Ed Balls accused the Labour Party of “twiddling their thumbs” for the last 14 years in a spat over delays to housing reforms.
The ITV Good Morning Britain host was interviewing the minister Matthew Pennycook over the government’s plans to ease the housing crisis this morning.
This includes a new task force “to present a final shortlist of recommendations on appropriate locations” to build new homes to ministers, according to the gov.uk website.
So Balls asked Pennycook: “Given the urgency, is that new towns task force going to report in September or October?”
The housing minister said they had asked to report within a year, to which Balls said with incredulity: “A year? I thought it was urgent? Are you serious?
“Are you actually saying a year from now?”
Pennycook said: “Up to a year, but we’ve made very clear to Sir Michael [Lyons] that if the task force can identify appropriate locations quicker than that, we will get moving on them immediately, shovels in the ground.”
Regeneration expert Sir Michael will be leading the new task force.
Balls pushed: “Why are they taking a year?”
“Because, they are doing in a sense, Ed, a high-level spatial strategy,” Pennycook began, but Balls interrupted.
He said: “You’ve had 14 years to get ready. Surely you need to go a bit quicker than that?”
Pennycook said he had only three years shadowing the housing minister role before the general election.
Balls hit back: “You’ve been in in opposition for 14 years, twiddling your thumbs as a party, ready for this moment – you come in, you say you want new towns and we’re not going to have a report for a year!”
“We want to give the expert task force the time to report back,” the minister said.
It was not an easy morning for Pennycook on the broadcast round, as he was then called out on Radio 4′s Today programme, too – but this time, for setting “unrealistic” targets.
Presenter Amol Rajan said it seemed deputy PM Angela Rayner wanted to see housing completion in new towns within five years.
He said: “Given a normal scheme of 2000+ homes takes around seven years to get to completion, Angela Rayner’s target of five years is totally unrealistic, isn’t it?”
“I don’t think it’s unrealistic to have spades on the ground on several of these large scale housing communities by the end of the five-year parliament.
“That would be our objective,” Pennycook hit back.