Easter Adjournment

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 10th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

I want to discuss a subject that strangely we often shrink from discussing in any depth: the housing shortage in this country, its consequences, its causes and its cures. Reflecting over the years on both the social and the economic problems of this country, it strikes me that almost all the social problems and many of the economic ones are either caused by or aggravated by a shortage of housing. This is true not just of homelessness, overcrowding and the huge housing benefits bill—the fastest rising benefit bill and one of the largest components of the Department for Work and Pensions budget; it is also true of the benefit trap and the resultant disincentive to work, in that so many people have housing benefit even if they are in work and consequently suffer a loss of benefit when their earnings go up, and of family breakdowns, single parenthood, declining home ownership, and the inability of young people to leave home. All these problems are aggravated by the housing shortage. Now the average age of first-time buyers in London is the late-30s, which is dramatically different from a generation ago.

There are also economic problems: the level of debt, the diversion of lending from business to mortgages, and the mortgages cycle. They, too, are all aggravated by this housing shortage.

The causes of our having the highest prices and the highest rents in Europe and ever-longer waiting lists are simple enough: the number of households is outstripping the pitiful level of new house building. There are two main factors accounting for that. First, there are smaller households. Over the years, the average size of households decreases by roughly 0.5% as people live longer; often there is one of a couple living in the home; or the children might have left home so there are just the parents living in the home. The average size of households is declining, therefore, and, sadly, family breakdown adds to that trend. We would have to build a 0.5% addition to our housing stock every year just to cope with that factor, and we are barely doing that.

The other factor we are strangely reluctant to discuss is the fact that we are now a country of mass immigration. Since Labour took the brakes off immigration in the late ’90s, between 2 million and 3 million additional people have come to this country. For centuries this country was a net exporter of people. Rather bizarrely, now that we are one of the most densely populated countries in Europe, we are a net importer.

I find it strange that many people argue that immigrant numbers are not the problem so long as we have the right sort of immigrants. They say that so long as we exclude scroungers and the unskilled and so on, numbers do not matter. The situation is almost the reverse, however, because the sort of people we have had are overwhelmingly decent, hard-working, law-abiding people who come here to make better lives for themselves. The idea that they are qualitatively wrong is nonsense, insulting and racist. It is numbers that matter. It is numbers that have contributed and added to, and aggravated greatly, the housing shortage in this country. Very few people come to this country to claim benefits, although that is the focus in the discussions we have in this country, but all of them need homes, and all of them are going to occupy homes that otherwise would be available for the people already here.

I wrote a pamphlet back in the early part of this millennium entitled “Too Much of a Good Thing?” I hope that title makes clear my view of immigration: immigrants are basically decent, nice people—fellow human beings, children of the same God, people we should love as our neighbours when they live next to us. But we are foolish to invite too many people into this country. I was caused to publish that pamphlet by looking at the housing shortage and the reason for the rising demand for house building in this country, and I was immediately labelled a racist and an attempt was made to shut off the debate. I hope we can stop doing that, because we will never solve the problem if we do not understand its cause.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I agree absolutely with the right hon. Gentleman that this subject is important, and it is the subject I am going to speak about, but I disagree with everything he is saying about it. There are 50,000 new homes being built in my constituency—a small, densely populated constituency—over the next 20 years. The majority of them will be sold off-plan to overseas investors, not to immigrants to the UK—not to people who now have British citizenship or are acquiring it. They will be sold in that way for a profit because mainly Conservative councils do deals with developers to sell them in that way. That is the root of the housing crisis, in London at least.

[Mr Lilley]

The hon. Gentleman is simply factually wrong. It contributes to the housing problem, but to a small degree. I advise him to read an article in City A.M. last week which got the figures for the number of such new unoccupied houses in London, and it is very small. It contributes to the problem, and if it is bigger than I think, I entirely agree with him that we ought to tackle it , but to suggest that it has anything like the impact of allowing 2 million or 3 million extra people, and every year an extra 200,000 or quarter of a million, into this country is simply to try to divert people’s attention from the self-evident realities. Let us deal with all the problems, including the problem the hon. Gentleman identifies, but we should not try to pretend that there would not be a problem if that issue were to go away.

The only answer in the long run is to build more homes. We cannot pretend that we can solve the housing shortage by manipulating house prices or house rents or mortgage interest rates. Whatever the price of a bottle, we cannot get a quart into a pint pot. If we have more people here, we have to build more homes here. I am not suggesting that we undo history. The history means there are more people here, and we have got to build more homes if we are to overcome the social and economic problems that result from a housing shortage.

If there are 2 million or 3 million more people here, we have to build a corresponding number of additional homes, because those people by and large are of child-bearing age, they will want to form households and we have to accommodate that. We also have to avoid the excuses that are often given for not building homes, not least in my constituency. I have a Hertfordshire constituency, and Hertfordshire is the most densely populated county outside central London. None the less, we have to build more homes there and avoid the excuses for not doing so.

The first excuse for opposing any proposal that gets planning permission is, “They’re the wrong type of houses.” In Hitchin people say, “They’re too small. There are too many flats, and we don’t want to build any more flats. Any new proposal must be stopped because it is for small homes or flats.” Elsewhere they say, “They’re too big. We don’t want those. If we have got a housing shortage, we should be building the small homes for first-time buyers and flats.” We must avoid seeking refuge in excuses. We probably need more of all kinds of property, including flats, small starter homes and larger family homes.

The second excuse that people use in Hertfordshire is that immigrants do not come to our area. By and large, that is true: the vast majority go to central London or to areas with an existing large immigrant population, including Luton. I see my distinguished neighbour, the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), nodding in agreement. Immigrants tend not to come to Hertfordshire, but the people who would have lived in the homes in central London that are now occupied by people from abroad—or kept empty by people from abroad, as the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) says—do move out to the home counties. We cannot pretend that that does not happen. We cannot just shut the gates and pull up the drawbridge and pretend that we are not going to accommodate them. We have to accommodate more people.

The third excuse that people use is that we cannot build new homes because there is no infrastructure to support them, and if we build, it will just create a demand for such infrastructure. However, it is not houses that create that demand for more schools, hospitals, roads and water; it is people, and the people are already here. It is people, not houses, who consume water and who need hospitals and schools. The people are here, and we need to provide the infrastructure and the homes for them. We cannot pretend that the lack of one is an excuse for not providing the other.

The housing shortage creates problems for people like me who represent densely populated constituencies whose distinctive feature is the green belt. When I was first elected, I made the defence of the green belt a feature of my maiden speech. I pointed out that the one thing that united the diverse settlements in my constituency was the desire to remain separated from each other by strips of green belt. They should indeed remain separated in that way: the green belt is a vital and valuable part of our planning law, and we should attach enormous importance to keeping it. However, that means that we must build elsewhere, on brownfield sites or using infill development, unpopular though that often is.

New towns will also have to be built, not too far from London. We cannot pretend that this can all be done in the north of England. We cannot tell people to go and live in the north, or give them incentives to do so. There are already enormous incentives to move out of London and the home counties to the north. Anyone who sells their house in Harpenden can buy an equivalent property in the north of England for a fraction of the price and live off the investment income from the rest of the money. There are therefore already enormous incentives, but if people still have a desire to live in London and the home counties, that reflects the reality of economic and other forces that have to be taken into account.

We must do everything we can to stimulate and promote growth in other regions, but let us not pretend that we can avoid the need to build homes in and around London. We must do that, and we must avoid the excuses that have been used to prevent us from doing it. We must defend the green belt, but we must not be so hypocritical and bigoted as to pretend that we can have no housing at all elsewhere. I hope that enough of us will have the courage to say that, so that we can at least double the rate of house building in this country, as we must do if we are to tackle the underlying economic and social problems. If we do not do that, we will continue to suffer indefinitely.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I want to talk about housing and planning policy in my constituency, which is having a detrimental effect on the quality of life of tens of thousands of my constituents in the short term and on the physical and social integrity of the area in the longer term. Given the nature of this debate, I will take a Pearl & Dean moment and give three tasters of other issues that will occupy my time and that of my constituents between now and the general election, and probably long beyond that.

The first is truly a life and death matter: the inaptly named “Shaping a healthier future” programme of NHS North West London, which is overseeing, in effect, the closure of two major hospitals and four accident and emergency departments in north-west London. An article in last night’s London Evening Standard by its health editor, Ross Lydall, summed up the futility, incompetence and callousness of the way in which this largest ever hospital closure programme is being carried out. It was based on research by the London assembly Labour group, which revealed that 200,000 people in London last year went beyond the four-hour limit in A and E. The article stated:

“Imperial NHS trust, which runs St Mary’s in Paddington, Charing Cross and Hammersmith, missed the target on 50 weeks. North West London hospitals trust…missed the target on 51 weeks.”

Those two miscreants run three of the four closing A and E departments.

This process has been a stitch-up from the beginning: it has had fixed consultations; it has been subject to the most appalling propaganda by Hammersmith and Fulham council which simply tells lies, saying that hospital departments are going to stay open when in fact they are closing; and the trust has now put back the final decisions on the closures, which should have been taken as long ago as last October, to the week after the local elections. That does not fill me with anything other than dread.

I am glad that the arguments over the central issue are being made in the local elections on 22 May. It is not because people are Luddites that they oppose new developments and specialisms within the NHS; that has being going on for years in the area. It is because these are crass and life-threatening proposals. What really sealed the issue for me was a garbled letter that I received from the NHS this week. It said that it was going to find, from the various clinical commissioning groups, about £100 million in this financial year to provide the community services that it said it would have provided before the closures went ahead. It then added for good measure that it also wants to share out £35 million between the CCGs, which means that my CCG will have to give money to those CCGs that are in deficit. That is a shambolic way in which to run the health service.

The subject of dodgy consultations links me to my second subject, which is Heathrow’s expansion. People in west London have received a consultation document called “Black Heathrow” from a front organisation for Heathrow. It is completely unintelligible, talking at one stage about the closure of Heathrow, which no one wants, and then trying to advocate a third or additional runways on the site. I am pleased to say that there is a genuine cross-party organisation on this subject, which includes the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall), the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), me and many others of all parties and of none who genuinely represent the views of the 2 million people in west London, the overwhelming majority of whom do not want Heathrow expanded.

I share the frustration of Howard Davies over the political fix that both coalition parties go along with. I am talking about the fact that the decision on airport capacity in the south-east has been kicked into touch until after the election. I think Mr Davies is a constituent, and his report so far is good as it explodes the myth of the need for a hub airport and raises the prospect of a second runway at Gatwick, which is, on every criteria, a better option. I hope we can have a little more honesty and transparency in this debate, and that we can force a decision before the next election.

The third issue is police crime statistics, which we have already touched on in our discussion on the report from the Public Administration Select Committee. The end of neighbourhood policing, which is what we are seeing in London and around the country, is a huge step back, and does nothing to ensure public confidence in the police force. On the misuse of statistics, I gave the example earlier of a propaganda exercise, which in fairness to the police was carried out by the local authority on their behalf, that pretended that extra resources were going into policing. In fact, the official statistics, if we can believe them, say that there has been a cut of 158 officers—police community support officers and police officers—in Hammersmith since the last election. I raised that matter with the police and crime commissioner.

I raised another matter with the commissioner which will affect Members across London. He was perfectly clear that it was not in his gift to do anything about this, as it was a political decision by the current deputy Mayor to sell off police houses across London. Most police accommodation is effectively social housing. Many tenants are current or former police staff. Many are families who have lived in that accommodation for 15, 20 or 25 years. They do not have security of tenure, so families are being evicted on a daily basis. I have 40 homes in my constituency at Broadmead. Families who thought that they had a home for life are being thrown out on to the streets or the tender mercies of the local authority.

That brings me neatly on to the issue of housing proper. I am only able to talk about that thanks to two sources. One is what I call, pace Sherlock Holmes, the Uxbridge road irregulars. I am talking about the hundreds of my constituents who write to me every month about housing issues and tell me about things such as the 300% rise in complaints about council housing repairs or identify the hundreds of empty council flats that are being sold off on the open market by the local authority. I also want to thank Martin Peach, one of my constituents who happens to be a housing expert. He has written a report on the issue, which reveals the depth and cynicism of the housing policy in Hammersmith. I have had to rely on those sources because, unlawfully, the local authority refuses not only to give me the information voluntarily but to answer freedom of information requests. Over a two-month period, before and after Christmas, I submitted nine such requests. I do not think that is particularly excessive, and I usually put in a lot more, to be honest.

As the local elections are approaching and the authority is so ashamed of what it is doing, it aggregated those freedom of information requests because most of them had the word “housing” in them. Some were about how many properties were sold, some were about rent arrears and one was about the Christmas card sent at great expense to all tenants that said, “Please don’t get drunk this Christmas, pay your rent instead,” which I thought was an excellent use of public money, but because they all contain the word “housing” they were aggregated and I was told that under the Freedom of Information Act it was too expensive to answer those questions. Clearly, I will go to the Information Commissioner and clearly I will get a decision in my favour, as I am sure that that is an unlawful step, but that will probably take me six months and the aim will have been achieved. That is another example of how the Freedom of Information Act is misused by local authorities. However, as I say, we have other sources to help us find out what is going on.

Let me briefly summarise what is going on. The policy in Hammersmith is to build no new social rented accommodation, in a borough where the average house price is, at a conservative estimate, £675,000, although some estimates say that it is £750,000, and where rent for a two-bedroom flat is £400 to £500 a week. At least 10,000 families are in housing need. The local authority’s response is not simply to say that it will not build a single additional social rented home, but to decide that it will reduce the existing stock. In 2011 it decided that any property that required repairs costing more than £15,000 could be sold on the open market. At the end of 2013, 262 properties had been sold, generating £112 million in revenue.

At the time, the local authority was warned—again, this takes us into the realms of illegality—by the director of legal services that it should not sell off scarce properties, when in fact it had sold off 72 ground-floor flats and 31 whole houses, that it should not sell off properties if there was a pressing housing need, which of course there is, and that it should have regard to the effect on persons protected by the Equality Act 2010. The people who are disadvantaged—those who are most in need—tend to be from minority ethnic groups, people with disabilities and other groups who are protected by that Act. The director of legal services also said that sales should not be tainted by considerations of electoral advantage. I will let that one hang in the air.

Selling off perfectly good, sound council flats that could be rented to homeless families is step one, and step two is a joint venture with a private developer that will ensure that initially 150, and over time perhaps several thousand, blocks or estates of council property will be emptied out, not replaced, and then developed into what one of my constituents poetically called “zombie homes for absentee oligarchs”. That is obviously a waste of public funds. Most of those properties have been newly refurbished under the decent homes programme, but they will either be sold off by auction or demolished. Housing the families who would have gone into those properties and who will now be in the private rented sector will cost a great deal in housing benefit, and that does not deal at all with the social cost.

In the period from 1 January 2010 to 20 November 2013, 2,505 homeless households approached the council for help. As of 20 February 2013, 138 people were sleeping rough on the streets of the borough. The council’s emergency housing costs rose from £387,000 in 2009 to £1.7 million in 2012. It placed 463 households with one child or more outside the borough, and a further 121 households with no children but to whom the council owed a homelessness duty were placed in accommodation outside the borough. Of all the households that were housed temporarily, 329 were placed in bed-and-breakfast accommodation, often for longer than the law permits. A further 22 households were housed outside London altogether, at a further cost of £79,000. All told, 600 households were housed outside the local area and 12 hostels were sold off.

How many people are in housing need in the borough? I said more than 10,000, which was the number on the housing waiting list this time last year, but then the housing waiting list was effectively abolished and now the council will tell you that the figure is only 700. However, the waiting time for properties was between two and seven years depending on the size of the property. How selling off or demolishing hundreds of homes helps, I do not know.

What reasons are given for this? First, that there is too much social housing, but there is 31% social housing in Hammersmith and Fulham, which is below the inner London average. Secondly, that there is no need for social housing; we need a property-owning democracy. The net effect between this census and the one before is that owner-occupation in the borough fell from 43% to 35.6%, the second highest fall in the country. That is a very successful policy.

On planning, the target is 40% affordable housing in any scheme. What is achieved, on average, is 16%, and none of that is social rented housing. Most of it will be for a discount market sale or some form of shared ownership, with a likely income needed of £50,000, about £37,000 net. That is not affordable housing by my definition, yet the definition of affordable housing has been extended so that it now applies to households earning £80,000 a year.

Who are the 50,000 homes in Hammersmith being built for? As I said in an intervention on the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley), that is the target number. The answer is in a letter that comes through my letterbox in an ordinary street in Shepherd’s Bush every day, from estate agents who say that they have demand from overseas investors. They say they have 3,000 purchasers looking to buy in our area, many of whom have 100% cash funds.

I shall give one example of a riverside development next to an ordinary terraced street in Hammersmith. It is a modern, contemporary development of one, two and three-bed luxurious apartments in a tranquil riverside location, priced between £600,000 and £1.7 million. The agents details say this:

“Also exclusive to the services residents will sport complex, which includes a swimming pool, sauna, spa room, gym, massage room, virtual golf, movie theatre for residents, a wine room and a room for meetings…The complex is in walking dostants…and the Royal Borough of Kensington Park…is another Stronie away through the area Fulham—is one of the larges parks in London—Richmond Park.”

I apologise for the English, but, of course, that was translated from the Russian by Google translator, because almost all the developments in my constituency are marketed either through The Straits Times or through websites in the middle east or Russia. That is who a local authority in London thinks it is appropriate to build for when we have tens of thousands of local people of—I say this to the right hon. Gentleman— whatever ethnic origin, whether they are indigenous, first, second or third generation in the UK, who need homes. We have a successful and vibrant mixed community in Hammersmith, which suffers only because of the direct policies pursued by this Government, this Mayor and the local authority in my area.