Sir Keir Starmer: 'We need a better Brexit deal'

Before we talk about their proposals for planning reform, I would like to know your reaction to what the stilantis have said overnight: they do indeed want the UK government to renegotiate their Brexit

deal

. I think we

need

a

better

agreement than the one we have. I have um, I think there are other things that we

need

to do as well, um, on the supply side, um, the chains etc., need to be improved, so there are many things, but the Brexit

deal

that we have works well, no, It is not and We need to improve that and that is part of our plan to make Brexit work, so they will actually look to renegotiate the Brexit deal with the EU.

Yes, we want a closer business relationship. I think there is more work we can do with the EU on science. and innovation. I also believe that we can do more in the area of ​​security, so I believe that real improvements can be made to the agreement with the EU. I don't think many people look at that deal and think it's working very well. We've been promised a, you know, oven-ready deal and, um, we have something that, frankly, was half-baked, so there's a lot of work to do there as there's everything else to improve, clear up the mess and then boost our economy. because if there is anything that has been significantly bad in the last 13 years it is our growth rate, our economy has not grown at the rate we need it to and that is why I have said that an incoming Labor government if we are privileged enough to be elected, We will have economic growth as our central mission, the highest sustained growth in the G7 and that must be felt in living standards.

The UK's business performance has deteriorated quite a bit since Brexit is ramping up across the country. will be willing to go as far as rejoining the EU single market. No, I don't think we should rejoin either the EU in general or the single market, but I do think we should break down barriers. If you look, we know that car manufacturing is obviously In today's news, we have been a very good car manufacturer for many years. We've been good because the way we've organized manufacturing has been to have all the parts needed to make the car arrive as smoothly as possible.

Arrive at the assembly point at the right time so that the cars can be manufactured and removed from the warehouse as soon as possible. That's a manufacturing model that has worked. It has been prevented by the agreement we have with the EU and that is why we need to improve the agreement. I think we can do other things too, although I'm referring to some of those parts. I think we should make them in the UK so we're not constantly carrying them across borders. it has to amount to a very solid comprehensive plan to grow the economy.

Well let's talk about what you are looking to do with the planning regime, as I understand it you are basically looking to relax the planning regulations. Yes, we want to build more houses. As you all know, many people watching this will know that the aspiration of owning your own home is very real. They know this, not least because for workers it provides the security that they desperately need and that the government has effectively removed, because while we had targets for housing construction until the end of last year, those targets have been removed, that means that Now the blockers are in charge and housing construction will probably fall to its lowest level since World War II, so what I want to lay out. today is what a new incoming Labor government, if we are privileged to be elected, will do about it.

Part of it is about resetting those goals, but that alone I don't think we're doing enough to do that. familiarize ourselves with the planning framework because at the moment it is the landowners and developers who essentially choose how many houses and where they will be. I think we are going to boost housing construction in PACE, we have to put Local areas in charge of changing planning rules have development corporations as vehicles on the ground to drive construction and make sure the dream of owning your own home becomes a reality for so many people who have had their dreams at this moment. broken and you know, I know when I was a kid, my father was a tool maker and worked in a factory, my mother was a nurse, we didn't have much money and sometimes we had problems with our bills, but we had our own house with a mortgage and that sense of security, so as a child I never feared that we didn't have a roof over our head, our own roof over our head, and that's the kind of security that accompanies that aspiration of owning your own home, now .

I have said in the recent past that you want to give communities more say over developments in their area. What if these communities don't want their local Green Belt to be done well based on the basic principle that the local area should have more of a say? I think that's really important because at the moment, as I say, landowners and developers tend to choose warehouses and that often leads to conflict with local communities, whereas if local authorities had more of a say, I think which would actually be reduced. those local conflicts you asked me about the green belt of course we want to protect our countryside when we went on holiday when I was a child we went to the Lake District the countryside is rich it must be protected but we are going to have to make difficult decisions and there are parts of the belt green where we build now and I think there are

better

decisions to make and the example I would give just to liven up my argument, if you will, is that there has been housing development in the south east. of England, where the choice for housing development was a playing field or a car park, the car park was technically on the green belt and therefore protected, so the playing field that It was technically outside the green belt, so we ended up with a protected parking lot and the playing field used to build houses.

I just think we have to make different decisions, so it's not about disrespecting the need to protect the green belt and countryside, of course it is. We have to do that but we have to make tough decisions and if you let the local areas decide I'm pretty sure they would say look if we had the choice we would have put those houses on the car park and saved the playing field it's common sense and it will boost housing construction and that's also part of our plan to rebuild the economy because for every hundred thousand homes that we can build across the UK, broadly speaking, that's one per cent of GDP going up. that's desperately needed right now you're also talking about ending the moratorium on onshore wind farms in England.

What kind of veto will the communities have if they do not want these things to reach their doors? Well, communities have to have a say, but at the moment the system is tilted in such a way that if only a few people object, it takes years to do something and, um, what we're saying about housing planning It applies frankly equally to other commercial sectors, whether it's wind farms, laboratories, we desperately need warehouses. we need all the planning it's taking too long. I asked one of the energy CEOs, if we're in government, how long it would take to build a wind farm and he told me about two years.

I said, well, why then? It takes about 13 years before anything actually happens and they said, well, it's two years to build, it's about five years to plan and then the grid that needs to connect to the wind farm doesn't really crawl into the wind farm until The wind farm is finished and you end up with 13 years, which is too long, and companies all over the country express their frustration over and over again because this all takes too long and that holds us back because other countries are much more rationalized and have changed their rules and they are winning the race for the next generation of jobs, we have to make tough decisions to change that, so that when the question is asked you know which nation is going to lead on wind turbines which nation is going to lead on hydrogen, the The answer is why Britain is not left with the energy now.

The United Union, which is its biggest financial backer, has today called for the renationalisation of the entire UK energy industry. It's something they're going to consider. Well, we've considered it and, um, decided. which is not the right step and I'll tell you why we looked at it last summer when energy prices, as you know, skyrocketed and this question came up, wouldn't it be better then to bring them in? on some kind of public property and I looked at it with my team and said, well, how much would it cost us to do it and then the crucial question, if we did it, would it reduce prices, which is obviously what's putting pressure on people. right now and the answer is no, because even if it were nationalized and became publicly owned, energy companies still have to buy on the global market and that's why we considered it and in the end we rejected it because it doesn't really answer The central question is how to lower those energy prices and I think there are better things than what we did in France.

Energy prices. I think it depends on the setup whether it is tied to oil and gas or renewable energy producers in the first place. place, but the other thing I think we could do is rush towards renewable energy. We believe there should be a publicly owned vehicle for that, so as we move towards renewables we want GB Energy, a publicly owned company, to be the vehicle to ensure that the profits go back to the British taxpayer and are used, You know, to help reduce those bills, so I'm not ideologically opposed to something that's in public hands;

In fact, we are proposing GB energy, but that is to produce the future. job we want to do, there are other things, by the way, I'm very interested in the idea that we properly insulate our homes. If we've been doing that for the last five, six, seven years, millions of homes would be priced very low. bills I've seen this, you've probably seen it yourself in places like Yorkshire where you go to one of the houses that have been stripped down and properly insulated and I went there, the people who lived there were smiling from ear to ear on a freezing February . tomorrow because your house was warm, your bills were very, very low and that should be not only what we expect from new houses but what we expect existing houses to adapt to because, in the long run, what we do with bills of energy, you know, we need it.

To keep them down prices have been frozen, they are very expensive things to do, but we have to fix the fundamentals if you want at the same time, okay, before I let you go, you have obviously been on a great mission to rekindle relationships with companies , every CEO I know has met with you or Rachel Reeves in the last year. Can you take your party with you because you've even been talking to private equity executives who are for much of your uh party uh kind of a folk demon almost yeah, we've talked to countless CEOs and um, and I've changed my party and my party is now fully committed to this, we know that to grow the economy we have to partner with business and when I say we are pro-business, what I mean by that is that we recognize that business is a Force for good and that the next generation of jobs will ensure jobs and production for this country is with an active dynamic government, if you will.

We roll up our sleeves working alongside companies and that's why the discussions we've had with CEOs haven't been just a cup of coffee. Get to know them, it's also about how we work together in government and that's why Rachel and I have met so many people. CEOs, we went to Davos, as you may have seen, to speak directly to investors and ask them what the inhibitor is to why they are not investing in the UK in the way we think they should and a big part of their answer was because We do not have the stability, we do not have the partnership that we need from the government at the moment and I am determined to change that situation and, just as I turned my party around, we want to change the situation. country so that we can move towards what I am absolutely convinced would be a better future