argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
Tristram Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): First, will the Secretary of State confirm that the National Housing Federation does not support the sale of council housing property to fund this policy? Secondly, will he confirm that the purchase of housing association properties will be available to EU nationals after paying taxes for just three years?
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
John Healey (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State will know that housing associations have a long, proud history as independent bodies and that the main reason many signed up to this voluntary deal was to avoid their reclassification as public bodies by the Office for National Statistics, but it has now done just that. When did he know that this reclassification was on the cards? Was it before or after he made the agreement with the housing associations?
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
John Healey (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State gives the House partial information. He will know also that the ONS made this decision in the light of government accounting changes introduced in 2011, not just the provisions of the 2008 Act. So I ask him again: what does he say to those housing associations that believe he has acted in bad faith, knowing this reclassification was on the cards but still willing to do the deal with them?
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Other
Emily Thornberry (Labour, Centre-left): The point of order is this, Mr Speaker. The Secretary of State speaks again and again about the Bill’s importance in relation to London, but will not take any interventions from any London Members on the Opposition Benches.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Immigration
Tulip Rizwana Siddiq (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State read out a long e-mail earlier. Perhaps he would like to listen to an e-mail that I received from a single mother who is worried about the new threshold that is being applied to the "pay to stay" measure, as a result of which families such as hers, on middle incomes, will be pushed into high levels of poverty in places such as Hampstead and Kilburn.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
John Healey (Labour, Centre-left): I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from "That" to the end of the Question and add: "this House, whilst affirming its support for helping more people, particularly young people, to own their own homes and welcoming measures in the Bill that restrict the operation of rogue private landlords and letting agents, declines to give a Second Reading to the Housing and Planning Bill because the Bill will not help most people struggling to buy their own home, will mean a severe loss of affordable homes for local communities across England, will centralise significant powers in the hands of the Secretary of State and deprive councils of the capacity to meet the housing needs of their communities and local people of a proper say in the planning process, and will weaken the obligation of private developers to contribute towards affordable homes for local people After five years of failure on housing under Conservative Ministers, we desperately needed a Bill to give people who have been hit by the cost of housing crisis some hope that things will change. This is not that Bill There are some parts of the Bill that we welcome, but I have to say that they are few and far between. We welcome steps to control the worst private landlords, to help young people get their first foot in the housing market, and to speed up compulsory purchase. We aim to make those steps much stronger as the Bill goes through Parliament. However, if you are a young person or a family earning an ordinary income and trying to get on, then this is a bad Bill. If you want to buy your own home, then these so-called starter homes are a non-starter for you, and they are unaffordable to most people on average incomes. If you are a working family on modest wages in a council or housing association home, then you face your rent being hiked as a result of the Bill. If you are worried about rising rents and insecurity in your private rented home—one in four families with kids in England now brings them up in private rented accommodation—this Bill does nothing for you.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
Joan Marie Ryan (Labour, Centre-left): Average rents in Enfield now consume 46% of average weekly income, which is unsustainable for families. We need an increase in affordable homes. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, unless it is significantly amended, the Bill will lead to a decrease in affordable homes and do nothing to help those families?
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
John Healey (Labour, Centre-left): My right hon. Friend is right. The Bill will lead to a decrease in the number of affordable rented homes, as well as affordable homes to buy, and to a huge loss in such numbers, particularly in areas such as Enfield. She is right to point to the problem that those in private rented accommodation now face with ever-rising rents, but if she looks at the Conservative manifesto, she will not find a single word about the millions of people who face spending their whole lives in private rented accommodation. That is why the Bill does so little for them and is such a big missed opportunity.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
Stephen James McCabe (Labour, Centre-left): I was intrigued when I listened to the email that was read out earlier. The other night a young woman who lives in private rented accommodation came to see me. Does she not have the same aspiration to own her own home? Why can we sell off only council and housing association houses? Why is the private rented sector completely protected in the Bill?
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
John Healey (Labour, Centre-left): The real weakness in the private rented sector is that people who rent their homes from private landlords have so little protection, so few rights, and so little basic redress when their landlord does not do what they should as part of their obligations.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
John Healey (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman is right, but perhaps he should address his remarks to the Secretary of State. In the previous Government the Tories built the smallest number of affordable homes in this country for more than two decades—10,920 affordable homes for social rent. That compares with three times that number in the last year of the last Labour Government, which, incidentally, was when I was Housing Minister.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
John Healey (Labour, Centre-left): It is quite the contrary. I was a strong supporter of the affordable homes programme, and I negotiated with the rest of the Government an unprecedented switch of £1.5 billion from other Departments so that we could build more genuinely affordable rented homes to help bring the country through the recession. If the hon. Gentleman looks at his Government’s record, he will see that eight out of 10 of the affordable homes for social rent that they claim they have built were started and funded through decisions that I made as Labour’s last Housing Minister.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
John Healey (Labour, Centre-left): I regret that—just as in the last five years of this Government—we did not do enough to ensure that when council homes were sold, there was enough funding to ensure that they could be replaced fully, one for one, like for like, and in the area in which they were lost. That big flaw in this Bill will become more and more exposed in every area, including in the constituencies of Conservative Members, in each of the next five years.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
John Healey (Labour, Centre-left): There were failings in the way banks and the financial services were regulated in this country and every other developed country. What I do regret is that perhaps our Ministers listened too hard to the Conservative party, which was urging us to cut the regulation of the banking sector. What I am proud of is that when that deep economic recession hit, driven by the global banking crisis, ours was a Government prepared to step in to try to help the country through that deep recession—to help people stay in jobs, to help businesses keep going, and to help people stay in their own homes. I was proud to play a part in that with a £4 billion affordable housing programme building the affordable homes to rent and buy that people needed across the country—£4 billion in 2009-10 cut under this Government to less than two thirds of a billion pounds.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
Clive Stanley Efford (Labour, Centre-left): One of the first acts of the Conservative-Liberal coalition when it came into power was to scrap the home start scheme which had the aim of keeping us building homes, instead of seeing them stalled because of the lack of backing from the banks. Fewer homes were repossessed during the deepest recession we had had in nearly a century compared with any recession under the Tories.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
John Healey (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend and I worked very closely on this and he is right. The kick-start programme of putting public money into re-starting building on sites that were stalled because of the deep global banking crisis and recession was part of building the homes we needed and creating the jobs we needed, and because we also insisted on apprenticeships in return for that support, we got more apprenticeships across the country. In terms of the mortgage rescue scheme, my hon. Friend will remember that in the last Tory recession of 1991 they put nothing in place. They were not concerned about homeowners who were faced with the repossession of their homes, and despite a much deeper recession and much more serious economic problems, our mortgage rescue scheme meant that more than a third fewer people than in the 1991 recession had to lose their homes and lose the basis on which they were building their lives.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
Andrew Francis Slaughter (Labour, Centre-left): Does my right hon. Friend agree that the common thread running through this Bill is an attack on social housing which will exacerbate the social cleansing the Tories are carrying out in London in particular? The so-called starter homes programme will, in the words of Shelter, help only "those already earning high salaries who should be able to afford" a home on the open market. A £450,000 home is not an affordable home.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Other
John Healey (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend anticipates one of my main criticisms of the Bill. He also anticipates one of the major criticisms of many people who have taken what Conservative Ministers said at face value, because the more they look the less they will like what they see, and the more they look the less they will see support for them and their aspirations in future.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
Dawn Petula Butler (Labour, Centre-left): According to the Government’s own figures, with 200 right to buys being sold in Brent and replacement starts at zero, we are already in a deficit of 200 homes. With £450,000 being 20 times the average salary in Brent, does my right hon. Friend agree that we need to start building genuinely affordable homes for less than £450,000 as soon as possible?
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
John Healey (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is right. In truth the scale and cost of the housing crisis we face in this country requires every part of the housing sector, from private house builders to housing associations to councils, to do a great deal more, and we need more homes of all types, including social rented homes. The fundamental flaw with this Bill and this Government’s plans is that they put all the chips on starter homes and on home ownership. I am going to come on to why this is such a mistake for the homes we need in the future.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
Rushanara Ali (Labour, Centre-left): Is my right hon. Friend concerned, as I am, that smaller housing associations are already beginning to streamline their programmes? For example, 150 households in Tower Hamlets, mainly consisting of key workers, have been told by East Thames housing that they are on intermediate market rent schemes and must either express an interest to buy their homes within a week or face eviction within two weeks. Is not this an unforeseen consequence of the proposals? Will he ask the Government what plans they have to do something about those families?
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
John Healey (Labour, Centre-left): This is not an unforeseen consequence; it is the logical consequence of the Conservatives’ policies in the Bill. The danger of giving housing associations this gung-ho freedom and creating a dash to build is that many longstanding housing associations—although not East Thames, which is relatively new—will see this as a green light to become almost indistinguishable from private developers. The big risk is that some of them will lose sight of their social mission and that their boards, trustees and directors will simply not be strong enough to represent their tenants’ long-term interests or to ensure that we get the mix of homes we need.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
Emma Elizabeth Reynolds (Labour, Centre-left): Does my right hon. Friend agree that, in contrast to the consensual approach that the Secretary of State talks about, housing associations are suffering uncertainty about their assets and have had their so-called 10-year agreement on rent disrupted? Because they rely heavily on borrowing from the markets, some of them—including the Genesis housing association—are saying that they are not going to build any more affordable homes. Others are revising down the numbers that they were going to build. This is happening as a result of this Bill.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
John Healey (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend knows as much about this as anyone in the House, and in her characteristic way she has put her finger on a fundamental problem that the Secretary of State and his Ministers are now facing. It is a problem of trust. Just three years ago, councils and housing associations were given a 10-year guarantee on the rents that would be in place for them and the properties they manage, so that they could plan their businesses’ development and maintenance. How can they now trust this Secretary of State and his Ministers to keep their word in the future? This is a serious problem for housing associations. How can they trust a voluntary deal, the terms of which are not in the Bill? They have no guarantee that the Secretary of State or his successor will not welch on the deal, or that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will not march in with his big boots to override the Secretary of State. Unless the guarantees that they are seeking as a basis for this deal are placed in the legislation, I fear the worst for them.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
John Healey (Labour, Centre-left): This is a problem. We are not being given the details of the so-called vote taken by housing associations to enter this voluntary deal. The deal does not reflect the majority, or certainly a large number, of associations, which did not respond or were not consulted. There are serious questions for the Secretary of State about this. Despite many of the housing associations saying that they do not want to sign up to the deal—or not having said that they will do so—the Bill will nevertheless give regulators the power to enforce compliance by those housing associations on "home ownership" measures. How can we take at face value the words of Ministers about this being a voluntary deal for housing associations when behind it lies regulation that will enforce compliance? And if the right to buy is not put in place, what will happen to the tenants? The Secretary of State hardly mentioned them in his speech. How can there be a "right" to buy without the legislation to create that right? Without that legislation, and without giving tenants the ability to challenge landlords if they say no, this will not be a right to buy; it will be a right to beg to buy.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
John Healey (Labour, Centre-left): I am a little surprised at that intervention, because the hon. Gentleman has had experience of serving on the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government. If he had listened harder to the point my hon. Friend made, he would know that she was talking about tenants who are on intermediate rents and who do not have the sort of protection and rights he claims they have. This is a real problem. This is a straw in the wind. This is potentially a sign of problems to come Ministers have spent the past Parliament blaming Labour, but they have their own track record now. The inescapable background to this Bill is that that record is one of five years of failure on every front. The Secretary of State devoted most of his speech to home ownership, but that fell each and every year in the last Parliament—each and every year since 2010. It is at its lowest level for a generation. The number of home-owning households reduced by 200,000 under that Government, whereas it increased by more than 1 million under the Labour Government before them.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
John Healey (Labour, Centre-left): Oh dear, Madam Deputy Speaker! Is that really the best the Secretary of State can do? In 2009, when I was Labour’s Housing Minister, we were struggling with the deepest recession, following the global financial crisis. I was putting in place programmes to help lift the economy and, more importantly, to set up the mortgage rescue scheme, which helped homeowners who were struggling with their finances to stay in their homes. It will not wash to have the Secretary of State and Ministers continually coming back to what happened under Labour. They have had five years and it is their record—and on home ownership, young people have been hit the hardest. The number of young people owning their own home now has fallen by more than a fifth since 2010.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
John Healey (Labour, Centre-left): I am not going to give way, as I have given plenty of chances and I will give way later on. I am going to make some progress now While family incomes have stagnated, ever-rising private rents on new lettings are up by a fifth—by £1,600 a year—since 2010. Homelessness halved under Labour, but it is up by more than a third under the Tories, and it is rising rapidly. Housing benefit costs to the taxpayer have risen by almost £4.5 billion during the past five years, despite some punishing cuts for ordinary people, such as the bedroom tax. At the same time, housing investment was slashed On house building, I say to the Secretary of State that the House of Commons has confirmed to me that the last Government built fewer homes than any peacetime Government since Lloyd George’s in the 1920s. [Interruption.] The Minister for Housing and Planning is chuntering away, but if he does not take this from the House of Commons, let me draw his attention to his own Department’s statistics. The Department’s live table 213 shows him that the lowest number of homes built under Labour was in 2009, when the figure was 124,980. That was at the depths, following the deepest economic crisis and recession for 100 years, but it was still higher than in 2014, the year in which the highest number of homes—117,720—were built under the Tories. They have had five years of failure on all fronts. This Bill does nothing to correct the causes of that failure, and in many areas it will make things much worse Let me turn now to the content of the Bill. [Interruption.] Well, I can certainly stop taking interventions from hon. Members. That is what has held me up.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
John Healey (Labour, Centre-left): No, I will not give way, as it is clear that the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues want me to carry on Young people and families on ordinary incomes face a cost-of-housing crisis. The need for affordable homes has never been greater. This Bill sounds the death knell for our ability to build the affordable homes to rent and buy that are so badly needed in urban and rural areas alike. It strangles the ability and the obligation of the public and private sectors to build affordable homes.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
Elizabeth Louise Kendall (Labour, Centre-left): Does my right hon. Friend agree that shared ownership is one of the most affordable options for low and middle-income families? Indeed, Shelter says that 95% of those families would be able to afford a three-bedroom home with shared ownership. Does he agree that this Bill is a huge missed opportunity for a big shake-up in this area? It is exactly the sort of thing on which we should focus if we want more people to be able to own affordable homes in future.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
John Healey (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is absolutely right. When I talk about affordable homes to rent and to buy, I talk, in large part, about those shared ownership homes, which are often built because of obligations on developers, and often managed by housing associations, which will get choked off under this Bill. I will come to that point in a moment.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
John Healey (Labour, Centre-left): No Clauses 56 to 72 require the forced sell-off of affordable council homes to fund an extension of the right to buy to housing association homes. It is a power for the Chancellor to impose an annual levy on councils. Honestly, this is like some pre-Magna Carta monarch running short of cash for his exploits. There is no prospect and no plan for the proper replacement of these homes. There is no one-for-one, like-for-like replacement with new homes, and certainly not in the area where they are lost. This is unworkable and wrong, and we will oppose it.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
Rachael Helen Maskell (Labour, Centre-left): In York, we have more than 3,000 people who have the aspiration to rent homes from the council, and yet a city such as York, which is a high-value area, will have to sell about 1,500 of those homes. Are there not perverse financial incentives in the Bill?
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-02
Topic: Housing
John Healey (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She has just heard me describe these provisions as unworkable and wrong. She has just heard me say that we will oppose them in the Division tonight, and we will challenge them at each stage of this Bill through Parliament. I hope that she will help my colleagues and I on the Front Bench do just that. The truth is that, in many areas of the country—both rural and urban, especially in London—the council homes that are flogged off will not go to families who are struggling to buy for the first time; they will go to speculators and to buy-to-let landlords. The greater the demand for affordable housing in an area and the higher the value of the houses, the more the Chancellor will take in his annual levy.