Housing and Homes

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

This is why I made my point about the national planning policy framework and how it fits within the local plan structure, with which I know the hon. Gentleman will be more than familiar. We are looking carefully at the thousands of representations that have been made—as I have said, the consultation closed in the last week or so—to ensure that there is protection for the green belt.

This is equally about understanding what lies behind the slow build-out rates. Work is being done on this by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), and his report is due by the Budget this year. If he finds evidence of unacceptable land-banking, I again say that we will not hesitate to act.

Our second focus is on the facilities needed to deliver homes faster. We are making serious investments in roads, schools and communities. For this reason, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer doubled the housing infrastructure fund to £5 billion in his autumn Budget. Soon after, we announced the first initiatives of the fund. They involve 133 marginal viability fund projects worth a total of £866 million, and they have the potential to unlock up to 200,000 new homes.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is making some excellent points. He referred to the requirement for local authorities to have up-to-date local plans. He might be aware that York, which adjoins my constituency, has not had a local plan since the 1950s, which has put added pressure on other local areas such as Ryedale and Hambleton. Will he commit to stepping in to write local plans for authorities that do not bring forward their plans in good time?

[James Brokenshire]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Local plans are central to setting out how and where local authorities expect to meet residents’ needs for new homes. He has highlighted one council that has had issues, and we will certainly be monitoring the position in York closely. If further significant delays occur, intervention will be reconsidered. We have decided that intervention will continue in three local council areas—Castle Point, Thanet and Wirral—and we will now send in a team of planning experts, led by the Government’s chief planner, to advise on the next steps in that intervention.

As I have already highlighted, this is about looking at infrastructure. That includes projects that are part of the housing packages that we have agreed with the Mayors of Greater Manchester and the West Midlands. We have launched a new, more assertive housing agency, Homes England, which will work to secure land and unlock development on brownfield sites. We are also reforming the system of developer contributions so that developers will know the contributions expected of them and local communities are clear about the infrastructure that they will get alongside new homes.

Thirdly, we want to see a wider range of house builders helping us to deliver more homes. In the past, more than 60% of new homes were delivered by small firms. Today, the number is less than half that, despite the fact that SME builders are keen to contribute. This is why we are supporting these builders to deliver and grow through our home building fund. Over 70% of the original £1 billion short-term home building fund has already been allocated to support SMEs, custom builders and innovators in helping us to deliver more than 25,000 homes. At the autumn Budget, this Government added another £1.5 billion to the fund.

It is right that we are taking action in these areas, but we must not lose sight of the basic issue of fairness. With this is mind, I was delighted that the Tenant Fees Bill was introduced to Parliament soon after my appointment. This very welcome measure delivers on our commitment to end costly letting fees, putting more money in tenants’ pockets. The Bill will also cap tenancy deposits, ensuring that the deposit that they pay at the start cannot exceed six weeks’ rent. For too long, tenants have been stung by unexpected costs such as double-charging for the same services. The Bill will put a stop to such unfair practices, and it complements other measures we have taken to make renting fairer.

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[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

This is the Secretary of State’s first housing debate, but it is a bit like Groundhog day. He is the fourth Secretary of State, with the seventh Housing Minister, now in the ninth year of a Conservative Government, and it is clear from this debate that the Conservative party still has no plan to fix the housing crisis.

The Secretary of State may be new to the job, but he has been in government since the start in 2010. Surely he cannot look at the Government’s eight-year housing record and conclude that more of the same is what is needed. After eight years of failure on all fronts, how is the answer more of the same when, since 2010, we have seen 1 million fewer under-45s owning their own home and the lowest level of home ownership for 30 years? How can the answer be more of the same on homelessness when it has risen every year since 2010, and we now have 120,000 children growing up with no home? And how can the answer be more of the same when private renters face rents that are soaring way ahead of incomes? The average rent is now £1,800 a year more than before.

Finally, house building rates are still lower than they were at their peak under Labour, and fewer new social rented homes were started last year than at any time since records began.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that last year’s figure of 217,000 additional homes is the second highest in the past 25 years. Completion levels have risen 30% and starts have risen 85% from their low points under Labour. He must welcome those increases in activity in the housing market.

[John Healey]

The hon. Gentleman is a hard-working, loyal Back Bencher, and I have to give him credit. He is making some of the same arguments the Secretary of State made when he said the Government are making good progress on supply. In truth, a full decade on from the worldwide financial crash, house building is still below the level it was before that global downturn.

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[Mhairi Black (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (SNP)]

I am glad that this is a general debate on housing, because it allows me to draw attention to the different directions of policy throughout the UK and the results of these policies. The UK Government have said that they want to reassure voters that they are taking the housing crisis seriously, yet the facts suggest the very opposite. I was actually quite happy to hear the Secretary of State say that the Government are looking into the Housing First scheme, which I believe was developed in Finland, and is about providing people with security and stability as a starting point. That seems like a step in the right direction, but again the facts show a different story. House building has fallen to its lowest level since the 1920s, evictions are at record levels, and a mere one in five council homes has been replaced when sold.

Crisis says that 9,100 people are sleeping rough across Great Britain at any one time. We see homeless people all the time. Quite often we pass them coming into work, at Portcullis House and the underground station. Crisis has said that unless there is a significant shift in Government policy, the number of rough sleepers is projected to increase by 76% in the next 10 years. When it surveyed councils for its report, “The homelessness monitor: England 2018”, it found that 70% said that they had difficulties in finding social housing for homeless people last year. It is important to stress that homelessness does not just mean rough sleeping, as I know that many Members are aware. It includes people staying with friends and family, and people living in overcrowded conditions or in poor conditions that affect their health.

In their manifesto for the general election, the Tories included a flagship pledge to build a new generation of social housing. Everybody knows that this is something the UK is crying out for, yet within weeks of the election the Government U-turned on that pledge.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Lady said that house building had fallen to its lowest level since the 1920s, yet in 2008-09 new housing starts were 88,000 and last year they were 163,000. Where does she get her figures from?

[Mhairi Black]

Hold on and I will tell you. [Interruption.] Did the hon. Gentleman say, “From the Labour party manifesto”? Actually, they were from an article in The Independent. I will be happy to send it to him.

What adds another layer of incompetence and complication to all this is that there seems to be total denial on the Government’s part as to the further negative impacts that universal credit is having on the housing crisis. A report this month from the Scottish Government has shown that in East Lothian, for example, 72% of social housing tenants claiming universal credit were in arrears, compared with 30% of all tenants. Similarly, any action to tackle barriers to landlords offering longer and more secure tenancies has been kicked into the long grass, with the Government instead announcing yet another consultation to add to the 15 already ongoing consultations relating to the private rented sector.

The Scottish Government are taking a different ideological and political direction in the areas where they can. The SNP scrapped the Thatcherite right-to-buy policy, freeing up thousands of homes from falling into private rented properties, and we have at least attempted to put back in place some safeguarded housing stock for future generations. Since 2007, we have built more homes per head than in England and Wales—48,000 more than England’s rate, equating roughly to a town the size of Paisley. The Scottish Government have now delivered nearly 71,000 affordable homes since 2007. But we decided that that still was not good enough, so when we set a target of wanting 30,000 affordable homes by 2021, we decided, no, we are going to increase that to 50,000. We know the kinds of pressures that we are putting on ourselves, but, as we are all aware, this issue desperately needs the attention of Governments.

The Scottish Government are attempting to do all this while being saddled with paying £453.8 million in mitigating the effects of and protecting people from the very worst of Tory austerity. The Scottish Government fund the full mitigation of the bedroom tax, which would otherwise affect over 70,000 individuals who would lose an average of about £650 a year. If this is the good that the Scottish Government are able to do under intense pressure, often through no fault of our own, let us imagine what good the UK Government could do if they just made a simple change in direction.