Housing

Chris Evans Excerpts

Wednesday 5th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)]

I believe in two things: first, that everybody who can work should have the right to a job, and secondly that everybody should have a place that they can call home, whether in an urban or country area. Statistics show that the average age of a first-time buyer is 37 years—at the same age, my mother and father had been married and divorced and had two children—and according to Scottish Widows, that age will increase to 44 over the next couple of years. Average rent is £725, which is half the monthly wage of an average earner, and it seems that owning or renting a house, or whatever people want, is to become like walking on the moon or flying on a supersonic airline to New York—a thing of the past.

This debate has not been helped by the idea that somehow housing benefit is paid out to scroungers. It makes me absolutely sick and mad that the Prime Minister has placed a cap on housing benefit for political ends. He is not targeting people who are out of work; some 95% of the £1 billion increase in housing benefit has been paid to people in work. Seven out of eight claimants are people in work. The Government are not attacking those who are jobless; they are attacking those on low incomes. It is all very well to critique the Labour Government and for the Chancellor to appear on the Sunday programmes and say, “Oh, it’s all the fault of the planning regime.” I am sorry, but it is now the Government’s planning regime and if they have a problem with planning, they should do something about it.

I am not going to stand here and say the Labour Government were perfect. We need a quarter of a million new homes a year. If we are building only half that, something has gone wrong. The old ways will not do, so we need innovative measures.

The new Housing Minister, who has made the trip from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, spoke about enterprise zones, which can be successful. We have heard from other hon. Members about examples of where house building is working, but in other areas, such as inner-city London and other city areas, there is a problem. Could we introduce some sort of enterprise zone where there are innovative schemes to bring about house building? We could look at an example from France. When an electricity generator is built, those living nearby are compensated by having free electricity. Could we do something along those lines, and provide a new school or medical centre where there is a new housing development? I did some research before the debate and found out about the No Use Empty scheme in Kent, under which 21,000 derelict homes have been refurbished. Can we evolve that? The scheme can give owners £25,000 to refurbish buildings, which will encourage other banks to lend.

Those are innovative ideas. Time is getting on and I know that somebody else wants to speak, but I will say this: unless we act now, we are saving up problems for the future.