The response from the cross-party think tank Social Market Foundation follows.
On housebuilding and planning reform, Jamie Gollings, Deputy Research Director at Social Market Foundation, said:
“This is the kind of urgency required if the government is going to come close to hitting 1.5 million homes over the parliament. Progress is being made, but they need to pull even more levers, more quickly and more firmly. If mass social housing investment in the vein of the 1960s and 1970s is off the cards, then private housebuilding needs to hit more than 1.5 times its historic peak of 200,000 in 1964. Our international analysis suggests that governments often talk a bigger game on planning and zoning reform than they deliver. Reeves promises a permissive planning approach near stations, for example, but in similar cases abroad the impact of similar measures can be dented by restrictions on height, density and plot size. This speech won’t determine whether the Starmer government will buck this trend and stick to a maximalist approach to planning reform, but it at least shows that they recognise the scale of the challenge.”
On defined benefit pensions, Gideon Salutin, Senior Researcher at Social Market Foundation, said:
“The Chancellor’s move is a bold first step, and one which has the potential to boost investment and growth, but more questions will need to be answered before the Treasury claims to have found a magic money tree. Who will back the investments to ensure a market downturn doesn’t mean members lose their pensions? How will earnings be distributed between sponsors, employers, and pension members? Will any of the money be used to prop up ailing DC pensions? And how will the government tax returns? It’s tempting to assume a few sentences from the Chancellor have turbocharged the British economy with billions of pounds in new investments. But if the government is going to unlock DB pension surpluses for investment, a number of important questions so far remain unanswered.”
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