Low-Cost housing

Debate between Rupa Huq and Ruth Cadbury

Wednesday 8th February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under you again, Ms Gillan. I thank the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) for securing the debate.

I wondered whether there had been a mix-up by the Chairman of Ways and Means, who decides on these debates, but knowing him and understanding the process as I now do, I know that that is not possible. Hon. Members may have attended this debate and people may have watched it in anticipation of a debate on low-cost housing, perhaps hoping to hear some more detail about the White Paper that the Government released yesterday or some more meat put on the bones of the essential topic of low-cost housing. Instead, this debate has been about a small proposal to tweak the planning system.

I will address the proposal from the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare in a moment, but first I will address low-cost housing, which is the topic of the debate and is what I expected to be speaking on. Of course the overall supply of housing—which the hon. Gentleman states it is the intention of his policy to address—is important, because we have a shortage of housing in this country, as the Secretary of State said yesterday. In a pure supply and demand curve, one expects more supply to mean lower cost, and the obverse—shortage of supply—means higher cost, which is exactly what has happened in the open market; so housing becomes more and more unaffordable for more and more people.

That has happened in the last seven years. Under David Cameron, the UK built fewer homes than under any peacetime Prime Minister since 1923. The number of home-owning households rose by a million under the 1997 to 2010 Government, but it has fallen by 200,000 since 2010, and this shortage has meant that the price of buying has risen and risen, putting homes out of the reach of even well-paid young people. Members here today may have watched “Newsnight” last night, in which there were reasonably well-paid young professionals who could not get on the housing ladder. In my constituency in west London, working people earning reasonable salaries cannot even afford to rent, and if they can just about pay more than 50% of their income on rent, they have no money left to save up for a deposit. The market is not delivering affordable homes to rent or to buy, except in some economically deprived areas, where there are more homes than there are people who want to live in them.

In most of England, because house prices have risen, more and more people need some kind of subsidised low-cost housing. Since 2010, however, Government funding for all types of affordable housing—there were eight definitions of affordable housing in the White Paper—has been withdrawn, except for one, which is for first-time buyers. The level of new affordable house building has still managed to hit a 24-year low. The number of shared ownership homes and other low-cost home ownership homes being built annually has fallen by 66% since 2010, to just 7,540 homes a year, meaning that 34,170 fewer affordable homes have been built since 2010 than in the last six years of the last Labour Government. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) clearly described the problems—and the potential solutions—of delivering truly affordable low-cost housing.

For social rented housing, official statistics show that the number of social rented homes that were started in 2009-10 was almost 40,000, but in 2015-16 the number of social rented homes being delivered was less than 1,000—a fall of 98% and the lowest figure since records began.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) said yesterday in the main Chamber that private house builders, housing associations and councils need to fire on all cylinders to build the homes that we need, and councils need to be allowed to build homes again to meet the needs of local people. At the moment, they are not allowed to do that.

[Dr Huq]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for giving way. I agree with what she is saying, that this “Pile ’em high, sell ’em cheap and leave it to market forces” solution does not sound like it is enough. When it is left to market forces, in a place such as Ealing, people seem to use these high-rise homes that are going up as a very expensive piggybank; they are not even living in them. Obviously we need more social housing to counteract all this.

[Ruth Cadbury]

My hon. Friend and constituency neighbour is absolutely right. I have experienced that in my own constituency. We still have newly built homes that are never let, because they are seen as nothing more than an investment, and many of them are very high in price.

As I have said, the latest affordable housing statistics have fallen to their lowest levels in 24 years. Of course I welcome any credible initiatives to provide low-cost housing, but where is the evidence that this well-meaning initiative to extend permitted development rights, which the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare has discussed today, will actually deliver low-cost housing?

Between February and April in 2016, the Government consulted jointly with the Mayor of London on proposals to deliver more homes in London by allowing a limited number of additional storeys on existing buildings through a permitted development right, local development orders or development plan policies, which is exactly what the hon. Gentleman is seeking. That was part of the Government’s commitment to explore how more homes could be built on brownfield land, in order to reduce the pressure on greenfield or metropolitan open land. The Government summary of the responses that they received to that proposal says:

“More than half of those were not supportive of the proposal, with a one-size-fits-all permitted development right approach considered unworkable. While it was noted that it could support town centres and deliver more homes, it was recognised that the complex prior approval that would be required to protect neighbours and the character and amenity of an area would result in a permitted development right that is no less onerous than a planning application.”

Specifically, a couple of the consultees—the Planning Officers Society and Historic England—did not support the proposals. I am well aware that the British Property Federation welcomed them.

Affordable Housing: London

Debate between Rupa Huq and Ruth Cadbury

Tuesday 14th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Ruth Cadbury]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Of course, in his constituency he has many people working at very high salaries. We know there is a crisis when people on almost £100,000 a year cannot afford a home in London.

The problem goes to the heart of London’s ability to function and to serve the rest of the UK. Let us look at the problem from the perspective of a few people who want to live and work in London and see what their choices are. In the teaching and social work professions, there is a chronic shortage and a recruitment and retention crisis, as all of us who have recently met headteachers or directors of social services know. Inner London salaries range between £27,000 and £37,000. If we take a mid-point of £32,000, someone could get a 25-year mortgage with a 5% interest rate and they would be able to afford between £87,000 and £131,000, but in my constituency a teacher could not get anything. The cheapest home for sale in my constituency, apart from a boat, is £190,000, and that is for a one-bedroom flat in a house that is in a shocking condition.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend aware that in the W4 postcode, which is in her constituency and mine, just to have a chance at having a one-bedroom flat—a so-called starter home under the new scheme designed to alleviate the crisis—someone would need a salary of £90,500? Starter homes have been misnamed. They are not starting anything, but ending dreams for a generation.

[Ruth Cadbury]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right; I will move on to that subject shortly. Certainly a salary of more than £90,000 is not the average mid-point for a teacher or social worker.

Time and again when I talk to employers, housing is the issue. For some nurses there has been some key worker housing, which was introduced to deal with market failure and to provide cheap housing, but that is all but disappearing. Those entering nursing will also face a mountain of student debt now that the Government have announced the scrapping of the NHS bursaries. The Royal College of Nursing survey recently showed that many nurses will leave London if they cannot afford anywhere to live, which will add to the problems in the NHS.

At the lower end of the pay scales are people who are essential for London to work. A daycare assistant is paid £6.70 an hour to work in a nursery here in London; that is about £1,000 a month. No one with a family can do such work when the average rent is around £1,500 a month. Even renting a room takes well over half the daycare assistant’s take-home pay. I have a specific example of a hard-working man and his family in my constituency. Since coming to London he has worked full time in two jobs. He has rented privately for years, taking multiple loans to cover deposits and rent up front, and is now in considerable debt as a result. His landlord has now raised the rent as it is the end of the tenancy, so he now cannot stay there with his family. Letting agents and private landlords will not accept claimants of housing benefit, which he needs to top up his rent, and he cannot borrow any more money for a deposit. Despite never missing a rent payment and despite two previous letting agents confirming that with good references, he cannot rent privately. He has had to apply to the council as homeless in order to get housing.

But my constituent will not get a council home. The current series of “How to Get a Council House” is filmed in my borough of Hounslow. None of the families in that series has ended up getting a council home. If they have been lucky and got through the hoops, and if they have been accepted under the council’s duty to house, they are placed in temporary accommodation, as my constituent and his family will be. Temporary accommodation is private rented housing where housing benefit may contribute to housing costs, but even then my constituent is not out of the cycle of escalating rents. He may dream of owning a home—a Government objective—but what he needs is a home at a rent he can afford on his low wages.

He is not alone. The ending of a private tenancy now accounts for 39% of homelessness acceptances in London. According to the Department for Communities and Local Government statistics, 32,000 people in London made an application to their council as homeless in 2014-15, which represents an increase of 38% over five years. DCLG statistics reveal that right-to-buy sales between October and December 2015 accounted for 26% of sales. Right to buy is for people who are already fortunate to be council tenants, but, with a Government discount of up to £100,000, it is taking valuable stock away from local authorities, hence their dependence on temporary accommodation.

In the council housing sector, like-for-like replacement is not happening for the council homes bought under right to buy. The new replacement homes that the Government announced could be shared ownership or low cost sale rather than rent. At least 36% of all homes sold by councils across London are now let by private landlords, many of them subsidised by housing benefit because the rents are so high. The sale of high value vacant council homes will have the overall effect of restricting the number of affordable houses for rent. London Councils is concerned that the objective to replace two homes for every one sold may not be sufficient to cover construction costs and land purchases in the right mix of housing. So already we have examples of the failure of the housing market in London that is causing the affordability crisis.

I have not yet mentioned employees in the private sector on middle incomes. Fuller’s Brewery in my constituency is a thriving business with an international reputation. Having spoken to the directors, it has become evident that the housing crisis is affecting their business and their ability to recruit and retain staff. So who can truly afford to buy a home in the area they want to live in, grew up in or want to work in?

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth Cadbury]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Many business organisations are raising housing as an issue. Two years ago, the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry wrote a significant, ground- breaking report on housing costs and the housing shortage. That does not appear to have been taken into account when the Housing and Planning Bill was drafted. I understand that the LCCI will be launching another report in a couple of weeks to highlight the problems again.

A shortage of the total number of homes in all sectors—council, social rented, intermediate and market rented—has driven up open market sale and rental values. Several organisations, particularly the London Housing Commission, have estimated that London needs at least 50,000 new homes a year just to begin to deal with the shortage, and stated that a significant proportion must be affordable, particularly when wages have not kept up with prices. The average Londoner’s salary is £33,000, but the average home now costs 16 times that. As more people are priced out of home ownership, they are putting more pressure on the rental market, in which rents are continuing to rise. In my borough, Hounslow, the rent-to-salary ratio is 58%, and rent levels are out of reach for average earners, let alone those on low wages.

Until around five years ago, councils relied on Government support to add to the stock of council and housing association homes so that they could provide decent-quality, affordable homes to those in acknowledged housing need who were unable to rent or buy in the private sector. In 2011-12, some 12,000 new social rent homes were delivered, thanks to the Labour Government policies that supported housing associations, and later councils, to build, but that figure has been declining, and only around 2,000 new social rent homes will be built this year. That shows how the pipeline supply is declining. The number of council homes and housing association social rented homes built this year will be lower than the number of council homes lost through the right to buy. The total stock of homes for social rent is going ever downwards.

There was always the intermediate market of shared ownership—part rent, part buy—but less of that stock is now coming on stream as the Government focus on starter homes and Help to Buy. Relying on the private sector to deliver affordable homes has meant that in new developments across London, only 13% of homes given planning consent last year were considered “affordable” under the official definition. We are losing social rented homes faster through council house sales than section 106 agreements with developers are delivering new homes.

What are the Government doing about affordable housing? Let us look at their flagship policy: starter homes. When the policy comes on stream, it will apply only to brand-new properties, which, at current prices, are unaffordable to most working Londoners, as the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) said. Someone needs to be earning £97,000 to buy an average-priced starter home. Starter homes will also cut the delivery of all other homes. A third of councils that responded to an Inside Housing survey revealed that their entire affordable housing requirement could be consumed by starter homes if the threshold is set at 20%.

Charities such as Crisis are concerned that the policy will require councils to prioritise starter homes for higher earners and so reduce councils’ scope to meet the full range of housing requirements identified through their local planning processes. London Councils agrees that starter homes should be in addition to other forms of housing, so that councils can still secure the necessary tenure and price mix in accordance with the needs in their area, and can discharge their homelessness responsibilities by providing truly affordable housing.

[Dr Huq]

My hon. Friend is being very generous in taking interventions. She mentioned her own experience as a parent; has she seen the Aviva research that shows that 1 million more people aged between 20 and 30 are going to be living at home with their parents in the next 10 years? We have all heard of the bank of mum and dad, but does she agree that the Government have not only messed up the housing market but seem to be stunting young people’s growth?

[Ruth Cadbury]

Young people whose parents live in a house in London big enough for them to have their own room, or even to share a room, at least have the advantage that they can ask us to carry on housing them—for I do not know how long—but what about mobility? How can young people from other parts of the UK or other parts of the world come to London? They do not have the landlord of mum and dad to turn to.

Let me return to the implications of Government policy and the Housing and Planning Act 2016. Many London councils, particularly those in inner London, believe that in future there could be areas where there are no affordable rented homes, because the Government expect 20% of all new developments to include starter homes on sale at 80% of market value. Couple that with the right to buy, the decline of housing association stock and the forced sale of vacant council homes, and there will be yet more of a crisis.

NHS in London

Debate between Rupa Huq and Ruth Cadbury

Thursday 24th March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the NHS in London.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate, and I thank the London Members from three different parties who supported my application.

Our consideration today of the NHS in London is timely because there are reorganisations—or reconfigurations, as they are called—going on all over the city. I will address on the situation in north-west London in particular. In Ealing, the NHS was the main issue in the election campaign, and it continues to be a preoccupation, as I can see in my inbox and postbag. I shall talk today about matters such as the junior doctors contract negotiations we hear so much about; A&E closures; changes in maternity and paediatrics, which affect us in Ealing; community pharmacies and some of the other allied services, such as optical services; and staff morale. I have several specific cases from my surgery, including those of whistleblowers. I have a constituent who was sacked and has been effectively blacklisted from NHS employment ever since exposing bribe taking at Ealing hospital. I have raised her case three times on the Floor of the House, but nothing practical seems to be forthcoming for her.

There have been two important reports relating to the health service in north-west London. Most recently, the Independent Healthcare Commission for North West London, chaired by Michael Mansfield QC, was set up in response to the NHS’s “Shaping a Healthier Future” programme to reshape hospital and out-of-hospital health and care services in north-west London. The proposals in “Shaping a Healthier Future” are euphemistically called changes, but they are actually cuts—we know what they really are—and they include nearly halving the number of hospitals in our local area with a proper 24-hour A&E service. There were nine, but that is going down to five.

The London Borough of Ealing is around the same size as cities such as Leeds, but it will have no properly functioning A&E services at a hospital. The nearest four hospitals to my constituency—Central Middlesex, Hammersmith, Ealing and Charing Cross—are set to be downgraded to minor hospitals with no A&E. Instead, there will be urgent care centres.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. She is obviously concerned about the loss of services in her constituency, as are other colleagues about theirs. Is it not true that many people, including my constituents, are concerned about the pressure on the remaining hospitals, such as West Middlesex University hospital, when all the surrounding hospital services are closing? There is no guarantee that the remaining hospitals will have either the capital or the revenue funding they will need to cope with the inevitable increase in demand when services such as those at my hon. Friend’s hospital close.

[Dr Huq]

rose—

Feminism in the School Curriculum

Debate between Rupa Huq and Ruth Cadbury

Monday 11th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Huq]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. He makes an excellent point. Whenever I have school parties in and we do the Q and A session afterwards, the first thing they say is, “Why are there so few women here?” In some senses, we internalise this and treat it as normal because we work here every day, but to the outside world, the gender imbalance here is bizarre.

In 2016, women’s representation in politics and public life is still, as my hon. Friend points out, woefully inadequate. The contribution of women to our political history is vital. Some people argue that it should be much more her-story than history—get it? Learning about that is vital so that young people grow up knowing that it is not bizarre and far-fetched that women can contribute to our society and our country and can make history.

The Fawcett Society submission points out that the figures that my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne quoted equate to 94% of key thinkers being men. It states:

“Presenting men as the default political thinker…contributes to gendered stereotypes which limit women’s participation in politics. Only 29.4% of MPs are women, as are 33% of councillors, 35% of MSPs, 40% of AMs, and 19% of MLAs.”

As Labour Members have cautioned and as the noble Lord Watson has said, this proposal is part of a pattern. The Government’s policies are hugely unbalanced and damaging, with women bearing the brunt of the cuts. Some 81% of the “savings”—that euphemistic term—have been made from tax and benefit changes since 2010, for which women have paid the price. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) pointed out that his Committee has a good record of women members, but the Department for Education has only two women on its board and is one of the worst in Whitehall.

Over the Christmas break there were indications that the Education Secretary was considering adding more women to a list of political thinkers, but we need clarity on that. If what looks like a U-turn has occurred—we are in the dark about that—it has been forced to happen only because of Labour pressure. Last year my hon. Friends the Members for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) and for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) jointly wrote a letter to the Education Secretary, and co-signatories to that letter included Frances O’Grady from the TUC, Laura Bates of the Everyday Sexism project, and the president of the National Union of Teachers, Christine Blower—I believe she is a constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter). They urged the Government not to scrap feminism in the A-level politics syllabus, and stated:

“The new draft syllabus has all but erased any reference to feminism…This sends a very worrying message to both young men and young women that feminism has little to no place in politics”.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I thank my neighbour and hon. Friend for securing this debate. Does the fact that Edexcel has bowed to pressure from 17-year-old Jessy McCabe to include more women composers in the music curriculum send a strong message to the exam boards of other subjects—in particular politics and history—that we need more women on the curriculum and across the board?

[Dr Huq]

My hon. Friend puts it well. Jessy McCabe is with us this evening, and her e-petition—a very modern way of petitioning the Government—obtained nearly 4,000 signatures. When I pointed that out to the Prime Minister during Prime Minister’s questions, he congratulated her. However, that should not have been an afterthought. Why do these things go so far that they have to be brought back from the brink?

Last month, the Department for Education said that feminism could still be studied as part of the reforms to the A-level sociology curriculum, and that the proposed move

“tied in with school autonomy and trusting heads”.

It is not good enough to leave it to chance in that way. Teaching and learning strategy should enrich students because, as many Members have pointed out, feminism informs history and globalisation. This is not just one of those theoretical “isms” as many of these things are; feminism affects us all every day. As young people go on to study at university across different disciplines, having the compass of feminism and an understanding of unequal gender relations to navigate their path is critical, and we must make the classroom responsive to, and representative of, society. The syllabus should not be gender-blind, because that is denying reality. We could also include world thinkers on an expanded list, such as Simone de Beauvoir from France, or the American black feminist, bell hooks.

In the December debate in the other place, Lord Nash declared that the proposed new content for politics A-level was an improvement on the last one because for the first time it contained political ideologies. However, feminism was not one of the named ideologies, so that is a little inconsistent. The Department for Education justified the move on the grounds of giving more choice to schools, but to us it looked like freedom to downplay the historical contribution of female thinkers. It took reports on the website “BuzzFeed” over Christmas for us to have some inkling that movement was taking place, and such unofficial, if positive, statements, need substantiation tonight.

Today I tried to get clarity from the Department, and I rang up the parliamentary affairs section, which over Christmas was asking me, “What is going in your speech? ”—this is hot off the press, so I did not entirely know the content. I did, however, ask whether the rumours in The Independent on Sunday were true, and I was given the classic response, “The Minister will be laying out the Government’s position in the course of the debate.”