Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between John Healey and Greg Clark
Greg Clark
Clearly, that is a great disappointment for my hon. Friend’s many constituents who rely on those services. In the local government financial settlement, we have been able to make available a flat cash settlement over four years to councils across the country, giving them the certainty of four-year funding. That is intended to allow them to plan ahead for precisely the sort of services that he describes.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s tribute to Darren Cooper. For many of us, he was not just a good local Labour council leader but a good colleague and a friend.
May I take the Secretary of State back to the answer he gave the House in reply to Question 2, when he talked about the Government’s housebuilding programme? The latest official figures show that the number of new homes is down by 9% and that, six years on, it is still a third below the peak achieved under Labour. This is the housebuilding recovery that never was. Does he not agree that when housing policy fails so badly, it gives an opening to those who want to fuel resentment and division? Will he therefore today disown the comments of his Cabinet colleague the Leader of the House who blames the fall in home ownership on EU migration? Will he point out to the Leader of the House that it is possible to have a healthily growing population alongside higher home ownership, just as Britain did during the baby-boom years under Macmillan and Wilson?
Greg Clark
I lay the blame for the shortage of housing on what happened during the tenure of the Labour party and the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne, who was the relevant Minister at that time. Ignominiously, he will go down in history as the Housing Minister who built the fewest homes in the peacetime history of this country, with only 85,000 being built in 2009. He is the man under whom we saw a fall in home ownership of a quarter of a million. The most significant thing is that when he was commenting on that, he said:
“I’m not sure that’s such a bad thing.”
Under this Government, the proportion of building is rising again; we have 250,000 planning permissions and more than 170,000 additions to the housing stock. We have doubled the rate of growth of housing compared with the rate that he presided over, so he might talk about lessons from the past, but we will be looking closely at his record to see what actions to avoid.
John Healey
May I suggest that the Secretary of State go back to the Department and call in his Government statisticians to put him right on these figures? The Labour record speaks for itself: 1 million more homeowners, 2 million new homes built, and the largest investment in social housing in a generation. That is a record that the present Housing Minister would give his right arm for; it might even get him a Cabinet promotion. May I, however, bring the Secretary of State back to the question of the European Union? Does he accept that the European Union is helpful to housebuilding in Britain? Does he agree that the European Investment Bank’s commitment of £1 billion to build almost 20,000 new affordable homes is now needed more than ever, not least because this Government’s housing investment over this Parliament will be only half what it was under Labour?
Greg Clark
The right hon. Gentleman should go back and check his record—as a former Minister, I am sure he has access to the files. Under the previous Labour Government, including during his time as Housing Minister, 420,000 homes were lost from this country’s affordable housing stock.
An important source of investment in housing, including in social and affordable housing, comes from the European Investment Bank, which has invested £2 billion in our housing stock over the years. It is important that we continue to have access not only to that investment but to investment from private sector bodies, all of which benefit from the confidence and stability that we have had through our arrangement, including the wholehearted commitment of a Government determined to increase house building.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between John Healey and Greg Clark
Greg Clark
We will indeed. My hon. Friend will know that local places have until 2017 to come up with their plans. If they have not done so by then, we will work with local communities to ensure that they have a plan.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
In his autumn statement two years ago the Chancellor said that
“we must confront this simple truth: if we want more people to own a home, we have to build more homes.”—[Official Report, 5 December 2013; Vol. 571, c. 1108.]
Will the Secretary of State confirm that the number of new homes built in the best year of the previous Parliament’s five years was still lower than in the worst year out of 13 years of the last Labour Government?
Greg Clark
The right hon. Gentleman is having a characteristic bout of amnesia, because the worst year for housing starts was when he was a Minister in the Department for Communities and Local Government. That was the worst year for housing starts in peacetime since the 1920s, and 88,000 new homes were started. He has form on this.
John Healey
Never mind the bluster about starts—as the Chancellor said, new homes built are what count. Figures from the Secretary of State’s Department state that 124,980 homes were built in 2009 in the depths of the recession. Five years later in 2014—the Secretary of State’s best year—with a much-trumpeted growing economy, 117,720 houses were built. The answer to that failure was set out in his manifesto pledge, which mentioned 275,000 more affordable homes and 200,000 new starter homes in this Parliament. Will he guarantee that he will not double-count those numbers, and that new starter homes will be additional to affordable homes?
Greg Clark
The right hon. Gentleman’s record has gone down in history—he presided over the lowest number of housing starts since the 1920s. This is not just about a collapse in the total number of houses being built, but about affordable housing. During his time in the previous Government, the stock of affordable homes fell by 420,000. I have been doing my research about the right hon. Gentleman because he has form on this issue, and it is a cheek for him to talk about affordable housing. As he might remember, when he was Financial Secretary he published a report that stated that the Government’s No. 1 objective was:
“Freeing up or avoiding social tenancies.”
No wonder there was a collapse in the stock of affordable housing—he wanted to avoid those tenancies.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between John Healey and Greg Clark
Greg Clark
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. For anyone who has any doubt about the policy’s personal impact, I will illustrate it by reading an email I received from a young mother on the day on which our right-to-buy agreement with housing associations was announced last month. She wrote that,
“during the middle of the economic crisis in 2009…I was…made redundant from a job that I had been in for twelve years. I was left with a six year old, a three year old and a newborn baby and life was pretty much as grim as it could get.
For the past five years I have lived in a housing association home. At the time—it was very much a lifeline and I am enormously grateful for the safety, security and peace-of-mind that it brought me.”
She went on to say that,
“up until April of this year—I had simply accepted that this was my life now and would always be. I would forevermore be ‘just about’ comfortable: ‘just about’ paying the bills, ‘just about’ paying for Christmas. ‘Just about’ living.
But in late April that completely changed for me. I heard somewhere that the Conservatives were going to allow housing association tenants the right to buy their own home…I had completely written off ever being able to achieve that goal.
I voted Conservative in May because of that hope.”
She continued:
“I watched and read intently all about the Conservative’s crazy, ridiculous policy. I read the negative fall-out from Housing Associations, from Labour, from literally everywhere…And of course—all of these associations, politicians, media have far bigger voices than people like me. By September I had resigned myself to the fact that this looked like a lost-cause.
I am absolutely eternally grateful to everyone in the Conservative government that helped push this forward. I absolutely cannot wait until the point, hopefully in 2016, where I can be holding the keys to the house that I own. A house that will be my savings for the future. A house that will allow me to pass something onto my three girls.
Please, please pass on my very heartfelt gratitude to everyone involved in ensuring this was made a reality. For me, it’s life-changing.”
As this lady made clear, this policy, agreed with the housing associations, is giving people up and down the country the chance to fulfil a dream they thought was beyond them. As my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) said, it is disappointing, therefore, that the Opposition are turning their backs on such people’s aspirations and trying to take away the hope of home ownership that they have nurtured and which the Bill introduces.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
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?
Greg Clark
I am astonished by the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention, because the ONS, completely independent of the Government, has made it clear that the reclassification, which we intended to be temporary, has nothing to do with any action by the Government. The reason for the reclassification is the clumsy—I might even say clunking—provisions of the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008, taken through the House when he was a Minister. He should be apologising for the predicament into which he put housing associations. As hon. Members will have noticed, one benefit of our agreement with the housing associations is the ability, as reflected in the Bill, to deregulate the housing association sector to correct the damage he did when he was Minister.
John Healey
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?
Greg Clark
It is quite the reverse. It shows the benefits of a voluntary agreement. If we intend, as we do, to recognise the historical voluntary nature of housing associations, we are not going use legislation to thrust them into the public sector, as the right hon. Gentleman did when he was a Minister; we are going to legislate to remove those regulations that put them temporarily in the public sector. If ever there was a vindication of the voluntary approach, rather than the clunking reaching for legislation, which Labour favours, it is in this agreement.
John Healey
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.
Greg Clark
Does the right hon. Gentleman still take the view that the fall in home ownership is not a bad thing? That is what he said when he was Housing Minister.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between John Healey and Greg Clark(9 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Greg Clark
Neighbourhood plans have been a huge success since they were introduced in the Localism Act 2011. They give local people more power to control the shape of development in their area but sometimes, across the country, local councils seem inclined to be tardy in giving the support that is required. In the forthcoming Bill, we will place a clearer responsibility on councils to support neighbourhoods in producing their plans.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
This is the first Commons Question Time since our Labour leadership election and I am proud to speak for the party with more than 325,000 members behind me, more than double the Conservative membership.
I want to ask the Secretary of State about his ex-boss, the Chancellor, who describes the recent decline in home ownership as “a tragedy”. I have new House of Commons figures showing that home ownership has gone down each and every year in the last five years. What does the Secretary of State say to the millions of middle England, middle-income young people and families who desperately want the chance to own their own home, but have no hope of ever being able to afford the escalating costs?
Greg Clark
I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to the Front Bench, but I have to say that I am very surprised to hear that line of questioning from him. In 2009, he said that
“home ownership has been dropping…And I’m not sure that’s such a bad thing.”
For him to suggest to the House that his view is now the opposite is a turnaround. Since the coalition Government were elected, the number of first-time buyers has doubled—it collapsed under the Government of whom he was a member—but we want to go further, which is why we have extended right to buy and introduced Help to Buy. It is also why we are introducing the starter homes for first-time buyers.
John Healey
What the Secretary of State is saying and what he is doing are simply not working. People need affordable homes to rent and to buy so that they get the chance of a decent start in life. In the last five years, with Conservative Ministers in charge, the number of people getting mortgages is down by over 10%. Last month, Shelter showed that families on the Chancellor’s so-called living wage will find it impossible and unaffordable to buy in eight out of 326 local authority areas across England. [Interruption.] Yes, eight of 326 local authority areas in England. Let me give a warning to the Secretary of State and his Ministers. They spent the last Parliament blaming Labour. That will not wash now. You have a track record of your own, and we Opposition Members will—week in, week out—expose your failings and hold this Government to account.
Greg Clark
The right hon. Gentleman is not going to run away from his own record, because he was a Housing Minister in the last Government. In the manifesto on which he was elected in 2005, it said that his Government would
“create a million more homeowners”.
That was the commitment given when he was the Housing Minister. During that Parliament, home ownership fell by a quarter of a million—it actually fell. Under this Government, the number of first-time buyers has doubled, and under Help to Buy the figures published at the end of last week show that 120,000 people have been helped. That is working people who are being helped by this Government to achieve their dream of having a home for the first time. He should be supporting that, and doing so around the country, rather than seeking to hark back to a failed policy over which he, I am afraid, presided.