Rishi Sunak has stood by his leadership pledge to protect the green belt in England after the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, this week said it should be built on “where appropriate” to make housing more affordable. The prime minister restated his insistence that councils should not have to consider the green belt for development and emphasised he was moving away from housing targets despite the crisis in affordable housing making it difficult for younger people to rent and buy. Speaking on the plane during a trip to Japan, Sunak said: “On the green belt, I was very clear over the summer what I was going to do, which was move away from a system of nationally imposed top-down housing targets on local areas. I don’t think that is the right approach. “In government as prime minister, that is what I have delivered relatively shortly after taking office. I was very clear over the summer I wanted to make sure our green spaces are protected. I think that is what local communities want.” The issue of planning and housebuilding is likely to be a dividing line at the election, with the Conservatives saying they would stop development of green belt land and Labour now saying it should go ahead where right for the local area. Labour is also considering setting an overall number of homes the government would target to be built each year. A Tory rebellion forced Sunak to remove the target of 300,000 new homes a year from the levelling up and regeneration bill. The bill is also changing planning law to allow councils not to consider green belt land for development even if it would be the only way to reach their advisory new home numbers. Senior MPs on the backbenches have previously criticised the Tory planning rebels. The former levelling up secretary Simon Clarke has called their approach “very wrong” and argued it would cement “fundamental intergenerational unfairness”. A leader in the traditionally Conservative-leaning Times newspaper this week backed Labour’s stance on the green belt, saying it was “wholly sensible, provided developments are judicious and tasteful”. So did the rightwing Spectator magazine, which said it “shows a braver side of Starmer” to take on a problem the Tories had failed to fix. Conservative members broadly back Sunak on the green belt, but his predecessor in No 10, Liz Truss, was much more radical on the issue. In May 2019, as chief secretary to the Treasury, she suggested 1m homes should be built on the London green belt and around other “growing cities” to help more under-40s buy their first property. Since 2006, the green belt has shrunk by about 1%, according to analysis by the House of Commons library. During his first leadership campaign, Sunak’s team vowed to stop councils appealing to the Planning Inspectorate to declassify patches of green belt land by updating their local plans. He pledged to end this practice by updating the national planning policy framework, and scrapping the possibility of “inappropriate” development on the green belt “in very special circumstances”.