Latest news with #PlanningandInfrastructureBill
Bangkok Post
4 hours ago
- Business
- Bangkok Post
UK wants Thai investors for modern industry plans
The United Kingdom is inviting Thai investors to participate in "Modern Industrial Strategy 2025", a 10-year plan it recently launched to bolster future industries and strengthen UK-Thailand relations. During an exclusive interview with the Bangkok Post early this month, Rhiannon Harries, the UK's Deputy Trade Commissioner for the Asia Pacific (Southeast Asia), said the strategy is intended to ease business entry and offer long-term investment certainty -- particularly for Thai firms looking to establish or expand their presence in the UK. Launched on June 23, the strategy outlines the UK's ambitions to become a global leader in eight industries of the future: advanced manufacturing; clean energy; creative industries; defence; digital and technologies; financial services; life sciences; and professional and business services. Ms Harries emphasised that the initiative is designed to reduce investment barriers and streamline regulatory processes. "The UK is open for business with Thailand," she said. "We want to work with Thai investors to deliver long-term growth across strategic sectors." The strategy includes concrete measures to address longstanding bottlenecks. For instance, to support Thai investment in grid infrastructure, the UK government will introduce a new connection accelerator service by the end of the year to speed up access to the national grid. Simultaneously, the energy regulator Ofgem is reviewing the entire grid connection process to enhance efficiency. The UK's Planning and Infrastructure Bill will further support these efforts by allowing the government to designate key strategic documents, such as the Industrial Strategy, to guide infrastructure approvals. This includes reserving grid capacity for priority projects and cutting wait times for major investments. Ms Harries noted that planning delays and regulatory burdens have often discouraged investment. To mitigate this, the UK will hire more planning inspectors and simplify planning permission processes -- while ensuring environmental obligations are met. The UK government also plans to spend £1.2 billion (52.1 billion baht) annually by 2028–2029 on skills development, including training 6,000 new construction workers. Other supportive policies include reducing electricity costs by up to 25% for energy-intensive industries by 2027 and improving access to skilled talent through global talent schemes and visa reforms. Thai investors have already made significant inroads in the UK's clean energy sector. With the UK holding the largest offshore wind market in Europe, the strategy aims to double investments in clean energy, expanding into hydrogen, carbon capture, and civil nuclear power. A £1 billion clean energy supply chain fund and a £2.5 billion investment in small modular reactors (SMRs) have been pledged, she said. In the digital sector, another area of Thai interest, the UK will invest £2 billion in artificial intelligence. A new AI Growth Zone will be established to accelerate investment in digital technologies nationwide.
New Statesman
7 days ago
- Business
- New Statesman
This government will live or die by housing
Photo byAfter a summer break, Labour want to take on Britain's 'dysfunctional' housing and land markets. They want to make them fairer for those who want to buy homes to live in and less of a boon for 'speculative' investors. And although Labour's much-awaited long-term housing strategy will not be published before recess, Housing and Planning Minister Matthew Pennycook has hinted that if year one was about laying the groundwork for Labour's housing plan, year two will be significantly more radical. It is a testament to the functionality of Pennycook's department – the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) – that it rarely makes headlines in the way that, say, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) or Treasury do. Between them, Rayner and Pennycook have delivered on manifesto commitments by tweaking legislation in a quietly radical and efficient way. The Renters' Rights Bill will soon become law. Similarly, the Planning and Infrastructure Bill is paving the way for urgent planning reform, which, though not radical for some because environmental considerations must still be factored into planning approval, will make clever tweaks to existing frameworks for delivering development, such as beefing up the compulsory purchase powers of public bodies to stop the sale of land for development at inflated prices. Leasehold reforms, similarly, have been amped up, and there is reportedly more to come. With legislative changes that former Tory Housing Secretary Michael Gove wanted but could never get through his own party, Pennycook wants to step things up and reform the housing market once and for all by 'addressing the financialisation of housing', and 'ending our overreliance on a speculative model of development that… constrains housing supply.' Punchy in theory, so how will it work in reality? Ministers are exploring ways to give people who want to buy homes to live in them, as opposed to as an investment, an advantage. This could include implementing rules that stipulate new homes can only be sold to local people who will live in them, as Cornwall Council have done to protect hard-won new housing developments and prevent new housing being sold to investors. Labour have suggested that they will similarly protect homes in their new towns. Developers who buy up land, obtain planning permission to build, but then, instead of actually building anything, sit on the land and wait for it to rise in value, will be penalised and blocked from planning permission in the future. The sites for a 'new generation' of around a dozen new towns, like those built post-war, have also been plotted on a map to be announced imminently. Pennycook is determined that these will be built out quickly and purposefully. Ministers are thought to be considering giving Homes England more regional power so that it can be involved in planning at a local level, ensuring that the right homes are built in the right places. New towns will also be overseen by development corporations with their own governance structure, taking some decisions away from local councils and putting them in the hands of bodies specifically tasked with getting things built. These public bodies will be able to invoke the new rules on compulsory purchase to get hold of land cheaply and build homes and infrastructure on it. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Rayner and Pennycook need to get this all over the line, and fast. The stakes couldn't be higher. Labour will be judged harshly on whether they can be bolder and go further than the governments of recent decades, who presided over an increasingly dysfunctional housing market and did little to nothing. But, more importantly, there is now not a single part of Britain which is not impacted by this country's sclerotic housing market. Since the 1970s, house price-to-income ratios have more than doubled nationwide, pricing younger generations out of homeownership, ushering in 35- and even 40-year mortgages, and trapping nearly 5 million households in an expensive and unstable private rental sector. That's more than the number living in social and council housing, which not only provides secure and affordable homes but also provides a return for the state through rent. None of this is new. The housing crisis was fast becoming one of the defining issues of modern life when Labour lost to David Cameron in 2010. But the situation is worse than it ever was. Week after week, new lows are reached. Housing makes headlines for all the wrong reasons. Rising homelessness is now such a grotesque new normal that it rarely makes a front page. So is the increasing number of homeless families, and, at last count, 164,000 children who are forced to live in temporary accommodation. That's anywhere from a hotel to a converted office block and, even, a converted shipping container. And, of course, these bleak statistics don't capture the misery of the people who can afford their rent, just as long as they don't put the heating on, let alone contemplate a holiday. They also don't tell the story of the anguish of young adults who can't afford family-sized homes, or who still live at home in their twenties and thirties, and those whose mortgages have recently jumped up due to higher rates, swallowing chunks of their disposable income in the process. The human suffering caused by expensive housing and homelessness also has an economic impact. Housing costs consume ever-larger amounts of public money. A rise in the number of lower-income households relying on private renting has meant that the Housing Benefit Bill is predicted to rise to £35bn by 2028. That's more than the total spend of many government departments. Temporary accommodation now costs councils £2.3bn a year. As the Chartered Institute for Housing has pointed out, these expanding bills mean only 12 per cent of government spending on housing in 2022 went towards new buildings, compared to 95 per cent in 1976. High rents and mortgage costs, relative to income, also mean that young people today, who are less likely to be homeowners than their elders, are spending disposable income that could be contributing to growth through either the consumption of goods and services or investment on their homes. In the end, those who do the reading draw the same conclusions about what William Beveridge described as 'the problem of housing' in this country back in 1942 – affordable housing is the only way to prevent people becoming homeless and unwell and, in doing so, reduce the pressure on the state to support them. Before he backed down on housing reform and bowed out, Gove had realised this. He started to talk about the problem that the impact of extractive 'rentier economics' was having in Britain. The phrase was not a borrowing from Gary Stevenson, let alone Friedrich Engels. Downstream from Adam Smith via Thomas Piketty, Gove said it during a 2024 interview with that leftie rag the Financial Times. The Tory grandee correctly identified that Britain's housing crisis would be the death knell for his party because younger generations were at the sharp end of it. After all, why would any young person vote Conservative if they have no assets to conserve? However you slice it, the housing crisis is emotionally and financially draining us all. Economists (like Smith and latterly Piketty) have pointed this out for centuries. Labour knows that fixing housing will be key to their electoral survival. But, more than that, they know that it is the right thing to do. With one year down and four left of Labour's first term, the clock is well and truly ticking. After all, imagine a baby born into homelessness, to a family with one bedroom emergency temporary accommodation when Labour entered Downing Street last year will be five and in need of space to grow and do homework and play in no time at all. [Further reading: Immigrants did not cause Britain's social housing shortage] Related
Powys County Times
18-07-2025
- Politics
- Powys County Times
Powys MP 'incredibly concerned' by Labour MPs suspension
Montgomeryshire MP Steve Witherden has said he is 'incredibly concerned' after several Labour MPs were suspended from the party. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer removed the whip from four MPs, and Montgomeryshire and Glyndwr MP Steve Witherden has now said he is 'incredibly concerned' over the issue. On July 16 it was revealed that Neil Duncan-Jordan, Brian Leishman, Chris Hinchliff and Rachael Maskell, were suspended while three other Labour MPs - Rosena Allin Khan, Bell Ribeiro-Addy and Mohammed Yasin - were stripped of their trade envoy roles. The move comes after all four of the suspended MPs and the former trade envoys voted against the government's welfare reform bill earlier in July, among 47 Labour MPs who rebelled against the government's proposed cuts to welfare. Mr Witherden was also among the Labour MPs who rallied against the proposed cuts and criticised the grounds for suspending the four Labour MPs, warning they were responding to 'cuts that would have impoverished many people'. He said: "I am incredibly concerned at the treatment of many of my Labour colleagues – good friends amongst them – who have been suspended from the party or stripped of their roles as trade envoys over the past few days. "The grounds for punishment seem to be standing up for constituents, voting against cuts that would have impoverished many disabled people, and fighting for marginalised people in the communities they represent. "When I was elected a year ago, I vowed to put my constituents first and speak out when required. It now seems that doing so can be a punishable offence. These principled MPs have my full support." The four suspended MPs had also rebelled against the government in votes on other issues and pieces of legislation, including the Planning and Infrastructure Bill and the Public Authorities Bill. Shortly after the MPs were suspended, Mr Witherden retweeted a post from Brian Leishman, MP for Alloa and Grangemouth, on his suspension from the party. The post contained statements from Clackmannanshire and Dunblane constituency Labour Party and Falkirk East constituency Labour Party expressing support for Mr Leishman, with Falkirk East saying he 'has the full support and backing of our members'. In the post Mr Leishman said: 'Thank you to both of my Constituency Labour Party's and the wonderful members in them. Your support and solidarity shows the very best of our movement.'
Spectator
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
The reign of Rayner
Angela Rayner declined an invitation to a hen do last weekend where the entertainment included axe-throwing. 'She was worried about photos,' says one attendee. The Deputy Prime Minister had to see a family member instead, but a close ally admits: 'She is more careful about attracting that sort of publicity than she used to be.' Robbed as we are of the sight of Rayner waving an axe around when the Prime Minister is suffering his worst weeks in Downing Street, it is tempting to ask, as Metternich didn't quite say of Talleyrand: 'What did she mean by that?' It's a far cry from the days when she screamed that the Tories were 'scum' at a conference party or was filmed raving in Ibiza. For much of Labour's first year in power, Rayner kept her head down and avoided creating a rival power centre. Those in and around Downing Street, however, have realised that the more under the radar Rayner flies, the more seriously they should take her. 'Her commitment to her ambition was demonstrated to the greatest degree possible by the extent to which she did not rock the boat over welfare,' observes a senior Labour figure close to No. 10. In the Commons, Rayner loyally parroted Keir Starmer's lines about changes to personal independence payments. 'No backbencher believed that she believed it, therefore she was able to just take the loyalty points,' the source adds. And yet it was Rayner to whom Starmer was forced to turn when the rebellion spiralled out of control. It was Angela, along with chief whip Alan Campbell – dubbed the 'AA-Team' – who sought to broker a deal with the rebels and who privately made it clear that the government might lose, prompting Downing Street to gut the bill. With the parliamentary Labour party restive, it was Rayner who was dispatched on Monday to address the troops. Many Labour MPs are concluding that if Rayner was once seen as the 'Howling Mad Murdock' of the AA-Team, gobby and with questionable judgment, she has now emerged as the party's John 'Hannibal' Smith, an adept political operator who leaves others wondering what the plan is and when it will come together. Allies say it was her intention, initially, to keep a low profile, keen as she was to answer critics who questioned whether she was clever enough to handle a top cabinet post. 'The goal was to show she could get on with the job and get things done,' one says. So while most of the Starmer administration spent its first three months flailing around in a word soup of missions and milestones, Rayner overhauled the National Planning Policy Framework, to make building easier. Planning applications rose 6 per cent year on year in the first quarter of 2025. Her Planning and Infrastructure Bill is in committee in the Lords next week. That, plus her Renters' Rights Bill and her Employment Rights Bill, are expected to get royal assent in the autumn. Wildly unpopular as the latter is with business, each of these has been pushed through with less strife than expected. Part of her success, Rayner believes, is her ability to connect with people, having been 'a teenage mum'. She told Grazia this week: 'Growing up on an estate, I knew when to be quiet, when to speak and how to bring people round. Anyone who grew up from the same background as I have, you've got higher diplomatic skills than someone highly privileged, because you've never had the power in your hands; you've always had to negotiate and struggle.' Even her enemies acknowledge her people skills. Those drinking on the Commons terrace in early March were stunned to see Rayner on a teasing FaceTime call with Nigel Farage, joshing over which party would win the Runcorn by-election. Reform eventually did so by six votes on 2 May, when Labour haemorrhaged 187 council seats. Plenty of MPs think those are the kind of seats that a more rumbustious leader than Starmer might save from Reform. Farage gets her appeal: 'At least she's real,' he says. 'None of the rest of them are. She is who she is.' It may not be a coincidence that Rayner's favourite karaoke song is 'You to Me Are Everything' by 1970s soul outfit the Real Thing. Rayner is more than a boilerplate leftie. Her political friends include Business Secretary and constituency neighbour Jonathan Reynolds (who watched the election results at her house last year) and Environment Secretary Steve Reed, neither of whom is an ideological soulmate. When Rayner took part in her first Prime Minister's Questions it was Tony Blair she turned to for advice and Wes Streeting who helped with snappy lines. Her confidence at the despatch box, she tells friends, comes from an almost 'out of body experience' where she 'embodies the people I've been sent here to represent'. The New Labour politician with whom she is most often compared is John Prescott, the bruiser trade unionist who was Blair's deputy. Rayner once referred to herself as 'John Prescott in a skirt'. She is now aping his powerbase with a dedicated Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, staffed by 30 officials, a new logo and a Cabinet Office base. The goal of her cross-government work is to 'create sustainable communities' – a phrase lifted from Prezza's mission statement. It would be a mistake, however, to dismiss Rayner as a Prescott tribute act. Her admirers say that she's cleverer than he was and her one-liners tend to be intentional. In addition to bashing Tory wannabes at Prime Minister's Questions, Rayner will deputise for Starmer at this week's Ukraine recovery conference. Prezza was seldom entrusted with foreign affairs. Her real role model may instead be Gordon Brown, with whom Rayner was photographed as a Unison rep in 2007. Rayner has eclipsed Rachel Reeves as the most powerful woman in the government and, as the memo she sent to the Chancellor (suggesting eight tax rises on pensions, dividends and wealth) shows, she is also beginning to throw her weight around. Most importantly, Rayner is Starmer's heir apparent. Even fans of Streeting, considered her main rival, acknowledge that she would be hard to stop if the PM fell, or was pushed, under the proverbial bus. In Nick Parrott, her chief of staff, she has a skilled operator who can keep her on her perch. It is a measure of Rayner's new strength that she has no need of an axe.
Spectator
01-07-2025
- Politics
- Spectator
Liz Kendall gears up to face off welfare rebellion
'How many divisions has he got?' asked Stalin of the Pope. Tonight, we will find out just how many Labour welfare rebels there really are. A vote on the second reading of the government's reforms is expected after 7pm. Liz Kendall, the Work and Pensions Secretary, is facing the Commons this afternoon as she tries to whittle numbers down to as few as possible. There are some encouraging signs. Meg Hillier, the Labour veteran who sponsored the initial rebel amendment, has now withdrawn it following £3 billion in concessions. However, Rachael Maskell, a serial soft left critic, has stepped into the breach and is now putting forward her own amendment to effectively kill the Bill. Hillier boasted up to 126 names; Maskell has 35 MPs backing her. Organisers suggest more names will follow but it is still some way short of the 83 required to overturn the government's majority. Notably, the amendment raises new concerns about the changes and is backed by 138 disability groups. Both rebels and government MPs believe that Kendall's Bill will pass tonight. But it is noticeable that the blame game for this disaster has already begun. On LBC's Cross Questions last night, Charlotte Nichols – who signed Hillier's initial amendment – made a point of defending the whips' office. She went to lengths to praise their behaviour, unlike, she suggested, certain individuals in the parliamentary machine and the political operation of Numbers 10 and 11. Expect heads to roll over this debacle at some point down the line. For the parliamentary geeks, the question is how big the rebellion will be. Academic Philip Cowley has helpfully crunched the numbers. Tonight's vote looks set to smash the number of 16 MPs who defied the whip during the Planning and Infrastructure Bill last month – making it the biggest rebellion of Starmer's premiership thus far. Tony Blair's biggest rebellion in his first year was the 47 MPs who rebelled in 1997 over Lone Parent benefit. The minister responsible then was Harriet Harman, who ended up losing her job the following year. Her special adviser at the time? None other than Liz Kendall. She will be hoping to fare better than her old boss when it comes to reshuffle time.
