Mark Prisk
Main Page: Mark Prisk (Conservative - Hertford and Stortford)(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Mark Prisk (Hertford and Stortford) (Con)
I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I am an adviser to Essential Living.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) on securing the debate. Ensuring that people can afford to live in a decent home is one of the top issues for many of our constituents, and rightly so. Despite the suggestion that all the evils in housing started in May 2010, the reality is that our housing markets have been dysfunctional for more than 25 years, so we have built far too few homes, rents and prices have risen, and thus we have this issue of affordability. That means that when the current Government came to power in 2010, they inherited a real mess. For my money, the classic illustration of that is the loss of some 420,000 affordable homes under the last Labour Administration.
Since 2010, good progress has been made, so during this Parliament we should see the fall in the number of affordable homes reversed and an increase of some 170,000. Just as importantly—I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister will want to refer to this—the Government are now seeking to accelerate the increase in the number of affordable homes so that in just a three-year period we should see 165,000 additional affordable homes being built. That would, I think, represent the fastest rate of building in this sector for 25 years.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman is rightly focusing on the idea of affordability. Can he help us by giving his definition of affordability? Does he agree with the Mayor of London’s definition of affordability, which is that 80% of market rent is affordable, or does he agree with me that that is simply nonsense?
Mr Prisk
It actually relates to the ratio depending on where someone lives and what their wages are. One problem for our constituents is that we talk about affordable housing with a capital A—the Affordable Housing programme—but most of them think about it with a small a, in terms of mortgage costs or rents, so we need to be very careful not to get caught in artificial terminology.
I welcome what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has said about building thousands more homes, including this week’s announcements on starter homes. That builds on a programme that I was able to start, the Help to Buy equity loan scheme, which has helped some 77,000 people. However, much more can be done, and I would like to make three suggestions. I suspect that colleagues will want to consider issues such as section 106 and planning gain, which I think is an area ripe for improvement and reform, but let me touch now on three other things.
First, we will get a sustained increase in the number of affordable homes built only if we focus on delivering a long-term framework for investment. When I took on the role of Minister for Housing in 2012, housing associations rightly complained to me that the rental and capital policies of Governments of all political persuasions had always been short term. They might be for two years, or there might be an understanding of what the policy framework would be for three years, but housing associations argued that a long-term approach was needed if development was to increase and then be sustained. That is why I pushed for and, I am pleased to say, secured both a 10-year rental policy and long-term housing guarantees from the Treasury to underpin the investment. That means that rental policy is now set all the way through to 2025, and that gives the housing associations and their lenders the confidence to build more and for longer.
Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a very powerful speech. I completely agree with the point that he has just made, and wonder whether he could extend the same logic to councils. As a result of our self-financing initiative, councils can now start to look forward and build more homes. Does he agree that we need to give them long-term opportunities to borrow more money, perhaps by lifting some of the caps placed on them, so that they can plan well into the future for more council-built houses, too?
Mr Prisk
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend’s point, which is that we need everyone, in both the public and the private sectors, to engage and that will mean that we need to consider greater flexibility for local authorities. I will come on to that later if I can.
With regard to housing associations, now that we have the long-term framework, we need to hold them to their commitment. Many are performing well, but some are not. I hope that I may encourage the Minister to challenge those housing associations that could and should be building many more homes. I will also encourage the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds), should she cross the Chamber and take office in May—heaven forfend, from my point of point—not to tinker and meddle with that long-term rental programme, because the result of that would be inconsistency in policy. It would take everyone’s eye away from delivering actual homes for our constituents. As politicians, we have a habit of wanting to tinker and meddle, but consistency is important.
Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman support the suggested new policy of the Conservative party to open up the right to buy to housing association tenants?
Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)
My hon. Friend has made a valid point about working with housing associations. Does he agree that councils need to work closely with housing associations to identify sites for affordable housing? The Together Housing Group, which includes Housing Pendle, has recently rescued an abandoned development of 21 homes on Knotts lane in Colne. That development was left partially built a number of years ago, when the previous developer went into liquidation. Now, that housing association, by working with the council, has been able to rescue the development and provide much-needed affordable family homes for the local community.
Mr Prisk
My hon. Friend is a brilliant campaigner on this issue in Pendle. When I was the Minister for Housing, I had the chance to go and see the work that he does. He is absolutely right: we need the collaborative approach, across the sectors and between the different agencies, if we are to get the building of these homes unlocked.
I have spoken about the need for a long-term rental policy for housing associations. My second point is that we need to match that with a long-term commitment to sustained supply for all housing tenures. I recently had the chance to co-chair—with the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford), who was himself a very capable construction Minister under the previous Administration—a housing commission sponsored by Lloyds Banking Group. That commission brought together an outstanding group of public and private sector experts, who were crystal clear about the key issue. The report states:
“We believe that only a long-term commitment, across the political parties, will deliver the additional homes needed over the next decade. A realistic target is to complete 2 million to 2.5 million homes by 2025. To achieve this there is no single solution, no silver bullet. Rather what is needed is a larger, more competitive and diverse market in the supply of homes.”
As the report rightly says, we must not only expand the house building and private rented sector, but encourage housing associations and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) pointed out, local authorities to contribute more. We need not only the larger contractors, which the hon. Member for Nottingham South mentioned, but more small builders and, indeed, self-building. In addition to more homes for sale, a new professional private rented sector needs to develop. We will need not only to regenerate urban areas but to establish completely new settlements as part of a long-term comprehensive approach.
On that note, I very much welcome the Minister’s statement to the House yesterday on Ebbsfleet. He is making excellent progress on that; I remember the tensions and challenges of dealing with it. That, together with the potential in Bicester and elsewhere, is really good progress. Together—not individually but together—all these different elements can give us a sustained increase in housing supply, an increase not for one year or two years, but over a decade or more.
That brings me to my third and last point, which was a key finding in the housing commission’s report. We need to turn idle public land into affordable family homes. Government, in all its forms, owns a lot of buildings and land that are either underused or, frankly, completely idle.
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the hon. Gentleman therefore agree that it would have behoved the Mayor of London to sell off for that very purpose the fire stations that he has been selling? My local one has been sold for £28 million to an as yet unannounced but no doubt private developer.
Mr Prisk
I am not an expert on the hon. Lady’s constituency, so it would be wiser for me not to wade into that particular parish, but the Mayor is very clear about raising the number of homes built and he has been crystal clear about ensuring that we get land brought into use. The Government have established an effective register within Whitehall, but it has always proved difficult to turn that register into actual homes. The prize is great, as we discover if we talk and listen to some of the people who have analysed this. Savills, for example, estimates that up to 2 million homes could be built on publicly owned land. I welcome the recent announcements by Ministers about engaging the Homes and Communities Agency to drive that forward, and I commend Ministers’ efforts in releasing land, which should result in the building of up to 100,000 homes over this Parliament.
I contend that more can be done, however, and I suggest that we need to overhaul Treasury rules that guide public asset sales in this field. The strict application of best value rules works against long-term development partnership, and it means that we fail to use public assets to provide homes that people can afford. Instead, we need to incentivise Government Departments, agencies, NHS trusts and local authorities to become long-term development partners and to use public assets to deliver homes that are affordable to many more people. There are some good signs, and I draw the Chamber’s attention to the fact that the Ministry of Defence, which is often criticised in that regard, has managed to secure a sensible long-term programme in Aldershot.
More can be done, however. I encourage the Minister, although I suspect that he does not need much encouragement, to be ambitious in this field and to encourage his colleagues across Whitehall to do likewise. Alongside that, I would like other long-term owners of land—such as our universities, which are substantial landowners, many of the large private landowners and many of our large pension funds—to be able to work in a new legal and tax framework that actively encourages them to develop communities for all and, more importantly, homes that most people can afford.
Of all the problems that will face the next Government after May, meeting our country’s housing needs will probably be one of the greatest challenges. Many of the concerns that will be raised in this debate and others are symptoms of the wider problem—dysfunctional housing markets, which have meant that for 25 years or more, we have been building roughly half the homes we need, year in, year out. To break that long-term cycle, we need a long-term commitment across the parties to create a larger, more diverse and more competitive market in the supply of homes. There are no quick answers and no easy solutions, but if we create a consistent, long-term policy framework, we can build the homes that our constituents need.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) on securing this debate on a topic that is important not only for my constituents but for people in the rest of the country. May I also declare an interest? I still own my late mother’s flat, and we have been renting it out to the same tenant since she died.
Many people misunderstand my constituency. It is in one of the poorest boroughs in the country, and 40% of my constituents live in social housing. We have a great mixture of people. The very rich, the very poor and people from all over the world rub shoulders. I have the smallest amount of green space of any constituency in the country. We all live on top of one another, and we quite like it that way. However, the housing crisis is fundamentally changing the nature of my constituency. The average house price in the UK is an outrageous £188,000, which makes it impossibly difficult for the average person to buy these days, but the average price of a house in my constituency is £665,275. Tomorrow, I will see some 12-year-old children at one of my local schools. They were born and brought up in Islington, and they are ambitious and looking forward to life. How on earth will any of them still be able to live in Islington in 15 years’ time? Why are we allowing that to happen? Why are we not doing something about it? It is simply unfair.
These days, not only the children of the poorest but those of the richest will be unable to live in Islington when they grow up, because our house prices have got completely out of control. I do not want my constituency fundamentally to change, and neither do the residents of Islington. We can see no reason why it should, and we think that radical housing change is needed to regulate the market. Some people in this Chamber and in this building will think, “Oh, my goodness. What is this, some form of Stalinism? We can’t start controlling the housing market.” Excuse me, but yes, we can. Most world cities have some form of housing regulation that goes much further than the pusillanimous attempts that have been made in recent years to control the housing market in London. We must start taking strong action to ensure that London people can live in London.
I do not have any problem with people from outside London wanting to come and live here. There is a great tradition of people from all over the world coming to live in Islington. However, do you know what is happening now, Mr Gray? I went to see a woman a couple of months ago who is living in a completely overcrowded council flat. She is busting out at the seams. Her husband runs a local café, and has done for 25 years. They are a good local family, and the kids are doing well. She said to me, “I have no idea where my kids are going to live. They are all grown up now. Where are they going to go? How can I help them to live in Islington? We want them to stay here. We are absolutely overcrowded, and look at that,” and she pointed at the enormous tower block that is being built on the canal nearby. It is called Canaletto, or something equally ridiculous. It is covered in fancy stone, and it reaches up into the skies. We all know that when it has been sold, the lights will be off at night because no one is going to live there. People across the world are investing in our housing market, which is not properly regulated. If they have a choice between investing their money in a few gold bars and saying, “Let’s buy a flat in London,” they will buy a flat in London, because it is nice and secure. They will keep it empty, warm and secure, and they will rob the people of London of somewhere to live.
Emily Thornberry
Personally, speaking as a Back Bencher, yes, I do. I want to see rent regulation. An individual should be able to enter a tenancy agreement with a landlord for a long period of time—three, four or five years—at a set rate, which should increase only in line with inflation. We should not be able to treat people as they are being treated.
I believe that the private sector has an important role to play in meeting our housing need; I am not one of those people who do not believe in the private rented sector. However, we now have an entire generation of youngsters—some of them are our own children and our researchers’ friends—who move into properties and are exploited. They are asked to pay ridiculous amounts of rent. They make a home, but after six months or a year, perhaps because they have complained about the fact that their windows are leaking, they will be chucked out and they have absolutely no rights. We have to strike the right balance, and we must not give tenants so many rights that landlords are frightened off, but we are talking about people who want to be able to make a home in a community. For them to be able to contribute properly, they need some form of security. We should not allow them to be pushed out of our cities and our metropolises because rents are continually being hiked up.
Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) on securing this important debate.
As a country, we face a severe housing crisis. We are not even building half the number of homes that we need to keep up with demand. As the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk), the former Housing Minister, said, certainly for more than 25 or 30 years, we simply have not been building anywhere near the number of homes that we need. It is regrettable that, under this Government, we have seen the lowest level of house building in peacetime since the 1920s.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South has spelt out, people are being priced out of home ownership, and millions are on the waiting list for a social home. Home ownership is at its lowest for 30 years, and a record number of young people in their 20s and 30s, many of whom are living at home with their parents, are suffering most from this. We had the lowest number of homes in 20 years built for social rent last year. As my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Sir Hugh Bayley) pointed out, there has been an increase of 55% in those sleeping rough since 2010, and an increase of 26% in those who are statutorily homeless. As he also said, different people from public and private sector organisations are being priced out of home ownership. They may be cleaners, childminders, office workers, bus drivers or shop workers in some areas. In other areas, they could be teachers, police officers, or university lecturers. The list goes on.
The lack of affordable housing is not only bad for those who cannot afford to live in their communities. It is also bad, as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), for taxpayers and the wider economy. Worryingly, there has been an increase in the benefits bill because of people who are in work receiving housing benefit: an increase of two thirds since the Government came to power. It is a threat to our economic growth and competitiveness, with businesses in high-demand areas such as London—but not only London—worrying about where their staff will be able to afford to live. So it is clear that we need many more affordable homes, including council homes. I grew up in a council house, where I spent the early part of my childhood, so this is not just an abstract notion for me.
It is regrettable that the Government have taken every opportunity to undermine the building of genuinely affordable homes. As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South pointed out, it was an early signal of intent that, within weeks of taking office, the Government cut the affordable homes programme by an eye-watering 60%. They have redefined what affordable means. They changed what was meant by an affordable home when they introduced the 80% affordable rent model. As my hon. Friends the Members for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) and for Hackney South and Shoreditch pointed out, the truth is that homes at 80% of market rent are very often unaffordable in high-demand areas. According to research carried out by Inside Housing, for a home to be affordable for those in Kensington and Chelsea, a combined income of £80,000 is needed, and for many other London boroughs people need an income of £40,000. That is not affordable for many of the key workers we need to live in our cities.
As though redefining “affordable” was not enough, the Government have watered down the requirement to provide affordable housing and removed the requirement for affordable housing contributions on sites of fewer than 10 units. As my hon. Friend the Member for York Central pointed out, this is having a particularly devastating impact in rural areas. The Government have introduced what they call a vacant building credit, which is basically an excuse for developers not to fulfil their affordable housing requirement, and even the developers themselves think that that goes too far. The Westminster Property Association, which includes British Land, Land Securities, Berkeley Homes and the Grosvenor Group, said that the policy was deeply flawed and would lead to a further erosion of the ability of people from a wide range of backgrounds to live in the heart of the capital.
Emma Reynolds
If I cross the Floor of the House, as the hon. Gentleman suggested earlier, we will obviously inherit the current affordable homes programme, but we will make our plans for the future clearer in the weeks to come.
Even Westminster city council’s deputy leader, Robert Davis, has said that the policy
“threatens our capability to deliver much-needed housing in central London.”
His director of planning went even further and called it insane. The Housing Minister claimed that the reforms would not have a significantly adverse effect on the affordable housing programme, even though his own Department admitted that it had not done a formal assessment of the policy’s impact.