Rishi Sunak says net zero strategy must be ‘proportional and pragmatic’ – as it happened

• Rishi Sunak has signalled the government could delay or even abandon green policies that impose a direct cost on consumers, as he comes under pressure from the Conservative right to create a dividing line with Labour at the next election.

• Labour has said that plans announced by Michael Gove today intended to boost housebuilding don’t “come close to matching the scale of ambition needed to fix the housing crisis”. (See 5.50pm.)

• The BBC has written to Nigel Farage to apologise for its reporting of the closure of the former UKIP leader’s Coutts bank account.

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The Labour criticism of Michael Gove’s housing plans (see 5.50pm) matches what the National Housing Federation said about them earlier (see 9.34am).

Other specialists are similarly underwhelmed. Here are comments from three who have submitted reaction to the media.

From Stuart Baillie, head of planning at Knight Frank, a property consultancy

[The plan to make it easier for shops to be turned into homes] is unlikely to have meaningful impact on housing supply. It’s likely that the output of this policy will only create hundreds of new homes, instead of the many thousands needed to make a real impact on the UK’s significant housing shortage. This policy will only paper over the cracks, instead of getting to the heart of the issue facing the UK’s overburdened and under-resourced planning system. In many instances, residential amenity would be compromised by a town centre location – particularly ground floor retail – meaning conversion or redevelopment would be limited to fringe and out-of-town areas.

Local planning authorities will be very concerned that the proposals could create a loss of retail capacity, impact local retail amenity and reduce the vitality of already struggling town centres that have fallen victim to the rise of online shopping in recent years.

From Victoria Du Croz, head of planning and a partner at Forsters, a law firm specialising in real estate

A focus on inner cities makes sense, given the Conservative’s aversion to delivering development on the green belt, but the reality of bringing more homes to the cities will mean building high in order to reach the necessary density. Neither brownfield sites or conversions of office to residential have delivered the number of new homes that are needed across the country to date.

Re-focusing on these planning mechanisms, by expanding permitted development rights to shop and commercial conversions, is unlikely to boost housing numbers to the levels that are needed.

From Oli Creasey, a property research analyst at Quilter Cheviot, a wealth management firm

The government has today announced further changes to the planning system in an effort to boost house building and conversions, specifically aimed at urban regeneration. Unfortunately, like much of the housing policy that has come before, it is somewhat of a damp squib …

We will await further details on the proposals, but our initial view is that this is unlikely to have a significant impact on the number of planning approvals, or the number of homes built. And while this policy isn’t designed to line the pockets of the housebuilders, they do have an interest in these proposals and as such it is important to watch how their share prices reacted to the news. The fact that these share prices have been largely unchanged this morning tells you all you need to know – nothing will really change and the chronic shortfall of housing in the UK will continue.

Turning back to housing, and Labour says the plans announced by Michael Gove today won’t deliver the housing the country needs. Lisa Nandy, the shadow levelling up secretary, said:

The government has never met its target to build 300,000 homes a year and today’s announcement doesn’t come close to matching the scale of ambition needed to fix the housing crisis.

Families and young people desperate to get on the housing ladder deserve to know what assessment the Government made of Rishi Sunak’s reckless decision to scrap housing targets, which has pushed housebuilding off a cliff.

Penny Mordaunt has said she does not believe the government has been dragging its feet on the issue of paying full compensation to those affected by the NHS infected blood scandal, PA Media reports. PA says:

She was giving evidence to the infected blood inquiry, as bereaved relatives of victims of the scandal called on the government to pay wider compensation.

The current Commons Leader, formerly the minister responsible for the infected blood inquiry as paymaster general between February 2020 and September 2021, insisted there was “no let-up” in her time in the role.

But she also described how she had tried and failed to secure a meeting with then chancellor Rishi Sunak and other Treasury ministers about preparing for the possibility of paying compensation in 2020, with government bandwidth “very stretched” by the pandemic.

Mordaunt said the Covid pandemic had been an “all-consuming” issue, and there was a “pretty chaotic situation” at the Treasury and Department of Health at the time.

Concerns of delays in the government’s approach to compensation were put to Ms Mordaunt, and she was asked if, hypothetically, the government was deliberately dragging its feet, whether that would be morally objectionable.

Mordaunt replied saying “yes”, it would be, but added: “That has not been my experience in my current role.”

Elsewhere in her evidence, she said: “I do not think there is any delay to moving as quickly as we can on these matters, and it would have been pointless to have set up this inquiry and the [compensation framework] study not to then proceed with making redress.”

Suella Braverman, the home secretary, acted unlawfully in failing to provide basic support to asylum seekers, including young children and pregnant women, a judge has ruled. Diane Taylor has the story here.

Simon Jack, the BBC’s respected business editor, has issued an apology to Nigel Farage on Twitter for his report saying that Farage’s account at Coutts was closed because he did not have enough money in it and not, as Farage was claiming at the time, because of his political views.

The information on which we based our reporting on Nigel Farage and his bank accounts came from a trusted and senior source. However the information turned out to be incomplete and inaccurate. Therefore I would like to apologise to Mr Farage.

Jack issued his apology two days after Farage said he would be demanding an apology from the BBC.

A personal apology of this kind from a senior BBC journalist is unusual, particularly when it involves good faith and accurate reporting of something said by a trusted source – which is what Jack says happened in this case.

Deborah Turness, the BBC News CEO, has also written to Farage to say sorry, the BBC reports.

Jack’s original report made headlines because at the time Farage was saying he was having his account closed for political reasons by a bank he would not name, and no one was saying that that was not true. Jack said that the bank was Coutts, and that Farage’s account was in fact being closed because he did not have enough money in it.

Subsequently Farage used a subject access request to obtain information from Coutts showing that the bank did not want him as a customer because of his views and his values. By the time the account was closed it had fallen below the commercial criteria used by Coutts, but the documentation implies this was not the main reason for the account being closed.

Jack’s original report, which he said was based on information from “people familiar with the matter”, said it was purely a commercial decison.

On Friday last week Jack posted a message on Twitter saying the original story had been changed online to make it clear that, when it said Farage’s account had been closed for commercial reasons, the BBC was quoting what had been said be a source.

The headline on the Farage story has been clarified and an update posted. It should have been clearer at the top that the reason for Mr Farage’s account being closed was commercial - was what a source told the BBC. That has been corrected.

But that prompted rightwing papers to run stories about Jack “failing to apologise”.

As is customary for a journalist in receipt of confidential information, Jack has not revealed his source.

But it has been widely reported that, the day before he ran his story, he sat next to Dame Alison Rose, chief executive of NatWest, which owns Coutts, at a charity dinner.

24 Jul 202311.05 EDT

Fiona Harvey

Chris Venables, deputy political director at the Green Alliance thinktank, has criticised government and opposition leaders for suggesting they might scale back some green policies in the light of the Uxbridge byelection result, which has been widely attributed to voter backlash against the extension of the ultra-low emissions zone.

Referring to the language Sunak used this morning (see 11.12am), Venables said:

The only ‘proportional and pragmatic’ response to the climate crisis to pull every lever we can and use every weapon in our arsenal to get to net zero.

It is disappointing to see the government and the opposition hesitate on this over the weekend, especially during a period of extreme weather, and in the face of all the evidence saying that acting now will save lives, rebuild our economy, and protect the future of the planet.

Charlotte Owen, who was the youngest person on record to be nominated for a life peerage when when she was included in Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list at the age of 29, has been introduced in the House of Lords. In accordance with the normal ceremony, a clerk read out a message from the king saying Owen was being elevated to the “state, degree, style, dignity, title and honour of Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge”.

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Owen’s peerage has attracted criticism partly because of her age and partly because of her lack of experience – she just spent a short time as a relatively junior aide in No 10. But Johnson also gave a seat in the Lords to Ross Kempsell, 31, who served as a No 10 aide and political director at CCHQ, and who now works as Johnson’s press officer, and yet the Kempsell peerage has attracted considerably less media comment.

As life peers Owen and Kempsell can claim £342 per day on the days when they attend the House of Lords for parliamentary work and it is sitting, and they will keep their peerages for life. In theory this means they could continue to vote on legislation for the next half century, or longer. But Labour says it wants to abolish the House of Lords, and so they could find their careers as legislators ending much earlier.

Ben Houchen, the Tees Valley mayor, another name on Johnson’s honours list, also took his seat in the Lords this afternoon. At 36, he is not exactly an elder statesman either, but he has held his mayoral post since 2017.

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Rishi Sunak flew to Birmingham by helicopter for his visit to a housing project this morning, Pippa Crerar reports.

Two thinktanks have welcomed Michael Gove’s call for more “densification” (his term) of housing in cities and urban areas.

This is from Ant Breach, an analyst at the Centre for Cities

A key part of the UK’s housing troubles is that its most successful cities are too low-rise and they lack mid-rise apartment buildings, especially compared to their European counterparts. So it’s encouraging to see the government take steps to change this across 20 different cities – both for the economy and for the environment.

But densification won’t solve all their problems. Cities will need to expand outwards too, and this means green belt reform is essential. Only by building both up and out of cities will we start to close the gap on England’s 4.3m missing homes.

And these are from Sebastian Payne, head of the centre-right thinktank Onward

@michaelgove’s speech on pragmatic but ambitious housebuilding this morning is much delayed and much welcomed. Greater urban density is something we’ve long called for at @ukonward and we’re delighted to see it front and centre of the planning agenda.

Gove referenced Margaret Thatcher *and* Michael Heseltine, which speaks to the flexible ideology needed to resolve our housing crisis. The lessons from Docklands and Teesside development corporations is that it is vital to empower local communities to encourage investment.

Some quarters accuse the Conservatives of abandoning the needs and opportunities of cities – Gove made it very clear this morning this is wrongheaded with his focus on boosting housing in London and Leeds, as well as Sheffield, Wolverhampton and Cambridge.

Trade bodies covering housing seem unimpressed by Michael Gove’s speech this morning.

This is from Brian Berry, chief executive of the Federation of Master Builders, which represents SME building companies.

A plan for more housing is very welcome and hopefully it will go some way to get housing numbers back on track. It’s positive to see a focus on brownfield sites which are the mainstay of SME housebuilders, but the planning system also needs to be fixed to ensure that these developments become a reality. Too many SME housebuilders are stuck in planning purgatory which stops the delivery of housing and employment opportunities in their communities.

And this is from Nathan Emerson, CEO of Propertymark, a body representing estate agents.

The UK government’s commitment to building more homes is disappointing. In order to provide the homes the country needs, plans need to be more ambitious and government must go faster and further to achieve this.

Avoiding a fragmented approach is key, as well as having housing targets that are linked to tenure to meet the demand in different areas across the country. Housing reforms must also reflect societal change, help tackle the climate emergency, involve the tax system, meet the needs of older people and ultimately provide more affordable options, whilst protecting the green belt.

Shelter, the homelessness charity, said the government’s plan to make it easier for shops to be turned into flats and houses (see 2.07pm and 2.28pm) won’t provide the genuinely affordable homes the country needs. In a statement Polly Neate, Shelter’s chief executive, said:

Converting takeaways and shops into homes and restricting building to city centres won’t help. It could risk creating poor quality, unsafe homes that cause more harm than good.

When we are losing more social housing than we build, the government must work with councils to deliver the quality homes local communities across the country need.

The housing journalist Vicky Spratt has expressed concern about the government’s plan to expand permitted development rights. (See 2.07pm.) The British Property Federation, which represents companies involved in real estate, has also warned that quality is important. In a statement its chief executive, Melanie Leech, said:

The BPF has supported permitted development rights to accelerate the conversion of redundant retail and commercial space and revitalise high streets, but ‘quality control’ is critical. Not all commercial buildings are suitable for conversion to homes, and the priority must be to ensure that we are creating good quality homes where people want to live. Greater use of PDR must be just one element of an integrated strategy to create thriving town and city centres.

The full text of Michael Gove’s housing speech is now on the Department for Levelling up, Housing and Communities’ website.

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Vicky Spratt, the i’s housing correspondent, says that allowing shops to be converted to homes, as the government is proposing in its plan today (see 9.12am), can result in people living in sub-standard accommodation.

The Cambridge Labour party, which runs the city council, has said it is still unclear after Michael Gove’s speech what the government’s plan for Cambridge is. It is urging him to have a “serious and open conversation” with local leaders about the project.

In a statement it says:

The government must recognise the serious issues which we have consistently raised as we develop our emerging local plan, most notably the water crisis, lack of transport infrastructure, and a continuing housing shortage. We urgently need the government to commit to all necessary measures to resolve this. This includes measures to reduce domestic, industrial and agricultural abstraction of water use and investment to clean our rivers and chalk streams …

Cambridge Labour has a vision for a sustainable and beautiful city, with enhanced green spaces, and good quality housing. While it’s important that we unlock business potential, we need to ensure this benefits all residents in our fantastic city.

Increasingly the Green party has been winning council seats, and votes, in rural areas where residents are concerned about the impact of housing developments. In response to Michael Gove’s speech this morning, the Green co-leader Carla Denyer said she was glad the government recognised the importance of brownfield development. But she also said a “massive increase” in social and council housing was needed.

She said:

Following our excellent showing in some Tory strongholds we are pleased to see that the government plans to prioritise building on brownfield sites. But [Michael Gove] utterly failed to push for the right homes at the right price.

His speech comes on the same day an investigation reveals that there are now more than 1.2 million families on the waiting list for properties and that the majority of local authorities have failed to build a single council home in the past five years.

Too often speculators and developers are building their profits rather than the houses local people actually need. What is required is a massive increase in local affordable social and council housing built to the highest environmental standards so they cut household energy bills and reduce carbon emissions.

The Greens have set out their approach to housing in a right homes, right place, right price charter.

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