Michael Gove is right about one thing: building more homes won’t solve anything
Boris Johnson’s Queen’s speech was largely empty of substance. So thank goodness for the housing and planning secretary, Michael Gove. In his contribution he never spoke truer words, at least if anyone understood them. He has dismissed housing targets as “Procrustean … arbitrary … perfect arithmetic”.
In plain terms, what Gove meant was that Johnson’s mantra of “build, build, build” (a parroting of his chief party donors, the construction lobby) was senseless. The build-or-be-damned policies of David Cameron and George Osborne had funnelled jobs, people and money into the south-east of England, spawning characterless housing estates from Hampshire to East Anglia. This had enraged Tory voters in villages and small towns, because it sucked the life out of existing communities, crushing high streets and closing local pubs. The response at last week’s local elections was clear: stop the policy.
The British housing sector is not “in crisis”. Sectors such as social housing are in trouble and need far more help. But property prices have been rising fast, up 11% from last year. They have risen in all rich countries, driven largely by decades of low interest rates.
Gove is right to protest at the fatuous government statistic that Britain “needs” 300,000 houses a year, broken down to individual counties and cities. There is no Leninist requirement of a roof, bedroom and sitting room for each Briton, allocated by the state from birth to death. Whitehall’s centralism can be plain barmy. A housing market responds to changing patterns of migration and demand. Most people would like a different, preferably a better, house. Whether they can realise that preference depends on myriad factors, chiefly price.
British housing – overwhelmingly
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