Affordable Housing

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Mark Prisk

Wednesday 4th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Mark Prisk (Hertford and Stortford) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I am an adviser to Essential Living.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) on securing the debate. Ensuring that people can afford to live in a decent home is one of the top issues for many of our constituents, and rightly so. Despite the suggestion that all the evils in housing started in May 2010, the reality is that our housing markets have been dysfunctional for more than 25 years, so we have built far too few homes, rents and prices have risen, and thus we have this issue of affordability. That means that when the current Government came to power in 2010, they inherited a real mess. For my money, the classic illustration of that is the loss of some 420,000 affordable homes under the last Labour Administration.

Since 2010, good progress has been made, so during this Parliament we should see the fall in the number of affordable homes reversed and an increase of some 170,000. Just as importantly—I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister will want to refer to this—the Government are now seeking to accelerate the increase in the number of affordable homes so that in just a three-year period we should see 165,000 additional affordable homes being built. That would, I think, represent the fastest rate of building in this sector for 25 years.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is rightly focusing on the idea of affordability. Can he help us by giving his definition of affordability? Does he agree with the Mayor of London’s definition of affordability, which is that 80% of market rent is affordable, or does he agree with me that that is simply nonsense?

[Mr Prisk]

It actually relates to the ratio depending on where someone lives and what their wages are. One problem for our constituents is that we talk about affordable housing with a capital A—the Affordable Housing programme—but most of them think about it with a small a, in terms of mortgage costs or rents, so we need to be very careful not to get caught in artificial terminology.

I welcome what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has said about building thousands more homes, including this week’s announcements on starter homes. That builds on a programme that I was able to start, the Help to Buy equity loan scheme, which has helped some 77,000 people. However, much more can be done, and I would like to make three suggestions. I suspect that colleagues will want to consider issues such as section 106 and planning gain, which I think is an area ripe for improvement and reform, but let me touch now on three other things.

First, we will get a sustained increase in the number of affordable homes built only if we focus on delivering a long-term framework for investment. When I took on the role of Minister for Housing in 2012, housing associations rightly complained to me that the rental and capital policies of Governments of all political persuasions had always been short term. They might be for two years, or there might be an understanding of what the policy framework would be for three years, but housing associations argued that a long-term approach was needed if development was to increase and then be sustained. That is why I pushed for and, I am pleased to say, secured both a 10-year rental policy and long-term housing guarantees from the Treasury to underpin the investment. That means that rental policy is now set all the way through to 2025, and that gives the housing associations and their lenders the confidence to build more and for longer.

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[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) on securing this debate on a topic that is important not only for my constituents but for people in the rest of the country. May I also declare an interest? I still own my late mother’s flat, and we have been renting it out to the same tenant since she died.

Many people misunderstand my constituency. It is in one of the poorest boroughs in the country, and 40% of my constituents live in social housing. We have a great mixture of people. The very rich, the very poor and people from all over the world rub shoulders. I have the smallest amount of green space of any constituency in the country. We all live on top of one another, and we quite like it that way. However, the housing crisis is fundamentally changing the nature of my constituency. The average house price in the UK is an outrageous £188,000, which makes it impossibly difficult for the average person to buy these days, but the average price of a house in my constituency is £665,275. Tomorrow, I will see some 12-year-old children at one of my local schools. They were born and brought up in Islington, and they are ambitious and looking forward to life. How on earth will any of them still be able to live in Islington in 15 years’ time? Why are we allowing that to happen? Why are we not doing something about it? It is simply unfair.

These days, not only the children of the poorest but those of the richest will be unable to live in Islington when they grow up, because our house prices have got completely out of control. I do not want my constituency fundamentally to change, and neither do the residents of Islington. We can see no reason why it should, and we think that radical housing change is needed to regulate the market. Some people in this Chamber and in this building will think, “Oh, my goodness. What is this, some form of Stalinism? We can’t start controlling the housing market.” Excuse me, but yes, we can. Most world cities have some form of housing regulation that goes much further than the pusillanimous attempts that have been made in recent years to control the housing market in London. We must start taking strong action to ensure that London people can live in London.

I do not have any problem with people from outside London wanting to come and live here. There is a great tradition of people from all over the world coming to live in Islington. However, do you know what is happening now, Mr Gray? I went to see a woman a couple of months ago who is living in a completely overcrowded council flat. She is busting out at the seams. Her husband runs a local café, and has done for 25 years. They are a good local family, and the kids are doing well. She said to me, “I have no idea where my kids are going to live. They are all grown up now. Where are they going to go? How can I help them to live in Islington? We want them to stay here. We are absolutely overcrowded, and look at that,” and she pointed at the enormous tower block that is being built on the canal nearby. It is called Canaletto, or something equally ridiculous. It is covered in fancy stone, and it reaches up into the skies. We all know that when it has been sold, the lights will be off at night because no one is going to live there. People across the world are investing in our housing market, which is not properly regulated. If they have a choice between investing their money in a few gold bars and saying, “Let’s buy a flat in London,” they will buy a flat in London, because it is nice and secure. They will keep it empty, warm and secure, and they will rob the people of London of somewhere to live.

[Mr Prisk]

The hon. Lady has set out some of the problems, and I understand them. Do I take it from her remarks that she wants to see rent control?

[Emily Thornberry]

Personally, speaking as a Back Bencher, yes, I do. I want to see rent regulation. An individual should be able to enter a tenancy agreement with a landlord for a long period of time—three, four or five years—at a set rate, which should increase only in line with inflation. We should not be able to treat people as they are being treated.

I believe that the private sector has an important role to play in meeting our housing need; I am not one of those people who do not believe in the private rented sector. However, we now have an entire generation of youngsters—some of them are our own children and our researchers’ friends—who move into properties and are exploited. They are asked to pay ridiculous amounts of rent. They make a home, but after six months or a year, perhaps because they have complained about the fact that their windows are leaking, they will be chucked out and they have absolutely no rights. We have to strike the right balance, and we must not give tenants so many rights that landlords are frightened off, but we are talking about people who want to be able to make a home in a community. For them to be able to contribute properly, they need some form of security. We should not allow them to be pushed out of our cities and our metropolises because rents are continually being hiked up.