Andy Slaughter
Main Page: Andy Slaughter (Labour - Hammersmith)
Caroline Flint
What we are clear about is that the rail companies must prove themselves when it comes to their franchises being renewed. On my local line—the east coast line—the operator has done a remarkable job. Unlike some of the other operators, it has paid premium payments back into the Government’s coffers to spend on other things. However, we must ensure that each rail company is fit for purpose, and where a company is not doing the job and we need to take action, we can make a decision on a case-by-case basis at the time.
On housing, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central will set out in his speech later today, the Government are not just failing to tackle the housing crisis; their policies are making it worse. House building is at its lowest level since the 1920s, annual housing starts are down and housing completions were lower in both years of this Government than in Labour’s last year in power. As a result, more and more people are locked out of home ownership, stuck on local authority waiting lists or forced to live in the private rented sector. Whereas this Government sit back and do nothing, Labour would act now to change the private rented sector so that it works for all—landlords and tenants.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
In my constituency, both house prices and private rents went up last year by 8%, which is eight times the rate at which wages rose. It costs £650,000 to buy the average property in my constituency and £800 a week to rent a three-bedroom house, yet the Tory response is to sell off council homes when they become vacant and to put families into bed-and-breakfast accommodation, at a cost of £1 million a year.
Caroline Flint
My hon. Friend makes some important points. I seem to recall that we were told that the Government’s housing policies would not lead to an increase in private rents, but the opposite has happened. I, too, saw the headline—I think it was in the Evening Standard a few weeks ago—about private rents in London rising eight times more than wages.
If this was our Queen’s Speech, we would have had a housing Bill in it and we would be taking action to encourage landlords to offer families longer tenancies, so that they have security and stability. We would introduce a register of landlords and empower local authorities to strike off rogue elements, and we would end the rip-off fees and charges imposed by letting agents. However, this Queen’s Speech offers nothing to address those concerns. It is a no-answers Queen’s Speech from a tired, failing and increasingly fractious Government.
This Government promised change, but nothing is changing for hard-working Britons. Our country faces big challenges, but this Government and this Queen’s Speech are not equal to the task. The Queen’s Speech fails to provide a reboot for flatline Britain; it fails to address the rising cost of living; and it fails to listen to hard-working people. The big question that those people are asking of Government is: how can they afford to secure a roof over their head, heat their home, feed their family and get to work? However, this Queen’s Speech has no answers for them. The promise is that we will get there in the end, but like so much with this Government, it is wearing thin. Even the Government’s own independent Office for Budget Responsibility is saying that British people will be worse off in 2015 than in 2010.
I do not relish the rising levels of young people out of work, or the months turning into years among the adult jobless. I regret that our economy remains in the doldrums. None of us has all the answers, but our amendment shows that there are ways to help people through these harsh times. At no cost to the Government, we could cap train fares, put the over-75s on the cheapest energy tariff and stop private landlords ripping their tenants off. Labour’s amendment is about what is fair, what is reasonable and what is just, and I commend it to the House.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
Given the time, I shall confine my comments to the biggest cost-of-living issue facing my constituents, which is the cost of housing, an issue that illustrates just how out of touch this Government of millionaires are from the lives of ordinary people.
I said earlier in an intervention on my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) that the average price of a house in my constituency was £650,000 and that renting a three-bedroom house would cost £800 a week. Well, it might as well be 10 times those figures—£6.5 million—because no one, not just people on benefits or low or average incomes, can afford them. No one can afford market housing in west London, unless they are a City or foreign investor, and yet Government policies are actually increasing prices, with an 8% rise in the last year. An independent study last week showed that the Help to Buy scheme could push up house prices by another 30% by the end of 2015.
At the same time, Shelter says that two thirds of Londoners are either falling behind or struggling to pay their rent. The estate agents, who love all this of course, say that prices are
“going like a steam train”,
while the National Housing Federation says:
“Rents will continue to rise in London until we start building enough affordable homes. That won’t happen while this Government spends over £100bn on housing benefit in five years but only £4.5bn on building new homes.”
I know which of those versions I prefer. We thus have policies actually fuelling the rise in house prices, the lowest number of housing starts since the 1920s, and a 68% cut in the number of affordable homes being built. This is not just neglect; these are active steps. In my constituency, 10% of affordable homes that become vacant are immediately sold off at market prices, while whole blocks of council flats are kept empty until private developers can take them over and develop them and whole estates are knocked down. Some 20,000 new homes will be built in Hammersmith and Fulham over the next 10 years, but not one will be affordable to local people.
I briefly left the debate earlier to talk to Jobcentre Plus, which is busy tracking down the 800 households in Hammersmith and Fulham whose incomes will be reduced by £100 or £150 a week, in many cases, because of the benefit cap being introduced. We have families being forced out of their homes, therefore, and hundreds of flats standing empty. At the same time, according to the results of a freedom of information inquiry I received today, 365 families are in bed-and-breakfast accommodation, costing local taxpayers £860,000 last year. The Government are not just out of touch; they are following quite extreme policies. How can they leave hundreds of good quality affordable homes standing empty, while, at huge cost to the taxpayer, putting families in bed-and-breakfast accommodation and forcing others out of their homes and out of London entirely?
My right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) made an excellent speech about the demonisation of migrant communities, which is another feature of the Queen’s Speech. Yesterday, the former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), said this about the Conservative party:
“A party which was once pro-Europe is now anti-Europe, a party which was once anti-Powellite on immigration is now becoming very close to being Powellite on that issue. The party once for the welfare state now appears to be against it in so many aspects of the welfare state.”
That is how the Conservative party has changed within my lifetime, and there is no better illustration of that change from a mainstream to an extremist party—long before the rise of UKIP and completely unrestrained by the Liberal Democrats—and nothing bites deeper than the fact that the Government are no longer prepared to provide or invest in decent affordable homes for thousands of my constituents and millions of our fellow citizens across the country.