Housing and Planning Bill

Tom Brake Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

In the main, council housing in this country is allocated on the basis of need.

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

Does the hon. Lady agree that the hard-working families who we see in our surgeries—I certainly see them in my surgery and I am sure that she sees them in hers—will get nothing from this measure? The single mum who is earning £17,000 and wants to get out of her dreadful private rented accommodation, which literally has rodents running around on the floor, will get nothing out of this, will she?

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a really good point; that person will get absolutely nothing.

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[Ben Howlett]

I completely agree. The sale of one high-value asset in a high-value area, such as Oxford, could enable more than just one new home to be built, because it costs a lot less to build, particularly given the current style of building adopted in some cities to keep up with demand. That is learning the lessons of the problems in the 1980s when these things were not taken into consideration, and it is thus another reason to back the Government’s proposals and not to listen to the wrecking amendments from the Lords.

I look forward to the housing revolution by 2020, and I hope that the House will reject the wrecking amendments from the House of Lords and back the Government on this vital Bill.

[Tom Brake]

I am a member of Sutton Housing Society Ltd, although I have no pecuniary interest.

I will start where the Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee finished, on the issue of supply. The Bill should be about supply in the widest sense, but while I do not doubt that Ministers are seeking to solve housing problems for some, I am afraid that the Bill will do nothing for the people I see regularly in my constituency surgeries. Nothing in it will help the single mother I referred to earlier, living and working in London on £17,000 a year and seeking a better private rented property or social housing through a housing association. Nor will it help the couple I saw a few months ago in a two-bedroom flat with three children, who could not afford the rent in a housing association property, let alone afford to buy in London.

We have heard about the Khan amendments, but perhaps I could throw in the Caroline Pidgeon amendments, which unfortunately do not feature in any of the strings today. The advantage of her proposal for London is that it includes a revenue stream of £2 billion to deliver the housing. Many have said they will deliver housing, but in practice we are still hundreds of thousands of properties short.

The Bill has been subject to an extraordinary number of amendments and no fewer than 13 Government defeats in the Lords, which is testimony to the fact that the Bill was presented to the House lacking a huge amount of detail and clarity. I thought we might get some here but that has not, I am afraid, been the case. The Bill contains provisions that will have extremely concerning consequences for housing in the UK and affordable housing in particular, and the fact that there has been such united cross-party opposition to the Bill in the Lords, including from Cross Benchers, indicates the depth of concern.

The Bill’s focus is on home ownership for better-off renters, but it neglects affordable homes to rent and clearly seeks to reduce the number of social homes provided by local authorities. As Opposition Members have said, the impact will undoubtedly be a rise in homelessness. Furthermore, far too much is being imposed on local authorities, in terms of sales of higher-value council homes, pay to stay and secure tenancies. It is encouraging, however, that the Government have taken on board some of the serious concerns and made concessions in relation to amendments 26 to 36, on abandonment, and amendments 90 and 91, on mandatory electrical safety checks for private tenants. Those are welcome.

I also welcome the Government’s recent inclusion in the Bill of a commitment to replace all homes sold off under the sale of higher-value properties. Replacements are critical to whether the Bill will have a devastating impact on social housing. In the past, promises of replacement have been made but not delivered, and as several Members have mentioned, it is critical that the replacement is like for like, in terms of the type of property, and in the same area.

In London, pay to stay is of particular concern. Some Members might be aware of a report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in 2014 that found that a family of two adults and two children needed an income of £40,000 to have an acceptable standard of living. That was an average across the whole country. Given that that was two years ago and an average for the country as a whole, it is clear that families on £40,000 in London would not be wealthy. I hope that the Government will look favourably on amendment 57, which would raise the threshold by £10,000 and might actually get people up to an acceptable standard of living before their income is reduced by rising rents in their social property. In addition, I will certainly support amendment 55, if it is pressed to a vote, and amendment 54. If they are pressed, I will also support amendments 9 and 47, which were debated earlier.

With that and within your five-minute margin, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will sit down.

[James Cartlidge]

I start by declaring my housing interests in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. They include a significant involvement in shared ownership, which it is almost impossible not to speak about in such a debate.

I want to focus on starter homes, on how they interact with other affordable home ownership products and, more importantly, on how they will affect my constituents. I am intrigued by the idea, in amendment 1, that someone would repay the 20% discount over 20 years. It is unclear how it would work in practice—I apologise for not having studied the Lords Hansard for a lengthy explanation. Would the money be repaid on the sale of the property only, or would it be a credit agreement repaid annually? If, on the sale of a property, someone’s circumstances had worsened or they were unemployed—people sell their properties when their circumstances change—would they still have to repay the equity discount from which they had benefited? We must remember that whenever we add complexity to a home ownership product, lenders do not like it and are less likely to be involved. I make that impartial observation as a former mortgage broker.

My other point about amendment 1 is that we must remember that it is relatively unprecedented in affordable home ownership products to have repayment of the subsidy from which the homeowner has benefited. With shared ownership, grant is implicit, but when someone sells their share, they do not repay the part that came from the Government grant. They have become a homeowner, and they benefit or otherwise from the increase in the value of the share.

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[Brandon Lewis]

I am happy to outline that there is additional help out there. We give money to local areas to do their neighbourhood plans, and to local authorities to support them in that work. We will continue to do that. I am always looking at more ways not just of promoting plans but of making sure that communities have the support that they need, from a wide network, including templates and other work.

We are tight on time, so I will move on. As I said earlier, the Government have listened. Permission in principle is a good example. Thanks to Lords amendment 100 the Bill now states explicitly that permission in principle can be granted only for housing-led development. We are happy to accept that amendment.

We are somewhat unconvinced, however, by amendment 108. It would increase the construction costs for home builders by an average of more than £3,000 on a semi-detached home, and place a regulatory burden of around £200 million a year on the industry. That will have an impact on all home builders—not just the big companies, but the small and medium-sized companies that we are looking to drive and help grow across England. We cannot accept the amendment. It would tip the balance, driving some small home builders out of the industry altogether and making housing development unviable in some areas. We already build some of the most energy-efficient homes in the world as a result of the tough building regulation standards we set in the last Parliament. In fact, there has been a 30% improvement on the standards before 2010, reducing energy bills by around £200 annually.

[Tom Brake]

Has the Minister attempted to calculate what homeowners would save each year in energy costs if the Government were to go for the enhanced standard?

[Brandon Lewis]

The right hon. Gentleman might want to reflect on the point I have just made about how we have reduced energy bills with that 30% improvement. We must balance that with the fact that a £3,000 increase in the cost of building a semi-detached home will lead to at least that increase—potentially even more—in the cost of buying one. That will not help home builders, and could slow down house building and make it harder for small businesses to come into the sector.

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[Antoinette Sandbach]

I know that the Minister is aware of my constituents’ feelings in the light of an avalanche of applications by developers against adopted neighbourhood plans and an avalanche of objections by developers to emerging neighbourhood plans. I have seen this in Tarporley, in Moulton and in Davenham. My constituents describe themselves as being under siege. In the light of the debate that we have had today, particularly on clause 97, I urge the Minister to take this opportunity to review the planning legislation so that we can have some certainty about the interplay between neighbourhood plans and local plans and provide stronger protections for residents such as mine in Eddisbury. My constituents have put time and effort into creating robust neighbourhood plans that have been passed by inspectors, but they now feel as though they are under siege. We need a full review of the planning process if we are to strengthen local democracy and achieve the localism that everyone in Eddisbury so desperately wants.

[Tom Brake]

I want to spend a couple of minutes on two amendments. I am disappointed by what the Minister had to say about amendment 108, which he said would cost homebuilders some £3,000. We heard from the Labour Front-Bench team that it might be as little as £1,500, and as builders get used to building homes to high emissions standards, I suspect that the cost will fall further in years to come. Over the lifetime of a property, the savings to its owners will be significant and much greater than £3,000—if that even is the figure. I am therefore disappointed that the Minister is not willing to support amendment 108.

The Minister said that amendment 110, which I will be pressing to a vote, was faulty, but it was not clear whether he was saying that it was defective. If that is the case, the Minister could have amended it in a way that was acceptable to him to ensure that it was not faulty. He has heard the long list of organisations, including the water industry, community groups, and a range of water management experts, that feel that the current arrangements for sustainable drainage systems are inadequate and unsatisfactory. Amendment 110 would ensure that developers provided SUDS to reduce the pressure on existing systems, which we know from the flooding up and down the country cannot cope with current levels of water.

If there is a vote on amendment 108 this evening, I will certainly support it. I will also press amendment 110 to a vote.