The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered housing.
As we forge a new relationship with the European Union, building the homes our country needs is a mission more important than ever, because a home is so much more than a roof over your head; it speaks directly to your hopes and dreams—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. The Minister is speaking about an important subject, and we must hear what he is saying.
Kit Malthouse
As I was saying, a home speaks directly to your hopes and dreams and gives your children a good start in life. It is about moving to take up a better job and anchoring yourself in a strong and confident community. However, for too many, particularly young people, a decent, affordable and secure place to live can feel out of reach. We remain determined that that must change.
Housing is this Government’s chief domestic priority, and our progress is already clear. For the first time in 10 years, home ownership among 35 to 44-year-olds is up. We have helped over 500,000 people into home ownership since 2010 through Government schemes such as Help to Buy and right to buy. Last year, we built more homes than in all but one of the last 31 years, bringing us closer to our ambitious target of 300,000 new homes a year. However, there is much more to do if we are to meet people’s aspirations.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
Will the Minister apologise to all those sat waiting and languishing on homelessness waiting lists across the country?
Kit Malthouse
I have many times, at this Dispatch Box and elsewhere, accepted the fact that Governments of all stripes over the past three or four decades have failed to build the houses that the country needs, and we all share some culpability in the housing crisis we are now facing. The question is not how it came about, but what we are doing to address it.
When I took on this role last year, I made my task a simple one: more, better, faster homes. I will begin with “more”, because we are taking bold action on a number of fronts to increase supply. We are putting billions into housing and infrastructure—at least £44 billion over five years. We are reforming planning and we have empowered Homes England, our new national housing agency, to take a more strategic and assertive approach to increasing supply. We have recently announced the award of £1.2 billion of grant funding from our £5.5 billion housing infrastructure fund. The seven successful schemes have the potential to unlock up to 68,000 new homes, and we look forward to announcing further awards in the coming months.
We are not looking only to the market to deliver; we have paved the way for a new generation of social housing by removing the Government cap on how much councils can borrow, so that they can start to build a new generation of community homes.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate the Minister on staying in post for as long as he has, which I should say is quite unusual for Conservative Housing Ministers. What, however, can he say to Greater Manchester, which has apparently been told that the Government are withdrawing their offer of £68 million to remediate brownfield sites?
Kit Malthouse
As the hon. Gentleman knows, we are in ongoing discussions with Manchester about its housing ambition, but one of the frustrations in that conversation is the unwillingness of the Mayor of Manchester to take responsibility for housing figures in that city. As I say, if he is willing to be ambitious, we would be willing to support him as well.
Kit Malthouse
No.
In addition to our affordable homes guarantee scheme, which gives £3 billion of guaranteed support, making it cheaper and easier for housing associations to raise funds and get building, we are increasing supply as the means to make the most of the space we already have, including land that has already been built on. With that in mind, the planning proposals and consultations announced in the autumn statement aim to give people more flexibility to build upwards on existing buildings and in converting commercial properties. This is a positive step that ensures we conserve precious land, accelerate supply and help to revive our high streets.
We are also looking at how we can close the gap between planning permissions and homes built, and we will be taking action on the back of the review by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) to do just that.
Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
I want to take my hon. Friend to one particular issue. One of the big problems we have had is that the building regulations are set against a new type of homes—prefab homes made of wood or steel—which can be built throughout the year, which would accelerate the whole building programme and which are ecologically far better than brick-built houses. Yet people always tell me that they have to make all sorts of adjustments just to meet the building regulations. Will my hon. Friend undertake to look at that, because these homes would accelerate the whole process of house building and make it much more affordable too?
Kit Malthouse
My right hon. Friend, with his usual wisdom, has prefaced the part of my speech I am moving on to. He is quite right: we believe that modern methods of construction hold enormous potential not only to produce more homes but to produce them faster and better. I recently visited a factory in Walsall, in the west midlands, where Accord is building 1,000 homes a year using modern methods of construction. So good are the environmental standards that those homes for social rent have lower arrears, because people can afford to heat them.
That is something we are backing through our £4.5 billion home building fund, £2.5 billion of which is to champion small and medium-sized enterprises, custom builders and more diverse builders to get modern methods of construction and other cutting-edge tech into the mainstream. The fund has already allocated all of the original £1 billion of short-term funding. Over 94% of the funding contracted to date has gone to SME builders. We expect the fund to deliver more than 30,000 homes—around 5,000 more than the original target.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
The Minister is quite right that we are going to need a whole variety of different types of houses and tenures to hit the 300,000 target. How many homes does he think will be built for social housing—not affordable housing—in the rest of this Parliament? What is his plan?
Kit Malthouse
I am constantly asked what targets might be for particular types of housing.
Kit Malthouse
Well, 12,500 is the minimum amount that is due to come out of the affordable homes programme. We hope and believe that the aspiration may be more, not least because we have taken the cap off the housing revenue account. It is therefore up to the ambition of councils whether they do this. As the Chairman of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), knows, I would love to sit in my office in Whitehall and plan the country—the Malthouse period of planning. I could plan in his constituency, as I could in mine, and decree what all these targets might be. However, as he knows, there are numerous housing markets in the UK —there are probably 30 or 40 in the capital alone—and they all operate in a different way, with lots of variable sites that all have their own issues and problems that need to be dealt with, so we are setting a standard target across the country as an aspiration. However, by setting councils free to build a new generation of social homes and investing enormous amounts of money in the affordable homes programme, which can also be for social homes, we hope and believe that that tenure will advance and increase to play its part in the 300,000 homes that are, we hope, coming in the years ahead.
I am mindful that, with such a dramatic increase in supply, the more we build, the more important it is that we get it right. That is why we are focused on building better. A key part of that is communities having a bigger role in shaping the future of the places they call home. We are making changes to our planning system, and in particular the planning rule book, so that they can do this. We are providing greater clarity and certainty for developers and communities alike, by giving local areas more options and the freedom and flexibility to make effective use of the land they have. That is crucial if we are to reassure communities that promises made on the provision of affordable housing and infrastructure will be promises kept. Keeping promises is the only way to ensure that communities will continue to have faith in new developments.
Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)
In March last year, the Secretary of State wrote to 15 local authorities that had not submitted local plans. I understand that, as of now—a year later—10 of those have done so. Should the Government not be doing more to pressurise all local authorities to make sure they submit local plans to plan housing for their areas?
Kit Malthouse
Yet again, my hon. Friend shows his legendary impatience to build the homes that the next generation needs. He is quite right that we are urging, cajoling and pushing councils across the country to get their plans in place. We hope and believe that a plan-led system will produce more and better homes across the country, and also that, when a local authority puts its weight behind a plan and starts to think in decadal terms, perhaps, about how its area should look and how it should plan for homes, we will be able to help it with infrastructure. We have seen that in parts of the country from Carlisle, to Exeter, to Oxfordshire, where forward-thinking civic leaders are able to think 10, 15 or 20 years ahead. They are then able to come alongside us for big infrastructure asks, assistance, and, frankly, large cheques to assist them with that sort of ambition.
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
On neglected areas of housing that do not get much ministerial airtime, can I first ask the Minister about new homes for people who are elderly? What further funding does his Department intend to allocate? Also, housing co-operatives rarely get any attention in this House. Does he—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. That intervention is too long. Before the Minister answers the hon. Gentleman, I must point out to the House that, for obvious reasons, this is a very short debate. We have to finish in an hour and 20 minutes. Fifteen people have indicated to me that they want to speak. At present, that gives each Backbencher three minutes. If people who do not intend to stay for the whole debate and do not intend to speak make interventions of more than one minute, there will be people at the end of the list who will not get to speak at all. It is not up to me; it is up to the House as a whole to decide how we will conduct this debate.
Kit Malthouse
The hon. Gentleman raises a pertinent point. As I tour the country, I go to lots of places in all parts of the country with significant brownfield land. One of the cries I hear from people in meetings is, “Where have all the bungalows gone?” That is a proxy for: where is the move-on space for older people whose children have left home and feel they need to downsize? We are keen to try to stimulate and encourage an, if you like, less than prime market that provides the kind of homes that older people would like to occupy. Key to that will be encouraging more participants in the house building market, as well as giving local authorities, as we have in the National Planning Policy Framework, the power to devise in their plans the type of housing that they need. It is perfectly possible for the hon. Gentleman’s local authority to signal in its plan that that is the kind of housing it requires.
We have also seen how community support increases when we build homes that grow a sense of place, rather than undermine it. It is why we are championing design and quality through the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission. We reinforced that in February when we hosted a second national design conference. It is increasingly important as we create new settlements across the country, such as garden communities. Last month, we announced support for a further five garden towns with the potential to deliver up to 65,000 homes, in addition to the 23 locally led garden communities we are already supporting.
It is not just about getting numbers up, however. We are determined to put fairness back at the heart of the housing market. Our commitment to restore the dream of home ownership remains as strong as ever. That is why we have committed to a new Help to Buy scheme, which will run from April 2021 to 2023. We have cut stamp duty for first-time buyers and put a call out for evidence on innovation in shared ownership. We believe that the private rental market can be a stronger platform for those aspiring to home ownership, turning “generation rent” into “generation own”.
Mr Ivan Lewis (Bury South) (Ind)
When I met the Minister recently, he assured me that Government housing estimates were not a target. Yet within hours of that meeting his own Department informed the Greater Manchester Combined Authority that its housing deal was being scrapped because the new housing estimates were not sufficient. How does the Minister justify that contradictory statement?
Kit Malthouse
I think the hon. Gentleman is confusing two things. He is quite right that the standard assessment of housing need is meant to be a starting point from which councils assess, plus or minus, what they think they can address, subject to constraints and their other duties in the planning system. That, however, is separate from the Government’s housing deal. We are using the money available for those deals to stimulate ambition. Local authorities should deliver more than would otherwise be delivered in their plan and can justify the need for infrastructure on that basis. We have done successful deals, for example with Oxfordshire, and we are having a number of conversations. Critical to that is stimulating and encouraging every part of the country to play its part in building the homes the next generation needs by being ambitious about their targets.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
The Minister talks about being ambitious and setting targets. Does he accept the figure, published by the Shelter commission in January, that we need to build 155,000 social homes a year for the next 20 years?
Kit Malthouse
I accept that we need to build a hell of a lot more homes of all types and that is exactly what we are trying to do. We are in the process of creating a situation where everyone who wants to build can build and can seek assistance from the Government to do so, if they are willing to be ambitious—from the private sector to housing associations, councils or anybody who wants to build. We think that this problem is so acute that we cannot be partial about who gets to build the homes.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
I am sorry that I came into the debate a bit late; I was held up. On encouraging local authorities to build, exactly what help can the Government give local authorities to build social housing? I have had a number of people who are homeless—I have had families—coming to my surgeries desperate for accommodation. The local authorities do not have the resources. How is the Minister going to provide them?
Kit Malthouse
As I hope the hon. Gentleman knows, we lifted the borrowing cap on local councils so they can now borrow to build a generation of new homes. We have opened up the affordable homes programme to councils to bid in for Government money—grant funding—so that they can seek to build social homes. I am more than happy to write to him with details of how his council can access that.
Turning back to ownership, as I said, I wanted to turn “generation rent” into “generation own”, but we also believe that fairness should not stop once people get the keys. That is why the Secretary of State unveiled a new industry pledge last month to bring an end to onerous lease terms, such as the doubling of ground rents. More than 40 leading developers and freeholders have signed that pledge and I encourage others to follow the lead. We are bringing forward legislation to require developers to belong to a new homes ombudsman to champion the rights of home buyers and to ensure that they get the quality build that they rightly expect. We will soon consult on how this will work so that we can ensure that consumers’ problems are resolved faster and more effectively.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
On behalf of Members on both sides of the House, I welcome what my hon. Friend has said, and I thank the Secretary of State and my hon. Friend for their work on this. Will he or one of his colleagues make a statement as soon as Homes England approves commonhold houses for the Help to Buy scheme, and will he make a statement on when the Land Registry can easily register commonhold associations? At present, there is one development on the way, but it is being blocked because the Land Registry has forgotten how to do it.
Kit Malthouse
My hon. Friend, in his customary manner, has raised an important but detailed point. I will go away and ascertain what the timetable might be and keep him posted about where things might go next.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Ind)
Does the Minister accept that “generation own” is particularly challenging in areas such as South Hams in my constituency? It has the highest property price to earnings ratio in the south-west—11.7—and part of that is driven by second home ownership. Will he touch on what can be done where the impact of second home ownership is particularly high to make this an affordable dream for young families?
Kit Malthouse
The hon. Lady raises an issue that, in certain parts of the country—including in my constituency —can have an impact, albeit that I think it is sometimes overstated. Having said that, the Government have taken steps, such as giving councils the power to charge premium council tax on empty homes and second homes, which should help with that issue. In the end, however, in areas such as the hon. Lady’s, most of the problem will be solved by increasing supply. I recently attended a meeting with the Campaign to Protect Rural England down in her part of the world, where I tried to explain to 240 people who were not best pleased at the idea of having a significant number of homes in their area that this was their moral duty to the next generation and that they needed to accept the homes, control them, design them well, and make them fit in and enhance their local communities. We have a growing population and in popular areas where people want to live and from which young people are often driven out, the solution will be to build more homes.
Happily, the picture is also improving for renters. We are cracking down on rogue landlords and from 1 June, the Tenant Fees Act 2019 will come into force, banning unfair letting fees and capping deposits. These vital steps will protect tenants and save them millions. We will also set out our position shortly on longer-term tenancies, because those in the private rented sector can face a high degree of insecurity. It is time that we put that right. Indeed, landlords could also benefit from more stability. As well as feeling more secure, nothing is more important than people being safe in their homes, so we will also be implementing a new regulatory framework for building safety. It is no small task but it is the debt we owe to those who suffered so terribly from the Grenfell fire, because everyone must be safe and feel safe in their home, no matter where they live.
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
The Minister knows that I have residents in New Providence Wharf who are being pressured by Ballymore to pay for the removal and replacement of defective cladding. He has kindly looked at that issue. Will he assure us that the Government will continue to press companies to accept their responsibility and the cost? Can he tell us anything about progress, particularly in New Providence Wharf?
Kit Malthouse
The hon. Gentleman has met me to press his constituents’ case. In turn, I have raised the matter face to face with the representative of Ballymore. We continue to put pressure on the industry generally to do its duty to leaseholders and critically, to remediate to ensure that everybody is safe in their homes. However, I am more than happy to write to the hon. Gentleman in the next few days about the progress we are making generally on the issue.
Catherine West
I thank the Minister for taking a further intervention on Grenfell. Can he confirm that every single tenant who was made homeless as a result of the terrible fire in the Grenfell block has been housed?
Kit Malthouse
Sadly, I cannot quite confirm that. We are very close to completing the rehousing of everybody who was involved in the Grenfell Tower fire. At the moment, the numbers remaining are small and the cases are often complex, and we are making significant progress.
I am also mindful of those without a place to call home. When I reflect on what we can do better, I am clear that we must do everything possible to confront rough sleeping and the broader challenges of homelessness. Our cross-Government, £100 million rough sleeping strategy is helping our rough sleeping initiative reach more parts of the country—now more than 75% of local authorities in England. As part of that, we announced £46 million to support people off the streets and into accommodation in 2019-20, because we have already seen how that can work and make a real difference. Recent figures have shown the first fall in the number of people sleeping rough in eight years. However, we should make no mistake: one person sleeping rough is one person too many and we remain more determined than ever to end rough sleeping for good. That means combating homelessness, and our ambitious £1.2 billion package of support will help tackle it in all its forms, giving some of the most vulnerable people in our society the security and dignity they deserve.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
While the Minister is on the subject of homelessness, will he urgently review permitted development, which allows some homeless families, including those who live in Terminus House in Harlow, to be housed in wholly inappropriate accommodation and bring up their children in a new slum? The permitted development regulations need to be looked at urgently.
Kit Malthouse
We have made a commitment to review the implementation of the permitted development rights policy. However, alongside that, I urge local authorities to use the maximum power available to them through their building regulation powers and other forms of inspection to ensure that the homes people inhabit are suitable. I also urge local authorities that place people in those homes to reassure themselves that they are suitable for occupation. We have often found that people in unsuitable homes are placed there by councils that frankly should know better and should seek higher quality accommodation for their residents.
As I hope I have shown, we are making every effort to get everyone on board to deliver not just more homes but stronger communities. My triple challenge—more, better, faster—is the key to the country’s happiness, health and prosperity and the work is starting to pay off. The number of homes built is up, rough sleeping is on the turn, there is greater fairness in the rented sector and more beautiful and innovative places to call home should start to appear. We have every reason to be confident and optimistic as we look forward to our future outside the European Union. A stronger, fairer, more diverse housing market can be the bedrock of our future success—a way to spread opportunity and ensure that no one is left behind. We remain focused on delivering that and fulfilling the basic promise that each generation must make to the next: that their life will be better than ours.
John Healey
The hon. Gentleman has a very short memory. In 2009 we were in the direct aftermath of a global financial crisis and recession. It was the action that the Government took then that kept house building going and helped to pull the country out of the crisis. More than a decade on, under this Government, the level of house building has still not reached the pre-crisis peak. We have seen a pitiful performance over the past nine years. The public have lost patience with a Government who, nine years on, try to blame their Labour predecessors.
The Government’s record is now very clear. The rate of home ownership is lower, with almost 900,000 fewer under-45s owning a home now than in 2010. The level of homelessness is higher: the number of people sleeping rough on our streets has more than doubled since 2010. Private rents are higher, with the average tenant paying £1,900 more than in 2010. The rate of social house building is lower, and in the last two years it has been the lowest since the second world war. Let me say this to the Minister. If the Government had only continued to build homes for social rent at the same rate as Labour did in 2009, there would be 180,000 more of those homes—more than enough to house every family in temporary accommodation, every person sleeping rough on our streets, and every resident in every hostel for the homeless.
The Minister said, in response to an intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West), “We are very close to completing the rehousing of everybody who was involved in the Grenfell Tower fire”. I have to say that, nearly two years on from that shocking national tragedy, the Government’s action is still on go-slow. He would not give the House the figures, but one in 10 of the residents from the tower and one in three of the residents from the wider estate who were involved in the fire still do not have a permanent new home. Eight in 10 residents of other high-rise blocks across the country that are covered in Grenfell-style cladding have still not had it removed and replaced. Those are residents in 354 high-rise blocks across the country, nearly two years on from the fire.
Kit Malthouse
I want to correct the right hon. Gentleman on the rehousing numbers for Grenfell, not least because I hope he would never seek to use it as a political football. We are putting enormous efforts into rehousing residents. Of the 202 households from Grenfell Tower and Grenfell Walk that required rehousing, every one has accepted an offer of either high-quality temporary accommodation or permanent accommodation, 196 have moved in, 181 have moved into their permanent home, and 15 remain in temporary accommodation. Six house- holds remain in emergency accommodation—two in hotels, three in serviced apartments, and one living with family or friends. There is a constant and ongoing conversation with those people about their needs and requirements. We are taking this very slowly and sensitively. We cannot compel anyone to do anything. We are working closely with them to try to ensure that they get the homes they need. It is unfair of the right hon. Gentleman to try to make out that we are being dilatory in that effort.
John Healey
The Minister does himself, the Government and the Grenfell survivors a disservice when the story he tries to tell with those figures is so at odds with the experience of the people affected by the fire.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
The residents of the Witham constituency are concerned about a wide range of housing matters. Ministers might be familiar with some of them, but I want to pick on three examples.
First, the issue of how the five-year land supply is calculated affects communities across the country. In planning applications and appeals, we see developers trying to pick apart the declared pipelines in councils’ local plans. To be frank, highly paid consultants and advisers are producing lengthy reports for applications and appeals, and the public struggle to contest them because they do not have the resources. I have seen many cases in my constituency of developers trying to pick apart the council’s supply pipeline and go against local community planning and the council’s planning objectives. That is not good enough.
We all recognise that the delivery of land and housing can sometimes be beyond councils’ framework and mandate. I urge the Government to look again at how much weight is applied to the five-year supply. We must ensure that councils and communities have more protection. Developers think that by ripping apart five-year supply calculations, they can develop almost anywhere. That is a major issue across the board.
Kit Malthouse
I hear what my right hon. Friend is saying. She is making a strong point. I hope she agrees that part of the solution is to encourage neighbourhood plans, particularly in her constituency.
Priti Patel
I thank the Minister for that point. I will come on to that. Like all Members of Parliament, I want to see my communities empowered in planning decision making. In Witham town, there was recently an application for Gimsons—a site at River View in Witham—which is deemed a visually important site and is highly regarded by everyone in the community. The current local plan protects it from development. The draft local plan, which could be two years away from adoption, recommends approximately 40 dwellings, but an application for 78 came along and was granted permission. The residents were appalled that their views were ignored.
I am a great believer in neighbourhood plans and I encourage all my parishes to develop them. We want much more support for community-based planning and neighbourhood plans, particularly with parish councils. I urge the Minister and his team to give more resource to parishes and communities so we can ensure that they are protected from developers, who sometimes come along wanting to rip up the five-year land supply and to challenge councils and communities. Importantly, we must ensure that there are resources and that place-shaping can happen. The Minister has already spoken about that.
My final point is about the ways in which we can support housing and development. The Minister spoke about garden settlements. We have had many conversations and I urge him to ask the Secretary of State to reply to me—we have some outstanding correspondence. There is a huge opportunity for all Departments to work together to ensure we have integrated planning. That means that we have the right infrastructure, including road and rail, health, schools, and public amenities and services. That is a great programme that our Government could take forward. I urge the Minister and his colleagues across Government to work in an integrated way so we can drive the right kind of local community outcomes on housing and planning.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak after my Select Committee Chair; we agree on much, although I am not sure about selective licensing, which is too often a licence to print money for some local authorities. It is also a pleasure to speak with the Housing Minister on the Treasury Bench. I feel, from my short time in Parliament, that he has got at least as good a handle on these issues as anyone I have seen.
We need to build more truly affordable housing, both to rent and to buy. We cannot simply do what Labour would do—put more pressure on an overburdened taxpayer. We must do it in different ways. The best way to do it is to cut out the middlemen or middlewomen; I speak as a middleman who has been involved in the property market for 30 years. There are a couple of simple ways we could do that that are simply too good to miss. The Housing Minister is familiar with some of my ideas on this, particularly on delivering more affordable homes to purchase through the section 106 system.
Every year, we deliver around 25,000 affordable homes through section 106 requirements. They are typically sold to housing associations at 50% of market value. The housing association then rents them out at 80% of market value and puts them on their balance sheet at 100% of market value; nice work if you can get it. Why, instead of doing that, do we not simply sell those properties—or half those properties—to first-time buyers on low incomes, at 50% of market value? That would be in perpetuity and those first-time buyers could pass the properties on to the next person. There is no cost to the taxpayer whatsoever. It is good for them. It is good for the developers, who are dealing direct with their customers. The only people who probably will not be too keen on it are the housing associations, but that is not who we are here for; we are here for real people.
Kit Malthouse
My hon. Friend has raised this issue with me a number of times. I am keen to promote it with him. Will he meet me to discuss how we might promote it to councils?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Mrs Heather Wheeler)
This has been a really excellent debate. I have this wonderful speech here, which is obviously way too long, so we are not going to worry about that. The contributions made by so many people in the House make it clear why housing is the No. 1 domestic priority for the Government. We all want Brexit done, so please vote for the deal, and then we can get on with dealing with this stuff.
The important thing to me is talking about community land trusts, as my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) did, and sorting out what we are going to do in the private rented sector, with the changes to electrical standards and carbon monoxide—
Mrs Wheeler
That is why it is important that it is coming through. The important thing here is that the guidance is coming through now, and there has been great respect for that, which I am very pleased about.
I am appalled at the way in which issues are turned into political footballs. There is no stronger Department in trying to deal with such issues one by one, in a logical way, so that nobody ends up sleeping rough or dying on our streets. The important thing is that the Government totally get this. We are spending an awful lot of money to change things around, because that is what is important. People out there realise that changes are being made in the private rented sector, changes are being made for tenants, and changes are being made to professionalise the professional services—the letting agents and managing agents. Leasehold changes are on the way. There are all sorts of things in our country that are wrong; they need to change, and it is this Government who are going to change them.
I am delighted that our ministerial team is on the case, looking at how many houses we need to build in the year; looking at giving councils the freedoms to build more council houses; encouraging social housing to grow; encouraging first-time buyers; encouraging veterans to get on the housing ladder once they leave the armed forces; making sure that veterans are not sleeping rough and that they get the help they need; and looking after people in Scotland, where there are innovative ideas—I looked at rough sleeping issues and Housing First in Glasgow. All these ideas are very important to the Government; no one should be left under any illusion about the fact that only the Government are making the changes that will get these things right.
People’s lives are at risk. People’s happiness is at risk. We want to make sure that fairness is sorted out for the future. I pay huge tribute to the teams of civil servants that are going round the country making sure that people get the help they need. In Medway and Cornwall, there has been a 40% reduction in rough sleepers. These are huge changes, and I am very proud of what the Government are doing.