argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-08
Topic: Housing
Dale Norman Campbell-Savours (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I have some difficulty with all these amendments. I was not going to speak because it exposes my difficulty; however, I will do so briefly. When the then Conservative Government decided to introduce the right-to-buy policy in the early 1980s, I was one of a very few Labour MPs who had reservations about opposing it. That was because my constituency at the time was in quite a deprived area with a lot of property in very bad condition, and the only way round that problem that I could see was to incentivise people on estates to buy their homes and thereby spread a culture of prettifying those estates and making them look pleasanter and nicer to live in. Under that scheme, gardens were done up, windows and doors were changed, roofs were redone—all sorts of changes took place. When I look back over the years, I see that that scheme worked. However, the problem was that while I was living up there I was also living in London and I could never understand the justification for selling local authority housing in London. That has been an absolute disaster. When I checked this morning, I found that 43% of all the local authority property in Westminster has been sold off. A lot of it is now in the hands of private landlords—we are trying to get the statistics for that in Westminster—who very often charge four times the rent levied by the local authority. This Bill will denude London of most of its public housing stock. That will be the product of the Bill. I consider the estimate that 76% of this housing in Westminster will be sold to be an underestimate. I think that a lot more housing will go from the public sector than anyone ever imagined. Therefore, I have a dilemma: in parts of the country I can see the justification for this measure, but in other parts it will be an absolute disaster The Government say that we should leave this issue to the housing associations to decide. However, as cuts are imposed and as housing associations find that they have reduced resources, they will feel under pressure to sell. Therefore, what may appear to be a voluntary arrangement now will become a de facto mandatory measure because the housing associations will need to draw in this money to enable them to invest further My noble friend has moved an amendment which is particularly important in many ways. I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Horam: I think it is possible to replace stock in the same borough—you just build high rise. If you compare high-rise and low-rise property, the figures stack up. I think I read somewhere that Boris Johnson—or was it Goldsmith?—had extracted an agreement from the Government whereby they were going to have to replace two for one in London. That is what we are talking about. Obviously, the Government have calculated that it is possible to do it, so my noble friend’s amendment must surely be in order. The reasoning of my former noble friend, the noble Lord, Lord Horam, must be wrong. The Government believe it is possible.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-08
Topic: Housing
Dale Norman Campbell-Savours (Labour, Centre-left): I see. If that is the case, and they are not in the same borough, it does not comply with the spirit of my noble friend’s amendment If you get up at 6.30 or 7 am and get on a Tube train or a bus, it is full of people going to work. They are the people who service London and they cannot be coming in from Watford or outer London. They have got to have homes in central London because they service it. There is a whole world, which many noble Lords do not even know exists, of people getting up at unearthly hours of the morning to go to work. I wonder where they are going to live if 43% of Westminster is already sold off. Camden expects to sell off a huge amount of its property portfolio. Where are these people going to live? They are going to have to come in from the outskirts on Tube trains and buses. They will be exhausted. The whole arrangement is wrong Although people like me can see the case for the right to buy and believe it does work in certain areas, there are some parts of the country where it should not be allowed. If it is allowed, it must be on the basis of replacement by like property in the area where the property is being sold off. Otherwise, we totally disrupt the demography of central London in a way which is contrary to the public interest.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-08
Topic: Housing
Jeremy Hugh Beecham (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Foster, has referred to the many attempts over the years to introduce a right-to-buy policy, which eventually came to pass. It is one thing to have a right-to-buy policy when you are building a lot of houses anyway; it is quite another when you are falling far short of demand and of meeting need for new houses. That has been a chronic situation for the past few years, and it has not materially improved. That is the context in which the issues have to be considered Having said that, I agree with the noble Lord that the wording of Amendment 57 may not be perfect; it is a question of replacing like for like, not just one for one. Unfortunately, the way in which much new housing has taken shape over the last few years means that we are looking at very small units. I keep saying this, but it is a fact—housing units built in this country are smaller than in any other major country in Europe. We are looking at, frankly, expensive housing offering little in the way of space in the market generally and, equally, in the event of a replacement scheme. I rather regret that my noble friend and I did not include like for like in the amendment. We may have to revert to that, because it would not do much good to replace a two-bedroom or three-bedroom house with a one-bedroom house or something equally small. The temptation to do that, I suspect, given the high land prices in London, would be very great It will be interesting to see whether the Minister agrees that we have to look at what we are replacing, rather than purely the numbers.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-08
Topic: Housing
Roy Kennedy (Labour, Centre-left): Does the noble Baroness think it is regrettable that if this carries on, we will lose social housing in the centre of London? The risk is that it will go to the outer London boroughs, and here in the centre of London there will be less social housing for rent.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-08
Topic: Other
Roy Kennedy (Labour, Centre-left): The noble Baroness mentioned the figures for starts. Does she have the figures for where those starts are in London? They may not be available now, but it would be very helpful if she could provide them.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-08
Topic: Housing
Patricia Hollis (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister emphasised, perfectly sensibly I think, that housing associations should have some discretion in how they meet local needs and what types of housing they provide. I also take the point about shared ownership. Will she extend that same freedom so that housing associations can replace housing with social housing at social rents rather than at affordable rents, given that affordable rents are nearly double social rents? At the moment, they are not allowed to by the Government. Given this new localist agenda for housing associations, will she restore their freedom to them?
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-08
Topic: Housing
William David McKenzie (Labour, Centre-left): Perhaps the Minister could help me out on this. Great faith is being placed in housing associations. I accept that—they have a great track record—but in reality there will not be enough housing to deal with all the need in every area of the country. How does she expect housing associations to deal with that constraint?
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-08
Topic: Housing
William David McKenzie (Labour, Centre-left): That is helpful, but in so far as they do not fully cover the position, the residual risk and obligation will fall on the local authority to pick up the homeless, those who are disadvantaged and those who cannot access properties via housing associations. Is that right?
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-08
Topic: Housing
William David McKenzie (Labour, Centre-left): On the basis of our discussion before the dinner break, we identified that councils were picking up the tab for this policy. It seems that they will also have to pick up the tab when it fails people who have housing need.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-08
Topic: Housing
Roy Kennedy (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this short debate. It highlighted the problems we have with this part of the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Horam, said that we are not like Paris or New York where people have been priced out of parts of those cities. They are unable to live there because they cannot afford to be there. I agree that we are not there, and I would never want us to get to that situation. London is one of the greatest cities in the world, and it works because you have rich and poor people living on the same street, living side by side and getting on very well together. That is how London works. It may not be the Government’s intention, but the Bill could create a situation where people are driven out of whole parts of London, which would be bad. We cannot have everybody doing key-worker jobs or in modest or lower-paid jobs all living in outer London boroughs. That would not be right. It worries me that we will get to that situation with the policy we are pursuing today We will come back to this on Report. I look forward to the information on housing starts that the Minister said she will send us. It will be very interesting to know where those starts are.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-08
Topic: Housing
Jeremy Hugh Beecham (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I should confess that this amendment is not well drafted—I blame my noble friend for that—because the intention is not clear from the terms of the amendment. It would add a fourth provision to Clause 62 in relation to grants by the Secretary of State, the effect of which would be, allegedly, to prevent property sold under right to buy being converted into buy-to-let dwellings for a period of 10 years. I do not think that the way it is worded achieves that objective. The objective is clearly to avoid a situation in which properties bought under right to buy are sold within 10 years for buy-to-let purposes. The wording does not achieve that. If we revert to this on Report, it will have to be revised I suppose a better way of putting it would be that if such a house were sold the grant made in respect of the original purchase should then be repaid—in other words, putting it the other way round. The noble Lord, Lord Young, is nodding, so that must be right. The reality is that we are talking about potentially very large rents being charged for properties of this kind. I can illustrate the situation. I have referred to Islington before. My daughter now lives there and my son used to live there. The flat that he occupied was all of 286 square feet and is now on the market at a rent of £1,500 a month. It is quite extraordinary. So unless there is some sort of provision for preventing the maximisation of rents by private landlords ultimately moving in on properties acquired from housing associations under rights to buy, this economic cleansing, as I think we might reasonably describe it, will continue and we will have precisely the hollowing out of parts of the city to which others have referred, both here and abroad. I hope that some consideration will be given to preventing the situation advancing by this recoupment suggestion, even if it has not been properly expressed in the terms of the amendment as tabled. I beg to move.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-08
Topic: Housing
Patricia Hollis (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am sympathetic to the intent of my noble friend’s amendment although, like him, I have reservations about the way it is drafted. I want to put the question back to the Minister. I do not think that anyone would wish to undermine the capacity of people, particularly young people, to become homeowners, and that is not what we are debating today. The problem is that, given that the scheme is being baited—I use that word deliberately —with huge discounts in some cases, with some people who have spent five or 10 years in housing association property getting a return of 300% or 400% on the rent that they have already paid coming back to them in the form of a discount, how is the Minister, who must share our concerns about this, going to inhibit the rapid recycling of that property into the private rented sector The Chancellor has accepted that this has been abused in various forms and has sought to put some financial controls over the tax reliefs and so on that private landlords may receive. No one doubts that there are many good landlords trying to do a decent job by their tenants and charging them a reasonable rent, but this is such high-profit territory that I know that there are scores of wide boys out there just waiting to take advantage of housing association tenants in order to produce sales back into the private rented sector at inflated prices—and then who pays the bill Those people may or may not have gone on to buy another home, but the process turns the house into a private rented house. We have seen what has happened with our own eyes when that has happened on council estates: it has sent some streets skidding downwards, to the resentment not only of council tenants who did not buy but of council tenants who did. They see their estates contaminated by the spread of precarious, insecure and low-paid but high-rent-paying tenants on the one hand and students on the other, with no leverage over their landlords to get them to maintain the property or keep it up to a decent standard, for fear of eviction How is the Minister going to ensure that the purpose of all of this, which is, after all, to give housing association tenants the same rights as local authority tenants to buy their own homes in which they have lived, is not exploited and abused for a quick buck to increase numbers in a tenancy that will, ultimately, be of poorer quality and infinitely more expensive for the rest of us? On the first round, the local authorities will be financing the discounts; on the second round, the taxpayers will be funding the increased housing benefit bill as those properties get cycled into the private rented sector. How does the Minister expect to control that abuse—and it is an abuse, because that is not what this is all about—if she cannot come forward with some scheme, not necessarily the same as what my noble friend has identified, but some form of control?
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-08
Topic: Housing
Dale Norman Campbell-Savours (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, there will be abuse, and the incentives are very substantial. I have some figures on what is happening in Westminster which might be of interest to Members of the House. The average cost of a one-bedroom council flat in Westminster is £113.78 a week. When it is sold off and in the private sector, that same flat now fetches £480 a week. That is nearly four times as much. A two-bed flat is £128 a week in the social sector and £450 a week when it is sold off. A four-bed flat is £157 a week in Westminster and £738 a week when it is in the private sector. We are talking about former council flats here. That is £38,500 a year after tax for a former council flat that would be rented out today at £157 a week if it was still in the public sector. These figures are an absolute scandal. The Government are promoting all this in the Bill, and we cannot see why they insist on doing it Westminster City Council has its own residential department, CityWest Homes, which at least tries to bring some sanity to this market, but its rents are very high as well. The problem is essentially that private landlords and estate agents in London market these properties at silly prices, and they have a market. Who is the market? People I have discussed this with now tell me that these flats are not being taken by former council tenants in receipt of housing benefit because of the cap. I am told that 70% of all Westminster council flats that have been sold off now go to overseas tenants, because, obviously, they have the money. In other words, we are shifting people out of London into the suburbs and using the properties in which they formerly lived as private accommodation, which is being let to people from overseas who come to London. This is an absolute scandal, and I cannot see the sanity in what the Government are doing. That is all I need to say at this stage of the debate.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-08
Topic: Housing
Dale Norman Campbell-Savours (Labour, Centre-left): And on top of that, some people object to the fact that people can sell in London a council flat—for which they have perhaps paid a low rent for a number of years—leave London, retire to the countryside and live off the income that was gained simply by selling what was essentially public property. Sometimes—it gets worse—they move abroad. People from abroad, who are not even British citizens, buy this property and then live abroad on the rental income gained from tenants who are overpaying within the United Kingdom. The whole thing is ludicrous.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-08
Topic: Housing
Jeremy Hugh Beecham (Labour, Centre-left): If people are moving in, paying the private rent and relying on housing benefit, that is a cost to the Exchequer, and if they pay the sort of rents that my noble friend referred to, they are likely to be in a much better position than other people in greater housing needs who cannot afford it.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-08
Topic: Housing
William David McKenzie (Labour, Centre-left): Can the Minister help me out? She said that the solution to stopping properties being turned into buy to let was the new stamp duty provisions. However, if somebody acquires a property under the right to buy and then in due course vacates it and enters into a letting agreement, where does the stamp duty bite on that?
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-08
Topic: Housing
Patricia Hollis (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, when the Minister has a chance—perhaps over the weekend—to look at the "Dispatches" programme, would she like to reflect on the information given to that programme by experienced housing professionals? It concerns the implications of illegal deferred sales, in which the money does indeed come from the wide boys and is given to an older person to buy, and many of these people will be pensioners. The arrangement then allows the house to be reclaimed five or eight years on when the pensioner dies. It is a malign form of equity release—if you like, a rolled-up mortgage payment. I hope that she will look at that. Socially, the housing professionals—obviously, it was a television programme and I do not know what the other side of the argument might have been—scandalise me, and I think the Minister, as a local authority person, will also be scandalised at what is being reported there.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-08
Topic: Housing
Jeremy Hugh Beecham (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I think that the Minister overlooks the impact of allowing these properties to be re-let, particularly in London but also in other places of high demand where what had been, effectively, social housing will become housing on the market for the maximum rent that can be extracted from it. That is effectively at the cost of those who cannot afford that kind of rent or that kind of property, and who will remain stuck. They are the people who suffer from that regime. I do not think it a great hardship to require of people who are getting a substantial benefit not to then turn themselves into landlords making the maximum profit on a building they have never paid the market rent for. I find that, frankly, rather distasteful. However, clearly, the amendment that I moved is not quite up to the mark, so I beg leave to withdraw it.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-08
Topic: Housing
Patricia Hollis (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, because it is possible that he has found a way to square a circle. Whether you support right to buy or have reservations about it in terms of the implications for waiting lists and so on, nobody today has defended the argument that local authorities should not find their stock sold to fund the tenants in another tenure. As the Camden Association of Street Properties said, why should they? They are not their tenants and it is not their property The noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, suggested—I understand that this is supported by Boris Johnson, the mayoral candidates and the like—a way to make it attractive, feasible and possible for people in housing association properties to buy and to take advantage of the opportunity to acquire that home, but to do so in a way that is not to the detriment of local authorities, which are expected to sell their stock, first, to fund the discounts, secondly to sort out brownfield sites, and thirdly to replace their own loss of property that has gone in sales The figures do not stack up. We know that it will take three years or more for receipts to flow from selling high-value property in authorities such as Cambridge and there will be a queue of would-be buyers knocking at the door to take advantage of the right to buy in housing associations. That means that the levy is going to have to be imposed, not just on local authorities with retained stock, but on local authorities which do not have a single council house left to sell, because they have gone over in stock transfers, so they will have to be levied appropriately.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-08
Topic: Other
Jeremy Hugh Beecham (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, on his ingenious approach. I am, however, slightly disconcerted by the fact that the Mayor of London is, apparently, very much in support of this. No doubt, by tomorrow he will be claiming that it was his idea in the first place.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-08
Topic: Housing
Jeremy Hugh Beecham (Labour, Centre-left): Well, yes—it might bring it to a rapid end. It does appear to be a very useful way forward. I also endorse my noble friend Lady Hollis’s reference to Help to Buy as another avenue through which it should be possible to assist people into home ownership without making difficulties either for local authorities, or, more importantly, for other people who are in need of rehousing. I hope that the Minister will be sympathetic to the amendment However, I am slightly puzzled by the description by the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, of the difficulties of replacing homes on the basis of the numbers being very hard to achieve. I think he said that something like 5,000 a year would be needed to replace and it was difficult to see how that number could be built. That 5,000 houses would be something like 2.5% of the Government’s annual target of 200,000.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-08
Topic: Housing
Jeremy Hugh Beecham (Labour, Centre-left): That sounds like a lot, given the record of the last few years. However, when I was first elected to the council in Newcastle in 1967, the city council built 3,000 council houses in a year. That was one authority. It cannot be beyond the capacity of the construction industry to achieve this, given the resources to invest. I obviously concede that it cannot be achieved overnight because we are starting from next to nothing, but over a three-year period I would have thought we could build—literally—up to that sort of figure, given the investment.