Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between John Healey and Alan Brown
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to participate in this debate, which is the first to be classified under English votes for English laws. Further to the points of order raised by my hon. Friends earlier, I want to draw hon. Members’ attention to a quote in a Library briefing paper. The quote is from a debt management expert, who said that having a lower asset base could see some housing associations “pushed towards insolvency”. Given that some housing associations work on a cross-border basis, it is clear that the Bill may have some indirect consequences for Scotland. I am not challenging the certification, but I wanted to draw to hon. Members’ attention to the fact that classification under EVEL has complications.
My contribution will look at the different approaches of the Scottish Government and the UK Government, which I hope will benefit Members on both sides of the House. A key omission from the Bill is that it does nothing proactively to tackle homelessness. Scotland has brought in what has been accepted as world-leading legislation on homelessness. Since 2012, anybody in Scotland who has been classed as “unintentionally homeless” has had a legal right to be housed. As a former councillor, I have seen the benefits of that legislation and the number of people who have been rehoused under it over the years. That shows that that legislation is working.
A key aspect of the Bill is the right to buy for social housing. That subject will clearly form a lot of today’s debate. Hon. Members in this House need to have a long think about what is in front of them. Last week when I contributed to the tax credits debate, I commented that right to buy is a taxpayer subsidy. Later, a Government Member suggested that the SNP was against home ownership. That could not be further from the truth. In Scotland, the SNP Government have had a help to buy scheme that has helped up to 14,000 buyers enter the private housing market. At the same time, we have been funding social housing and new council housing. Home ownership and social housing are therefore not mutually exclusive. Sometimes, the debate in this place is too polarised and makes out that people are either for home ownership or against it. That is not the way it should be.
John Healey
The hon. Gentleman has given a list of the SNP Government’s record, but how does he explain the fact that after eight years of that Government, more than 150,000 people are still on council waiting lists and half of all homes in Scotland still fall short of the official quality standards?
Alan Brown
The right hon. Gentleman is wrong about the quality standard. In my local authority, all houses bar a few that have exemptions meet the quality standard in Scotland.
In Scotland, we have built nearly 6,000 council houses in the same period that Labour built six. The records of the SNP and Labour are incomparable. There might still be people on council house waiting lists, but by building many more houses than Labour did, we are clearly moving in the right direction to tackle that.
In this Parliament, 30,000 affordable homes will have been built in Scotland under the SNP Government. We are aiming to increase that to 50,000 in the next term. We are certainly doing our best to tackle housing waiting lists.
In my opinion, right to buy has had its time. In Scotland, the SNP Government have legislated to take it away for council houses. That has clearly had an impact on waiting lists in Scotland, which the shadow Minister talked about, because it allows greater stock retention.
Government Members have been shouting about home ownership. As a point of interest, my parents bought their council house under right to buy, so I know that people have benefited from it and I have seen what happens. People who buy their homes take pride in them. I know that that has happened over the years. The policy was right at the time, but we now see the problems that have arisen. Initially, all the money went to central Government and was not used for stock replacement. That is why we have the problems that we have today.
In many areas, large family houses have all but disappeared from the stock because of the right to buy. As we have heard, it has led to an increase in private renting to compensate for the lack of social housing. That drives up housing benefit costs. It is therefore counterproductive to extend the right to buy to social landlords, because it will keep that vicious circle going.
A study by Glasgow University estimated that the right to buy cost £3 million a year in Renfrewshire in extra housing benefit. The same is true in England, where up to 40% of the flats that were sold under right to buy are now in the buy-to-let market. This is a UK-wide issue and it will only get worse with the proposed extension of the right to buy to social housing.
Another unintended consequence of the previous right-to-buy policy is that couples who bought their houses many years ago, including my parents, might end up living in a house that is unsuitable for their needs when they are elderly. There is a risk that people will be trapped in their houses because not enough social housing is available for them to move to, or because priority for those new council houses that are being built is given to people who already live in council houses so that there is a through flow. Houses are not always suitable for the needs of the people who stay in them.
As a councillor, I have also seen unintended consequences relating to the common repairs to, and upgrades of, tenement properties. When people buy such properties, the title deeds say that they are responsible for shared repairs and other upgrades. That all seems fine when they sign on the dotted line, but people often object when councils want to do work to the property. That is a particularly big problem with buy-to-let landlords who take over properties, because all they want is a return on their money. They do not want to shell out any more money than they need to, so they obstruct upgrades to properties. Some housing schemes whose properties require external rendering are left with a patchwork-quilt effect because private owners and buy-to-let landlords will not pay the money for the upgrades.
I have highlighted some of the problems that I have seen as a result of the right to buy council stock. Why would we want to repeat the exercise with social landlords? The Secretary of State keeps mentioning one-for-one replacement, but that proposal is as flawed as the maths accompanying the policy.
It is estimated that the right-to-buy discount payable to housing associations will be £10 billion to £12 billion. This is another area where the debate can be too polarised. The Government propose to cut £12 billion from the welfare budget—we have had a debate about tax credits—yet at the same time they want to make available a £10 billion to £12 billion taxpayer subsidy for people to buy the homes in which they already live. I ask Members to think of the difference that money would make if it were put directly into house building. It would create more homes, help drive down the cost of private renting and create more jobs. Those homes would also be more energy efficient, which would help hard-pressed families make their budgets go further.
On the maths accompanying the policy, the property agent Savills reckons that the Government have overestimated the average house price value and, therefore, the income it will generate. Councils therefore face the risk of having to pay more money than they will recover.
It is also a flaw that there is no guideline on how the one-for-one replacement will be managed in terms of house type, and there is no absolute requirement to provide a replacement in the same area. The housing policies of councils and local housing associations should be based on need and demand, but under the Bill they will be target driven and replacements might not be built on a like-for-like basis. Family homes could be sold off and there is a risk that decisions will be fudged and that they will be replaced by smaller units. That does not do anything for long-term housing need.