Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
Roberta Carol Blackman-Woods (Labour, Centre-left): I am sorry, I would normally give way to the hon. Gentleman, but we are very short of time At least we on the Labour Benches recognise the scale of the task at hand. Current rates of house building in England are running at about half the level needed to meet existing and anticipated demand. We need to deliver an average of 240,000 to 245,000 homes per annum, of which 78,000 must be in the social sector, to meet housing need. That is a very long way from where we are at present, and measures in this Bill do little to address the task at hand Looking at right to buy, Labour is not against measures that would increase access to home ownership, but we have always said that the extension of the right-to-buy scheme to housing associations funded by the mass forced sale of affordable council homes is unworkable and wrong. It would lead to a severe and irreversible loss of affordable homes at a time when they are most needed, because there is no plan for a genuine one-to-one, like-for-like replacement According to figures estimated by Shelter, 19,000 council homes could be sold by 2020, with a further 113,000 at risk. In fact, since 2012, only one in nine council homes sold under the existing right-to-buy scheme has been replaced, so we can only estimate that the loss of socially rented stock will be substantial, with high-need areas of the country especially badly affected. The right-to-buy policy also leaves many questions unanswered, including whether all 1.3 million tenants will get the right to buy next year as promised We do of course also welcome the principle behind starter homes allowing those who can afford to do so to climb on to the property ladder. However, they are not, and should not be, a substitute for low-rent affordable housing. The proposals in the Bill to change planning obligations under section 106 agreements to prioritise the delivery of starter homes mean that they will simply replace the building of affordable rented housing There is a further problem with the starter home proposals. Put simply, starter homes are not affordable for many, even by the Chancellor’s own standards. A family living on the Chancellor’s new minimum wage of £9 an hour in 2020 would not be able to afford a starter home in 98% of the country The pay-to-stay measure to charge higher rents to some tenants is also extremely problematic. The very idea that a household income of £30,000 outside London, or £40,000 in London, is high is questionable at best, but as the income needed to sustain a basic standard of living varies hugely by household type—for example more income being needed for a family with two children than a single person—the proposals are ludicrous. We know from the Government’s own consultation that we are not the only people to think so. The Government’s 2013 consultation on pay to stay found that, even with much higher threshold levels, only 25% of respondents were in favour of the policy Labour supports measures in the Bill to crack down on rogue landlords and letting agents, but they fall far short of ensuring that England’s 11 million renters have a more secure, affordable home We wish to thank the Minister for adopting some of our proposals from the Lyons review, and the measures to speed up neighbourhood planning, to require local plans to be made, to streamline the compulsory purchase system and to prioritise building on brownfield land are to be welcomed. We have concerns about wider changes to the planning system and we will raise questions on them in Committee This Bill should be a Bill to tackle a crisis faced by thousands—a crisis in which people cannot afford a home, can barely afford their rents and, in the worst cases, are sleeping rough because they simply do not have a home. Instead, this Bill is an all-out assault on social housing, a smash and grab on council stock and a power steal from local authorities and councils. Under the previous Labour Government, home ownership increased, but it is falling now. The Bill does nothing to address five years of failure; indeed, it does not detail how a single affordable home will be built. Frankly, I am appalled that the Bill, which has 106 pages, does not mention homelessness once. We need a Bill that will increase the number of homes built across all tenures and I urge colleagues to vote for our reasoned amendment.