Tory planning changes ‘perverse’ and creating ‘unbalanced development’ warns Cable

One of the most striking things about the Lib Dem conference is not that the party has decided to be mean about the Tories in a mildly obsessive and weird way, but that Nick Clegg and colleagues have also been softening the red lines that could really stop them returning into coalition with the Conservatives. At a fringe meeting today, even Vince Cable managed to say a number of nice things about his coalition partners on housebuilding. Asked whether the Tories and Lib Dems had started to disagree over new housebuilding so much that they’d really run out of road to share after 2015, Cable replied:

‘No, there are some positive things that are happening on housing, which we do agree with them on. In my area of government one of the things we’ve established is trading construction as part of the industrial strategy and a lot of very useful, you know, practical things are now being done about skills training, and one particular thing which actually George Osborne introduced and I am very supportive of, at the Budget, was credits for small builders who currently can’t get money out to the banks for love or money, and I would like to see that scheme expanded.