Eilidh Whiteford
Main Page: Eilidh Whiteford (Scottish National Party - Banff and Buchan)
Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. May I say how refreshing it is to be called so early in the debate? I can assure you that that novelty will not wear off quickly.
I begin by welcoming both the Secretary of State and the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) to their new roles. I also commend the official Opposition for dedicating their first Opposition day to housing, where the crisis is “urgent and growing”, as they so aptly put it. I trust they will not think I am making too barbed a comment when I say that I hope that reflects a change and a new prioritisation of housing on their part. As others have said, it is hard to avoid the inconvenient truth that this crisis goes back decades and reflects chronic underinvestment in social housing by successive UK Governments, Labour as well as Tory.
That is one key issue that needs to be clearly stated today. The other is the deceptively simple point about supply and demand: there is a critical shortage of affordable housing in almost every part of the UK. In some ways, that is so obvious as to be self-evident. If it is not evident to Members of this House yet, it will be after the first round of constituency surgeries. I repeat that simple point because that shortage—that lack of supply of affordable homes—is the problem from which almost all the other issues stem. Unless we bite the bullet and start building affordable homes at scale, we will make limited headway and we just will not address the housing crisis.
I can assure the House that housing is a priority for the SNP, and I hope I can look forward to hearing contributions from one or two of my new colleagues who will be seeking to catch your eye to make their maiden speeches in this debate, Mr Deputy Speaker. Although much of housing policy in Scotland is devolved to the Scottish Parliament, we cannot forget that the financial framework in which it operates is determined here at Westminster. When we consider the need for investment in affordable housing, particularly housing for social rent, we need to take account of the ongoing impact that austerity is having on the ability of social landlords to invest in new housing stock, and of the impact of cuts in capital expenditure on the ability of devolved and local governments to meet housing need. Scotland has had a 25% real-terms cut to its capital budget since 2010, and ongoing austerity will restrict the ability of future Governments to respond adequately to a growing shortage of affordable housing.
The priority the SNP attaches to housing is underlined by the fact that despite the austerity cuts, the Scottish Government are on track to invest more than £1.7 billion in housing and deliver 30,000 new affordable homes by the end of their Parliament next year. They are already more than 90% of the way there. That track record compares very favourably with every other part of the UK and, indeed, with previous Administrations in Scotland. Perhaps the most illuminating measure to illustrate the relative performance of the Government’s delivery of social housing across Great Britain is the ratio of completions per 100,000 of population. Last year the figure in Scotland was 65.3, which compares with only 44.7 in England and 24.6 in Wales. It is worth noting that since 2007 Scotland’s ratio of completions has outperformed the rest of the UK for all types of housing, not just social housing, although those rates are still below pre-recession levels and the construction sector is still facing very challenging times.
Although the Government have made much of their plans to extend right to buy to housing associations—a move that will compound rather than address the under-supply of affordable housing—we have gone down a different route in Scotland and ended the right to buy. That will enable us to keep up to 15,000 precious homes in the social sector over the next decade, and will protect the public investment that has been made in affordable housing. With nearly 200,000 people on the list for a council house in Scotland, we simply cannot afford to be depleting the stock further, and ending the right to buy is giving social landlords greater confidence to invest in new builds.
Although I am making a case for investment in social housing, I want also to make clear the essential and valuable role that the private rented sector plays in our housing market. I want a thriving private rented sector that is an attractive and affordable option for tenants, and I am pleased that the Scottish Government established a strategy back in 2013 to enable growth and investment in the sector, to help improve the overall housing supply, and to improve consistency in the quality of management and the condition of property for rent. Measures such as the tenancy deposit scheme, the introduction of first-tier tribunals for disputes and the plans for further legislation to introduce a statutory code of conduct for letting agents are beneficial to landlords and tenants alike.
But social housing remains a foundational piece of the housing jigsaw, possibly more so now than ever, as the spiralling property prices of recent decades have made home ownership increasingly unattainable for people on ordinary incomes. As the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East said, the average house price in some parts of the country is 10 times the average salary. In Scotland, it is seven times the average salary, and that is simply not sustainable. The days when people could borrow only three times their salary are long gone, but I remember that when I got my first mortgage I was advised not to borrow that much because I would have to live, sustaining myself on what was left. Many people on good wages now cannot even think about buying a house. We have had exceptionally low interest rates in recent years, but I have real concerns about the level of debt many people are taking on just to house themselves and their families. I worry very much about how many of those people, who are mortgaged up to the hilt, will manage to service their debts when interest rates start to rise, as they inevitably must, given the floor they are on at the moment.
That is the context in which home ownership has hit its 30-year low. Demand for rented accommodation in both the private and social sectors has soared, driving up rents to eye-watering levels in some places, not least here. For those on lower incomes, market rents in the current environment are just not realistic, and so demand for social housing is at unprecedented levels, too. Selling off housing association homes is not going to address that underlying problem; it just makes the problem worse because it fails to create any new supply to meet the demand that is growing in the market.
It is worth making explicit the negative impact that this housing market failure is having on our social security system and our public spending. Housing benefit is one of the biggest-ticket items in the Department for Work and Pensions budget. As Ministers never tire of pointing out, the housing benefit bill has escalated substantially, and quite disproportionately, in recent years: there has been a 54% real-terms increase across Great Britain over the past decade. It is important that the House understands why that is happening, because to a very large extent those increases in the housing benefits bill are being driven by increases in private sector rents in areas of high demand and low supply of affordable housing. Almost a third of the increase is attributable to London alone—although there are other hotspots—but the Government do not want to accept that rents in this city are out of control and increasingly outwith the means of people earning normal wages. We are not even talking about low-paid people; we are talking about people with well-paid jobs who simply cannot afford a market rent. I hope the Government will take their head out of the sand and confront that issue.
By contrast, in those parts of the UK where the housing pressures are not quite so acute, increases in housing benefit have been much more manageable and sustainable. In Scotland, for example, the inflation-adjusted increase in housing benefits for those in the social housing sector was only 6% over the same decade, which does not sound unmanageable. In Scotland—this is a key point—the ratio of housing benefit expenditure to GDP in the social rented sector was lower in 2012 than it was in 1997. That should give the Government and the Opposition Front Bench real food for thought.
It would be very wrong to debate the housing crisis without mentioning the bedroom tax. In Scotland, around 70,000 households are liable for the bedroom tax, and 80% of them—much higher than in the rest of the UK—are the home of a disabled adult. Those are the people who already have the least choice in where they live. They are staying in the cheapest homes, and those homes have been allocated to them on the basis of their social need, not their household size. Given the depletion of the most modern social housing stock, thanks to the right-to-buy scheme, most of our extant council houses were built in an age when people had much bigger families, so we have a serious mismatch between the size of the available houses and the needs of today’s tenants. If 60% of tenants need a one-bedroom property, but only 30% of the housing stock is that size, it does not take a maths genius to identify the underlying structural problem.
Although the Scottish Government have provided money to ensure that everyone affected by the bedroom tax in Scotland can get a discretionary housing payment, that legislation remains on the statute book and tenants remain legally liable. I hope that the Scotland Bill currently going through the House will devolve the power to repeal that legislation in Scotland. I appeal to Ministers to look again at the punitive impact that the bedroom tax is having on some of the poorest and most disadvantaged people in our communities right across the UK, and recognise that it is simply not addressing the systemic issues underlying the housing crisis, namely chronic under-supply, under-investment and rents that have spiralled out of control.
Before I conclude, I wish to say a few words about homelessness, because the motion specifically alludes to a rise in homelessness and rough sleeping. I have no doubt that recent changes to social security, delays and mistakes in the benefit system and the new sanctions regime are major contributory factors in those sharp increases, but on tackling homeless, it is important to put it on the record that in the past five years, the number of homeless applications in Scotland has fallen by 36%, and last year applications were down 8% on the previous year. That is not accidental. It is a consequence of progressive legislation that ensures that anyone who is assessed by the local authority as unintentionally homeless has a legal right to settled accommodation. That legislation has been recognised internationally as world leading and has been commended by the UN.
It has not been easy to deliver those achievements. I pay tribute to the local authorities that have been working closely with the Scottish Government to reduce those figures. They have done that mostly by focusing efforts on prevention—preventing the most vulnerable from becoming homeless in the first place—and, crucially, by building many more houses in the affordable sector.
We have made progress, but more needs to be done. I hope the Secretary of State will look seriously at how Scotland has reduced the rate of homelessness, and consider what might be emulated in a different context.
The housing crisis cannot be fixed overnight, but the first step is to acknowledge the roots of the problem. It is very difficult to avoid the conclusion that under-investment in social housing by successive UK Governments has been a costly oversight and a big mistake. It is important that this Government acknowledge that their approach has been short-sighted and short term and that it has short-changed us all. Selling off the housing stock will not solve the problem, nor will pushing disabled tenants into the private sector.
Dr Whiteford
Sorry, I will not give way as I am winding up. Such schemes avoid the real challenge, which is a need for a step change in investment in social housing. If the Government really want to house people and give them a decent place in which to live, they should understand that it is about security of tenure and having a place that people can call their home. I fear that until we are prepared to put money into building social housing, which incidentally would boost our economy and help our struggling construction industry, we will be back here repeatedly debating these issues over the next five years.
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Brandon Lewis)
I welcome you to your new role, Madam Deputy Speaker. This is my first time at the Dispatch Box with you in the Chair.
I will first touch on some of the speeches made by my hon. Friends and other hon. Members in an interesting debate, which has included some great contributions. I was slightly surprised that the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) gave a critique of Labour’s past performance—something we agree on and which I know was something to be worried about. We are disappointed that the SNP, as she said, has ended the right to buy in Scotland, therefore crushing the opportunity for aspiration for so many people.
Brandon Lewis
I will not, given the time that is left, I am afraid.
My hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) made a great contribution and gave some superb ideas for us to look into. He rightly outlined the work that we have done for family-friendly tenancies with the model tenancy agreement that the Government launched in the previous Parliament. I look forward to working with him over the months ahead to ensure that we will do what we can to deliver homes for people throughout our country and across tenures.
In particular, I wish to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) on his maiden speech. He made a good start in the House by respecting the comments of Mr Deputy Speaker and keeping himself short and tight in his words, while outlining his clear passion for his area and his experience as a man from London, although I would question his loyalty to Crystal Palace football club. I am a supporter of Queen’s Park Rangers, so that might be one area where we fail to agree, but his passion and knowledge of housing will be a great contribution to the House, particularly his clear passion for the use of public sector and brownfield land.
The hon. Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis), one of my new neighbours as a fellow Norfolk MP, gave an interesting maiden speech, with an interesting outline of the Norwich that I know best as the city of ale, as I am a former pubs Minister. I look forward to him joining us in putting pressure on Labour-run Norwich City Council to use the powers and money that it has to build council houses in Norwich. I have met the council about that and I encourage him to join me in nagging it to go further.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) for a thoughtful speech. He outlined some of the issues and problems left by the Labour party because of its failure to regulate properly, which led to some of the problems in the economic crash that Labour gave us just before it lost its majority in Parliament in 2010.
The hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) in his speech outlined his 100-year family background in the area, which he is clearly and rightly proud of. I am pleased that he, along with other Members, has given a clear message to the House that he has a focus on housing. I am sure that he will want to join me in congratulating the Leeds area on having the highest number of beneficiaries of the equity loan Help to Buy scheme in the entire country, for which it can thank a Conservative-led Government.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Mims Davies) on another excellent and thoughtful contribution, which outlined the importance of local plans. She rightly seeks to ensure that absolute pressure is put on her local authority to deliver a local plan to serve the constituents she has been elected to represent. I hope that the council will have listened to her speech and taken note, and will deliver that local plan which it so badly needs and should rightly deliver for its residents.
The hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) gave a typically robust, if a little far-fetched, outline of the Government’s policies, but I look forward to debating with him further when we come to the housing Bill later this year. [Interruption.] Yes, it was not a maiden speech, but it was close.
My hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) made a thoughtful and helpful contribution, as I know he will do throughout his time in this Parliament. As with my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen, I particularly noted his comments about rural exception sites, and we will come back to that as part of the housing Bill in due course.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) on her maiden speech, in which she paid a clear tribute to her predecessor. Again, I thank her for showing that she will have a clear focus on housing, and I hope she will join me in making sure we deliver the housing we need across our country.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes) for giving a short but insightful speech, supporting good-quality development and highlighting the poor delivery of housing under the last Labour Government.
I am fortunate, as the Minister for Housing and Planning, to be able to build on excellent work done by my predecessors, including my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk), who did fantastic groundwork on the private rented sector, setting it up to be the strong and growing sector it is today, and in his general work on housing. My hon. Friends the Members for Henley (John Howell) and for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) have also contributed through work on neighbourhood planning and on the NPPF. My neighbour, the hon. Member for South Norfolk, has done fantastic work on custom-build and right to build. That is all contributing and will go on to contribute further to build the homes we need across our country.
I was surprised at a couple of things said by the Opposition Front Benchers, not least because we are still not entirely clear—I do not know whether any Labour Members are—about whether they support or do not support the aspiration to own that people who benefit from right to buy will have. Conservative Members absolutely support that. It is deeply ironic, at best, that the Opposition have called today’s debate at all, in order to raise the alarm about the housing crisis that they created. It is a little like listening to the arsonist ringing the fire brigade to report a house that they burned to the ground. Let us remember where we have come from: in 2010, they left this country with the lowest level of peacetime house building rates since 1923, with millions of first-time buyers locked out of the market and—let us be clear about this—with a net loss of some 420,000 affordable houses. That was a shameful track record to leave this country.
Let us contrast that with what has happened during the past five years of a Conservative-led Government. We have had the job of clearing up the mess, and progress has been made. [Interruption.] Labour Members may not like to hear this, but let me give them some facts. Housing starts and the number of first-time buyers have doubled since 2009, and those continue to rise. Councils are building at the fastest rate in 23 years; just five years of a Conservative-led coalition built more social housing than 13 years of Labour. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State rightly said, we were the first Government since the 1980s to finish with a larger stock of affordable homes than we started with.
We plan for a brighter and a bigger future, which the Opposition cannot come to terms with. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has set out a clear goal and a clear mission for him and for us in this Parliament, which is to ensure that everyone who works hard can aspire to have a home of their own. More than 1 million tenants in housing association properties will be helped to buy a home. Some 200,000 starter homes will be built with a 20% discount for first-time buyers, and 95,000 homes will be built on brownfield land. We will help communities to have more control over house building and we will build 275,000 more affordable homes, which is the fastest rate in more than 20 years. As my right hon. Friend said, we have a rich legacy on which to draw.
Today we have heard the difference between a Government with plans to fulfil housing goals and an Opposition who want to frustrate them. We are offering working people a ladder, and the Opposition are telling them to form a queue. We will build more homes that people can afford. We will make it easier for local people to build the homes they need for the future in the places they want to build them. Above all, we will support the aspirations of working people who want to buy a home of their own.
Question put.