Mordaunt accused of missing meetings to focus on her leadership campaign
Minister says her deputy left others to ‘pick up the pieces’ and ‘had often not been available’ for duties
PENNY MORDAUNT has been accused by her boss of missing ministerial meetings in recent months to prepare her campaign for the Tory leadership.
Anne-marie Trevelyan, the International Trade Secretary, said her deputy “hasn’t been available” for duties and left colleagues to “pick up the pieces”.
Her department is locked in trade talks with countries including India, Canada and Mexico and has sealed deals with Australia and New Zealand.
“Understandably perhaps, now it’s clear Penny has for the last few months spent some of her time focused on preparing her leadership campaign,” she told LBC.
“There have been a number of times when she hasn’t been available, which would have been useful, and other ministers have picked up the pieces.”
Ms Trevelyan is the second Cabinet minister to speak critically of the former defence secretary after having her serve under them in Whitehall.
Last week Lord Frost, the former Brexit secretary, said he had “grave reservations” about Ms Mordaunt becoming prime minister and that she “did not master the detail”.
He added that the Portsmouth North MP had gone off-grid during trade negotiations with Brussels and “wouldn’t always deliver tough messages to the EU when that was necessary”. “Sometimes I didn’t even know where she was. It became such a problem that after six months I had to ask the Prime Minister to move her on,” he told Talktv.
Ms Mordaunt, 49, has polled well among members but her campaign has been hit by a series of setbacks in recent days and she struggled to make an impact in Sunday night’s leadership debate on ITV. Last night she received 82 votes in the third ballot of Tory MPS – one fewer than in the second round.
She will launch an attempt to get her campaign back on track today with a pledge to give local residents greater legal powers to block developments.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, she has pledged to beef up neighbourhood plans, which allow communities to choose where new homes are built.
“We need to build, but we can only do it with the support of communities, rather than leaving them under siege from developers,” she says.
“We know that communities that engage in local plans end up supporting more building, not less, because they feel empowered.”
Ms Mordaunt has also vowed to scrap the binding house building targets that are imposed on councils, arguing that they “don’t work”. She said that she would do more to protect green-belt land from development but also cut red tape which is delaying work on thousands of brownfield sites.
She would place a heavy emphasis on building more in urban areas to “reinvigorate and revive our town centres”.
But the row over her views of trans rights, which has dogged her campaign from the start, continued to prove a distraction yesterday.
Nadine Dorries attacked the leadership hopeful over her role in maternity legislation that referred to pregnant people rather than women.
The Culture Secretary said Ms Mordaunt had sent her a text message dismissing her concerns and told her to “focus not on that, but on the positives”.
Ms Mordaunt has insisted she fought for the language to be changed, though that claim has also been disputed by Suella Braverman, the Attorney General and former leadership contender.
Housebuilding policy is not working. On one hand, millions of people are fed up with sprawling, low density, greenfield housing estates that overwhelm communities.
On the other hand, millions of young people feel disenfranchised from ever owning their own home.
Housebuilding is trapped in a broken pattern; a lazy reliance on greenfield sites without public services, land banking by volume housebuilders who then don’t build and mandatory targets that councils can’t meet.
I am going to fix this.
I will change the system.
I will champion a brownfield building boom – and do more to protect precious green fields. We will build better, and we will do it using incentives, infrastructure, investment and innovation.
To start with incentives, it’s important to realise that mandatory housing targets for councils to hit don’t work. It’s an idea that has been tested to destruction over many years, and it’s time to face the fact that they’ve been a failure everywhere. So we will abolish housebuilding targets, and replace them with incentives.
We will extend permitted development rights, to allow “Build Up Not Out” in urban areas, following local council-produced style codes to match high local standards on style, height and materials. We will help councils with novel ways of new affordable house-building, such as modular homes and councils setting up house building companies.
Next, we will stop land-banking and speed up building for sites that already have planning permissions, especially brownfield sites. There are thousands of unbuilt sites all over the country waiting for construction to start.
Most importantly, we will make neighbourhood plans easier to create, and give them greater legal weight. We need to build, but we can only do it with the support of communities, rather than leaving them under siege from developers. We know that communities that engage in local plans end up supporting more building, not less, because they feel empowered.
Next comes infrastructure. We will create a new generation of development corporations – potentially new towns – to drive our brownfield building agenda, tasked with pushing through regeneration, including housebuilding, in inner city and town brownfield sites, creating jobs and homes – especially for young and first-time buyers – and regenerating city and town centres throughout the UK. We’ll cut red tape to do so. This new era will need high environmental and quality of design standards, so we are building green and beautiful too. Those local-councilcreated style codes I mentioned will be crucial for delivering homes and public spaces that people are proud to call home. We’ll build near public services and public transport to create sustainable, workable neighbourhoods that are communities.
All this change should attract huge interest from investors, who will be able to see an industry that’s changing. It will move much faster, with many more buildable sites in a wider variety of sizes and styles, and many more nimble new firms challenging today’s large and cosy incumbents with new approaches, construction techniques and materials than ever before.
The new permitted development rights will increase the value of almost every urban property overnight, and all the other measures should usher in a new era of easily affordable homes for people to rent or buy, in existing communities, near public and local services, in beautiful, local styles.
This vision will transform Britain’s housing from one of our nation’s biggest headaches, into our biggest source of pride.
‘The new permitted development rights will increase the value of almost every urban property’