These simple propositions seem obvious, don’t they?  Indeed, they are.  Yet they drive great divides between the housebuilding industry and professional local authority planners.  The Planners always exaggerate the amount of usable housing land that has been designated in their Plan – the housebuilders contend that the real figure is much lower than the Plan suggests, for all the above reasons.  This problem is particularly acute where the Planners are under pressure from local communities to resist development, rather than welcome it. 

Some of these differences are endemic to the system, and mere politicians will not wish them away.  But they all restrict land supply, both for housing and other uses.   For us politicians, if we want to ensure there is sufficient land for new housing, the only course is to instruct the Planners to over-provide, to ensure that land is plentiful, not a miserably-scarce commodity.  The most drastic measure in this connection was taken by Nicholas Ridley, Thatcher’s Minister in the early 1980s, who declared that in the case of “white land” (i.e. land not already designated for any other specific use) there should be a presumption in favour of release for housing. 

I would now use the Ridley Method.  It is drastic, but so is the requirement for housing.  I would declare that, on appeal to me as Minister (or to the Welsh Assembly, for that matter) I would ask the Planners to demonstrate why a site should not be released for housing, and get them to argue the case against its release. The prospect of losing planning appeals on a major scale would soon change the balance-of-power between the planning authorities and the housebuilding industry which they regulate.  Housebuilding would flourish, and in the lower price-brackets, price rises would be moderated.

• So my advice to the Government is - Do a Ridley!

If we want to see housebuilding rise significantly, we will have to find more public funds for preparing the land for development. True, it would be possible to raise much more money from UK landowners in the longer-term, but there would have to be bi-partisan agreement on any new tax system, and that is simply not a practical political possibility.

I know that to spend scarce public funds on building new roads and drains and schools to service highly-profitable new private housing will seem unjust, and so it is.  But be practical.  There is no short-term solution to the taxation problem.  Labour tried and failed in 1947.  Labour tried and failed in 1966.  And Labour’s best attempt, in 1976, was reversed by the Conservatives in 1981.  If Prescott wants results (say) in the next six years (i.e. before the end of a Labour Third Term, to help fight for a Fourth), we must pay for those services from public funds. There is no other option.  A housing site needs good highway links, access to all services, convenient facilities (shops, primary schools, recreation), and reasonable access-to-work.  That is costly.  John Prescott is already facing big bills for the planned land-releases in London and the South-East – and those bills are bound to rise.

We are, historically, the victims of a system of private landed property has never delivered to the landowner the true “bill” for bringing has land into development.  The landed gentry, from 1840 onwards, busily sold off their land for railways, factories, and later housing and more rapid urban development, without ever having to meet an appropriate tax bill.   There is still no effective means of charging the owners of development land for any of the public services necessitated by its development.  The sheer cumulative power of private property, in the English establishment, has successfully kept the tax-collector away from the safe door, while enormous fortunes (like the Duke of Westminster’s) have been harvested.

That means that the rest of us must pay, if we want higher levels of house-construction.  The tab for increased land-servicing investment must be picked up by the general tax-payer. There is no other way.  And the ownership of development land will remain a licence to print money. 

Labour should grasp this nettle.  De Gaulle managed to do it in 1958, for France, and it is time that we caught up.  It is possible that Gordon Brown will crack it with his Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), copied from the USA – in his Budget speech he promised details of these proposals, but they are not yet to hand. 

First, let me state a home truth.   It is a Liberal Socialist home truth.  It is not possible, in the sort of society we have and we value, to “rig” the owner-occupied market to achieve such results.  That is simply not a management method open to a Liberal Socialist government, or to any other imaginable UK Government.  Liberal principle requires that we should each be entitled to sell our homes to the highest bidder, when we no longer have need of them.  It would not be acceptable to force a home-owner to sell to a specific category of purchaser – nurse, or a fireman, or a Gaelic-speaker, or a Welshman, or a Kentishman, or a Son of Cornwall. 

The wrong must be addressed in other ways.

The only practical solution is the creation of tenant-specific rented housing, where the landlord is carrying the value-risk of the constraints imposed, and the constraints are “designed in” at the very beginning of the venture.  A number of some dedicated housing associations already exist.  They may provide for nurses, firemen or policemen, or other key workers, locally-born Welshmen, Men of Kent or whatever.  Such methods would amount to discrimination, of course – but it would not be unlawful discrimination.