Provision of Council Housing Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
Warinder Juss
Main Page: Warinder Juss (Labour - Wolverhampton West)Department Debates - View all Warinder Juss's debates with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
Provision of Council Housing
Warinder Juss Excerpts(3 days, 3 hours ago)
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Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Ind)
Council housing is the first, most important and only viable solution to the housing crisis and to creating a society that matches the hopes of both the Labour movement and the wider public. Not long ago, under the leadership of the current Prime Minister, Labour Front Benchers now sitting in Cabinet declared that housing is a fundamental human right, that Labour would restore social housing as the second-largest tenure ahead of the private rented sector and that the mantra of Ministers as they did so would be “council housing, council housing, council housing”.
As voters continue to demand the change that the Labour Government were elected to deliver, now is the time to recapture the clarity and optimism of that vision. It bears repeating at the outset that solely expanding the market supply of housing is not a solution to providing the genuinely affordable homes that so many families across our country desperately need.
Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)
According to the charity Crisis, only 1.4% of one to three-bedroom properties in my constituency are affordable to renters who need housing benefits, while the number of people on the social housing waiting list in Wolverhampton has nearly tripled in three years and rents have surged by over 35% in the last five years. Does my hon. Friend agree that the housing emergency demands urgent and sustained action, and does he therefore welcome, as I do, this Government’s commitment to delivering the biggest increase in social and affordable house building in a generation?
Chris Hinchliff
I fully agree with my hon. Friend. The points he raises perfectly exemplify why the provision of council housing is so important.
England has seen 724,000 more net additional dwellings than new households since 2015, yet in the same period the number of households in England on local authority housing waiting lists rose by more than 74,000.