Housing Need (London)

Tom Brake Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Westminster Hall

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

Thank you, Mr Howarth. I shall follow your stricture and keep my remarks to 10 minutes or thereabouts.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) on securing this debate. He is right: many of the usual suspects are present for it. They include some ex-Ministers who share responsibility for the housing situation that we have in London.

It is fair to say that housing has been neglected by successive Governments and that the problem in London has not emerged in the past couple of months. There are different figures for how many households in London are looking for or waiting for social housing, but 350,000 has been quoted to me. Whichever figure one takes, a substantial number of people need social housing.

Clearly, as a result of demographic changes in London, pressure on housing will increase as the population increases. Demand might rise further if the coalition proposal to safeguard housing rights for people who are looking for work and perhaps coming to London has an impact, which it could. The proposal has some merit, but for it to work, we need some spare capacity in housing in London. I would not want such a proposal to displace people who are waiting for housing in London and who, in many cases, are being advised that they could wait for seven, eight, nine or 10 years. Such waiting times are being quoted to some people in my borough.

Clearly, too, the housing benefit changes, to which many hon. Members have already referred, will have an impact. There is some evidence, certainly in the commercial sector, that some landlords are responding to the present financial situation and, if not knocking down prices, holding prices for leases that run for four or five years.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The situation may or may not have changed but the policy certainly has, so does the hon. Gentleman support what the Housing Minister said about looking at having no secure tenancies for new lettings in the future? Does he support the £250 to £400 cap on housing benefit, which must affect his constituents as well as mine?

[Tom Brake]

Some valid points have already been made in the debate and, perhaps surprisingly, one of the reasons for my being here today is to listen to the Minister, who is a sound and honourable man, explaining—hopefully, explaining away—some of the apparent contradictions in a number of the proposals. I know from his background in local authorities that he believes, contrary to what the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) said, that council and social housing in this country has a strong and sound future. I am sure that he will defend that principle.

[Glenda Jackson]

Going back to my theme, we have heard such a proposal before but presented in different words: essentially, it amounts to a property-owning country. That is good old-fashioned Thatcher dogma, simply re-dressed in another way. We saw what happened when that dogma ran the first time: a massive loss of homes, businesses and families. The Government will create that all over again.

[Tom Brake]

That is the hon. Lady’s interpretation of the coalition Government’s proposals across a number of policy areas, but it is not one with which I can agree. I agree that we need to guard against the potential impact of the proposed housing benefit changes on migration from central London to outer London boroughs or beyond, but I hope that Opposition Members accept that we are in rather a difficult financial position at the moment. I am keeping a tally of their proposals on how to address that position. They have accepted the need to cut 20% from a number of departmental budgets, including those of the Departments for Work and Pensions and for Communities and Local Government, so we need to hear some sort of explanation. Indeed, the hon. Lady said that housing benefit should be looked at, but presumably not with a view to increasing the funding available. I hope to hear at least an outline of some possible Opposition solutions or improvements to the coalition Government’s proposals. I shall wait and see.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Does the hon. Gentleman not understand that if we invested in housing with affordable rents, through housing associations and councils, we would immediately cut the housing benefit bill enormously: instead of paying £400 a week, we would pay £120 a week?

[Tom Brake]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I assure him that I understand his point perfectly, but he must be aware, having spoken in many such debates in the past 13 years, that housing in London is in short supply. The previous Government did not manage to resolve the problem, but I hope that the coalition Government will do so.

I want to refer to some of proposals in the coalition programme that will address the issue.

[Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

As someone who also represents an outer-London borough, I share the hon. Gentleman’s concern about the migration of people from central to outer London—a number of my constituents, who are struggling to find housing in the private sector because of the changes, are already concerned. He hopes that the Government will make some changes to prevent such migration from happening, but what sort of changes would he like the Government to make?

[Tom Brake]

I am afraid that I shall again have to defer to my hon. Friend the Minister, who I am sure will pick up that point when he responds to the debate. I want to put on record some of the proposals that the coalition Government have listed in their programme—measures, or sentiments, that can address the situation. When the Minister responds, I hope that he can put some flesh on the bones of such sentiments, as well as give an indication of where the Government are going with housing, so that we have greater clarity about how housing provision and needs will be addressed.

We will promote a radical devolution of power and greater financial autonomy to local government and community groups. We will abolish local spatial strategies and return decision making on housing and planning to local councils. We will radically reform the planning system, to give neighbourhoods far greater ability to determine the shape of places in which their inhabitants live. We are exploring a range of measures to bring empty homes back into use, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) made clear in an intervention earlier. We are also looking at new trusts and perhaps ways of providing cheaper homes that people can buy—cheaper because community trusts hold the land separately.

[Emily Thornberry]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that David Orr from the National Housing Federation has said that changes to the planning system, such as the end of regional targets and the cut in investment, mean that the amount of affordable housing built in England this year could fall by 65%?

[Tom Brake]

I am aware of those concerns. However, a bottom-up approach to housing is required. Again, when the Minister responds to the debate, I hope that he will explain how the proposals in the coalition programme will help to increase the supply.

I want to mention the promotion of shared-ownership schemes. Registered social landlords, such as London and Quadrant led by David Montague, are proposing imaginative schemes, such as the “up to you” programme, to make homes available for people who might not be able to pay a deposit for a property.

The situation is challenging, but we have some solutions or partial solutions to the problem of housing need in London and beyond. I should like to ask the Minister a specific question—just to get some clarity—on the decent homes programme. Although the issue is a local one, it might affect other hon. Members. The London borough of Sutton was awarded partial funding for its decent homes programme shortly before the general election. I seek confirmation that that funding remains available, and I ask about the future of the programme, which was due to last for a number of years. Tenants and the Sutton Housing Partnership are interested in what will happen to the decent homes funding.

To conclude, we are clearly in a challenging situation as far as housing need in London is concerned. It is not something that has emerged in the past couple of months but has been a long-standing problem in London, with a shortage of supply of affordable homes and, indeed, homes for sale. I hope that the coalition Government can take on that situation and can address it in the next five years.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), who has a long history of bringing to this place for discussion matters on which Opposition Members work as a team. My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck)—I hope that she catches your eye, Mr Howarth—also has a long history of bringing such matters to this place.

As London MPs, we are not here to suggest that we have cracked housing issues in London. We all have a long track record of campaigning on them, and understanding them, largely because we know from our constituency surgeries that London is a tale of two cities—the two cities that my father found when he arrived here in 1956. He shared a one-bedroom flat with a small paraffin heater in Finsbury Park with five others. He is not with us today, but I know he is pleased that I now have a big house in Finsbury Park. That is the progress of immigration.

All of us in the Chamber have large homes, and all of us have employment, but we are here because either we are moving incrementally forward on housing or moving backwards. The Budget and its housing benefit issues will move us backwards. I predict that the result of the exodus from inner London to outer London will be equivalent to what happened in the Parisian suburbs and there will be social unrest in three or four years. It is right to put that on the record. That will be the consequence of the social cleansing of inner London. It is patently clear to all Members of Parliament who represent London constituencies that the face of homelessness, particularly in London, is a black and ethnic minority one. Those are the people who will be cast out of Westminster, Islington, Camden and Hackney to find their way and their homes as they will, against a backdrop of existing acute housing need in London.

We have a Mayor who is not committed to building the necessary affordable homes in the city. Looking at the list of Conservative local authorities, I find it pathetic that only 200 affordable homes were built in Westminster in the last year for which we have figures; just 100 were built in the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea and, even worse, in Richmond only 127 were built. Those authorities have the space and the opportunity, but over that period their attitude to building affordable homes was poor. That is the backdrop against which people will suffer.

Last Friday, an event was organised by the charity, TreeHouse, which supports families with young children on the autistic spectrum. I spent the afternoon on the Broadwater Farm estate with the Uddin family. I collected their son, Adil, from Broadwater Farm primary school, to be close to the family as they deal with their five-year-old’s serious autistic needs. There are eight of them and they live in a two-bedroom flat, which is typical of housing need in my constituency. My message to that poor family with six children is that their disability living allowance will probably be cut by the present Administration, so despite having a three-week-old child, they can forget any possibility of receiving the baby or toddler element of the child tax credit, because that will go too. Mr Uddin makes representations to me about housing need, but against a backdrop of 3,471 people on the temporary accommodation list in the London borough of Haringey and, as we speak, 818 in emergency accommodation, it is very unlikely that the family will be able to move from their two-bedroom flat, despite the fact that eight of them live there. Even worse, the new Government, because of their attitude to economic matters, has deemed that the housing pressure in our London borough is set to become even worse.

Opposition Members believe passionately that despite the tough economic times, the way through is to invest and to determine growth. This is an opportunity for a new deal arrangement for our country, and Liberal Democrat Members should remember the opportunities that Lloyd George put in place with his people’s Budget. It is a disgrace that hon. Members who represent areas such as Hornsey and Wood Green, and Bermondsey, where there are poor and needy constituents, support a Budget that will result in an exodus and social unrest. It is a disgrace.

[Tom Brake]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Lammy]

No, I will not give way. We have heard enough from the hon. Gentleman and, frankly, it was pretty poor.

One in eight people on housing benefit is unemployed, but many are workers—cleaners, shop workers, hospital porters and so on. The pressure that the Budget will put on them is unacceptable. It is a disgrace, and will lead to the sort of social unrest that I and my constituents saw in 1985 when unemployment was 20% in the constituency, and probably 40% among black people. We will see that again with the cutting of the future jobs fund alongside the ridiculous, nasty policy that underpins the Government.

[Mr Mike Hancock in the Chair]