Lord Stunell
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Andrew Stunell)
I am pleased to have the opportunity to respond to a very important topic in a timely debate. It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Caton. I am delighted to have the opportunity to respond to the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell), who is a long-standing and passionate campaigner for council housing. In fact, I think he has got more passionate every year that I have heard him, which is from 1997 onwards. I think his passion increased as his despair with his Government’s performance grew. Of course, he is not simply an advocate of social housing. I hope that he will not take this amiss, but he is a fundamentalist who is in favour of council housing.
Several temptations have been offered to me in this debate—for instance, to trespass on the work of my right hon. Friends in the Department for Work and Pensions in relating to housing benefit. I will not go there. I have been tempted to trespass on the toes of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in relation to the Government’s approach to stabilising the finances of this country and writing a new Budget. I will not go there. In the limited time that I have, I will focus on the key points relating to council and social housing. I want to make it clear that we accept the analysis that it would be a good thing to have more investment in housing. That is why we are investing more in housing. We think that it is a good idea to have more social and affordable homes. That is why we are investing in social and affordable homes.
I want to put very clearly on the record the statistics for social rented homes—local authority and housing associations combined. They show that in the 18 years between 1979 and 1997—dates chosen not entirely arbitrarily—the number of social rented homes fell by 1,122,000. Between 1997 and 2010—13 years—the number of social rented homes fell by 420,000. The average loss per year under the Conservatives’ 18 years was 62,000 a year, and the average loss per year during Labour’s 13 years was 32,385—a net loss of local authority and housing association homes.
As a result of our investment programme, in the five years from 2010 to 2015, for the first time since 1979 there will be a net increase in social and local authority homes. Although I am ready to concede that it would be good if we could do more, it is important to recognise that this Government are outperforming their predecessors by a margin. The problem is large. We currently have 1,840,000 families on local authority waiting lists in England. As several hon. Members have noted, the Localism Act 2011 gives back to local authorities the flexibility to manage their housing stock without reference to national diktats.
One thing to emerge from this debate is that there are many different housing markets and many different social housing markets. As an example, my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech) contrasted the situation in his constituency with the problems facing the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander). It is surely right that local housing authorities should have the right and the duty to determine for themselves what their social housing strategy should be, and the Localism Act gives them that additional flexibility.
The hon. Member for Lewisham East made a point about the national planning policy framework perhaps dictating to councils what land they should allocate for social housing. That is surely a matter for them to carry out a proper study of the circumstances in their area and to make appropriate provision.
Andrew Stunell
No, I have only two or three minutes left. I want to make a point regarding the reduced investment in housing alleged by the hon. Member for Lewisham East and by the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson). It is true that the amount of money that we are investing is lower, but of course the amount of subsidy needed is lower as well. Under the formula that we inherited, every social home built required a subsidy of £85,000 to be built. Under the affordable rents model, it requires a subsidy, on average, of £37,000. We produced a scheme that would invest £4.5 billion in social and affordable homes, and we told the House that we were confident it would deliver 150,000 new homes over the period to 2015.
We were mocked and scorned by the Opposition, who said that the model would not work; it could not possibly deliver. I have not yet received an apology now that we know that not 150,000, but 170,000 homes will be provided with the £4.5 billion injection. Contracts are being signed up all over the country by the Homes and Communities Agency. Indicative rent levels are in a range to fit local circumstances. The average affordable rents range from 65% in London to 79.5% in the north-west. In London, only 5% of the affordable rent homes are being offered at the 80% level. Those are in areas of comparatively low rental values in London.
I want to make a point about decent homes. If I can put it this way, Labour hoped that it had got a “get out of jail free” card for reducing the social housing stock. Of course, the Labour Government improved much of it. We are also improving 170,000 existing social homes to bring the remainder up to the decent homes standard. We are continuing that investment as rapidly as we can in all circumstances.
I will address points made by the hon. Gentlemen from the northern part of Lincolnshire: my hon. Friends the Members for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) and for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) and, of course, the hon. Member for Great Grimsby. The new homes bonus does not simply apply to new homes, but to the reoccupation of empty homes. Indeed, the conversion of shops to homes would generate the new homes bonus via the empty homes route. I hope that those hon. Gentlemen will talk to their local authorities to see how best they can make sure that that is dealt with appropriately.
In my final moments, I will talk about right to buy. It seems to be generally agreed—certainly by the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and a number of others—that the problem with right to buy in the past was that there was no replacement policy. When the Prime Minister announced last September that the Government were reintroducing the right to buy policy, he made it explicitly clear that that was on a one-for-one replacement basis. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Derby North disbelieves it. He disbelieved the 150,000, and we produced 170,000. No aspect of this Government’s policy has been taken at face value on Labour’s side of the road, and yet, every time, we have not simply delivered, we have exceeded. I ask the hon. Gentleman, just for once, to accept that the intentions of this Government are clear: to increase the social housing stock and to make sure that we maintain and deliver on the promises that we have made to the House.