Housing — House of Commons, 2015-06-10
Topic: Housing
Christopher Laurie Malthouse (Conservative, Centre-right): I also congratulate you on your ascension, Madam Deputy Speaker I join the Secretary of State in lamenting the lack of humility from Labour over their previous policy. It was my colleague on the London Assembly, the charming Tom Copley, who blew the lid off its record by revealing that more social housing was built in the final year of Margaret Thatcher’s Administration than in the whole of the 13 years of Labour. The situation is even worse than that, however, because during those 13 years Labour created an unsustainable housing market, with rapidly rising prices, very thin mortgage equity requirements and a much looser credit situation than now. It then crashed the market and, once it had been revived, decided that the best thing to do was to propose a tax on it—the mansion tax. That is no solution to what is an extremely pressing problem There is much to commend in the Government’s plan presented in our manifesto and the proposed Bill, which addresses access to the market as well as supply. The brownfield register; the housing zone; the promotion of garden towns, the starter homes—all that is extremely welcome, but there are two areas I particularly want to address. One is the extension of right to buy, which I support. It has much potential to enable the same social change and progression that the right to buy council housing did during the 1980s and 1990s. I want, however, to bring two areas to my right hon. Friend’s attention. One was eloquently highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry): exceptions for small rural communities, particularly in extremely delightful areas to live, such as large parts of my constituency, where there is pressure on housing already—I will not elaborate on that. Secondly, will the Secretary of State consider a transferable discount, so that housing association tenants can realise the value of their discount and transfer it into the private sector, with various conditions applied. That might solve the problem of disposing of the house, but also give them the freedom to move on The second area I want to talk about, which sadly is not mentioned in the motion, is the role of the planning system, particularly the Planning Inspectorate. One of the revolutions that the previous Government introduced was the notion of local neighbourhood plans. I am pleased to say that large parts of my constituency have embraced the idea with extreme enthusiasm. From larger settlements, such as Whitchurch, Oakley, Kingsclere and Overton, to small villages, such as St Mary Bourne in the middle of my constituency, people have worked hard on their local neighbourhood plan. It has excited much interest in the community and quite a lot of debate, and for the first time in these areas, people feel as if planning is something being done with them, rather than to them Still hovering above them, however, is the role of the Planning Inspectorate. I hope that over the next few months or weeks, as we debate the Bill, we can address the issue of the inspectorate and the game of poker that its existence creates in the planning system for local authorities. Far from smoothing the passage of planning applications, the planning inspectorate is more often used, I find, as an excuse to slow things down, as a complicated game of chicken is played between developer, local authority and local community about what each thinks the planning inspector will deal with. If localism is really to take hold, locally elected democratic representatives, including the Mayor of London—even with his vast majority and mandate, he has to bear in mind the chap in a suit from Bristol—will have to play a part in dealing with the possibly negative effect of the planning inspectorate. I think that any fear and loathing generated in communities by this problem needs to be addressed Finally, let me say a few words about homelessness. The shadow Secretary of State tried to offer a simplistic solution to the rough-sleeping problem by saying that it is just about housing. That does a disservice to those many people who unfortunately find themselves on the street. There are complicated issues relating to mental health, alcohol, drug addition, previous life experience—particularly for the high proportion of rough sleepers who have been in the forces and might have post-traumatic stress disorder or other mental health problems—that need to be addressed. Having worked as a councillor on this issue, I am aware that many people living on the street are very hard to help. Offering them just housing as a solution will often not get them very far It was Ronald Reagan who said: "There is no limit to the amount of good you can do" in politics, "if you don’t care who gets the credit." I am extremely pleased to see my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in his place on the Front Bench. We were councillors together, and he has worked very hard on the localism agenda over the last five years. It is good to see him in a position where he is able both to achieve great things for housing in this country and to take much of the credit.