The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)
That was a remarkable example of a combination of encyclopaedic knowledge and conviction about what my hon. Friend rightly says should be not only the Government’s top domestic priority but the entire country’s primary moral mission: to build the homes that the next generation need and which are currently denied to them.
It is unusual for me to hear strains of my own speeches read back to me. I know that my hon. Friend has not been to listen to many of my speeches, but what he said resonates strongly with me: many of the themes he laid out in his preamble and diagnosis I am myself going around the country promoting—not least the dysfunctionality of the house building market. The one element that he omitted, but that I am sure he is aware of, is that the situation is not helped by the fact that in the crash of 2007-08, 50% of all small house builders were wiped out—removed from the market—having produced, as my hon. Friend said, more than half of all new homes. That proportion has now dropped to about a third, I think.
Both in coalition and since, the Government have done their best to try to push output up from a low of 124,000 in 2012 to 222,000 last year. The forward indicators for next year are looking pretty good as well.
Anna McMorrin
Why did the Government scrap the requirement for homes to be carbon neutral, when that would go a long way towards helping with living costs and budgets, as well as meeting climate targets?
Kit Malthouse
I totally acknowledge the role that high environmental standards have to play in a sense of social justice about housing. I went to a factory run by Accord Housing, which produces 1,000 modular homes a year. So good are the environmental standards in those homes that they have lower arrears because people can afford to heat them. That is definitely something on which I want to focus.
I want to address some of the questions that my hon. Friend raised. He is right that we need to do something about the way in which the house building market functions at the moment, and my job is to wander around being disruptive, supporting new entrants and players to create the competitive landscape that he is looking for—competing on quality and type; being disruptive on technology and encouraging modern methods of construction, including off-site manufacture and new techniques, so that new entrants find it easier to overcome the barriers to entry that he mentioned; and being disruptive on finance.
My hon. Friend is a little negative about Help to Buy, but I ask him to take care. Many tens of thousands of young people have accessed homes for the first time when the market was denied to them before, because of a Government-backed effective bank of mum and dad. While there will be assessments of that scheme, there is no indication at the moment that it has pushed up prices.
Mr Bacon
Of course people who are given cash will be grateful, but if there is a subsidy for demand rather than supply, we will not fundamentally solve the problem. Would it not be a good idea to wean people off Help to Buy and towards Help to Build, so that we subsidised supply? If we subsidise something we get more of it, and what we need more of is supply.
Kit Malthouse
My hon. Friend is right. It is possible—although I know it is strange—for Government to do two things at the same time. Help to Buy affects a very small percentage of housing transactions—about 4%—and the indications are that it has not had a particular impact on prices. We continue to review the policy in the light of its success—some 160,000 people have now accessed homes who otherwise would not have done so.
In the last minute or so I want to return to my hon. Friend’s questions. He asked five specific questions. First, will we look at a review for the taskforce? Given that we are going into a spending round, with what may be small amounts of money in the scale of the spending that I have available, I would be more than happy to do so. I am of course also more than happy to look at planning guidance review and particularly land allocation. In particular, we could perhaps think about communicating more widely to local authorities. I would be happy to help him by sponsoring some kind of event to promote the idea and to help local authorities to learn.
On viability, when I was on the Treasury Committee we did a housing inquiry in which I posed the question to Kate Barker and David Orr whether we should do away with the viability test as part of the planning system, and both of them thought that that was a good idea. In the meantime we have standardised the viability test to see where we get to.
On the Planning Inspectorate, my hon. Friend is right. We are trying to talk to staff about how they can be more consistent in their decision making and apply it more regularly across the country.
Finally I would be more than happy to join my hon. Friend in raising consumer awareness, and I congratulate him on what was a tour de force of knowledge of housing policy.
Question put and agreed to.