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The green belt is an urban containment policy to stop cities from sprawling and joining up, but it also acts as a gastric band on building. And it is huge.
More than half of the local authorities in the country have some green belt land within them, totalling 1.7 million hectares. This makes up 12.5pc of the total land area in England, according to Lichfields planning consultants.
It means that there is designated land around cities including London, Manchester, Bristol, Bournemouth, Newcastle, Cambridge, Birmingham, Liverpool and Leeds where planning rules make housebuilding incredibly difficult.
In other words, in the places where new homes are most in need, it is hardest to build them.
Jason Lowes, planning partner at consultancy Rapleys, says: “The greenbelt was introduced in part to stop the over sprawl of urban areas and protection of the countryside but instead is often used as a blocker for development of any kind, no matter how grey the sites actually are.”
The term green belt can often be a misnomer, he says.
“It is true that there are swathes of land classified as greenbelt that are closer to urban wasteland and not actually rolling hills as many would expect.”
There are cases where even brownfield sites cannot be developed because they sit within the green belt.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4 last week, Sir Keir noted a development in the South East that was built on a former playing field outside the green belt, instead of a disused car park within the green belt.
“That is ridiculous and we have to be prepared to say we will bulldoze through that,” he said.
So far, there is scant analysis on the exact scope of the “grey belt” and how much land it actually covers.
“I don’t think you’re necessarily going to be looking at swathes of land within this grey belt designation,” says Anthony Breach, senior analyst at Centre for Cities.
But the term opens the door to a wider conversation about building on green belt land, says Breach.
“If we are now open to the possibility of thinking: ‘which bits of green belt land could we allocate for new homes?’, you could build about two million houses in walking distance of stations, in commuting distance in the big cities, all for suburban living,” says Breach.
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