Andrew George
Main Page: Andrew George (Liberal Democrat - St Ives)
Emma Reynolds
I thought the hon. Member for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery) was starting to deliver his speech. I say gently to him that the last global financial crash was not caused by the Labour Government’s spending on schools and hospitals, and for him to tell us otherwise is completely fatuous.
Labour has set out plans to boost the role of small house builders, self-builders and custom-builders, who tell us that access to finance and access to land are the key barriers to getting homes built. We have proposed a help to build scheme, which will help them to access finance through the banks—crucially, to get them building—and on access to land we have said that we will ensure that local authorities allocate land in their five-year land supplies, while giving them guaranteed access to public land.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
The hon. Lady knows that I have a private Member’s Bill on the subject of affordable housing. In an area such as mine—not a nimby area—the housing stock has more than doubled in the last 40 years, yet the housing problems of local people have got significantly worse. She will be aware that the situation is complicated and requires a more sophisticated answer than simply producing thousands more homes. Does she not accept that we need to look at, for example, controlling the number of second homes, which have increased greatly in areas such as mine? Do we not need to deal with issues such as that as well as simply build more houses?
Emma Reynolds
I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point and I know that this is a particular issue in his constituency. I think that this whole debate around second homes is difficult. How do we prove which is someone’s first or second home? Many right hon. and hon. Members here, for example, split their time pretty much equally between London and their constituency. I am not entirely sure that the measures suggested by the hon. Gentleman would be fair or effective. I recognise that the problem is not just a matter of building more homes; it is also about whom we are building those new homes for. That is why it is crucial that the homes we build are truly affordable, which I believe is part of the hon. Gentleman’s private Member’s Bill. I agree with him on the key point that it is not just about the numbers; it is about quality, affordability and place making. It is right not to focus only on the numbers, but in my view the numbers are important.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
It is a pleasure to follow the considered speech of the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts). I experienced a bit of déjà vu at the start of this debate, as we had the predictable trading of blizzards of carefully selected statistics and political froth, which does nothing to shed any light on this matter. As is often the case, there is, at this point, a coming together, with people trying to find constructive solutions, rather than simply trading selective statistics. People who accidentally stumble on this debate while seeking entertaining daytime television, and who happen to watch this kind of thing, will be left bemused or cold by the trading of figures that we saw at the start.
The obsession with chasing housing build targets and with trying to apportion blame is one reason why there has been, over decades, a complete failure to provide enough decent family homes that are affordable for people in this country. There seems to be an obsession with one rather two-dimensional issue, which is the building of thousands of houses. I have won the MPs’ equivalent of the national lottery by coming first in the private Members’ Bill ballot. On 5 September, providing there are not too many other Members filibustering me out of this opportunity, I will put the case for the further tools that are necessary to advance the interests of affordable housing for families in this country.
This is a bespoke Bill—not one that is off the peg—on which I will seek cross-party support; it is still being drafted. I hope to gain support for it over time. At the moment, it is a veritable Queen’s Speech of a Bill that will probably have to be narrowed down. The issue on which I will primarily focus is the still insufficiently developed intermediate market for housing, particularly in the south, where there is a big mismatch between earnings and house prices. Constructing a new lower rung on the housing ladder of shared equity, shared ownership and mutual housing is necessary to address some of the problems in areas such as mine.
Having listened to the shadow Minister, I want to speak about some of the things that are undermining our attempts to fulfil the desperate need for affordable homes in areas such as mine. They include the proliferation of second or holiday homes. I have tried to advance the case for the introduction of a new use classes order in the planning system, which would cover those who want to convert a property from permanent to non-permanent occupancy. The order would last only for the lifetime of that occupancy, because otherwise there would be a perverse incentive for us all to go for that when we wanted to sell our properties. However, there does not appear to be political support for that at present. I urge both Labour and Conservative Members to look at the impact that that issue is having on areas such as mine, where four times as many properties are sold to second-home buyers than to first-home buyers.
As I mentioned in my intervention on the shadow Minister, we are not nimbys in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. The housing stock has more than doubled in the past 40 years, yet the housing problems of locals have got significantly worse. It is not simply building homes that is the issue; we have significantly more second homes and holiday homes in our area and significantly higher housing need. This obsession with building hundreds of thousands of homes is not the answer. We need to be a little more sophisticated in our approach. It is not the case that if we dump a load of homes on the countryside the market will, by magic, ensure equilibrium, and local people will have their housing needs met. I can assure Members that that policy will fundamentally fail in my constituency.
There is also the impact of the spare room subsidy. I do not think I will have time to advance that issue, but there is a principle involved here: if someone is poor, they should not be less entitled to a stable family home than if they were better off. I am not sure that I will be able to advance that principle in my Bill, but I feel very strongly that it is something that has been lost in our obsession.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
It sounds to me—I hope I have not misinterpreted the hon. Gentleman—as though there is an argument for building council houses again. What does he think about that? We have debated social housing time and again, but it would never meet the requirements of the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. Perhaps he should think about council house building.
Andrew George
Absolutely. I am not quite so obsessed with the issue of whether the property is owned by a council or by a registered social landlord. We have some fantastic housing associations in this country, and we have had some pretty rotten local authorities. What we need is social rented accommodation of a decent standard that meets the local need for affordable housing.
Andrew George
Time prevents me from taking another intervention from the hon. Gentleman. One of the unintended consequences of the spare room subsidy is that we will end up with smaller new build properties, and less flexibility for housing associations in meeting the needs of local communities. When I was involved in this sector, before I was elected to this House, I always recommended future-proofing new build estates. For example, if I identified an even demand for two and three-bedroom properties, I erred on the side of three and four-bedroom properties, because of the need to future-proof the estate. At the time of building, the marginal cost of adding another bedroom to a development is almost insignificant; it is tiny. That is why the spare room subsidy is driving policy in entirely the wrong direction, and that needs to be addressed.
Speculative landholdings need to be controlled, particularly in rural areas such as mine, where we are looking for exception sites. How can we do that when people are clinging on to land for dear life? One of the planning system’s big problems is that it is fuelled by greed, rather than need. If we are to meet local housing need, we need a system that forces landowners to use or lose their land. I would like the Government to address those needs.
In view of the time, I clearly need to bring my remarks to a close. I look forward to addressing these issues in private meetings in advance of our debate on 5 September, but people who have shared-equity or shared-ownership accommodation often find themselves stuck because they are unable to buy. The Government need to consider extending the Help to Buy scheme to shared ownership, to enhance that sector and allow for a new lower rung on the housing ladder, particularly in those parts of the country in which there is a bigger mismatch between earnings and house prices.