Tim Farron
Main Page: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)Housing and Planning Bill
Tim Farron Excerpts
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
The Bill comes at the right time—in the midst of a national housing crisis—but unfortunately it does not provide the right solution. It is clear that Britain needs more affordable homes, both to rent and buy, and a huge increase in the supply of homes. Yet the Bill gives billions of pounds to a relatively small number of people through the extension of right to buy while prioritising a relatively small number of better-off renters through so-called starter homes, rather than supporting the much larger number of people for whom saving for a deposit, even for a starter home, seems like a pipe dream.
The purpose of my amendment 110 is to ensure that new homes built under the starter homes initiative are genuinely affordable and include social rented homes. Unamended, this Bill threatens an even worse crisis for those in need of an affordable home to rent or buy in the years to come.
As it stands, the starter homes initiative will merely allow a few people to access those homes at the cost of losing about 300,000 new genuinely affordable homes that would have been secured through planning gain. The policy is bad and based on the wrong priorities. In addition, the sale of social rented homes will further exacerbate the situation. It is expensive. The National Housing Federation estimates the cost at £11.6 billion. It is unfair for private renters, who have been paying market rents for many years and do not have the luxury of a £100,000 discount on buying a home. Given the Bill’s current lack of safeguards for replacements and the funding mechanism through the sale of council homes, the policy will lead to a reduction in affordable homes. I would like the provision to be removed from the Bill when we discuss the matter later.
On amendment 110, we should ensure that new starter homes are genuinely affordable and meet the needs of the community in which they are built. They should be mixed-tenure, including shared ownership and social rented homes. In rural communities such as mine in south Cumbria, we should ensure that there are planning controls for newly built properties to prevent them from slipping into the second-home market, undermining the sustainability of our communities and pushing up house prices for local people.
The Government must recognise the differential impact of their proposals across the country. In places such as London, the west country, Northumberland and Cumbria, the forced selling off of high-value council homes will reduce the supply of affordable homes in the very places where they are needed most: where high rental prices push out those who work locally on low incomes, often causing them to travel long distances with unaffordably high travel costs to reach work or forcing them to give up work altogether. It is absolutely the wrong thing to do and puts a crippling financial burden on councils already struggling to cope with reduced budgets.
My amendment relates to the Bill’s impact on the supply of affordable homes through the inaccurately titled starter homes proposal—in particular, the fact that the starter homes will replace a larger number of other forms of affordable homes to rent and buy, including shared ownership, resulting again in a squeezing of the availability of homes for lower-income renters. A policy similar to the starter homes proposal would be deserving of support as long as those homes were kept below market value in perpetuity, which is essential so that the benefits of starter homes are passed on to future buyers. However, they should be in addition to, not instead of, other forms of affordable homes that meet different needs. Consequently, councils should have a duty to promote all forms of affordable tenures in new developments and not exclusively the Government’s narrow, mostly unaffordable definition of a starter home.
Seema Kennedy (South Ribble) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman talks about the affordability of starter homes, and I refer to a development in my constituency, in Penwortham—a place that he knows very well, because it is where he grew up. Much of this debate has been London-centric. In the vast majority of the country, starter homes are affordable to working people, and that is why this initiative is very popular with all our constituents.
Tim Farron
I am particularly grateful to have given way to my dad’s MP. On affordability, we all started somewhere. We might be fortunate enough to be homeowners, but people who are only just a bit younger than me belong to a generation where the average earner cannot afford to buy a home of any kind, so a starter home is a great blessing wherever it may be. I am not arguing against starter homes, but against a narrow definition whereby they are built at the cost of a larger number of genuinely affordable homes across the country. That is what my amendment seeks to address.
Tim Farron
I am in favour of those things too, but our understanding is that the starter homes initiative comes at the expense of—displaces—a larger number of homes built under section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 through other forms of planning gain. That is what the Government have stated since the election and since this Bill became a subject of discussion.
I am not somebody who ideologically takes a view in favour of private or publicly provided housing; in fact, my great problem is that too many people in this debate do take an ideological view one way or the other. I want to solve the crippling housing crisis in this country. That means building 3 million homes over the next 10 years, and to achieve that, the majority will have to be what we would refer to as affordable homes—social rented homes, shared ownership homes, and other homes with some form of restriction that allows them to be affordable to people on average incomes.
Tim Farron
Perhaps if the hon. Gentleman understood what the average earner earns and what the average home costs in the average place, he would not need to ask why.
Mr Bacon
Does not the hon. Gentleman understand that the word “affordable” is deeply tendentious—deeply laden? The reason things are not affordable is that there is not enough supply. Fix the supply, and we fix the affordability. It is perfectly possible to have exception sites for mutual housing co-operatives, or for self-build, which could be done on a large scale. Some 50% or 60% of housing is done that way in big countries such as Germany and France, and it could be done here. All it needs is a bit of imagination.
Tim Farron
The hon. Gentleman preaches to the converted. It is about supply and demand, but it is not as simple as that. House prices have tripled or quadrupled over the past generations while incomes have not, so it cannot be merely about supply and demand: we need to do something else as well. That is why it is wise to be involved in the marketplace in a way that does not just allow the market to rule. If we are to go through a process of setting up new starter homes, which the Government may build themselves according to the Chancellor’s statement earlier this week—I would welcome that—we have to recognise that unless we put restrictions on the value of those homes we will simply kick the problem five years down the road.
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
Has the hon. Gentleman considered the possibility that, if housing and planning policy is ideologically left to developers, they will have a natural tendency to build more expensive properties, for which they will get more money? I do not blame the developers for that, but that would be the consequence of leaving it to be determined by their needs.
Tim Farron
The hon. Gentleman makes a fine and correct point. I do not blame the developers, either. In a market situation, they sell what they can at the price they can get. In my community, one in seven homes are not lived in. I am talking not about holiday lets, but about second homes bought by people away from the area who earn significant incomes and can afford to buy several properties as investments or boltholes, and good luck to them. In such a marketplace, it is blindingly obvious that there needs to be intervention. That is why there is a role for social rented housing and why our amendment to improve the Government’s starter homes proposals is completely wise.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
I say gently to the hon. Gentleman that it was regrettable that the Liberal Democrats did not provide anyone to sit on the Bill Committee. He may need to review that. He probably views policy through the prism of South Lakeland, which I would have thought is a unique place in the north-west of England. The information we were given by expert witnesses was that the cumulative impact of the Bill would be to deliver a larger number of affordable homes. We received no evidence whatsoever that the new starter homes would not be affordable to people on average incomes on the line between the Bristol channel and the Wash
Tim Farron
If I thought there was no merit whatsoever in the proposal, I would have tabled an amendment to scrap it altogether. The point, however, is that in different parts of the country, including in the north of England—not just Cumbria, but Northumberland and parts of the Yorkshire dales—in the west country and in London, which are significant proportions of the country, the homes are unlikely to be affordable to anybody on anything like an average wage. They may be affordable in other parts of the country, in which case the Government have nothing to fear from accepting my amendment.
In moving towards a conclusion, I am genuinely deeply concerned about the effect this Bill will have not just on those areas I have mentioned, but on others as well, particularly with regard to right to buy.
Tim Farron
I would like to move on for other people’s sake, but I am happy to give way.
Oliver Colvile
Surely this is about making sure that we fulfil aspiration, because what a large number of people actually want to do is to own their own homes.
Tim Farron
Indeed, and I have a great aspiration for the 1.6 million people in this country who are rotting on a social housing waiting list, and that number will grow larger as the years go on. I want to bring down house prices so that they are affordable to people, but this is a displacement proposal that will help better-off private renters and will not help a much larger number of people who are in a much worse situation.
Simon Hoare
Conservative Members would be very interested to hear the hon. Gentleman answer his own question. He told the House a moment ago that it is not solely—I think that was the phrase he used—supply and demand that affect the price of a house. What other things does he think add to it?
Tim Farron
I have already given my view on that—it is blindingly obvious, really. Supply and demand play a significant and critical part, which is one of the reasons I am very proud that my council in South Lakeland has already built 1,000 affordable homes and has plans to build another 5,000. Why do things other than supply and demand have an impact? The answer is that property is a clear investment and people with enough money will buy more than one. Indeed, my constituency is strewn with such properties.
In conclusion, my worry is that in 10 years’ time, the housing crisis will be even worse, with thousands of affordable homes having been sold off, some converted to buy-to-let properties and very few replaced, at the same time as waiting lists for homes soar and homelessness rises. Poor housing is a barrier to success in life, and that impacts not only on individuals, but on communities and wider society. That is why it is essential for families across Britain—and, indeed, for our economic ambitions as a country—that we ensure that everyone has a decent and affordable place to live in.
It is often said in polite society that the most stressful thing in life is moving home, because of the insecurity, the uncertainty and the cost. Well, welcome to the reality of everyday life for millions of people in Britain who do not, and cannot aspire to, own their own home. Millions of families live with the financial, psychological and emotional burdens that inadequate, insecure and unaffordable housing brings. The Bill deliberately misses the opportunity to help those people in order to settle old ideological scores and ride some pretty ropey old hobby horses. Doing nothing in the face of this housing crisis would be bad enough, but by actively promoting a Bill that will make the crisis worse, the Government are ensuring that their legacy will be scorned by the future generations that the Bill betrays.