If Philip Hammond can’t fix the housing crisis, who can? He is a property developer, after all…
Chancellor could unveil measures to build new homes and start to fix Britain's housing crisis in upcoming Autumn statement
PHILIP HAMMOND is not what you would call a natural showman.
The Chancellor has the look and manner of a man who spends his time poring over numbers.
But Westminster and the City are waiting with bated breath for his Autumn Statement next month.
Why? Because it will set out how the Government intends to steer the economy through the uncertainties of Brexit. In a private meeting with Tory MPs this week, Hammond gave an indication of what he plans to do on November 23.
First, he made clear that it isn’t going to be a giveaway statement.
He warned that the UK still has an “eye-wateringly large deficit”, that the debt-to-GDP ratio is getting near the point at which markets starts to get worried and that it was important discipline was maintained on departmental spending.
He said this restraint was important to reassure the markets that Britain was still serious about getting its books in order.
But Hammond also said he wanted enough flexibility to allow him to deal with the uncertainty that will exist until we know what the Brexit deal is.
So if the economy started to splutter, he could intervene to get things moving again.
However, hard-pressed households aren’t going to see a VAT cut any time soon. The Chancellor argued that spending on infrastructure gave you a better bang for your buck and that the country had something to show for it afterwards.
Theresa May has repeatedly said she wants an economy that works for everyone — and there is nowhere where the economy more obviously works for just a privileged few than housing. Hammond, though, is clearly determined to try to sort out our dysfunctional planning system.
He lamented that the bottleneck of planning “has never yet been effectively addressed”. It is certainly one of the main reasons why Britain doesn’t build anywhere near enough houses and why home ownership is out of the reach of more and more people.
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I understand that the Government will issue a housing White Paper at around the same time as the Autumn Statement. This will set out a series of reforms to the planning system designed to get more homes built.
Senior Tories tell me they are now prepared to take a political hit from some of their own “Nimby” supporters to get this done.
Much of Hammond’s own multimillion-pound fortune came from property development and one former colleague tells me “he’s still a property developer at heart”. If he can’t sort the planning system, then it is beyond fixing.
Hammond will be a very different kind of Chancellor from George Osborne.
He is more practical than political. In more than an hour of conversation with Tory MPs, he mentioned Labour just once.
But with Labour flat on its back, the Tories don’t need a political Chancellor right now.
Instead, they need someone who can offer reassurance and optimism. Next month, Hammond has to show he can do that.
Time for another Go-ve?
MICHAEL GOVE is preparing a Brexit manifesto.
Titled Declaration Of Independence, the book will be published next year. It sets out what Britain can learn from the success of the US.
Combined with Gove’s election to the Brexit Select Committee this week and his work with the Labour peer Lord Glasman on devising a new, post-European Union immigration system, it is clear that Gove is determined to make a political comeback.
Whatever mistakes he made in the leadership contest, if Theresa May wants to have a government of all the Tory talents, she should find a place for him in it.
New Nissan deal should make us some Qash
NISSAN’S decision to build the new Qashqai in Sunderland, revealed in this column last week, is a major boost to Brexit Britain.
The car maker’s decision to stay here is partly down to the “robust assurances” from the Government and the excellent relationship Business Secretary Greg Clark has worked to develop.
It is also thanks to the workers – the plant, right, has gone 30 years without losing a single day to strike action.
For its part, the Government remains very confident a deal can be done with the EU to ensure that tariff-free, barrier-free trade in cars continues.
Certainly, both sides would lose out if obstacles were put up. German car exports to the UK are worth around £15billion.
I understand one option being looked at by the Government is the UK leaving the EU Customs Union but opting back in to certain sectors, such as automotives.
As part of this deal, the UK would accept that we could not include cutting tariffs on cars in any global trade deals we went on to sign.
What’s in such an arrangement for the EU? Well, EU countries sell more cars to Britain than we do to them.
Off yer bike, Boris!
BORIS JOHNSON is the last politician who would want to be caged in. But he is now moving into the Foreign Secretary’s official residence, 1 Carlton Gardens.
It is hardly a hardship. There are official state rooms downstairs and, upstairs, a private apartment. The Foreign Office pays an annual rent of more than £480,000 for the property.
But for Boris, inset, who revelled in his banter with voters as he cycled to work from his home in Islington, North London, this means giving up one of the things that made him different from the average politician.
The journey in, though, now takes an hour in his official car – which is simply too long.
There’s also, more importantly, the issue of Russian hackers.
When they have attempted to hit Hillary Clinton’s private email and successfully hacked both the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s campaign chairman, it isn’t sensible for the Foreign Secretary to work on his home internet.
This is especially true as Johnson is one of the leading figures pushing for a tougher Western line on Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
So it’s off yer bike Boris and into your grace-and-favour residence.
Cam avoiding cash-grab accusations
ONE of the tricky questions for those working on David Cameron’s post-Downing Street career is how many big-money speeches he should make.
Do too many and you look like you are cashing in. But he will never be in more demand than he is now.
As one figure from the speaking circuit told his team recently, the former PM is the most marketable person in the world... until Barack Obama leaves office – which is less than three months away.
James Forsyth is political editor of The Spectator.