigrant ones are being policed like China policed Tiananmen Square.