Housing

Angela Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 5th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Prisk]

I will go further than that. I will meet the hon. Gentleman. It is my first day in this position and I want to know and understand the issues. My diary secretary may regret that, as I suspect that other Members will try to get in the queue. However, I would like to understand the issue before commenting on it.

Not adopting the top-down approach works in practice. For example, our investment of £4.5 billion in funding new affordable homes over the spending review period levers in £15 billion from the private sector to deliver those properties. That makes a total investment of £19.5 billion in new affordable housing, which will help us deliver 170,000 affordable homes by the end of the Parliament.

The Homes and Communities Agency has now reported that it has exceeded its targets for affordable housing this year, achieving a total of 51,665 affordable homes in England. Contracts have been signed for affordable house building in all parts of the country and across councils of all political colours.

Affordable housing is at the heart of our agenda. We have consciously sought to introduce initiatives to ensure that housing is the most affordable for first-time buyers for a decade. Mortgage payments are the lowest for 15 years as a direct result of our action to tackle Labour’s deficit. In July, Halifax noted that housing was now the most affordable for first-time buyers for a decade. Conservative Members are and should be proud of that record.

As the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington said, of course the challenge for first-time buyers is getting a mortgage. We understand that, and that is why we have launched the NewBuy scheme, which provides guarantees for mortgages of up to 95% loan to value for new build properties. That has already given a helping hand to prospective buyers who were otherwise frozen out of the housing market. The Home Builders Federation has estimated that NewBuy could deliver up to 25,000 additional new homes over three years.

The Government also introduced the Firstbuy scheme. Labour Members claim that we are not doing enough and criticise the initiatives. They need to decide what they actually want. The Firstbuy scheme supports capacity in the house building sector and is assisting almost 10,500 first-time buyers to purchase new build property in England by spring 2013. Interestingly, demand for the Firstbuy scheme has been strong. Official statistics published by the HCA show there had already been 3,000 Firstbuy sales by the end of March 2012, which is good progress.

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

I join my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) in congratulating the Minister on his appointment, but will the Minister confirm the level of cuts applied to the affordable housing budget by the coalition Government?

[Mr Prisk]

With respect to the hon. Lady, the idea that budgets across the Government are impervious to or not involved with the deficit we have faced—[Interruption.] She has highlighted a point not only about the overall housing budget but about how that money is used. The point I was trying to make is that when dealing with affordable housing, it is not just about every pound we spend but about how we lever in other private sector funds, which is important. It is peculiar that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington applauded that principle a moment ago.

We have reinvigorated the right to buy—supporting social tenants who want to own their own home. That is a policy of which the Government can, and should, be proud. We have reversed Labour’s cuts, and increased the right-to-buy discount cap to £75,000 across England from April. For the first time, every additional home sold under the right-to-buy scheme will be replaced by a new home for affordable rent, with receipts from sales recycled across the cost of replacement. I wish that the cultural opposition of Labour Members to this issue would reflect the reality. The right to buy promotes mixed communities and gives social tenants a financial stake in the well-being of their neighbourhood.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington mentioned the right to buy, and he might now be able to help. My understanding is that the Labour group on the Local Government Association opposed the right-to-buy scheme.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Neill]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his comments. It is always a pleasure to exchange arguments with him. He must bear in mind the reduction in affordable homes of about 250,000 over that period. Whatever his intentions, the fact is that there was a consistent under-supply throughout the Labour Government, and we are now reaping the consequence.

[Angela Smith]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Robert Neill]

I have given way once and time is short, as I am sure the hon. Lady will understand.

The important point is that the current Government have started on the important task of rebalancing the planning system. I was privileged to undertake that work with my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) and it gives a strong basis for policy going forward. It was ludicrous that we had such a complex system of planning and, allied to that, the top-down imposition of targets, which were a positive impediment to growth, not least because they set communities against appropriate growth. That created a system of tension and antagonism, which the national planning policy framework rightly seeks to remove.

The final point that I should like to make in that context—and which I know my hon. Friend the Minister will take on board—is that we must look at planning and housing policy holistically. We should look at the interactions between housing policy and planning policy, and also at the need to give local authorities incentives to support sustainable growth—for example, through the way in which we are reforming the funding of local government finance. All three are parts of the same equation, if I may put it that way, and I hope that my hon. Friend will feel able to build on the work started in the Localism Act 2011 and the Local Government Finance Bill; I do not know whether he will inherit it, but I assure him that he will find it cheerful bedtime reading.

The reality is that this Government are removing blockages in the system. My hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) rightly referred to the change at Eastern Quarry. That project had indeed stalled; it is also something that, in my responsibilities for the Thames Gateway, I had some involvement in, together with my right hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps). I should also say that the realism shown by the Conservative-controlled local authority of Dartford council was a major help. However, the irony is that the system we inherited from Labour did not allow willing parties to come together and renegotiate an agreement to produce a more realistic reflection of current market conditions. Our Government gave them that flexibility; they took advantage of it and now those homes will be delivered. Indeed, the first homes will be delivered this year, which I hope will be a matter of pride to everyone associated with the project.

I also hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will continue to build on the work that we have already seen with the Growing Places fund. There will be sound arguments to consider if in due course we are able to roll it out further, into the type of revolving infrastructure funds that have been talked about by informed sources in many parts of the industry. I also hope that he will continue to look at refinements to the operation of the community infrastructure levy—the CIL—so that it is a positive incentive to development and brings a genuine benefit to local communities. Again, however, we should look at some of the technical detail. For example, there are some excellent schemes, such as the one developed by Pocket in London, that do not require any public subsidy, yet they can face difficulties because they do not count as affordable housing under the CIL rules in the same way that they do under planning policy.

Those are some small but important matters that I hope my hon. Friend the Minister will take on board. I know him to be an enthusiastic Minister and a good colleague. I assure him that I shall be more than happy to support him in everything he does and I wish him well.