BPF RESI 2019: Shadow housing minister John Healey has pointed to Brexit as a “convenient cover” for the government’s failure to deal with housing market changes.
Healey said Brexit had acted as a “distraction for public policy and for government”.
He said: “In the last two-and-a-half years this has caused an almost unprecedented breakdown in the work of government.
“What this has meant for housing is the government has been stuck on hold on a number of really important programmes.”
See also: BPF Resi 2019: Five key takeaways
Healey said there had been some 3,000 government announcements and 700 speeches from ministers on Brexit since the June 2016 referendum. He said the flagship European Union (Withdrawal) Act had taken 270 hours of parliamentary time and, regardless of the outcome, there would be more.
“People say the government is doing the best it can with Brexit. I have to say, this has got to be a convenient cover for a non-Brexit department, especially as the department has just as many staff as it did in 2010, before the start of the civil service cuts.”
Healey said leasehold reform, cladding removal, starter homes, among other initiatives had all fallen by the wayside. “We’ve had vague promises… but little hard policy, no action, certainly no legislation.”
The shadow minister pointed to rising homelessness and said housing delivery rates were still below pre-financial crisis levels.
He noted a “lukewarm” reaction to Oliver Letwin’s review of build-out rates: “The government has shown no willingness to act on the back of some striking findings.”
Healey said: “The government is a prisoner of conviction, rather than circumstances. It has certainly got distracted by Brexit, but I would argue it is also divided and dysfunctional.
“It’s these divisions that also disable government on the other big challenges that face us all.”
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