Housing
Debate between John Healey and Jake Berry
John Healey
My hon. Friend is right. He will remember how serious the levels of homelessness and rough sleeping were when Labour came to office in 1997 and how they fell with the policies that we put in place over 13 years. He is right to say that he, like Members on both sides of the House, has seen homelessness and rough sleeping rising again. We should pause ahead of the Christmas period, reflect on that and ask hard questions of the Housing Minister about why it is happening, what he will do about it and, in particular, what he will do over the Christmas period to help.
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that homelessness peaked in 2004. He makes the serious point that we should all consider homelessness at Christmas. That peak came under a Labour Government, but I am not making a political point. As he has worked on this issue and will have been involved in part of the solution, perhaps he can tell the House what he believes the solution is.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between John Healey and Jake Berry
John Healey
This is a problem. We are not being given the details of the so-called vote taken by housing associations to enter this voluntary deal. The deal does not reflect the majority, or certainly a large number, of associations, which did not respond or were not consulted. There are serious questions for the Secretary of State about this. Despite many of the housing associations saying that they do not want to sign up to the deal—or not having said that they will do so—the Bill will nevertheless give regulators the power to enforce compliance by those housing associations on “home ownership” measures. How can we take at face value the words of Ministers about this being a voluntary deal for housing associations when behind it lies regulation that will enforce compliance? And if the right to buy is not put in place, what will happen to the tenants? The Secretary of State hardly mentioned them in his speech. How can there be a “right” to buy without the legislation to create that right? Without that legislation, and without giving tenants the ability to challenge landlords if they say no, this will not be a right to buy; it will be a right to beg to buy.
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman is a former Housing Minister, so he will be aware that housing association tenants, whether secure tenants or those on affordable rent tenancies, have significant statutory protection from eviction. I hope he will take the opportunity, in response to the intervention made by the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali), to say that housing association tenants cannot be evicted with two weeks’ notice.
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.