Housing

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 5th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jack Dromey]

A record of 2 million more homes, 1 million more mortgages holders, half a million more affordable homes and 1.6 million homes brought up to the decent homes standard is one that we can rightly be proud of. All I will say now, as I will say later on, is that in the here and now there is a pretty dramatic contrast between what Labour councils and Conservative-led councils are doing in building new council homes, taking advantage of the housing revenue account reforms, reforms that we pioneered.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend talks about building new council homes; we wish we had that luxury. On Monday in Hammersmith, the Conservative council decided to knock down 760 newly refurbished council family homes and sell the land to a private developer, some of whose associates have been arrested in Hong Kong on fraud charges. Is that the localism of which the Government speak? The residents of those homes had voted three times for them not to be demolished—the last time by a majority of four to one.

[Jack Dromey]

My hon. Friend represents with great distinction a constituency with a council that has been a laboratory for some of the most right-wing, ideological Conservative thinking on housing. He is right to challenge that and to say that the rhetoric may be that of localism, but the practice is more like Leninism.