Chris Williamson
Main Page: Chris Williamson (Independent - Derby North)(12 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)
This is an important and timely debate. Time prevents me from commenting on each of the contributions we have heard—there have been some excellent ones—but I shall pick out one or two. My right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) effectively debunked the Government’s flamboyant use of statistics and demolished the claims made about the benefits of the new homes bonus.
I welcome the Housing Minister for the second time today. He clearly has an extremely big job to do. We have not seen a failure to deliver on this scale since another Tory-Liberal Government failed to deliver on their promise to build homes fit for heroes for the families of soldiers returning from the horrors of the first world war.
Conservative Members used to talk about a property-owning democracy, but many would-be home owners are now trapped in private rented accommodation, paying extremely high rents and unable to build up the very high deposits necessary to secure a mortgage. Nowadays Members on the other side of the House talk about “an affordable housing revolution”, but they are presiding over the disintegration of affordable housing as we know it.
Jeremy Corbyn
Is my hon. Friend aware that in constituencies such as mine a third of the population are living in private rented accommodation, both those in and out of work, are being denied sufficient housing benefit to pay the rent and are being socially decanted out of central London? That is destructive to communities and to family life. Does he agree that the Government have simply got it wrong on housing benefit?
Chris Williamson
The Government have absolutely got it wrong, and it is a complete scandal. If we are to have balanced communities, we need to create a situation in which people in different places on the income scale can live in the same community. What the Government are doing is completely wrong.
We have seen a massive fall in affordable home starts and a catastrophic collapse in social housing starts. When I was first elected, I was a member of the Communities and Local Government Committee, and I well remember the ministerial team coming before the Committee. The then Minister for Housing said:
“We believe in house building; we believe we’ve got a better way to get houses built. The idea is to get a system which delivers housing in this country.”
The Secretary of State chipped in, adding:
“And homes that people want to live in so kids can play in the streets and people come home with some pride.”
But they have totally failed to deliver on all the rhetoric on that day and since.
In her contribution, my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) touched on the fact that the Government are failing to deliver. Indeed, every one of the plethora of new initiatives announced by the Government has been an utter failure. As my hon. Friend the shadow Minister for Housing pointed out, in the month following the introduction of the NPPF, planning approvals fell by 37%, which accompanied the loss of 180,000 planning approvals as a result of the meddling in the planning rules by the Secretary of State when he first came to office. That puts into context the cavalier way in which the Government have addressed the whole issue of delivering decent housing.
The Government’s definition of “affordable housing” means that it is not even affordable to large numbers of people. Indeed, the ministerial announcements that we are seeing on various new housing initiatives would not have been out of place if they had appeared in George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” as the product of the Ministry of Truth. Perhaps we should rename the Department for Communities and Local Government.
The reason we face this massive housing crisis today is the abject failure of the coalition parties’ economic plan. They have cut housing investment at precisely the wrong time and, as a consequence, the construction industry is on its knees. It is a very labour-intensive industry and it could create huge numbers of jobs. Moreover, 80% of the products on a building site are procured from inside the United Kingdom. Construction is an engine for economic growth.
Chris Williamson
With all due respect to the Minister, I know it is his first day but it is his party that is in government, his party that is responsible for this housing crisis, his party that is presiding over a huge increase in homelessness and a significant rise in rough sleeping, and his party that is catastrophically failing in its duty to provide the houses that people need in this country.
What do the Government do in response to this huge and growing crisis and massive demand for housing? Rather than build the homes that people need, they tinker with measures that deny housing benefit to people under 25, inflict a crude housing benefit cap and impose a bedroom tax on people deemed to be under-occupying their homes, forcing people up to the age of 35 to live in a single room if they happen to be on a low income.
The human cost of the calamity with which we are faced as a consequence of the failure of the Government’s economic and housing policies is tragic and shameful. More people are homeless as a direct consequence of their policies, and more people are having to sleep on the street—as I mentioned, rough sleeping is increasing. This is completely unacceptable in the 21st century in one of the richest nations on the planet. I just hope that the new Housing Minister is not blinded by the failed ideology that resulted in the abject failure of his predecessor.
The country is crying out for, and demands, real action now, not more meaningless initiatives. We need a clear plan, because plan A has totally failed. The new Minister said that he was committed to increasing housing supply. I hope that he can deliver on that. We need a new tax on bankers’ bonuses to build tens of thousands of new homes, and we need a cut in VAT on home improvements to help people undertake that work and generate more jobs. These are the sorts of measures contained in our motion and that would give a boost to the construction industry. I therefore commend the motion to the House.
