Housing (London)

Debate between Clive Efford and Jeremy Corbyn

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I am pleased that we are having this debate. There is a great Labour turnout. I admire but am surprised at the solidarity that Conservative Members have shown with the tube workers this morning by not coming to the debate. Obviously, the Liberal Democrats are of the same mind.

Like many of my colleagues, I represent an inner-city constituency; 40% of housing there is social housing, 30% is owner-occupied, although that figure is going down, and 30% is in the private rented sector. That figure is going up. There is a desperate housing shortage, as my hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) outlined, and we are stuck with planning policies that are the opposite of what is needed in London. A good example is the absurdity of the sale to a property development company, for a very small amount of money, of the Royal Mail site at Mount Pleasant, and the proposal to build large numbers of executive homes on the site, when there is desperate housing need throughout central London—not just in Islington but in Camden, Hackney, Lambeth and Lewisham. All the boroughs in central London have a desperate housing shortage.

Furthermore, the Government have a specific, deliberate policy of putting no social requirement on the conversion of offices to housing developments. The Archway tower in my constituency is a large office block, originally built in 1967 by London Underground and later occupied by the Department of Social Security, the Lord Chancellor’s Department and various others. It is empty and is due to be converted to housing. I do not have a problem with that; it could help a great deal. However, I have a big problem with its being bought by a company that will no doubt do the conversion work very well, but will not provide one flat for anyone in social housing need, and will set rents that are unaffordable to anyone who lives in the area or is on the housing waiting list. The opportunity to provide more than 100 good-quality new flats for people on the housing waiting list is being lost in favour of off-plan buying by wealthy overseas residents, who can occupy those flats right next to a tube station. What message is that giving to the people who work and live in the community, who want somewhere decent to live? I hope that the Minister will explain.

Not far away from Archway, which is at the northern end of my constituency—someone would need to cycle only for 10 or 15 minutes, up a steep hill, admittedly—is somewhere wonderful, The Bishops avenue. The Bishops avenue is apparently the most expensive housing in Britain, if not anywhere in the world. More than a third of it is empty. A large proportion of the property is owned by various Gulf state royal families, and the Saudi Arabian royal family. There are huge mansions there, and they are deliberately kept empty as part of a process of land banking. Some of those properties have become derelict, and there is a danger that English Heritage will decide to preserve them on the ground that they are good centres for wildlife. Owls and bats have taken up residence in some of those extraordinarily valuable properties. I wish the owls and bats well.

[Clive Efford]

At least someone is living there.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

As my hon. Friend says, at least someone is occupying them, and no doubt they are having a good life there; but what kind of city are we living in, if we encourage the development or ownership of large, expensive properties for investment and land banking, and for occupation by wealthy people—I understand that some of the properties are used for up to two weeks a year, for summer vacations—while people are sleeping on the streets and hostels are hard to get into, and young people grow into middle age staying with their parents and sleeping on sofas, because they cannot get anywhere to live?

[Clive Efford]

My hon. Friend is right, but does he agree that we must rumble the Mayor of London for constantly making promises on which he has no intention of delivering? In 2008 he promised 50,000 houses by 2011. That figure went up to 55,000 by 2012 and it is now 100,000, but between April and November last year only 2,235 of those houses were started. He missed his targets again. He constantly does it, and he is letting down the people of London.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I was about to refer to one of the briefings for today’s debate: the work of fiction from the Mayor’s office about all he is doing to improve housing in London. The reality is that he and his planning policies support the development of expensive executive housing, which is unaffordable to the people of London. He is not intervening to get social housing, or to support local authorities like mine, which are desperately trying to build housing to solve the housing crisis in London.

I want to refer quickly to what my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) said. I introduced a ten-minute rule Bill in October to regulate the private rented sector. If we are to deal with the housing crisis in London, we have to tackle it in a number of ways. First, we need a planning policy that enforces the need for social housing content on all sites, including office conversions. Secondly, there must be massive investment by local authorities in affordable council housing, with secure tenancies and affordable rents, not the market-level rent model imposed by the Government.

Thirdly, recognising that a third of my constituents live in the private rented sector, and that the proportion nationally, although slightly lower, is rising very fast, we need regulation of agencies, enforced conditions in tenancies so that there are decent-quality homes, and, above all, affordable rents. I therefore seek a default power for London local authorities to impose a rent model across London to ensure that we keep the diversity of our population and work force, and do not go down the desperate road of housing for the wealthy and homelessness for the poor.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Clive Efford and Jeremy Corbyn

Friday 22nd March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I want to talk about housing, particularly in London, but before I do let me refer to the millionaires’ tax cut that will come in in April. It will benefit 13,000 individuals who earn more than £1 million and have a combined income of £27.4 billion, and I am grateful to the trade union Unison for providing me with that figure. Those 13,000 people earn £27.4 billion, and the Government somehow think that in these times that cut should be a priority for public expenditure. It is outrageous. The Government are freezing child benefit for the third year running, and the money could have been used to benefit 12 million children if child benefit had been increased in line with the consumer prices index. I wonder what the cash injection to the economy would have been if that money had been given to families who would have spent it rather than on providing a bonanza to 13,000 people. Imagine the letter from the Chancellor of the Exchequer saying, “You’ve been selected as one of 13,000 people to share in a £1.2725 billion payout from Her Majesty’s Exchequer and all you have to do to qualify is confirm in writing that you earned more than £1 million this year.” What an absolute disgrace.

I look back on the criticisms of our benefit changes when we were in government, and on the fact that the Liberal Democrats were constantly carping, saying how mean we were, and attacking us about benefit changes and rules for people with disabilities—but now they sit there, and that tax cut is their priority. At a time like this, when the bedroom tax is being introduced, when wages are being frozen and when unemployment is going up, as we have heard, this Government’s priority is a tax cut for millionaires. I find that absolutely shocking.

Some elements of the Budget are welcome: any assistance for people who want to buy their homes, particularly those who might have to wait many years to save a deposit, is always welcome. However, I am concerned about the impact of the Government’s planned assistance in the absence of a significant improvement in the supply of housing. I know they will say that they are planning to supply housing and that they have a house building programme, but we have been hearing those honeyed words since they came into office in 2010. In London we have seen a slump in house building and we now have the lowest level of starts since the 1920s. The Secretary of State has attacked the Labour Government and made a great deal of saying that they built too few homes—they did, and they certainly built too few socially rented homes—but this Government are going even further.

For instance, in London most of the homes built under the current Mayor were started under Ken Livingstone. The current Mayor is claiming credit for homes although the plans were started under Ken Livingstone. According to the Evening Standard—I think we can rely on the Evening Standard because, as we all know, it was heavily briefed on the Budget on Wednesday—there have been only 3,332 starts for affordable homes in the past year, and only 1,357 have been completed. That is fuelling enormous problems in London, not just for people who need rented homes but for people who want to save to buy homes.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Is my hon. Friend aware that “affordable”, as used by the Mayor’s office, is a complete misnomer? In many places where so-called affordable homes are being built, they are affordable only for people earning well over £50,000 a year and are of no help whatsoever to the average Londoner.

[Clive Efford]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

I want to discuss the impact of the purchasing power of overseas money on house prices in London. That not only has an impact on house prices but has a knock-on impact on land values that makes it virtually impossible to build affordable housing, particularly in large parts of central London.

The Smith Institute published a report last year called “London for Sale”, which stated:

“Anyone doubting the scale and potential impact of overseas investment in London should note that at £5.2 billion in 2011 it was a larger sum than the whole Government investment in the Affordable Housing Programme for England for four years…Two years of overseas housing investment in London would total more than the public sector funding package (£9.3 billion) for the 2012 Olympic Games.”

That is the scale of the money coming from overseas into our housing market. Savills, one of the property market agents, says that London is a prime property market that

“will rise 22.7% during the period 2012-16.”

Its comparable forecast for the mainstream market across the UK is 6%, less than the rate of inflation. What we are seeing is the huge impact of overseas money on the price of housing in London. The Government intend to compete with that money by providing assistance with mortgages. I have no objection at all to anyone being given such assistance, but if—and this argument was made on the “Today” programme the other day—12 people go for 10 houses, that is likely to drive up prices. If the Government’s incentive to provide additional help to people to put down deposits means that 15 people go for houses, but there are still only 10 houses being supplied, prices will be driven up.

The Social Market Foundation has commented on what the Government plan to do, and it says that it helps only older home buyers:

“Overall, the scheme will entice young people to load themselves up with debt to finance overpriced houses”.

The SMF goes on to say that if prices fall those people will be in a trap, and they will pay twice: they will pay for the overpriced house, but they will also have to pay increased taxes to pay back the money that the Government have put into the scheme.

I have only a minute left, but I want to tell the Government that they must make it clear that they are going to build affordable houses. I return to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) made. When we talk about affordable houses, we must make them affordable for people on the median income for London. It must not be affordable rent calculated according to a percentage that takes into account land values in places such as Kensington and Chelsea. We must remove those land values and make sure that we build houses that are affordable, not just so that people can live in those parts of London and fill the essential jobs in the economy at the lower end of the pay scale but so that they can become savers for the future. Unless we create that capacity in the rental market so that people can live in houses that they can afford to rent and, at the same time, afford to save, we will not have a sustainable private housing market or houses for sale in future.