Interview: Is Andrew Western parliament’s most YIMBY politician?

Andrew Western has a good claim to being the Parliamentary Labour Party’s most committed YIMBY. LabourList talks housing, planning and generational inequality with the Greater Manchester MP.

The party’s second newest MP describes himself as being on the soft left of the party (“I believe in mainstream European social democracy. A big and active state, progressive systems of taxation, equality, public services for everybody”) and has some rather pithy advice for anyone hoping to emulate him in winning a by-election for Labour: “Start with a seat that we’ve never lost.”

The 38-year-old was leader of Trafford council before being elected to succeed Kate Green as Labour’s MP for Stretford and Urmston last December – temperatures of -9°C on polling day made it, Western claims, the coldest by-election in history.

He gave his maiden speech in January, and instead of the usual mild-mannered peon to the greatness of his constituency that one normally expects on such occasions, Western launched into a full throated call to “build, build, build”.

‘A financial adviser asked why I’d not saved up for a deposit’

“I’ve had a long standing interest in housing and regeneration”, Western tells me as we sit in Portcullis house on a sunny afternoon six months after he was elected. “I think most council leaders inevitably do.”

He is also very clear, however, that it is not just his professional experience that propelled him towards this issue; it was his personal experience, and that of those around him.

“I have watched friends, family, moving out of the local area… being priced out, or living with parents until their 30s, or paying exorbitant rents, etc etc. So I care about it passionately from that perspective.

“I was 35 before I bought my first property, I lived at home on and off until I was 30, 31, I’ve been in private rented properties, I’ve been in shared accommodation, and it’s difficult.

“I’ve been in a room with a financial adviser asking why you’ve not saved up money for a deposit, and pointing out, well, because I was paying more in rent than I will be doing on the mortgage and that didn’t leave enough for me to be able to save for a substantial deposit”.

The fight against generational inequality

Despite his obvious passion for housing policy, Western insists that he is interested in it primarily as a proxy for other issues: “I’m not really a housing person, I’m an inequalities person.”

In this case, generational inequality, which he describes as “off the charts” in this country, and “driving poverty”.

“If you are fortunate enough to have wealthy parents, then your age, frankly, is not an issue.

“The challenge that we’ve got is that because of the way that wealth has been accumulated by what is traditionally called the boomer generation, my generation and certainly younger than me, their life chances are going to be determined by the size of the home that they can inherit from their parents.”

I have secured a Westminster Hall debate on Tuesday on the cost of living and private rent, precisely because of this fact. https://t.co/qfAIDrTwTo

— Andrew Western MP (@AndrewHWestern) July 14, 2023

Western manages to come across as simultaneously unprepossessing and quietly self-assured (if you think this is the politicians’ natural pose, you’d be wrong; uncertainty, bluster, and a particular kind of snapping, insecure self-importance are the more common metiers of the newbie MP).

He has a dry sense of humour and a notable fluency with statistics and policy as we talk, and credits the impressive record of Trafford Labour under his leadership (they took the Tory controlled council first into no overall control and then up to a Labour majority) to demographic change and to hard, strategic organising work by the local party.

While not quite one of those red princes we hear so much about, Western is from a Labour family. His mother is a Labour councillor and his father was North West regional secretary for the Fire Brigades Union. He tells me he grew up as one of five kids with not much money, but he puts even his own upbringing in the context of increasingly generational inequality.

“My parents bought a three-bed semi-detached house for three times a firefighter’s salary and a 10% deposit when my mum was six months pregnant with me. That house is now worth about thirteen times a firefighter’s salary and a 10% deposit. Young people just don’t have a chance.”

If Western has clear eyes on the problem, he also has a clear idea of what we need to do to fix it: “We should scrap the planning system. It’s not fit for purpose, it’s not delivering the homes we need.”

The ‘strange bedfellows’ campaigning on housing

“We don’t hear the voices of people without a home in our current planning system”, he tells me. “Because it’s case by case, we hear the voices of the people on the street who don’t want it because their view might be impacted, or parking might be a bit worse on their road.”

If there was a “statutory duty to consult with everybody on the housing list, for instance, you would hear very very different things about developments”. His ideal house-building target is 400,000 a year, but says “it is apparent that successive governments of all colours have not built the number of homes that we need…we’ve been dwindling since the mid-1950s in terms of housing delivery against need”.

Western is aware that campaigns for planning reform often make for “strange bedfellows”. He recounts, in a baffled tone, being praised by Tory MP Simon Clarke for his stances on housing.

Yet he says that, at the end of the day, whatever your party allegiance, “younger people and younger politicians get this issue”. Clarke, like Western, is 38; the average MP is slightly over 50.

‘The NIMBY lobby is very powerful’

Western does, however, have criticisms of Conservative approaches to planning reform.

“I’m not in favour of deregulation, I’m in favour of different regulations”, he stresses, saying that he feels another issue with right wing proponents of planning reform is a lack of interest in the more immediate impacts of the housing crisis.

As well as long term building commitments, Western- who tells me he is hoping to be on the bill committee for the renters reform bill-  says we need to be talking about “social homes, 15 minute neighbourhoods, what are the interventions to make in the private rented sector”, and about bold approaches to tackling homelessness. For this, he favours the “housing first” strategy, which he admits is “intensive and quite expensive”.

As for housing strategies from the left, Western professes himself to have been pleasantly “surprised” by the strength of Labour’s recent push on housing, which includes commitments to leasehold reform and, crucially, to build on the green belt.

Labour will back the builders, not the blockers.

We’ll reform our planning system to build houses, build national infrastructure projects and grow our economy. pic.twitter.com/eTPS30ek0l

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) May 18, 2023

“There are serious risks in any political party being brave enough to go out there and say, in order to deliver the homes that we need, in order to deliver the quality homes afforded to previous generations that should be available to current and future generations, we’ve got to have that debate.

“The NIMBY lobby frankly is a very very powerful lobby, and you’ve got to respect what the party has done on that. The reintroduction of mandatory housing targets – we cannot understate the importance of that basic change.

“That compels local authorities to build the homes we need, attached to the requirement for a five-year supply of land, and attached to the requirement – both of which the Tories would scrap, by the way- to submit your local plan to a planning inspector. These are the things that make local authorities build even when they do not wish to do so.

“They’re also the things that pro-development local authorities can, in practical terms and thinking about the realpolitik of it, point to and say, sorry, you might not like those homes but the government is making us do them. You can’t understate how important having that air cover is for local authorities.”

Fighting for ‘starving babies’

Despite his obvious zeal for the topic, Western laughs off a question about what he’d do if he were put in charge of the country’s housing tomorrow, saying he doesn’t think that’s on the cards any time soon.

More’s the pity; in the meantime, he’s campaigning to uprate the “Healthy Start” food allowance given to the poorest families (“you have to be earning less than £408 per week”) of children below the age of four in line with inflation.

Labour’s Andrew Western MP is calling for the government to increase the healthy start allowance in line with inflation to ensure low income families can access health food#KayBurley: https://t.co/44EHHDYmrG

📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/v1Q0hfuCwX

— Sky News (@SkyNews) May 23, 2023

With “rocketing” milk formula prices and a general rise in the cost of living, the allowance is simply not covering costs anymore. “I’m pretty disgusted with where we’ve got to with the ministers”, Western tells me, saying he will look next to work with supermarkets to try and top up the payment.

“The campaign is ongoing, but the government have not been particularly receptive, which I think is a real shame. Because nobody likes a conversation about starving babies”.