Brandon Lewis
Main Page: Brandon Lewis (Conservative - Great Yarmouth)(9 years, 8 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Brandon Lewis)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. My hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk) made some good points, as he always does, on how we built the foundations for the success we are seeing with house building. He should be proud. One point he touched on, which showed the Government’s ambition, was the public sector land that has been released, which is enough to build 100,000 houses. A few Members made that point, and I am pleased to announce that we have surpassed that target. When Members leave the Chamber, they will see that we have gone past 100,000 and set ourselves a higher target of 150,000 in the next Parliament.
I am disappointed that the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) seems to lack real ambition. The Labour party generally seems to lack ambition compared with us on what can be achieved. The hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) made a fair point on the ambition of what we should be delivering. I have often commented that setting targets can lead to unintended consequences and fictitious outcomes. We should be driving for the right outcome, which is homes that people can afford. The Labour party’s lack of ambition in wanting to hit 200,000 homes by 2020 is clear and evidenced by the fact that this Government’s programme, as we outlined this week, will hit 200,000 homes by 2017.
I hope to work with Jane Hunt in a Conservative Government. I visited her in Nottingham South, where she is fighting hard to ensure that we get even stronger Conservative representation in this place. She wants to be part of a Conservative Government who would build 200,000 homes for first-time buyers. Not only will we offer first-time buyers a chance to benefit from Help to Buy, which has allowed tens of thousands of families to get on to the housing ladder with a reduced deposit following the economic farce and crash that we inherited, but we will go further by giving them a 20% discount, making the achievement of buying a first home more open to more people.
Emily Thornberry
Has the money for those 300,000 homes been explained to us, or does it come from the same pot at the end of the rainbow as the £7 billion of tax cuts that the Conservatives have promised the public?
Brandon Lewis
The hon. Members for Nottingham South and for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) and I have spent many times at the Dispatch Box in the past few months in full agreement, so it is probably a healthy return to normal that we disagree today, but I suggest they go away and read some of the documentation before they come to this place and make comments that are absolutely inaccurate. For example, it is worth having a read of the Hansard transcript of the Communities and Local Government Committee sitting last week, where we made it clear that the right to buy programme is delivering on the replacement of homes in the way it was designed. There is an interesting contrast, because the replacement rate was 1:170 under Labour. Opposition Members should be very aware of that. It is important to understand that with the starter homes—it is clear in the documentation that the Government have put out—we are looking at making available land that has not been viable before. We are doing that without section 106 agreements and we are reducing regulation for developers so that they can offer those homes at a minimum discount of 20%.
Brandon Lewis
I will finish the point I am making. The hon. Ladies have made a fair few interventions today and I want to respond to the points raised in the short time we have left. There is no direct cost to buying those homes at that discount. It makes home buying affordable to the very people that the hon. Member for York Central (Sir Hugh Bayley) mentioned. Some of those who have not been able, even with Help to Buy, to get on the ladder will be able to link Help to Buy with a starter home to make house buying accessible. From day one, fixing the housing market and the economy have been top priorities for us in government.
Brandon Lewis
Not at the moment, no. We have channelled new investment into every area of the housing market. We have cut the deficit to keep interest rates low for investors and home buyers. We have introduced a wide range of measures to get Britain building again, and that plan is working. More than 500,000 home have been built. There are 700,000 more homes in England, with house building at its highest level since 2007.
Sir Hugh Bayley
When I talk to developers in York, they say that there are two constraints: one is the lack of land and the other is the lack of building materials. There has been a shortage of bricks. What are the Government doing to ensure that the supply chain delivers enough technically qualified builders and enough building materials to build the number of houses they seek?
Brandon Lewis
I will give way to the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch and then deal with her points and those of the hon. Gentleman together.
Meg Hillier
We see in London the effects of an untrammelled Tory Administration. Private developers have free reign. There is less affordable housing. Where it is affordable, it is 80% of private rents. That applies to a number of sites, as we have highlighted. Is that the Minister’s ambition if he is in power after the election?
Brandon Lewis
As I have outlined, the ambition is to ensure that we are building the houses that this country needs. Those 200,000 starter homes will give people opportunities that the Labour party simply cannot match. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford—my predecessor—outlined, we are at the start of a programme that is building affordable housing at the fastest rate the country has seen in more than 20 years.
The hon. Member for York Central made a good point. People often expect the challenge for the development industry over the past couple of years to have been land supply, but it is not, thanks to the changes that we made to the top-down rigours and structures in planning that stopped development under Labour. Through that, our driving of planning locally and because we have kept interest rates low, we are seeing benefits. Some 240,000 homes have been given planning permission in the past 12 months. Members touched on the changes the Government have made to finance for small building projects, which have made that finance available. We went further a couple of months ago. One area that developers consistently mention is the supply chain. I was delighted yesterday to reopen a brick factory that shut down in 2008 during Labour’s recession. It reopened on Monday and will deliver 2 million bricks a year to the industry.
The construction industry is working and hiring at the fastest rate since 1997, and the hon. Gentleman is right that that delivers the second challenge to the industry, which is skills. One thing we can all do—I hope that all parties agree on this—is encourage more people to come into the sector. It is a phenomenally rewarding career, with wide opportunities at home and, potentially, abroad. There are a wide range of careers in the industry. We need to change some of the perceptions of the construction industry to encourage more people into it. That is why I hosted a skills summit with the Minister for Skills and Equalities, my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) just before Christmas at the fantastic new Olympic park. Developers, apprentices and colleges discussed those issues to try to ensure that we are delivering the skills we need for the future. Construction is no doubt one of the opportunities we have to see more jobs coming to this country, beyond those we have already seen.
Andrew Stephenson
Does the Minister agree that for parts of the north of England, such as the area I represent, it is important that we focus not only on new build homes, but also on bringing long-term empty properties back into use? I thank him for the support he has provided to Pendle borough council. We have done fantastic work to reduce the number of empty homes in the borough from more than 2,000 to just 1,200.
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend makes a good point. I know from when I visited his constituency that he makes that point passionately and has worked hard with the excellent leadership of Pendle borough council to develop that work. Earlier, Members talked about the work that is often unsung. The work to bring empty homes back into use under this Government has been phenomenal. Empty homes are at the lowest level pretty much since records began. That is a big step forward in replacing and moving forward from that loss of 420,000 socially rented homes under Labour, as Members have touched on.
Brandon Lewis
No, I will conclude, as there is only a short time left. Over the next Parliament, we will build more affordable housing at a faster rate than at any time in the past 20 years. Our first priority has been to ensure that we get the public finances back under control. We knew that public spending had to be constrained. We have to live within our means, and that is part of the problem we inherited with the Labour Government’s fiscal mess.
We have given housing associations the tools they need to build more homes. The changes we have made will from April give certainty and stability to social tenants and landlords alike. We have protected social tenants from large rent increases. Our strong economic record has allowed us to offer housing guarantees to housing associations, which mean that they are borrowing at the cheapest rate in the sector’s history. That has helped to provide more than £1 billion of support to affordable homes across the UK. All sectors need to be delivering, even social housing.
The hon. Member for Cambridge and others touched on the issue of building by councils. We have to be responsible with borrowing, and the borrowing that councils do has an impact on the public sector borrowing requirement, so there are no plans to lift that cap. As part of our long-term economic plan, however, we have incentivised councils to build. The power of competence has allowed them to move forward. We made more money available last summer for those who needed headroom and wanted to borrow more. Councils have more powers and greater freedoms to deliver the housing they need. We need to build more houses in this country. We have a fixed, strong, long-term economic plan that gives us a secure economy to deliver those houses and the jobs that are the benefit from that house building. We are delivering for those who want to buy a home of their own to give security for themselves and their families.