TORY plans to incentivise housebuilding by weakening anti-pollution protections for rivers beggar belief.
The housing shortage — and the relentless upward pressure on prices it helps drive — are a national scandal.
But the idea that it is caused by over-regulation of the construction industry is a Tory myth — and opting to deregulate by ditching requirements for new developments to be “nutrient neutral” shows a brazen indifference to public outrage over the reckless pollution of our rivers and seas.
The government itself admits nutrient pollution is an “urgent problem” for freshwater habitats.
The House of Commons found last year that just 14 per cent of rivers in England had “good” ecological status, and not one was free of chemical contamination.
Pollution from agriculture, roads, sewage and single-use plastics amounted to a dangerous “chemical cocktail” coursing through our waterways, the environment audit committee warned.
Since then, we’ve had a summer of headlines over the shocking behaviour of privatised water companies following revelations that they pumped raw sewage into our rivers and seas more than 300,000 times last year alone.
The likes of Thames Water, Southern Water, Severn Trent and others may have paid millions in fines for their ecological vandalism — but since these are immaterial compared to the huge profits derived from their monopoly supply of a universal need, and their CEOs can walk away with fat bonuses regardless, these do not encourage compliance with the law in future.
And with over 70 per cent of England’s water supply owned by foreign companies with no particular interest in the long-term health of Britain’s environment, the pollution will continue, even if water bosses are belatedly promising to invest in their own infrastructure (and raise our bills to pay for that).
The political response to these scandals has been limp. Despite public ownership being the obvious solution — and already pertaining in Wales and Scotland — it has been rejected by the Tories and Labour, no doubt because post-ministerial careers like that of former Labour grandee Ruth Kelly (now chair of Water UK) appeal to grasping politicians of both parties.
Doing nothing about river pollution is bad enough. Deciding to weaken regulation further confirms Tory contempt for the environment and for public health.
Claims it will encourage construction of an extra 100,000 houses are nonsense. Britain’s housebuilding sector is controlled by a handful of companies whose profits depend on restricting supply.
As Morning Star columnist Solomon Hughes has outlined, big players like Taylor Wimpy state openly that they work on guaranteeing shareholder returns by “strong operational cost discipline and focus on price optimisation.”
Translated? Build cheap, sell dear. Cut costs where you can, ensure houses are sold for the highest price possible.
That is easy since it is operating in an “undersupplied market,” which it doesn’t expect to change since the “fundamentals of the market remain strong,” because “there is a recognised housing shortage in the UK with new home completions running at significantly below the government’s desired levels.”
If the biggest building companies in the country describe “a recognised housing shortage” as one of their key business advantages, how keen will they be to address that shortage?
Much better to focus on “cost discipline,” and if friendly ministers are happy to scrap a few environmental obligations no doubt that will edge the profits up a bit.
In sector after sector we see the capture of our politics by corporate players whose interests are diametrically opposed to the public’s.
So averse is British business to investment or innovation that its quest for ever-higher profit relies on lowering standards while charging us more — whether through milking public contracts or monopolistic control of the things we have to buy.
