Andy Slaughter
Main Page: Andy Slaughter (Labour - Hammersmith)
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.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
Over the last four years, the problem has been the failure to build affordable homes and social homes. The truth is that what are defined as “affordable homes” are unaffordable to most people on or below average incomes. Sadly, although I have great respect for the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George), the Liberal Democrats have propped up a Government who have destroyed affordable housing in this country.
Emma Reynolds
I am delighted to say that in my hon. Friend’s constituency of Hammersmith and Fulham, we now have a Labour council that is committed to affordable homes and ensuring that developers deliver their fair share of truly affordable homes, particularly in areas of high demand, such as my hon. Friend’s, where average house prices are, frankly, eye-watering. It is different from the situation in my own constituency.
Mr Slaughter
Does the Minister have any interest in homes that are affordable on low and average incomes? In London, the targets the Mayor sets are £80,000 in income for larger properties and £66,000 for one and two-bedroom flats. Does the Minister think those are reasonable figures for affordable homes?
Kris Hopkins
I am not going to take any lectures about affordable or social housing. The last Government failed to deliver sufficient social housing at a time of economic boom. They did not build the housing required. They did not address the issue of social need. In the most difficult times, however, this Government have stepped up and are delivering those houses. We need to deliver more, but we are setting about delivering that.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George). I echo what he said about the bedroom tax, not only because of its effect on those it directly affects, but because of the attitude that it shows to the 8 million people in this country who live in social housing, which is that they are effectively second-class citizens so far as the Government are concerned. I am sorry that so many of his colleagues voted for the bedroom tax, although he did not, which is entirely to his credit.
The hon. Gentleman’s constituency is very different from mine, and I hope he will not mind if I move the subject on to London, where housing problems are writ large and are intensifying. We see that in every indication, from the gap between housing demand and supply—the gap in London is some 30% of the gap in England as a whole—to rough sleeping, which has gone up 75% in London over the past three years; that is more than twice the increase in the rest of the country. It is tempting to say that the problems are too difficult to solve, and that house building should therefore take place in areas where land values are cheaper. I am well aware of that, because the median rent for a three-bedroom property in my constituency is £550 a week, which is more than the average London wage. The average purchase price for any property is approaching £750,000, which is completely unaffordable even for those on several times the average income.
We have to address those problems, including in central London, because Government policy—and certain local policies, too—has intensified them. Local housing allowance for three-bedroom properties has been capped at £340. That is supposed to cover the bottom third of rents, but the valuation office’s up-to-date figures tell us that the lower quartile of rents in Hammersmith for a three-bedroom property is £459. The net effect of the change, and indeed of all the other changes the Government have made to benefits policy, is that it is almost impossible to find any property in the private sector that would be covered by housing benefit. We have therefore had an exodus—a process of social cleansing—that has forced people who, in many cases, have lived in London for generations out of the city, and away from where their homes, schools, jobs and families are.
That was intensified by a deliberate policy. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) for mentioning what happened at the local election in Hammersmith, which was a breath of fresh air to almost everyone who lives in the area. There was a deliberate demolition of council properties. Whole blocks of 200 or 300 good-quality council properties were held empty for six or seven years before being demolished to be handed to the private sector. Council properties were sold off as they became empty. Over the past four or five years, 500 homes have been sold that could have been used by families on the waiting list, had the waiting list not also been abolished.
I cannot understand the mentality of the Government or local councils, who want to exacerbate an already serious housing problem. I am therefore delighted that a Labour council came in, and the first thing it did on the day after the election was to cancel the demolitions and the sales. The first thing the council did at the first cabinet meeting was to say, “From now onwards we will again prioritise social rented housing, which for eight years has been excluded from the types of housing that could be constructed.”
I want to be a bit more optimistic, and talk about how we can achieve decent affordable housing in high-value areas. Our local plan envisages 50,000 new properties being built over a 20-year period. That is perhaps slightly over-ambitious, if anything, and somewhat unwise, in the sense that it means demolishing hospitals to build housing on their sites. I think that is somewhat short-sighted.
There are three opportunity areas in Hammersmith and Fulham. One is on the site that will be used for High Speed 2; it is envisaged that 24,000 new homes will be built there. The second is in White City, on the site vacated by the BBC, where it is envisaged that 6,000 properties will be built. The third is in the Earls Court and West Kensington area, where it is envisaged that 8,000 properties will be built. The problem is that under existing policies, not a single one of those almost 40,000 properties will be a social rented home. Clearly that will change with the planning policy, but many planning consents have already been given.
I draw attention to two facts. First, across London, and probably outside London, too, developers are relying on viability assessments, which are confidential documents that are not disclosed to the public, or even to councillors on most occasions. Developers typically say that they can afford to build 5% or 10% affordable housing at 80% market sale or 80% market rent. Every time that has been challenged and taken to the Information Commissioner, the documents have eventually been revealed. In the case of Earls Court, for example, we had to go to not only the Information Commissioner but the first-tier tribunal. It was only at that point that the local authorities gave in. Guess what? The viability assessments did not support the idea that there should be little or no affordable housing in those developments.
Secondly, much of these developments are on public land in the widest sense. If they are not on council-owned land or Government-owned land, they are on land owned by the BBC, Network Rail or Transport for London. If we cannot build decent affordable housing on publicly owned land, we are saying to developers, “In those cases, you can also get away with building 95% market housing.” In inner London, that means that properties are for sale abroad, off-plan. Most properties currently being built in my constituency are advertised on websites in the far east, Russia and elsewhere. One-bedroom and two-bedroom properties begin at £1 million-plus. Those properties are not affordable to anyone, by any means, which is why there is effectively a coalition between those who need social rented homes and those who could afford quite a lot on the private market. All my constituents say to me, “When will the Government act to ensure that houses are built that are affordable for the people who live and pay taxes in this country?”
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
If I am following the hon. Gentleman’s logic correctly, he is arguing for scrapping the ability of developers to vary section 106 agreements on the basis of a project’s financial viability. Is that the Labour party’s policy? Does he not understand that that may well reduce the overall supply of affordable housing?
Mr Slaughter
I am asking for the viability assessments to become transparent, open documents, so that everyone can see where the truth lies. I am also asking for Conservative local authorities to stop colluding with developers to drive out affordable housing for their own political, economic and ideological motives. That is what is happening across London, and I am sure outside London, too. I support exactly what Michael Lyons said yesterday at the LGA conference, which is that if local authorities are going to act in that way, there has to be an impetus to build more social housing, and that has to be in addition to any revival in the private housing market.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East that we do not want to change things back to exactly how they were, but the four principles that the Government have relied on need to be reversed. They have cut capital investment in housing, reduced security of tenure and almost eliminated affordability, certainly in London, and now they are refusing to determine on the basis of need how housing should be allocated. That is more than a generational step back. Frankly, those are not housing policies that any Government should support. I hope that when my hon. Friend is Housing Minister, she will reverse them.
Mr Slaughter
I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman will address the point that the Minister would not deal with. The Mayor’s definition of affordable is an income of up to £80,000 for larger properties and up to £66,000 for smaller properties. I realise that that is a maximum, but the hon. Gentleman will have seen the story in the London Evening Standard this week about housing associations such as Notting Hill, which frankly is a disgrace. Pitching the target at those levels, they are demanding for their affordable housing a minimum income of £66,000 in order to qualify.
Nick de Bois
The hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I did not quite catch the whole point, but I think that my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) made the point about the steep variation in what is an affordable home. Some regard it as just 80% of market value, which is a lovely description and quite enticing, but we know that that still faces a lot of challenge. However, I welcome many of the Government programmes, such as Help to Buy, that will help to overcome the challenges, particularly on deposits, which are crucial. I happily declare an interest in that regard, having had to help finance one of my daughters when she bought a home. I was lucky enough to be able to do that, but many people are not. The Help to Buy scheme was not around at the time, but I have two more daughters to go, so who knows—I am in trouble now.
I will briefly mention the housing zones. I am grateful that the Mayor and the Chancellor—local government working with national Government—have come together to launch a housing zone scheme across London. They will create 20 zones where home building will be accelerated by working in partnership with boroughs, landowners, investors and builders—all the key stakeholders brought together. They are based on a “something for something” deal, not just a handout. That will enable the GLA to act in concert with the key boroughs and stakeholders so that we can focus resources on sites that will be expensive to redevelop, such as brownfield and former industrial sites. With such policy interventions, we can either drive and fast-track developments that are planned at the moment but facing the hurdles we have all talked about, or stimulate new plans and new sites.
In order to ensure that we see progress on housing zones as quickly as possible, the Government will grant the Mayor the powers he needs—so-called mayoral development orders—to remove planning obstacles. That will accelerate the much needed construction in the zones. The site in my constituency has not, I hasten to add, been formally approved yet. The London borough of Enfield, in concert with Network Rail, has already secured development of a third track up to Angel Road. The development will hopefully be called Meridian Water and be on the very important line between Liverpool Street and Cambridge. That crucial ingredient helped to stimulate developers to show their interest and invest in a site that was once industrial and had gasworks on it, which is very expensive to redevelop. The bid that will be going in for Meridian Water will be effectively to seek assistance in site remediation, some land acquisition and decentralising energy infrastructure.
I will draw my comments to a close, Mr Deputy Speaker, as I can see that that is something you clearly wish me to do. The point is that that fast-tracking will enable us to deliver 5,000 homes at a relatively fast speed, if the scheme is approved, which I am optimistic it will be. That will be critical in achieving the overall challenge that London faces. If it is repeated in 20 other zones, that will make a significant difference. I commend those steps to the House.