As The Guardian has reported:
Providing every new home with at least one “swift brick” to help endangered cavity-nesting birds has been rejected by Labour at the committee stage of its increasingly controversial planning bill.
The amendment to the bill to ask every developer to provide a £35 hollow brick for swifts, house martins, sparrows and starlings, which was tabled by Labour MP Barry Gardiner, has been rejected by the Labour-dominated committee.
This is surprising because Labour supported a similar measure when it was tabled on Conservative government legislation in 2023, but now, apparently, Labour housing minister Matthew Pennycook has said:
“We are not convinced that legislating to mandate the use of specific wildlife features is the right approach, whether that is done through building regulations or a freestanding legal requirement.”
Three thoughts. First, more than a hundred thousands people have supported this move, which means it is likely to have considerable popular support.
Second, this is a small move at low cost, but it keeps a lot of people happy, and Labour needs every happy supporter it can find right now. Instead, they appear intent on alienating them.
Third, the message from Matthew Pennycook is clear. It is that Labour thinks it can do nothing to improve the quality of life in the UK. What else does his statement mean? Apparently he thinks that within the powers available to government there is nothing he can do to help wildlife. And since he must know that market outcomes are making life a lot worse for it, what does he think the message is, as a result? Is it that we all give up now? Should we just despair? Or should we abandon belief in government itself, as Labour is obviously doing?
It's hard to be sure what he meant, but one thing is certain, and that is someone so confused, small-minded and out of touch with what is required by voters has no role in any government, let alone one that calls itself Labour, even if in name only.
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“We are not convinced that legislating to mandate the use of specific wildlife features is the right approach, whether that is done through building regulations or a freestanding legal requirement.”
Then what is the right approach
I think it’s another example of Labour dancing to Farage’s oom-pa-pa marching tune. It’s been deemed that “swift bricks” are woke, so let’s dump the idea and stuff the environment and wildlife. Simple as.
I fear you are right
But then Farage can just implement every measure Labour rejected, or say he will, like winter fuel Allowance.
What is astounding about Nigel Farage and his oom-pa-pa marching tune is that he was the architect of Brexit disaster and reform was the Brexit party – he promised us it would be ‘milk and honey’ on day 1 and the media seem to have forgotten this; and the amount of money he has made personally from Brexit.
He always has control of the sound bite, the snippet of talk that gets distributed. He never debates anyone, and he is easy to discredit by anyone who tries, but most don’t dig deep. He “feels right” to some, and that’s all that matters. To me he feels like the Mouth of Sauron, but there’s no Aragorn ready to cut his head off, just Denethor going mad in his tower. Sorry, got a bit Tolkien there.
“We are not convinced that legislating to mandate………… the minimum age in which a child can be employed in a factory…….. is the right approach, whether that is done through building regulations or a freestanding legal requirement.”………….continuing in the 19th cent “many of my collegues employ children as young a 6 & get very good results”……..hear hear … I agree…. hear hear… what’s the country comin’ to’ etc..
How was/is “Labour housing minister Matthew Pennycook” funded & with whom has he met over the past year? Ditto the LINO MPs on the committee.
I confess this comment is off-thread, but yesterday ‘The Times’ reported the complete U-turn by the Labour Government on WFA, but also the implicit confession that means testing is a terrible, and unaffordably expensive way of delivering benefits (but ‘means testing’ provides a great self-righteous headline for the deeply ignorant, ill-informed or illiterate, that Governments assume are the only people keeping them in office). Where practicable ‘universal benefits’ (and taxing back benefit payments to the wealthy through the income tax system) is the only cost-efficient and fair way to deliver benefits*.
Today, ‘The Times’ reports on another of my ‘bête noire’ issues with both Conservative and Labour: domestic energy pricing. A Government energy price fix based on the wholesale price of gas is effectively the worst, most stupid and incompetent policy you can possess, unless your purpose is to rob consumers blind. And now what do we find? ‘The Times’ again reports this today, under the title ‘Unlinking electricity prices from gas ‘would cut energy bills’’:
“Britain’s energy costs could be cut by at least £2 billion a year through reforms to stop expensive gas-fired power plants setting the wholesale electricity price, according to a former senior government official.
Gas plants should be removed from the wholesale electricity market and instead given regulated returns to fire up when needed to keep the lights on, argued Adam Bell, who was head of energy strategy at the business department in 2020-21.
Britain’s wholesale market operates on a system of “marginal pricing” whereby the most expensive plant needed to keep the lights on determines the price all generators are paid.
Gas plants generate only about 30 per cent of Britain’s electricity, yet set the wholesale price 98 per cent of the time, according to a new report by Stonehaven, the consultancy where Bell is now director of policy.”
* So why does the Treasury like Means Testing and hate the WFA? Because it knows many people do not claim WFA through the Pension Credit application system. It seems around 37% (880,000 households) of those eligible, did not claim the Winter Fuel Allowance (source: ‘The Conversation’). The Treasury likes the idea that the low take-up could save it around £2Bn.
Remember – this low-standards, luminous hypocrisy and rank stupidity always gives someone you can’t see, will never know, and is unaccountable to you, a big advantage.
Thanks John
And the argument is, of course, right
Well, look……………sod PennyPinch, my local authority employer specifies swift bricks in our two story buildings any way in our new build social housing. We just happen to have a good working relationship with the regional Wild Life Trust.
Yay!
No doubt after consultations with the “house building community “.
🙂
This is my personal problem with YIMBYism (as a counterforce to NIMBYism). So many of those arguments are basically “the poor property developers can’t build because of all this red tape :(“, instead of any serious discussion about how to actually increase the amount of affordable homes in desirable areas in this country.
Property developers are not the answer to the Housing Crisis, but Neolabour is betting the house on them anyways, because the government building homes is trotskyism or something.
We could build.
The aimn is to not do so.
There is a Petitions Committee in the House of Commons. It promotes certain permissions with big backing for debate in the main chamber of Parliament. Hopefully this petition on Swift Bricks -which I have signed-will be put forward for debate. The hapless minister “Pennypinch” will have to reply to the debate. It could be interesting!
It should be – the latest version is at 80,000+
Petitions are NEVER debated in the main chamber. They are debated in Westminster Hall. Few attend and no-one pays the slightest ounce of attention.
The Petitions Committee was a brilliant piece of sleight of hand – LOOK we are listening. If anyone can show me one petition that actually resulted in a change, I will give them my state pension.
Cindy
You may be right that debates on Petitions do not gain much, if any, attention from the parliamentary media lobby reporters. But a minister does have to put the Government position in response to the concerns raised, and this response is formally on the public record.
I would also say to dismiss petitions in the way you do diminishes the importance of collective anger channelled via a strong statement that is brought before a minister’s attention. The alternative view is not to bother with petitions of any sort because cynically they have no impact whatsoever!
Pwetitions are soft power – they change little directly, but they can change mood.
They are an administration, they are not a government.
A government has leaders, this one just has administrators who do what they are told, in this case probably by the construction industry, who have also put paid to the idea of solar panels on all new builds.
I’ve read the submissions to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill Committee, and Pennypincher’s responses. All the evidence points to the inclusion of swift bricks, yet the clause was rejected. Likewise, a suggested inclusion of mandating most new car parks to have solar panels was rejected – this time because the Government wants to “gather evidence” of their cost-effectiveness.
Last time I checked, the Administrative Committee in charge of Buggering Up The Country had instigated 74 commissions/enquiries to examine what said Administrative Committee should be doing. Excuse me, but four years of working this out wasn’t enough….??
I come back to all my previous points. Not forgetting that the internal narrative within “Government” is entirely focussed on how to win the next election. That, of course, is the only thing McStupid knows anything about; which is no way to run a country. I also hear that the Labour Party itself has run out of funds. Maybe spending £4 million pursuing the whistleblowers who revealed the toxic campaign to oust Corbyn and lose the 2019 election wasn’t such a good investment; particularly as Labour eventually dropped the case.
Actually governing the country in the here and now might be a good way to win the next election? Far too scary, of course. Much easier to defer everything, or when all else fails, extract money from disabled people.
It’s the unbelievable stupidity and political ineptitude I find intolerable.
Spot on Hannah!
In a time of increasing extinctions, tumbling biodiversity and environmental degradation, I just find it totally incredible that there should be so much political and administrative time taken up around a provision for builders to provide a single £35 brick in a new house that, even in the cheapest instances, will cost somewhere around £140,000 and on which the builder profit, on lowest estimates (via Gemini) will be £16,800, so that the brick will represent at most 0.2083% of profit.
Surely one would expect any vaguely grown-up minister/politician to proceed down a logical assessment something like:
How much does the brick cost? > £35 > What does it do? > It protects the environment, biodiversity and a threatened species > Will it materially impact the price of the house or constructor profits? > No > Are such bricks easily available? > Yes > Does installing it require special, expensive construction techniques? > No > Then, why are you bringing this to my desk? – Mandate it for all new homes and don’t waste my time with this sort of nonsense in future.