Housing

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker. My city of Cambridge is in the grip of a housing crisis, and I have 110 seconds in which to speak.

An email that I received from a constituent recently encapsulates the problem. She wrote:

“I live, work and pay my council tax in Cambridge. Housing in Cambridge is almost as expensive as London these days. I was very excited to hear about the help to buy ISA—but Cambridge should have the same threshold as London of £450,000. Looking at rightmove right now, it is disheartening that there are only 4 properties that would meet our criteria of 3 bedrooms and the Government’s criteria of maximum £250,000 within a 5 mile radius of Cambridge…How are we supposed to buy, afford and raise a family in Cambridge?”

There are only four of those properties—four!

Perhaps the Minister will be able to answer my constituent’s question, but I personally doubt it, because I do not think that the Government have a clue about the real problems that face young people in Britain today. If young people such as my constituent cannot afford to buy, they have to rent, and do we hear anything from the Government about helping renters? I do not think so. If they were really listening, they would know that when house prices become unaffordable in areas like mine, the nature of the private rented market changes. Young families who would once have bought are staying longer in the rented sector, but the legislation has not kept up; the Government have not kept up.

Let me skip the points I was going to make about the attack on social housing and conclude by saying a little about the impact on business. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) visited my constituency recently and even he, experienced on these issues as he is, was shocked by the consistency of the message from employers. In every sector, be it the thriving life sciences and tech sector, research and our universities or major public sector employers such as the NHS, the message is clear: we cannot recruit and we cannot retain staff while housing remains so unaffordable. This is therefore not just about housing; it is about social justice and inter-generational justice. At the start of my speech I quoted the question from my constituent and I urge the Minister to answer it:

“how are we supposed to buy, afford and raise a family in Cambridge?”