Labour MP BREAKS RANKS and takes aim at Andy Burnham over nonsensical housing targets

The Camilla Tominey Show | GB News

This episode of The Camilla Tominey Show features a series of intense political debates involving key figures from the Labour, Conservative,

Key takeaways

• Former Housing Secretary Steve Reid argues that while the 1.5 million home target is stretching, it is achievable through planning law changes.
• Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp proposes dismantling the UK immigration legal system, including leaving the ECHR, to prevent criminals from gaining asylum.

Main topics

• UK Housing Crisis
• Immigration and Asylum Law

Notable quotes

I'm not Wikipedia.

Conclusion

The episode provides a comprehensive look at the fractured political l

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:09) Joining me now is former Housing Secretary Steve Reid. Steve Reid, this time last year you and I had an incredible ding-dong at this very conference. Shall we just remind the viewers of the fun we had? Speaker 1 (0:24) No, how many new homes have been built since Labour took power? Speaker 5 (0:29) I don't have the exact... I'm not Wikipedia. No, I'm not Wikipedia. I'm here to talk to you about policy. That doesn't mean I know every single statistic going on in the entire housing sector. You Speaker 1 (0:39) don't know how many homes... Speaker 5 (0:39) You only know it because it's written in front of you. But I'm not in charge of housing. Speaker 1 (0:46) And can I congratulate you for agreeing to come back on so we could memorialise that glorious moment? I think it's me covering up the figure, which is the moment. Well, I'm just Speaker 5 (0:54) glad I've got a different tie on. I've done him enough. Speaker 1 (0:57) You're looking fine. And listen, you're no longer housing secretary, but on house building, just because Andy Burnham has made this announcement about right to buy. Kevin Maguire came on earlier, though, and said... The bottom line is Labour will not meet that housing target of 1.5 million. You know that, don't you, deep down? Speaker 5 (1:12) It's Speaker 1 (1:12) a Speaker 5 (1:12) very stretching target, but it's not impossible, although it's very tough. We're up to about 500,000 now homes. We've got to keep speeding it up. We changed the planning laws because they were such a barrier to development, but those changes are now in place. If you speak to developers, and I still do... They will tell you they need, they call it demand stimulus, help for people that need to get a deposit and buy their first home because people just can't afford to put money down for a property and that means the developers aren't going to build them. So the announcement we've just had is fantastic news. It's something I was pushing for with the Treasury when I was in government, but they've come out with it. The developers are delighted and I think it will make a difference. Speaker 1 (1:53) But you do accept that that 1.5 million target probably won't be met? Speaker 5 (1:57) It's a stretch. I think if people went out and said we're not going to meet that target, everyone just gives up and we don't get the development. So it's a stretching target. Angela said that, I think, to the new housing secretary. We have to aim for it to get as many homes built as we possibly can. Because we've got a housing crisis, you know, you'll have young people in your family as I do in mine. They can't afford a place to rent, let alone a place to buy. And when I was in my 30s, I bought my first flat. I think young people today deserve that same opportunity. Yeah, Speaker 1 (2:26) that age for home ownership keeps on going up and up and up. What about empty properties, Steve? Because we know those numbers have gone up. 714,000 in 2024, 754,000 in 2025. Was that something you were concerned about when you were housing secretary? Well, absolutely. Speaker 5 (2:41) I mean, some of the issue is where the homes that are empty are, because we've got some areas of the country where there aren't very many jobs, but there are empty homes. And obviously people want a job, so they're not going there. But where you've got empty homes and they can be brought back into use, then councils have got funding to buy them. RSLs, housing associations can buy them, turn them into social housing areas. are doing that too. You've got some properties that are empty but they're privately owned. I mean, there's no question that the state should come in and sequester private property. No. That would be unacceptable. Speaker 1 (3:14) That would be Speaker 5 (3:14) a Speaker 1 (3:14) bit Corbyn-esque. Speaker 5 (3:15) Well, it would be a bit Soviet. We can't have that kind of thing going on. But I think you can look at other measures through the tax system, the council tax system, to incentivise people to make sure that empty properties, particularly in areas of high housing demand and a lack of supply, are occupied. Speaker 1 (3:33) Are we a bunch of happy campers here at the Labour Party conference? We've got news of a kind of internal war going on. Is there something going on between the Starmorites, of which you were one, and the Burnhamites? We've now got Angela Rayner coming out again against the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, and her proposals on indefinite leave to remain. We've got Peter Carr bringing up the rear, suggesting that economic growth isn't fast enough. He says that the government is like a car driving at 30 miles an hour down a motorway. Speaker 5 (4:01) Well, I mean... I was Labour before there was Burnham or Starmer, even, in fact, before there was Brown and Blair. So we've always been a party, as all big parties should be, that has debates. We have to have these debates. And what you're seeing coming through there is the big challenges the country faces are how do we grow the economy? Because that's how you get people into secure jobs. That's how you put money in people's pockets. How do we build the homes that people need when we've got a housing crisis and young people can't get their foot on a housing ladder? How do we tackle immigration? But Speaker 1 (4:29) Peter Carr is right on Speaker 5 (4:29) growth, Speaker 1 (4:29) isn't he? I mean, it's sclerotic. It's going too slowly. And we've had two Labour budgets that businesses say have absolutely crippled them. Billionaires leaving in their droves, taking their tax pay with them. I think that misses Speaker 5 (4:42) one or two points. So if you remember the spring statement that Rachel Reeves gave when she was still Chancellor, we were looking at a year of further interest rate cuts. Donald Trump invaded Iran, the global situation became very difficult. The price of energy and oil shot up. And that's had a negative impact, not just on our economy, but on other economies as well. That has made the economy sclerotic. The economy was actually growing with Labour policies in the spring before Donald Trump invaded Iran. Speaker 1 (5:12) Isn't the accurate pre-budget analysis that you're spending too much and borrowing too much? You know, we found out last week that borrowing costs are eight billion higher than anyone thought they Speaker 5 (5:21) would be. Well, gilts are very high, so the cost of government borrowing is 5.6%. Well, they're above Liz Speaker 1 (5:28) Truslett at levels, and you said that the previous Prime Minister had crashed the economy on those levels. Speaker 5 (5:32) Correct, but there is this international context which has fed into that, but your point... Camilla, I think is right. The government has to make sure that we have a grip on public spending. Absolutely essential. And we have to make sure we are doing the things that will grow the economy. Now, back to the housing conversation we just had. One of the levers we've got that you can pull that gets growth the quickest is housing and development. Because it's building jobs. It's jobs in every postcode. It's growth in every postcode. So the demand stimulus that's been announced is going to help. On its own, it's not enough. But it's going to help. Speaker 1 (6:04) Isn't one of the problems with Andy Burnham that he isn't very... very decisive. You know, he can't decide on Jack Doran Rosebank. He's worried about the optics. He now can't decide on Chagos. Oh, let's just leave that deal until Trump leaves power. There's indecision over some of these immigration reforms. This is the reason that you wanted Starmer to remain as Prime Minister, isn't it, Steve Reid? Be honest. You're a Starmer loyalist. You didn't champion Burnham to come to Speaker 5 (6:26) Number 10. Speaker 1 (6:26) Well, as I was saying Speaker 5 (6:27) earlier, I'm a Labour loyalist and I've been a Labour Party member long before I'd ever met Keir Starmer or Andy Burnham. I Speaker 1 (6:32) know, but you'd prefer Starmer to Burnham because you think Burnham is indecisive. Speaker 5 (6:35) No. No, that's not mine. What I think the country needed is stability. So we've had ten years where we've had seven prime ministers, six chancellors, I think it is. Now we've got another one. Nobody really knows Speaker 1 (6:46) why. Speaker 5 (6:47) I wanted the stability because I thought the country needed stability. The Labour Party has taken its decision. Keir took his decision to stand down. Now we've got Andy Burnham. I want there to be stability behind Andy Burnham. Now, he's a new prime minister coming into office. He's going to review some of the big decisions and make sure he's comfortable with it. That's what you would expect to happen. But we've got a conference going on this weekend. It's going to make a big speech in a couple of days' time. But is there going to be anything in it? I Speaker 1 (7:13) mean, so far we've heard from the Prime Minister a load of thin air. We've got a diagnosis of the problem. He thinks the problem is the Thatcher era. I mean, that was 40 years ago, Steve. I don't quite understand what he thinks happens between 1997 and 2010 when Labour are in power, whatever. But it's all substanceless, isn't it? You scratch the surface and there's nothing yet there. Apart from the King of the North stuff, which you're in Streatham and Croydon. How does that help a Labour MP like you? Speaker 5 (7:39) Well, I mean, the way that it works with the Prime Minister's speeches, and I know this from previous Prime Ministers, is they save up all the good stuff for their speech and at the Labour Party conference on the Tuesday. So you're not going to get a lot in the run-up to that. They'll save it for that. Andy's been very clear that when he gives that speech, people will know what he intends to do with this job. Well, let's give him... It's only two days. Let's see what he's got to say. As to why the country's in the state that it's in, it's built up over a very, very long time. We haven't done enough to grow the economy, is my view. At the moment, we've got a situation where this really upsets people in my constituency, as it will all over the country. We've got one in six young people. not in employment, education or training. And if a young person isn't in employment by the time they're 25, they're likely never to work for their entire life. Their life is written off. We cannot allow that to continue. So that has to be a focus for this government. But Speaker 1 (8:31) then is it a focus for this government? Because there hasn't been a crackdown on welfare. If you make people living on benefits more beneficial than actually being in work, then of course they're going to be disincentivised from working. We hear that the PIP bill is going to go up. It's going to double by 2030. It's going to go up by 19 billion. So when the Labour government says we're cutting welfare, it's just a lie, isn't it? Speaker 5 (8:52) Well, they are going to have to rein in welfare spending, that's the truth of it. But you've got to do it in a way that doesn't penalise people who are already having very difficult lives. You've got to do it by getting people into work. So with those young people who are not in jobs and not in education, instead of putting them on welfare and letting them rot there for their whole life, let's put the funding in into the local area where the education institutions are, where the local employers are, and link them up and get