ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now there is some agreement amongst all the parties in the UK, not enough houses are being built, that is something that they all do agree on but the detail is where they differ.  The Green Party leader for instance, Natalie Bennett, got into quite a tangle this week about the Green’s housing policy so are the Conservatives going to be clearer in their aspiration to build more homes in the next parliament?  Grant Shapps is the Conservative Party Chairman and before that he was the Minister for Housing so well placed to tell us all about it. You were nodding there saying you are going to be clearer so your aspiration or is it a pledge, how many houses are you going to build if you get elected over the next parliament?

GRANT SHAPPS: Yes, this is a commitment actually and today what we’re saying is here is a way that we’ll deliver 100,000 more houses over and above all the other house building that will already be going on by making sure people can build their own homes.  The biggest block to that is land so we are going to make sure that local authorities, the councils, have to include in their plans somewhere for you to build so-call custom build or self-build homes.  So if people want to design their own homes and build them that’s …

DM: So where is this, on brownfield sites?

GRANT SHAPPS: Yes, brownfield sites, exactly.

DM: So how do you force them to hand it over if they don’t?

GRANT SHAPPS: Well at the moment when the local authorities create their so-called Local Plans, they don’t have to put space in for these self-build homes.  It’s a very good, efficient and cost-effective way to build a home, in other countries it happens, actually over half the homes in many countries are self-built.

DM: But they have to clean up the sites and make them ready to build on?

GRANT SHAPPS: They have to make the land available still for someone to purchase but often this will be a brownfield site, often they are already being made available for housing but not for self-build housing.  That’s one aspect, the other couple of things, we’re going to extend this ability to build your conservatory, build your extension, as long as your neighbours don’t object, they don’t mind then you won’t have to go through that complex planning permission.

DM: But you would if it were a conservation area.

GRANT SHAPPS: Oh yes, these plans are in place now, they expire at the end of this parliament, what we’re saying today is as Conservatives we’ll allow those conversions and extensions to carry on all the way through the next parliament.  

DM: So this is 100,000 extra and what are these 100,000 – I’m reading your press release here, these 100,000 new starter homes to be built for first time buyers?  Are those above and beyond the 100,000 so that’s 200,000?

GRANT SHAPPS: Yes, that’s right, that’s right.  The starter home thing is to enable people to get on the housing ladder in the first place and we want to see discounts for people who are younger generations who are struggling so much to get on the housing ladder.  Look, we’ve done a lot with all of these, these are lots of different plans in other words, we’ve done a lot with these, things like the Right to Buy has ignited the ability for tens of thousands of people to buy homes since I launched it with the Prime Minister back in 2012.

DM: But of those 100,000 starter homes with a discount which you say here is going to be at least 20%, then we get into Natalie Bennett territory, have you costed this?  The average house price in England and Wales is £180,000 so 100,000 houses, that’s £18 billion worth of housing stock, you’re offering a 20% discount so doing the maths here, £3.6 billion, where are you getting that from?

GRANT SHAPPS: Look, the one thing you know with all our policies because we’ve been …

DM: You said you’ve costed it, where are you getting the £3.6 billion from?

GRANT SHAPPS: Let me answer your question, because we’ve been in government and you’ve seen what we’ve done with housing which is to get into a position where we’re starting to build a lot more homes in this country and we cost everything that we do.  I can go into the complex finances if you want to …

DM: Well please do.  It’s a spending pledge, you said it’s a pledge at the start, £3.6 billion, you are offering a 20% discount on 100,000 homes and I am just doing this on the average house price, depending on where they’re built they might cost more, £18 billion, 20%, where does it come from?

GRANT SHAPPS: It is very straightforward, what we are actually offering here is for first time buyers to access the same scheme that has been made available through Help to Buy and you may be familiar with the Help to Buy scheme which has enabled tens of thousands of people to get on to the housing ladder by for example having mortgages which are available at up to 85%.

DM: But this is about a commercial transaction, presumably these are privately built houses, now somebody is going to take this loss, this 20% loss, so who takes it?  It’s not the buyer so who takes it?

GRANT SHAPPS: The way the Help to Buy scheme has worked very effectively over the last couple of years, it’s enabling people to get on to the housing ladder by getting proportionate mortgages which weren’t available in the market, so you’ll recall at one point you couldn’t get a mortgage for more than say 70% of the property value.  We are now making that available, with assistance from the government through our Affordable Housing Programme.  

DM: But the £3.6 billion?

GRANT SHAPPS: Look, there has been way more than £3.6 billion put into housing, let me just explain that …

DM: But you are selling houses on the cheap here, you are selling houses at 20% below market value, it says here in your press release, who is paying the difference?

GRANT SHAPPS: So it’s part of our overall housing programme so if I explain that in the last five years …

DM: Are sure you haven’t got a cold?

GRANT SHAPPS: No, I haven’t got a cold, no!  In the last five years we have built 19, we have put £19 billion of both public and private investment into building more homes in this country and what we’re saying here is as part of our package going forward we are going to have a very similar programme where we enable houses to get built by yes, some government support, this is part of what we’re talking about here but also by the market stepping up to the plate and building those homes.  So look, the fact of the matter is this, we have already done what we said we were going to do, let me just …

DM: But you haven’t done this yet though, you say you are going to do this but you are going to subsidise 100,000 houses by 20%.  The people are going to buy, the first time buyers who are going to buy these houses at 80% of the market value.

GRANT SHAPPS: So what we do is get together the house builders with the government, with the landowners, oftentimes that’s the local authority …

DM: And get the house builders to take a loss?

GRANT SHAPPS: Yes, let me just give you, before you are very sceptical about this let me just give you an example, I can hear you’re sceptical but I said five years ago we would build during this parliament 170,000 homes for social rent, do you know how many we’ve built?  220,000 so far.  So when we say we’re going to do these things, they’re properly costed, we actually have the numbers to back it up and it means that we are actually delivering those homes and we will do in the next parliament and that’s what that announcement is about.

DM: All right then, I must ask you about terror and terror laws, in particular hate preachers given the discussion we’ve just been having there.  The ability of people with pretty extreme views to say things on our campuses, outside our mosques and there is a row going on isn’t there between you and the Liberal Democrats in government where you want to clamp down on this and get universities to police this kind of thing and the Lib Dems are saying no.

GRANT SHAPPS: Well look, if I had a pound for every time over the last five years we were told there was a coalition war going on then not only would I be very wealthy but the coalition almost certainly wouldn’t have lasted for five years. I think that the headlines are usually overblown but yes, there is a difference of opinion.  Vince Cable doesn’t want to do what the Conservatives want to do which is to make sure that on campus we don’t have radical preachers saying things which incite violence which ultimately can lead to the radicalisation of young people.   We’ve seen these three girls go off to Syria, we’ve seen Jihadi John, we don’t think that sort of preaching should happen in our universities and that will be the Conservative, that is the Conservative policy.

DM: Well you have already passed the law haven’t you, do you want the universities to police it more rigorously?

GRANT SHAPPS: What this is about is the detail of the instruction which now goes to university and I’m afraid to say the Conservatives just have a simple view that people in Vince Cable’s constituency of Twickenham or around the country deserve that protection and that means that we have to put proper, decent, tough laws in place which don’t ban free speech but do prevent people from preaching death.

DM: Lastly, I just wanted to ask you, Chairman, about the issue of debates, debates taking place or not and you have often said and other say it, there really is only a choice between two people who could be the next Prime Minister of this country.  We would like to see them debate each other, could you make a commitment that we will see, before the election we will see a debate between the Prime Minister and Ed Miliband?

GRANT SHAPPS: Well we certainly will before the election, we see one every week on a Wednesday at Prime Minister’s Questions.

DM: No, no, no, you know what I mean, a proper televised debate, moderated …

GRANT SHAPPS: We do want to see debates take place, we always thought they were a good innovation last time, we’d like to see them happen.  This is actually really as much a question I can throw back to you or at least Sky and the other broadcasters, you buys are the ones who are setting the debates up.  They have got to be done with negotiation with all the parties, I understand that every time that a format comes forward some of the other parties say hold on a minute, what about us and then that goes back into the pot.  There are only two people who are likely to walk into Downing Street, David Cameron or, God forbid, Ed Miliband with all he’ll do to take us back to square one, repeat all the old mistakes so certainly I’d like to see the two of them debate but it’s a question for the broadcasters.  

DM: Why can’t you break free from that because you say you want to see it happen and if you said, if we heard from Conservative Central Office that okay we’re prepared to debate Ed Miliband, that could be jacked up, that could be started in a few days.  

GRANT SHAPPS: I mean you guys are the ones who would have to put the debate on and it seems to be as much a negotiation between the different broadcasters as it is between the politicians.

DM: But it’s you guys who muddy the waters by getting all the others involved in the other two debates so there may be eight or nine parties involved.  

GRANT SHAPPS: No, not at all, I though the initial proposals viewers may remember, is that you’d have one minor party in but not another minor party in, so they were going to exclude the Greens who already have an MP.  That was clearly ridiculous, I think even the broadcasters regret that proposal coming forward, there is now another set of proposals coming forward but look, it’s for you to kind of work out the format between you and the other broadcasters that works. We want debates to happen, we think that certainly a debate between Ed Miliband and David Cameron certainly makes sense.  It’s in your hands and the negotiations I understand are ongoing.

DM: And would you do it more than once?

GRANT SHAPPS: Well you can have multiple debates or …

DM: No, I mean the head to head.  

GRANT SHAPPS: I think what you don’t want to do is end up having the entire election campaign which should be about people in their own neighbourhoods, in their own constituencies, getting to see the leadership of the various different parties, getting to see the ideas, what you don’t want to do is to suck all of the life out of the actual campaign by having it all about TV, you want to be out there in the country but certainly a debate between the leaders makes a lot of sense and I’m really hopeful that you guys in the TV industry can sort that out.

DM: Well fingers crossed.  Mr Shapps, very good to see you, thank you very much indeed, the Conservative Party Chairman there.