Cost of Living: Private rented sector

Debate between Andrew Western and Lloyd Russell-Moyle

Tuesday 18th July 2023 Westminster Hall

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he acknowledge that we have more houses now per head than we did in the 1950s? It is not just a crisis of the number of units but, as he has just said, it is the tenure of those units that is vitally important. If we do not get that mix right, the crisis will not be solved.

[Andrew Western]

My hon. Friend is right and, like him, I look forward to a Labour Government ensuring that social rent is returned to the second highest form of tenure. We retain a significant shortage of homes overall. We are nowhere near where we should be, compared with the European average. He is correct, and I agree, that we are in desperate need of a significant increase in social homes, up and down this country.

Conservatives seem to have given up on building, as demonstrated by their capitulation on housing targets, which will leave house building at its lowest since the second world war. Only last week, we learned that, under this Government, we are in a situation where, despite the UK being short of approximately 4 million homes, the Department that is meant to build those homes is handing back £1.9 billion to the Treasury after failing to find housing projects to spend it on. I am pretty sure that, had the Minister sought advice or support from Members in this room and beyond, that money could have been well spent.

Thankfully, Labour has not given up on house building. Reforming planning rules, reintroducing house building targets, building on parts of the green belt that are in fact far from green, and, as I have just discussed with my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle), restoring social housing to the second largest form of tenure will be key drivers in our mission to achieve the fastest growth in the G7.

I congratulate the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook), on all his work to raise this issue and to promote house building but, as he knows, I would go further still. Our 76-year-old planning system needs to be scrapped so that we can shift away from a discretionary system at the mercy of nimbyism towards one that is rules-based, underpinned by a flexible zoning code and determined nationally for local implementation. Only then will we be sure that we can build the number of homes, and the types and tenures of property, that we require.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Does my hon. Friend welcome the Labour party’s proposal to empower local councils to set up development bodies, which would not only be reactive in the planning policy debate, but would be proactive, in the sense that they could buy up land at the current land-value cost rather than inflated future costs, and develop it themselves or with partners?

[Andrew Western]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I welcome the Labour party’s commitment not only to end the hope value that exists in the sale of land at present but, as he says, to introduce the vehicles that empower local authorities to build. As a formal local authority leader, I know how challenging it is, particularly without a housing revenue account, to build those homes, and therefore to influence the place-shaping of communities. It is imperative that local authorities can do that to ensure that we get the homes that our local neighbourhoods require.