Social Housing

Debate between Matt Western and Matt Rodda

Thursday 13th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Matt Western]

My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point, and I will come on to it. I am particularly familiar with his constituency, and I know that many areas of our country have seen high house price inflation, which has priced out young people, a lot of whom would ordinarily want to stay in those communities. This needs to be urgently addressed through social housing.

Twelve months ago, I was fortunate enough to meet a former soldier at one of my Saturday surgeries. He was back in his home town of Warwick, having been discharged from the Army after 10 years’ service. A veteran of several tours, soldier Y found himself searching desperately for a job and a home, and he was not in a good place. He was really struggling. He had he been diagnosed with, and was clearly suffering from, post-traumatic stress disorder. Soldier Y was sofa-surfing. Until relatively recently, it would have been possible for him to access one of the hostels provided by Warwickshire County Council, but the cuts since 2013 have resulted in a huge drop in capacity and places such as Beauchamp House in Warwick are no longer available. I have mentioned soldier Y, but I could have spoken about any of the dozens of people I have met since my election in 2017, all of them desperate for help to resolve their own housing situations.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I would like to thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Drew). I agree with him wholeheartedly about the need for a major council house building programme. The issue I would like to raise is the need for much greater funding for local authorities to build council houses. In my area of Reading, there has been an ambitious programme to build council houses within the limited scope of the funding that is available, but more funding is clearly needed. We have an excess of brownfield land in Reading, a former light industrial town. We have enough brownfield land to build all the houses that are needed until 2036, and I understand from colleagues that many other boroughs, towns and cities around the country face a similar situation in which former industrial land is available but there is no funding to enable the local authorities to build. Does my hon. Friend agree that that should be a priority for this Government?

[Matt Western]

My hon. Friend makes another important point. This is absolutely about the cost of providing housing and land and about how authorities are facilitated to do that. This is the most pressing issue of our time, as I have said, and Government policy should be to help our local authorities. Indeed, at one of the meetings of the parliamentary campaign for council housing, which I co-chair with my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud, Lord Porter made it clear that, in his view,

“all the bad things in our society stem from bad housing, and the best way to fix any of those problems is to make sure as a fundamental that everybody’s got safe, secure, decent housing.”

I could not agree with him more.

We only have to walk down streets such as the Parade in Leamington Spa—and, I am sure, any of the high streets across the country—to see some of the casualties of this crisis: rough sleepers curled up in our doorways or sitting at street corners crying out for help, asking for loose change, desperately trying to create personal order out of social disorder. Inevitably, there will be an ex-forces person among them, but no matter—they are all one community now. Surely civvy street was not meant to be this uncivilised or, for an ex-soldier, this ungrateful.

To understand how we got here and where we need to go, it is worth briefly considering the past and how times have changed. Had soldier Y been lucky enough to have been returning from the first world war rather than from Afghanistan 100 years on, he would have been greeted by the then Prime Minister’s promise of “homes fit for heroes”. Lloyd George recognised the importance of social provision and knew that because house building would be difficult it was only through subsidies that local authorities would be able to afford to deliver them. His progressive social and local authority approach kick-started the sector and resulted not just in a growth of housing supply but in improved standards in all new homes. It was actually following world war two that the council house really arrived. Enlightened administrators strove to deliver them, and none more so than the Attlee Government, which, despite the ravages of war and the shortage of materials, managed to build more than 1 million new homes to replace many of those that had been destroyed.

Permitted Development and Shale Gas Exploration

Debate between Matt Western and Matt Rodda

Thursday 28th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies). For me, the context of this debate is quite simply the deeply worrying issue of climate change. We face a stark choice if we are to avoid extreme and potentially unstoppable change to the climate: do we continue to develop and exploit fossil fuels, or do we leave them in the ground? It will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to stop dangerous climate change if we do not leave fossil fuels, including gas, in the ground. We can and must take a more responsible and sustainable approach, and that is why we need to stop the exploitation of shale gas.

I also want to talk about the issue of local planning, which other Members have spoken about today. There have been test wells in eastern Berkshire and other parts of the south-east, as was mentioned earlier. Many residents in Reading, Woodley and the Thames valley have deep concerns about our local environment. In our area, there is a long history of concern about the effects of noise and pollution from major infrastructure projects such as the expansion of Heathrow and large-scale gravel extraction. The very last thing that residents in our part of England need is a major new environmental threat.

I am conscious of the time, but I just want to add my support for a range of other points that have been made today. In particular, I would like to support and endorse the concerns that have been expressed about the relative weakness of the planning system and about the Government’s policy on energy—particularly renewable energy—and their deeply mistaken policy of cutting the feed-in tariff and not investing in wind power, solar energy and other renewables such as the tidal power project in Swansea bay. These mistaken energy policies stand in stark contrast to the policies of many other Governments, including the last Labour Government.

[Matt Western]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Matt Rodda]

I am afraid I am running out of time.

We have just 12 years left to reduce carbon emissions dramatically. Local communities around the country have serious and substantial concerns about fracking. Given the climate crisis and the need for radical change in energy provision, and given the indisputable local concerns, shale gas exploitation has to stop, and it has to stop now.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Matt Western and Matt Rodda

Wednesday 13th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Matt Western]

I do not have time.

In recent months, we have seen the storm clouds gather. We have seen faltering growth, rising inflation and major manufacturing job losses. We have seen not only the prospect but the reality of global trade wars. Protectionism is around us everywhere and racism and hate crime are on the rise. There are faint echoes of the 1930s. Now is not the time to desert our neighbours in Europe. That is why I will be voting with my Front Benchers for Lords amendment 51, to keep all the options on the table and to ensure that we achieve the best negotiated outcome for the public, for our businesses and for our economy.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I rise to speak in favour of the Labour Front-Bench amendment and the amendments on the customs union. Despite two years having passed since the referendum, the Government are deeply divided and have no plan. Given the lack of clarity and the absence of any policy, it is incumbent on this House to help find a sensible way forward, and I hope colleagues on both sides will support a balanced, sensible approach that includes continued close working with the EU after we have left it.

While a majority voted to leave, no one in this country voted to be worse off, no one voted for instability in Northern Ireland and no one voted for a shortage of NHS staff. A cliff-edge hard Brexit would be too far for most of those who wanted to leave, as well as for my constituents, a majority of whom voted to remain. After two years of Government indecision and distraction by hard Brexiteers, it is time for a sensible way forward. I urge colleagues across the House to consider the issues carefully and to reflect on the many real concerns about the direction in which we are currently heading.

Council Housing

Debate between Matt Western and Matt Rodda

Tuesday 27th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Matt Western]

I thank my hon. Friend for his timely intervention. He is of course absolutely correct. One issue we have had over recent decades is that so much of this property has fallen into the hands of landlords and others, the investment has not been made, and they are now charging extortionate rents. Had it been left to local authority provision, those renting would be able to afford the properties more readily.

Organisations that bid for Government grants were told to re-let homes for low-cost social rent at the new so-called “affordable rent”. It is now estimated that 150,000 homes for social rent have been lost in the past five years. More recently, the Government proposed to add to the sell-off by extending the right to buy to housing association tenants, funded by an extraordinary forced sell-off of council housing to the highest bidder.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I associate myself with my hon. Friend’s points and the genuine and deep concern that he shows for the needs of tenants throughout the country, many of whom are struggling with high housing costs, as indeed they are in my constituency. Does he agree that it was an outrageous mistake and serious error by the Conservative Government to stop many local authorities building council houses when they had fully costed schemes that were ready to go and, indeed, shovel-ready? Reading had a plan for 1,000 new council houses, but unfortunately it was stopped by George Osborne in 2015.

[Matt Western]

My hon. Friend is, of course, absolutely correct. There is a suppression of building low-cost rental properties by local authorities. Those local authorities know that there is a need, and we must allow them to have that responsibility. Preventing them from supplying that housing has had a huge social and economic cost in our communities.

[Matt Western]

I thank my hon. Friend once again. Not only is she very well informed, but she is very experienced in this matter. She is absolutely right. The high levels of housing that we have needed over the decades have been delivered by a mix of providers. The crucial element that is now missing is the housing that is provided by local authorities. In its absence, we will never achieve the objective that has been set by the current Government. If we look through the decades, we can see how, in the post-war periods of the 20s and then the 50s and 60s, the local authorities were allowed to ensure a good supply of housing, which they recognised was needed because of the constraints in the private sector.

It is worth looking at this matter in the round. Over the past 10 years, the overall supply of new homes has seen an under-delivery of at least 80,000 to 100,000 homes a year. The result is that the UK faces a desperate shortage of at least 1 million homes. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors now forecasts that we will reach a shortage of 1.8 million low-cost rental properties—that is just low-cost rental properties—by 2022.

All areas of the UK need housing, both public and private, but there is particular and desperate need for low-cost housing for rent. In my constituency there are more than 2,400 people on the housing waiting list. Homes are being built, but not enough are under construction to satisfy this social need. Once again, it is the wrong mix of housing that is being delivered. So, what is the answer? Of course, opinions vary, and the solutions presented to the electorate in last year’s election showed clear blue water between the main parties.

Recognising the critical importance of the housing shortage in its 2017 manifesto, Labour committed to the creation of a new department for housing. Importantly, on house building, we promised at least 1 million new homes over the next Parliament, which, as we now know, can be a very short time, and a new target of 250,000 new homes a year being built by 2022. Of those, at least 100,000 per year, or 40% minimum, would be genuinely affordable homes to rent and buy per year, including the biggest council house building programme in more than 30 years. If I am honest, I would personally like to see a lot more.

Subsequently, at the autumn party conferences, much time and debate were given over to this challenge, and the Prime Minister announced that she was committed to delivering 300.000 new homes. Specifically, she stated that £2 billion would be committed to helping the delivery of affordable housing, but, of course, that equates to just 25,000 properties. Clearly, housing is rising up the political agenda, and it is now one of the biggest domestic issues that we face.

My contention is that we now face a social crisis that is without precedent in the past 50 years. We have thousands of families without their own homes, waiting desperately for accommodation. We have record numbers of people rough sleeping. In my constituency of Warwick and Leamington, we have the highest number in terms of people per 1,000 of the population in the whole of the west midlands. Over the decades, the overall supply of housing has not delivered. Now must be the time to change that.

I am convinced that council housing was, is and will be the answer to our housing crisis. The Government need to release local authorities from the bounds of their borrowing cap and allow them to use their pension funds to invest in their communities. The use of public land holds the key to unlocking the potential to deliver this. Simply selling public land to the highest bidder will not solve anything. Land is the fundamental denominator in the cost equation of UK housing, and the planning process surrounding it needs urgent, radical reform.

Building more council housing solves at least two key problems: first, the lack of genuinely affordable housing for those who cannot afford market rents; and secondly, the chronic under-supply of housing that is the root cause of our housing crisis. As I said, there is a lack of genuinely affordable housing, with historically high waiting lists of 1.16 million households nationally. The easiest way to help those in need is to provide council housing. If we fail to do this, the result will be increasing homelessness, which we have witnessed more than doubling nationally since 2010. Another, less frequently made, argument is that building more council housing is the key to boosting overall supply, thereby addressing the root cause of the UK’s housing crisis.

The Government’s own target is to build 300,000 new homes each year, but the number of additional homes delivered in 2016-17 was 217,000, falling well short of their target. Although last year was the first year since the financial crisis in which over 200,000 homes were added—and I do applaud that—it was not enough, and the wrong mix of homes is being built. It is now stated that 300,000 houses would just about keep up with demand. Even if the Government hit this target, it is unlikely to bring down house prices and rents significantly. Also, in order to deliver those 300,000 houses, we need all providers to be supplying into the process.

History provides important lessons. It is no coincidence that house building rates reached their post-war peak during the 1950s and ’60s, when successive Governments were committed both to private sector and public sector house building. At the time, housing was plentiful and house prices stayed low, so that many on low to average incomes could afford to rent or buy their own homes. The success of the ’50s and ’60s shows that prioritising council housing need not be a partisan issue. Harold Macmillan, the Conservative Housing Minister from 1951 to 1954, initiated some of the greatest council house building programmes in order to meet his target of building 300,000 homes a year. During those Macmillan years, local authority housing made up 87%, 84%, 77% and 69% of completed dwellings per year respectively. This compares with just 1% in each of the past four years under this Government—or about 20% each year if we include housing associations as well as councils. Importantly, as I have illustrated elsewhere—I want to give credit where it is due—post-war Conservatives recognised that the public sector must build the homes that the private sector will not build during a housing crisis, which is where we find ourselves.

So why will this Government not do that? I would like to believe that it is not simply ideology that says that the state is bad while the private sector is good and will solve all our problems, because this crisis is holding back our country socially and—I cannot stress this enough—economically. I believe that there is a duty on one-nation Conservatives to come forward and urge the Government to commit to a mass council house building programme if they are serious about solving our housing crisis. In this light, I have recently relaunched, with my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Drew), the parliamentary campaign for council housing. I invite all MPs to get involved with this cross-party initiative that aims to see more council houses being built.

Central Government policy currently acts as a disincentive for councils to build more council homes: first, because, there is next to no funding from central Government for the provision of council housing; and secondly, because there has been just £5.9 billion gross investment in social housing in 2015-16 compared with £10 billion in 2009-10, and the vast majority of this will be directed to housing associations.

This compares with the £22 billion forecast to be spent on housing benefit in the 2017-18 financial year, which is a direct result of not building the housing we need. Is that not ironic? Surely the Government would rather not line the pockets of landlords in the private sector, but prefer to invest long term in the council housing that we need. Is that not pragmatic? The additional £2 billion investment announced by the Prime Minister at the conference was welcome, but it will only provide a few thousand homes by 2021, including the affordable homes that can be anything up to 80% of the market rent. The money is not ring-fenced for genuinely affordable social rents.

As I said earlier, the borrowing cap stifles a council’s ability to build where councils can currently only borrow up to a certain amount to invest in council housing. I welcome the announcement in the Budget that the Government will raise the cap by a total of £1 billion for areas under high affordability pressures, but more needs to be done. If the Government accept that the cap stifles building, why will they not lift it entirely for all areas, as has been done in Scotland?

[Matt Rodda]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a considerable need for greater house building in high-cost areas, and that there is actually a lot of available land in many of those areas? There certainly is in Reading. In our case, it is brownfield land from our light industrial past, and I assume that that may also be the case in Warwick and Leamington. Does he agree that urgent Government action is needed to free up that land in order to support the local economy in those areas and to support local public services? There is a particular pressure on local schools and the NHS in my constituency, as people move to lower-cost areas. Will he endorse my points?

[Matt Western]

I thank my hon. Friend for his informed and relevant intervention. He is of course absolutely right that this essentially leads to what may be described as social cleansing. We may actually be creating ghettoes of particular types of community, when we should be striving for sustainable, balanced communities for our economic and social good. I totally endorse my hon. Friend’s points.

It is estimated that lifting the cap would allow £7 billion to be injected over five years, providing an additional 60,000 council homes. Even the Treasury Committee, chaired by the right hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), has called for this and stated:

“raising the cap would have no material impact on the national debt, but could result in a substantial increase in the supply of housing.”

The Local Government Association agrees. In my view, we should lift the cap entirely and take borrowing to invest in council housing off the country’s balance sheet, as is standard in other European countries. Why not?

Returning to the use of land and its availability, there is clearly much land available, but it is questionable in terms of its efficient use. As my hon. Friend the Member for Reading East just alluded to, there is land—including public sector and brownfield land—but it is all about the planning process and how that land is brought into the equation in order to deliver affordable housing. The current planning policy framework makes it prohibitively expensive for this to happen. The whole process needs radical reform.

Councils are currently incentivised to sell off the overpriced land that they own to highest bidder, rather than to use it for the common good. This needs to be reconsidered urgently. I am calling for us to recognise this national crisis in housing by legislating for all unused local authority and public sector land to be used exclusively for council housing. That is the nature of the crisis we face.

The inflated land prices across the country are preventing local authorities from being able to assemble the land to build on. Land is currently priced at its potential future development value, rather than at its existing use value, as is done in other countries. This pushes up the cost of undeveloped land that would be suitable for housing development, making investment in council housing more expensive. Bizarrely, it also rewards landowners for housing and infrastructure developments to which they do not contribute.

The homelessness charity Shelter has argued that a few small reforms to the Land Compensation Act 1961 and associated legislation on compulsory purchase orders would enable local authorities to purchase land at a fair market value—one that reflects both the current value of the land and reasonable compensation, and allows for the delivery of high-quality, affordable developments. This is not rocket science; it is not complicated. That is what they do in other countries in Europe and elsewhere. It is just about changing the planning approach so that it favours the local authorities.

Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Matt Western and Matt Rodda

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 31st October 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Matt Western]

Q What could we do?

Robert Evans: Two different things. One is that the size of the power cables running into new developments is typically capped by the developer or by processes, so it is not built to add further capacity at later dates. That is what charging would require, so that is one part of the equation. The second part would involve effectively putting wiring in new homes in such a way as to ensure that a charge point could easily be added. We have repeatedly asked about this but been told that even putting a smoke alarm in some houses is too much for some developers. Any additional input in that area would be very welcome.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

Q Air quality is a huge issue, particularly in many urban areas and some other parts of the country. What do you believe could be done to increase the roll-out and take-up of electric vehicles in urban areas to help tackle the problem of air quality?

Suleman Alli: From our market, first we need to engage with people to talk about range anxiety. It is down to motor manufacturers to produce vehicles with a longer range. The second thing is availability of charging infrastructure. We have certainly seen an increase in activity from both TfL and local authorities in wanting to understand that more effectively, and we have done a lot of engagement with local authorities to demystify the process and explain what the costs are likely to be. The third thing is just the up-front cost—the capital cost—of buying a vehicle. There is no silver bullet; we would need to do a range of things to increase adoption.