David Lammy's grand plan to save London

Labour MP and London mayoral candidate David Lammy fears for London’s future, but he has a plan to save it

David Lammy will not be rushed. For someone who was streaks ahead of his peers, becoming an MP at 27 and a parliamentary under-secretary at 29, he likes to take his time. Sitting across a table in his Portcullis House office, the Labour MP for Tottenham has no qualms about taking lengthy pauses before answering each and every question put to him – though he never breaks eye contact. And when he does speak it is with a confidence and authority that lives up to the high expectations that many people have had of him since he became the youngest member of the parliamentary house back in 2000.

Now, 15 years on, the former Baby of the House is gearing up to launch a campaign to replace Boris Johnson as mayor of London. And while Lammy might take plenty of time to think before he speaks, he doesn’t pull any punches when he does: “London needs more than an ambassador with blonde ambition and a degree of wit. It needs an attentive mayor who wants to keep this city together.”

The 42-year-old former barrister was the first black Briton to study law at Harvard University and turned down a position in Ed Miliband’s shadow Cabinet in 2010, but returned to the political fore following his handling of the 2011 Tottenham riots. Here, he sets out what he would do to improve the UK capital and reveals that his policies would not be as much at odds with the property industry as many might expect.

City of opportunity

One of Lammy’s greatest fears is that we will see London fracturing as population growth edges it towards mega-city status and house prices force people out and away from opportunity – opportunity that he has experienced first-hand and that he says he owes to having grown up in the UK capital, starting off life on what was one of Tottenham’s most notoriously violent estates.

“I have travelled a long way from the Broadwater Farm Estate to the boardroom,” he says. “And the city has given me all that opportunity. But I feel some of that opportunity is disappearing.”

Lammy points to the worsening conditions for young people in London as evidence of this diminishing opportunity. “We have a situation where young people are driving 50 miles to work in the city,” he says. “This level of inequality will take us back to the 1980s when people were leaving London in droves.”

Like most politicians, Lammy pins many of London’s problems on the housing crisis. And tackling rising inequality, ghettoisation and gentrification will be priorities for him, should he become mayor. “We can’t become like Paris with an inner core of wealth and a poor outer core,” he says. “We don’t want the sorts of scenes we have seen in American cities, with substantial no-go areas. The strength of London is that it is a mixed city,” he says.

He believes the UK capital should bear the brunt of fixing the country’s housing shortage, and that the mayor should take on responsibility for ensuring this happens.

“This crisis will not be solved in the North or the Midlands. It will be solved when we start delivering homes in London,” he says. “And the mayor will be central to that.”

London: a special beast

The key, of course, is to build more homes and Lammy has a concrete, business-based plan for how to get this done. “London is a special beast, it’s attractive to the markets,” he says. “So I propose we build a new agency called Homes for London and go to the bond market to raise money.”

The agency would work in much the same way as Transport for London, which aims to raise around £7bn from the bond market by 2021. Lammy believes Homes for London could raise £10bn with the same strategy.

Not only does he hope to build more homes with this cash, he wants a chunk of them to be affordable. “Clearly 80% market value is not affordable,” he says. “Housing associations just went to the market to raise £650m, and that is my proposition to get serious about building homes in the city.”

As one would expect from this emphasis on affordability, Lammy has issues with viability assessments. He wants to make them “accessible and transparent”, particularly when it comes to the sale of public land. “It is important that ordinary people can see viability reports that developers often rely on to minimise affordable homes on that site,” he says.

He also takes a strong stance on rent caps. He points to areas such as Haringey, N22, and Richmond in south-west London, where rents are rising by as much as 40%, as evidence of their necessity and makes a convincing point in their defence: “If Merkel and Bloomberg can run on that policy, it’s not some sort of socialist plot. It’s sensible politics.” But he is quick to point out that this would not be within his remit as mayor and he laments the Conservatives’ lack of willingness to protect people struggling with rip-off landlords. He says: “Only the government can deliver rent caps and they are clearly turning away from that.”

Community principles

Championing the rights of ordinary people is expected from a Labour politician, but few have demonstrated their commitment to these principles as clearly as Lammy. He made a name for himself working with people in Tottenham after the riots and he says he feels “close to small businesses” as a result.

Another lesson learned during his time rebuilding the community after the riots was the importance of regeneration working for the benefit of everyone rather than the few. “London is always changing,” he says, “but it is important that regeneration comes from the bottom up rather than gentrifying and exporting people out of the city.

“From one street to the other, from one property profile to another, whether owner-occupier, council-owned or privately rented, it’s a mixed city. That is the idea that I think it is important for a mayor to keep hold of over this next decade, because we are in danger of losing that. If we lose that, we lose something very precious, something that we all take for granted, something that is quintessentially what London is about.”

The state must be an actor

The portrait painted of Lammy so far may give the impression of a man who stands at odds with the property industry. It’s true he feels the sector cannot provide all the solutions. “An expanding London cannot be just left in a laissez faire sense to the private sector,” he says. “The state has to be an actor alongside private developers.”

He recognises the city’s global importance and the responsibility it has for driving the whole country. He also understands the property industry’s crucial role in this. “The sector has continued to do what it does best, which is to build homes at a profit,” he says, “and it has received an unfair amount of criticism.”

He also emphasises the importance of inward investment in London and, despite his previous criticism of Johnson, sees the importance of attracting overseas money. “Boris cut the overseas offices but he was a good ambassador and his work must continue,” he says.

Lammy’s pro-business approach is refreshing following Miliband’s tenure – a period in which he believes Labour “lacked ambition and lacked appeal”. When he talks about London, he uses rhetoric unimaginable coming from Miliband, and it is clear he views business and property as integral to the city’s success.

“I will seek to ensure London continues to be a city of wealth creation. This is a place that must be open to the world if you want to invest, if you want to start a business and if you want to set up headquarters,” he says.

Pride and knowledge

Whenever Lammy speaks about the capital it is with pride, deep knowledge and a recognition of its importance. When asked about more mayoral spending powers, he explains how London is making the biggest contribution to the UK’s GDP than at any time since 1911. Consequently, it is in the opposition party’s interest to allocate more power over funding to the mayor.

While Lammy is far from the favourite to become Labour’s mayoral candidate for London, the clarity of his vision and the scale of his hopes for the city are ambitious. He describes himself as a “big-tent politician” and says: “It’s not about starting small with your tribe. It’s being as big as you can be.”

There can be no denying that the current mayor of London
is a big personality with boundless blonde ambition and arguably more than just a degree of wit. But the city needs a politician with big ideas and the conviction to deliver them. Something Lammy might just be able to do.