Housing Supply
Debate between Anne Main and Nick Raynsford
Mr Raynsford
I am very grateful for that intervention, and I suspect I shall be in deep trouble tonight for my failure to give way earlier. My hon. Friend makes a very valid point about the absence of the Minister. I hope he is away for only a short time, because I am sure he will benefit from hearing some of the comments I am going to make in the latter part of my speech.
Mr Raynsford
I agree very much with that and I will cover it in the latter part of my speech. My thesis is that we need to have a range of differing types of housing, and only by delivering that will we ensure that we meet the ambitious target of 200,000 homes in the next Parliament.
The price of this Government’s failure to build the number of homes necessary is very much reflected in the second crisis of theirs on housing, which is on affordability. The shortage of sufficient homes has been driving prices up in both the owner-occupied sector and the rented sector. Curiously, the Government have been compounding the problem by driving up rent levels themselves in the social rented sector, because in place of social housing at target rents, which was very much the objective of the previous Government, we are now seeing the Orwellian concept of “affordable rent tenancies” where rent is set as a percentage of the market rents. A level of 80% of market rents in London is simply not affordable. How can anyone suggest that 80% of a market rent of perhaps £400 a week is an affordable rent for a family on low income? That is simply not credible. We need a programme that delivers truly affordable homes, and not just for social rent; in addition to social rented housing, we need low-cost home ownership options, and intermediate rented options for people who can afford to pay more than the social rent and are looking for suitable housing in that category.
A mix of tenures is required—a point I stressed when I was pleased to welcome Sir Michael Lyons to Greenwich earlier this year. He came as part of his inquiry, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) alluded in her excellent introductory speech. I stressed to Sir Michael that we need a range of different tenures in order to expand output. It is well known that house builders—
Infrastructure
Debate between Anne Main and Nick Raynsford(11 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
I draw attention at the outset to my interests as declared in the register.
This has been a curious debate to date. Infrastructure is, at least in theory, a subject on which there is a large measure of cross-party support. There is general agreement across the House that we need to ensure that we have the transport networks, power arrangements, waste and water distribution systems, sewerage systems, flood protection systems and all the other necessary infrastructure that is essential to a modern, functioning economy. Really, we should have been debating how to make a reality of the current investment programmes to deliver the kind of infrastructure that is essential to our economic well-being in the longer term and, in the short term, that will help to create jobs, employment and growth in our stuttering economy.
However, we did not do that. Instead, we have seen a series of differences—not just across the House, between the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) on our Front Bench, but between the Minister and his Back-Bench colleague, the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main), who took a very different view from him. Rather than echoing his stated wish that infrastructure investment should be speeded up, she made a fairly passionate case for slowing it down.
Mrs Main
The right hon. Gentleman will see clearly that I talked about the strategic rail freight interchange in my constituency. More to the point, I am sure he would agree that these issues—whether waste disposal or otherwise—cause tensions in communities and that harm to the environment has to be weighed in the balance against development.
Mr Raynsford
I put it to the hon. Lady that when she reads Hansard tomorrow, she will see some pretty clear references to going slowly and not following the advice of her Front-Bench colleague, who wants to accelerate development. He has not been very successful in doing that, but at least his heart is in the right place, and I am with him on that.
The Minister chose to present a case that was, frankly, absurdly partisan—perhaps to divert attention away from his difficulties with his own party, which does not always share his enthusiasm for speeding up the development of infrastructure. The implication that there was no worthwhile infrastructure investment under the previous Government and that the arrival of the current Government has unleashed a cornucopia of new infrastructure schemes is, frankly, risible.
Let us look at the record. I tried in my intervention to point out to the Minister that it was completely unfair to say that there had been no worthwhile investment, particularly in rail, under the previous Government. Let us look at the history of High Speed 1, the link between the channel tunnel and London. That link was not constructed when the channel tunnel was built, because the then Government, headed by Baroness Thatcher, did not believe in rail investment. The French did, and there was a high-speed link between the tunnel and Paris. The Belgians did, and there was a high-speed link between the tunnel and Brussels. But there was no high-speed link between the tunnel and London because the then Conservative Government did not believe in it. Eventually, the Major Government had a last-minute change of heart and began to recognise the importance of such a link, but they could not get it together and the scheme was in a state of financial uncertainty when the Labour Government came to power. The Minister is a fair-minded man, and I hope that he will recognise that High Speed 1, an important piece of infrastructure investment, was the achievement of the last Labour Government.
I would also like to remind the Minister about Crossrail. The scheme had been talked about for a very long time, since the mists of antiquity, but it was the Major Government who introduced a Bill to enable it to be built. However, rather characteristically of them, their political management in this place was so poor that they entrusted the project to a hybrid Bill Committee, which rejected it. So the Bill never progressed, the infrastructure was not built and, once again, it was left to the Labour Government to introduce the Crossrail scheme, to take the Bill through Parliament and to begin the work.
I give credit to the current Government, because they have sustained the investment in the Crossrail scheme. I am glad that they have done so, but it is risible to argue that everything being done today is wonderful and that nothing good was done before. As the Minister must recognise, the Crossrail scheme was developed by the previous Government and is being carried forward by the current Government. Making a reality of such long-term investment schemes depends on that degree of cross-party consensus.