Angela Rayner has slapped down the suggestion Labour could “flatten the whole green belt” to build homes.
Politico’s London Playbook newsletter quoted an unnamed party official on Thursday, as saying: “I don’t care if we flatten the whole green belt, we just need more houses in this country.”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak posted the quote to his feed on X, formerly Twitter, with the caption: “Good to finally get Labour’s real views on Britain’s green belt.”
But speaking to City A.M. Labour’s shadow housing secretary denied that the comment represented Labour’s plans – after the party had previously pledged to expand building on so-called ‘greybelt’ or low quality green belt land.
She said: “That’s not our policy and we want brownfield first. And we’ve talked about creating new towns, making sure that we have the homes that people want to live in.
“We’ve talked about [building on] areas of ‘greybelt’ which could be a car park, for example.
“We’re not talking about going over the green fields around Sussex or around the Lake District or the Peak District. This is about specific projects with local consultation with local authorities and mayors involved in, about creating the homes we desperately need.”
Rayner added: “Whoever that person is, they’re not working in our team because it’s certainly not my proposal.”
Shadow housing and planning minister Matthew Pennycook, who is standing in Greenwich and Woolwich, also said the remark “doesn’t reflect any of the internal conversations”.
He added: “We’re not doing anything new. It’s not a situation where [the government] don’t release any of it.
“We’re just saying there’s a smarter way to release more of the right bits of the ‘greybelt’ and low quality stuff.”
It comes after party leader Sir Keir Starmer denied a Labour Party official even made the comment, telling journalists at a visit to a housing development in York: “No, that wasn’t Labour Party officials. That wasn’t Labour Party policy.”
Rayner and Pennycook spoke on a visit to the Westway Trust in Kensington, where they spoke to private renters about Labour’s pledge they would be “better off” with Labour.
The party says it would crackdown on unscrupulous landlords ripping off tenants with high rents and poor conditions; boost housing supply; and build 1.5m new homes in five years.
But Pennycook insisted there was “no evidence of some mass exodus of landlords” from the sector, despite warnings it could happen amid proposals to ban Section 21 no-fault evictions.
“Most landlords should welcome this new system,” he said. “It’s not a system that they should find threatening.
“They still have grounds for possession when they need to take their properties back in instances where that is justified – really serious antisocial behaviour, for example.
“There’s nothing to worry about, unless you’re an unscrupulous landlord that wants to keep tenants in poor conditions, damp and mould, to hike rents to hugely unreasonable rates.”