Steve Reed, the new housing secretary, has said he is “appalled” at the slow pace of housebuilding as he used his conference speech to pledge that work would start on three new towns before the next election.
The government wants to build at least 12 new towns and has identified three of the most promising locations at Tempsford, a village in Bedfordshire, Crews Hill on the outskirts of north London, and South Bank in a suburb of Leeds.
Reed told the Labour conference that the Conservatives had “crushed the dreams of families” who struggled to access housing.
“The Tories spent 14 years blocking the homes that people need. They didn’t just hold back the economy, they crushed the dreams of families who couldn’t afford a decent home,” he said. “Well, conference, no more. We will fight the Tory blockers and give working people the key to a decent home they can afford to live in.”
Reed, who came on stage wearing a red “Build, baby, build” hat, added: “I will do whatever it takes to get Britain building again, and we won’t just build homes, we’ll build communities. And not just communities but entire towns.”
The housing secretary paid tribute to his predecessor, Angela Rayner, who resigned after a scandal over underpaid stamp duty tax. He said she was a “true working-class hero” for her work on workers’ rights, council funding and housebuilding. Reed received a standing ovation for his tribute to the former deputy leader.
In a separate interview with GB News, Reed acknowledged that the pace of housebuilding had not been fast enough over the last year, blaming that on a lack of permissions given under the Conservatives.
He could not give a figure for how many new homes had been completed out of the 1.5m the party has promised to build this parliament. Given the total of 120,000, he said the government was “currently dealing with the tail end of what the Conservatives are doing, because it takes more than 18 months from application to the home being built”.
He said the government was changing the rules to “speed up planning so that the problem we’re seeing now won’t happen again in future”.
James Cleverly, the shadow housing secretary, dismissed the plans for new towns. “They could promise a free unicorn for every child and it would have more credibility than these new towns that they’re promising,” he said.
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Earlier, Reed spoke to Sky News’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips programme and stood up for Keir Starmer’s leadership over the last year. He said Starmer would be in place to fight the next election.
Sharon Graham, the general secretary of Unite, had said it was increasingly difficult to justify large donations to Labour and urged the party to “wake up, smell the coffee and be Labour”.
“Don’t be embarrassed to be Labour. They are a Labour government – do Labour things,” she urged.
However, Reed said he did not think Unite would walk away from the Labour party.
