Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Ben Howlett and Clive Betts

Tuesday 12th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Betts]

This proposal will indeed discourage people from moving from a secure tenancy on a family home to an insecure tenancy on a smaller property. If it is the Government’s intention to ensure that people who have more space than the Government think they need move home, surely the answer is to build more properties in the first place so that there are more social rented properties for the people on the waiting lists who need them.

Finally, let us take this down to an individual level. Imagine a family sat around their breakfast table or a pensioner couple, who are now on a fixed-term tenancy, sitting in their home. They are waiting for the postman to come, bringing a letter from their local council or housing association. Perhaps in future, it might be called the “Lewis letter” when it drops on people’s doormats. That Lewis letter, when they open it with trembling hands, will tell them, without any forewarning, some six to nine months before their tenancy ends, whether they can stay in their home—these are not houses, apartments, flats or bungalows, but people’s homes at the end of the day—at the whim of the council for another five years, whether they can move to another property that is some distance away in a different neighbourhood, with a different school, or whether they will have no home at all from the council in the future. Just feel the tension in that household when the Lewis letter drops on the doormat and people open it. Even if the answer is, “Yes, you’ve been a good tenant and can stay in your home for another five years,” the trauma that this will put people through is beyond measure.

I hope that the Government will think again. This schedule is mean-minded and dreadful. I hope that the Government withdraw it and, if they do not, that amendments 142 and 105, which were tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods), will be successful, so that we can give families, pensioners and everyone else the security of tenure that they rightly deserve.

[Ben Howlett (Bath) (Con)]

I have kept the House up to date with my struggles to get on the property ladder as a 29-year-old. Just before the Christmas recess, I managed to get on the property ladder with my partner after a struggle of about 10 years. I listened to the speech of the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) on the lack of house building under this Government, but I have been struggling to get on the property ladder for the past 10 years, like thousands of young professionals around the country, and I am afraid that he was a member of a Government who built far fewer houses than we are building today.

Thousands of my constituents in Bath, which is one of the least affordable cities in the UK, are also struggling to get on the property ladder, so I empathise with them. Put simply, we need to build more houses than we have done previously. It will not surprise anyone who has visited Bath to learn that it is one of the top 10 most expensive places to live, taking into account local earnings ratios. In Lloyds bank’s latest affordability review, Bath is ranked above Greater London as the sixth most expensive place to live in the UK. That means that for many people in Bath, buying a home will remain only an aspiration for a very long time.

Furthermore, it will not surprise the Minister to hear that my constituents fear that the much-needed rail electrification of Brunel’s Great Western main line, which is under way thanks to this Government’s investment and which will improve train journey times into London, will make the cost of buying a home increasingly unaffordable, forcing Bath residents to wait even longer before they can make the first step on to the property ladder.

Proposed new subsection (4) of clause 72 in amendment 112 shows that the Government are committed to increasing the number of affordable homes in London, where Generation Rent seems to have taken hold. Such changes prove that this is the party of opportunity that will help everyone to reach important life goals such as buying their own home. I welcome the announcement that the Government will ensure that in London, two affordable homes will be built for every high-value unit that is sold in the city. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) on championing that proposal. Having worked with him in the past, I am certain that he will make a superb Mayor of London.