Emma Reynolds
Main Page: Emma Reynolds (Labour - Wycombe)
Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House notes that the UK faces an urgent and growing housing crisis; believes that the Government should bring forward a comprehensive plan to tackle the housing crisis which sets out concrete steps to build more homes, including badly-needed affordable homes, boost home ownership, improve the private rented sector and reduce homelessness and rough sleeping; and regrets that over the past five years home completions have been at their lowest level in peacetime since the 1920s, that home ownership has fallen to a thirty-year low with a record number of young people living with their parents into their twenties and thirties, that there are 1.4 million families on the waiting list for a social home and that since 2010 homelessness has risen by 31 per cent and rough sleeping by 55 per cent.
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I have had a promotion since the last time we saw each other. I am now the shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, although we are talking about housing today.
Mr Speaker
Housing being but one of the hon. Lady’s preoccupations. We welcome her preferment and congratulate her on it.
Emma Reynolds
And I congratulate you, Mr Speaker, on your re-election. I am delighted that you are in the Chair.
The official Opposition are deeply concerned about the urgent and growing housing crisis, which is why we have chosen it for our first Opposition day debate. Housing has rightly risen up the political agenda in recent months and years, and many of our constituents will say that it is not before time. Our motion calls on the Government to bring forward a comprehensive plan to tackle the housing crisis, which should focus on: building more homes, including badly needed affordable homes; boosting home ownership, allowing people to fulfil their aspirations to buy their own home; improving private renting for the 11 million people now renting from a private landlord; and reducing homelessness and rough sleeping. Let us be clear that the big overarching problem is one of massive under-supply of new homes.
In England, we are building only half the number of homes we need to keep up with demand. It is true that under successive Governments of different political colours there simply have not been enough homes built for decades. It is also the case, however, that in the past five years house building has fallen to its lowest level in peacetime since the 1920s. The Prime Minister likes to maintain that the Conservative party is the party of homeownership, but the truth and the facts fly in the face of his rhetoric. Homeownership has fallen to a 30-year low. It is, as it happens, at its lowest since the last time there was a majority Tory Government.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
The average price of a property in my constituency is just shy of £1 million, but it might as well be £10 million because it is simply unaffordable for any normal family—certainly for first-time buyers. We need a comprehensive strategy that looks at releasing public land and attacks these crooked viability studies that developers bring out. Unless that is tackled, we will not build the homes that people need, particularly in areas where there are jobs and where people want to live.
Emma Reynolds
I congratulate Labour-run Hammersmith and Fulham council not only on taking over the council a little over a year ago, but on driving up the number of affordable homes through some of the big schemes in my hon. Friend’s constituency. He is absolutely right that many people and families in his and other parts of London have simply given up on buying their own home because the prices are so unaffordable and exorbitant.
Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)
Is my hon. Friend aware that the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that the Government’s housing proposals could lead to fewer affordable homes? In Enfield, it would take a couple with one child 20 years to save up a deposit on a house, and the average private rent now consumes 46% of the average weekly wage. This is not affordable for people. Does she agree that the Government’s proposals will not resolve these problems?
Emma Reynolds
I will come on to those proposals in a minute. To pick up on what my right hon. Friend said about rent levels, the previous Housing Minister seemed to suggest in the House only a year and a half ago that rents were going down, whereas we know full well that in many parts of the capital and in many of our other cities they are going up and people are finding it increasingly unaffordable to rent in the private rented sector.
Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)
I think that everyone in the House will agree that more houses need to be built. In that spirit, will the hon. Lady agree that the Government’s proposals on brownfield land and for a London land commission are bringing excess public sector, non-operational land into use for housing? That should be welcomed across the House.
Emma Reynolds
Warms words are one thing—we can agree that public sector and brownfield land needs to be built out—but we have heard many warm words over the past five years, and not much has been done. In fact, in my previous position as shadow Housing Minister, I asked the Government what figures they had available on their aim to build 100,000 new homes on public sector land, and answer came there none. They said they were not recording those numbers.
Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
I welcome the hon. Lady to her new post. I had the pleasure of debating against her during the general election campaign. When she was shadow Housing Minister, she was right that rent controls would not work in practice, and her leader was wrong. May I take it that her appointment means that Labour will once and for all abandon this misguided policy, which would drive up rents and choke off investment in the sector?
Emma Reynolds
Given that the hon. Gentleman is such a witty performer in the House, I am sure he can see the distinction between our proposals and 1970s-style rent control, which was never a proposal of the Labour party and which would have meant the state setting the level of rents. I was opposed to that and we never had it in our manifesto or in our plans.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend not accept that the crippling level of rents in London is a cause of increasing concern to young Londoners and their families? In every poll and interaction with them, Londoners are demanding a level of rent stabilisation and—yes—workable rent control.
Emma Reynolds
I am sympathetic to the concerns that my hon. Friend expresses, but we take different positions on this issue. I am not in favour of the state setting rent levels.
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)
In January 2014, the hon. Lady’s party placed a motion before the House which was not dissimilar to this one but which claimed that 5 million people were on the waiting list for social homes. In this motion, it claims there are only 1.4 million families on the waiting list. To what does she attribute the reduction?
Emma Reynolds
The Government have tried to manicure the figures, and we have used the Government figures, I am afraid. I think they underestimate the number of families and people on the waiting list. In Wolverhampton, there are 12,000 people on the waiting list for a council or housing association home. We have an affordable homes crisis in our country that the Government are not getting to grips with.
Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)
In my constituency, we have seen a reduction in the number of people on the housing waiting list but not in the number of people with housing problems, because the Government have changed the rules. Those people on zero-hours contracts are finding it increasingly difficult to pay the increased rents in my constituency. How can we challenge the Government on this point?
Emma Reynolds
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise this point. Over the past five years, we have seen a doubling of the number of people in work having to resort to claiming housing benefit to pay their rent. This is simply unacceptable, but again the Government have been complacent about the challenge. This is not just about people struggling to pay their rent; it is about value for money for the taxpayer.
For the first time on record, the rate of homeownership has fallen even below the EU average—so much for the Conservative party being the party of homeownership. In truth, in many parts of the country, wages have not kept up with soaring house prices. The average home now costs 10 times the average salary, and in some parts of the country the ratio is much higher.
Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
If the hon. Lady supports homeownership, will she support the Government’s right to buy plans?
Emma Reynolds
I shall come on to that in a minute. We support the principle that people should be able to buy their own homes, but we also think that the Government, weeks into the election campaign, came up with a half-baked proposal that was uncosted and unfunded. They have no plan to replace the homes they will force councils to sell to fund the discount, and they have no plan to replace the homes sold under the scheme.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
A number of new builds in my constituency are being bought by foreign buyers, meaning that local people are not getting a look in. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government need to undertake a review of whether foreign buyers are renting out or occupying the lands they are buying?
Emma Reynolds
I think the Government need to do much more to tackle the problem of empty homes, particularly in the capital. In a number of schemes, glamorous apartments are being built that few local people can afford, and in the evening many of them have no lights on because nobody is at home.
First-time buyers now need to be earning more than ever before, and deposits are 10 times the size of those needed 30 years ago—no wonder that a record number of young people are living at home with their parents into their 20s and 30s. Some get a helping hand from the bank of mum and dad, but others are not so lucky. Many have given up hope of ever being able to buy their own home, and a record 11 million people are now renting from a private landlord, while the shortage of council homes and homes for social rent is pushing up rents and the housing benefit bill. As I just said, the number of people in work and claiming housing benefit has doubled over the past few years, and, most worryingly of all, homelessness and rough sleeping are on the rise.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is right to point out the increasing numbers of people renting in the private sector. Is she as concerned as I am that a growing amount of my casework is now dealing with housing standards in the private sector? Is it not time we got value for the taxpayer and decent standards for private tenants?
Emma Reynolds
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the poor standards in some parts of the private rented sector. The Government need to do more to enable councils to crack down on the worst landlords—the rogue landlords and the “amateur landlords”, as they are politically called in the trade, but who perhaps deserve a more damning name—who do not keep their properties up to standard. That is affecting people’s health, the aspirations of their children and their kids’ ability to get on at school, so this is a very big challenge and my hon. Friend is right to raise it.
Byron Davies (Gower) (Con)
Will the hon. Lady comment on the fact that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher built more houses in Wales in the last year of her premiership than the Welsh Labour Government have built since they came to power in 1999?
Emma Reynolds
I will take our record on building affordable homes over the Government’s record at any time. We had the decent homes programme—[Interruption.] Well, we built over half a million affordable homes in our term in office, and we have seen the number of homes built for social rent under this Government fall to a 20-year low. We have transformed the lives of all the people living in council houses when they were left to rack and ruin after 18 years of a Tory Government.
The scale of the challenge ahead is therefore huge, but are the Government’s policies up to the task? Let us consider them in turn. First, we have the Government’s proposal to deliver 200,000 starter homes at a 20% discount. When questioned earlier this year on where the discount was coming from, the right hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps) was completely unable to answer—and no wonder. The Government have said that the 20% discount will save the average first-time buyer £43,000. The likely overall cost would therefore be £8.6 billion. They claim that this will be paid for by removing levies for affordable housing and infrastructure, but their own figures suggest that the average cost of affordable housing contributions accounts for only a third of the proposed discounts. How would the rest of the discount be paid for?
This also poses the question of who will pay for the vital infrastructure that we need in new housing development—a topic on which the Minister for Housing and Planning often speaks. After all, when it comes to new development—he and I know this very well—many people are concerned about the pressure on existing roads, schools and other services. When the Secretary of State responds, will he give us proper answers to these questions?
Secondly, there is the proposal to extend the right to buy to housing association tenants. The Labour party is on the side of those who want to buy their own home. We want as many people as possible to fulfil that aspiration, but the Government’s current proposals raise more questions than they answer. The hon. Members for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy), for South Dorset (Richard Drax), for Salisbury (John Glen), for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) and the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) have all raised concerns about the ramifications of the Government’s proposals.
The right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster said that the Tory party had pulled a rabbit out of the hat in the final weeks of the election campaign, and needed time
“to iron out its obvious iniquities”.
The hon. Member for South Dorset said only last week:
“There is no doubt that the first generation would be extremely grateful, but what about those who follow?”,
and he expressed concerns about the proposals leading to a shortage of affordable homes. The hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip has said that these plans amount to “insanity”—his characteristic turn of phrase—if more council houses are not built in the areas where they are sold. He also expressed concerns about this policy eroding the mixture of socio-economic groups in London.
Conservative peers in the other place have also expressed concern. Baroness Byford described the proposals as an
“absurd attack from a Conservative Government on the property rights of some of the most needed and respected charities in this country”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 2 June 2015; Vol. 762, c. 391.]
The former head of the civil service and permanent secretary from the Secretary of State’s own Department, Lord Kerslake, and Lord Turnbull, the former permanent secretary to the Treasury, have both said that the Government should think again.
Beyond Parliament, other bodies have raised serious concerns. The CBI has said the proposal does nothing to “solve the problem” of the housing crisis, while the Chartered Institute of Housing said the figures “did not stack up”. We have also seen those well-known socialist publications The Economist, The Spectator, The Daily Telegraph and the Evening Standard raising concerns.
The Secretary of State thus needs to provide answers to the following questions. How much will this policy cost? The Conservatives refused to answer that question during the election campaign. The Department has also blocked, after an FOI request, the release of a secret document detailing the policy’s costs and economic consequences. How will it be paid for? The Conservatives claimed during the election campaign that they would force councils to sell off their most expensive properties and use the proceeds to pay for the right-to-buy discount. However, the Government have no idea whether these 15,000 properties will become vacant every year, let alone whether £4.5 billion would be raised.
In a response to a recent written parliamentary question, in which I asked the Secretary of State what estimates the Department had made about the value of these homes and the number that would become available each year, the Housing Minister admitted in his response that it simply did not know. Perhaps the Secretary of State will tell us how on earth the Government know how much money they will raise if they do not know how many of these properties there are, how many will become available and how much they are worth. Given that there will be a time lag between forcing councils to sell off expensive council properties and funding the discount, will the Treasury step in to fill the gap? What is the plan to replace the homes sold?
The Government have yet again promised a one-for-one replacement on council homes sold—despite the Secretary of State claiming on the “Today” programme only a few weeks ago that no such promise was made in the last Parliament. I hope he has now had a chance to catch up on Tory party policy. It was their policy and it failed badly. For every 10 council homes sold through the right to buy in the last Parliament, only one council home started to be built. The question thus arises of why anyone should believe the Government’s promises now.
Serious questions have also been asked about the impact of the policy on the ability of housing associations to borrow money and build new homes. Moody’s is now the third credit rating agency to warn about this policy’s impact. It said that it could hit the financial viability of housing associations, risking their ability to raise private finance to pay for new house building. Here in our capital, the biggest group of housing associations has plans to build 93,000 new homes, with the vast majority of the funding coming from borrowing against future rental streams, but how many of those new homes will now be put at risk given that the rental streams and assets are so uncertain?
Legal experts have expressed doubts about forcing independent charities to sell off their assets. Some have said these assets are not the state’s to sell. Some will have been donated through their wills by individuals—some in their dying days—who wanted to provide homes for the most vulnerable people, such as those with disabilities, autism and indeed the aged or the homeless. Perhaps the Secretary of State could tell us whether these housing association properties will be included in the scope of the legislation.
Other experts have suggested that this level of Government involvement with the assets of private independent charities will lead to the reclassification of the £70 billion-worth of housing association debt being reclassified as public sector debt. Have the Government assessed that risk? Ultimately, we will have to see what the Government bring forward, but the test for any housing policy of this Government must be whether it eases rather than deepens the housing crisis.
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
The hon. Lady and the motion talk about us facing a housing crisis. The social landlords are owners of a substantial balance sheet of housing assets. What I want to get clear is whether the hon. Lady is stating the Labour party’s opposition to the extension of the right to buy in principle, or is she criticising on the basis of whether a practical solution could be brought about. It is important to get the best use of all balance sheets of housing, whether they be social tenants or otherwise.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
We need short interventions, as I know we want to hear all the maiden speeches today.
Emma Reynolds
As I have said, we support the right to buy, but policies brought to this House must be workable, must be funded and must be costed. Many people have rightly expressed concerns about whether this will lead to a deepening of the housing crisis and perhaps an even greater shortage of council and housing association homes. Labour Members know that many of our constituents are on the waiting lists.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
My hon. Friend has done an excellent job in giving us a comprehensive list of concerns about this policy, but may I add two more? First, many councils have sold off their housing stock in a stock transfer. Does that mean that they need contribute nothing towards the cost of the policy? Secondly, the most expensive houses owned by councils that still have stock are generally in the nicest and most expensive areas. Does that mean that, in future, those areas will not be available to anyone who wants to move into a council house, because all the council houses there will have to be sold off?
Emma Reynolds
I am sure that the Secretary of State will have heard my hon. Friend’s first question. I have to admit that I do not know the answer to it, because the policy is so light on detail. It was written on the back of a fag packet during the Conservative party’s general election campaign.
Emma Reynolds
I will not, because I am about to answer my hon. Friend’s second question.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that the policy will
“reduce the availability of social housing in the most expensive areas, thereby creating clearer divisions between areas where richer and poorer households are located”.
I will now give way to the hon. Gentleman.
Mr Jackson
I am unclear about the premise of the hon. Lady’s argument. Is she ideologically opposed to the policy, or does she think that it will not work? If it is the latter, did she not advance a similar argument about the affordable rent model? She said then that no money would go back into the system to fund the building of new housing, but that has not been the case. Along with organisations providing other forms of tenure, housing associations have built more homes as a result of the affordable rent model, which was pioneered by the last Government.
Emma Reynolds
With respect, I remind the hon. Gentleman that what the last Government did to affordable rent was redefine it completely, and raise it to 80% of the market rent. In many of my, and his, hon. Friends’ constituencies, that level of rent is simply unaffordable for people on low incomes. Indeed, in some parts of our capital and other big cities, it is even unaffordable for people on middle incomes. I think that the hon. Gentleman needs to get a grip on reality.
Emma Reynolds
I will give way in a minute, but I must make a little progress, because I know that many of my hon. Friends want to make speeches today.
I noted measures in the Gracious Speech relating to development on brownfield land and the right to build, but what is proposed is hardly equal to the scale of the challenge that we face. Where are the measures that will increase competition in the house building industry? Where are the measures that will help small builders? Where are the measures that will provide a new generation of garden cities? Such measures would not only tackle the housing crisis, but help our economy to grow. The house building industry already makes a huge contribution to our economy, but building another 100,000 homes a year would create 230,000 jobs and thousands of apprenticeships.
We must not forget the impact of the housing shortage on business. The CBI and many other business organisations have expressed concern about the lack of affordable homes for their employees. They fear that a failure to build such homes will restrict—and is already restricting—labour mobility and our economic competitiveness. Again, we see a disappointing lack of focus on the Government’s part
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to talk about the impact on the building industry. Representatives of Wienerberger, a brick manufacturer in my constituency, have told me umpteen times that, over the past few years, uncertainty about the amount of house building going through the system has caused them an incredible number of problems. Must we not ensure that the supply side of the industry is looked after as well?
Emma Reynolds
That is an important point, which I hope has been heard by Conservative Members. It may be easy for some of the bigger house builders to secure a supply of bricks because they have the necessary leverage, but we are concerned about small house builders. The last time we were building 200,000 homes a year was 25 years ago, when small builders built two thirds of new homes. Now they build barely a third, and they face the problems to which my hon. Friend has referred.
Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)
I have spent the last 21 years in the building industry, in a construction firm. The things that you are talking about, the brick shortages and so on, are a direct result of the lack of certainty and the appalling way in which the events of 2008 decimated our industries. We are just returning to those levels. Now, you can talk all you like about—
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. The hon. Lady must resume her seat.
Let me try to help the House. A great many Members wish to speak for the first time, and I want to try to accommodate them all. We need very short interventions, not statements or speeches, so we now need to move on rather quickly.
Emma Reynolds
The hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill) is new to the House, and I do not mind her calling me “you”. That is not the convention, but I am sure that we all sympathise with her. When we first arrived here, it seemed rather strange always to be using the third person. Members who have been here much longer still make the same mistake.
There was a deep recession, caused by the global financial crash, and—I hope the hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) will let the hon. Lady listen to my answer—there were severe problems for the housing industry, including firms on the supply side, such as brick manufacturers. Many builders suffered greatly—not just small builders, but big builders as well. We know that housing starts to recover when there is a general recovery, but our point is that we are not building even half the number of homes that we need to build in order to keep up with demand. The Government need a plan, and a bigger vision, to drive and boost the number of homes being built, but that is not what we are seeing. Over the last five years, we saw piecemeal efforts, and a hyperactive first Housing Minister who made announcements more often than he delivered on any of the promises that he had made at the start of the last Government.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
Will the hon. Lady give way?
Emma Reynolds
I want to make a little progress. I intended to speak for only about 20 or 25 minutes. However, I may give way towards the end of my speech if I am feeling generous.
The number of affordable homes provided last year was the lowest for nine years, and the number of homes built for social rent hit a 20-year low. However, there seems, again, to be a complete absence of Government proposals for addressing the crisis in affordable housing. The Secretary of State’s predecessor and the current Housing Minister reduced investment in affordable homes to a 14-year low, and watered down all manner of requirements for developers to build affordable homes in new developments. It is incumbent on the Secretary of State to adopt a fresh approach, and we hope that he will do so. He should also look at the definition of affordable homes, which has been totally skewed. Homes are simply unaffordable for many people on low incomes, and the impact on the housing benefit bill has been disastrous, which is also bad news for the taxpayer.
Let me now say a little about the 11 million people who rent from private landlords. There are some excellent private landlords out there, who provide decent homes for their tenants, but too many tenants have to deal with poor standards and great insecurity. Many people—individuals, couples, and families with children—are now settling in the private rented sector, either because they cannot obtain a council or housing association home, or because they cannot get on to the housing ladder. However, there was no mention of private renters in either the Conservative manifesto or the Queen’s Speech. Will the Secretary of State tell us what the Government will do to give that growing group of people the security and stability that they want? Will he also tell us how he will tackle the growing problem of homelessness and rough sleeping?
In the years before he became Prime Minister, the then Leader of the Opposition appeared to take a great interest in homelessness. Along with the former Housing Minister, the right hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps), he set up the Conservative Homelessness Foundation. However, we hear little about that foundation now, and, indeed, we hear little about these issues. Might that be because homelessness has risen by 31% since 2010, and rough sleeping has risen by 55%? Homelessness and rough sleeping have a devastating impact on the lives of, in particular, those who find themselves in such a position at a very young age. What does the Secretary of State intend to do about this urgent and pressing problem?
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
The issue of homelessness is clearly absolutely devastating. One only has to walk around the streets of London to see how many people are sleeping rough and begging. They are there for a reason, or rather for several reasons: the lack of council housing, the lack of affordable housing in the private sector, and the fact that properties are deliberately kept empty so that they can be land-banked for the future. Do we not need some really tough regulation to provide housing for all?
Emma Reynolds
This is a serious issue and the Government need to do something about increasing the number of affordable homes. The statistics for our country and other European countries show that the level of homelessness and rough-sleeping directly correlate to the percentage and availability of affordable housing. It is not rocket science: in our country and some other countries where there is a lack of affordable housing, we see an increase in the number of people having to sleep rough on the streets or being referred by their local authorities to what is often called bed-and-breakfast accommodation but which looks nothing like bed-and-breakfast accommodation.
I agree with my hon. Friend that the Government need to get a grip on this issue. We are talking about some of the most vulnerable people in our country who are being made to live in temporary accommodation week after week, month after month, and individuals who are not considered to be a priority in law or statute by local authorities and who are simply left sleeping on the streets with all the dangers that entails. They are more vulnerable to being attacked, to violent crime and to dying at a very early age.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady agree that the origins of the difficulties in today’s housing market are to be found not in the last Parliament but in the Parliament before that and the Parliament before that and the Parliament before that?
Emma Reynolds
I know the hon. Gentleman is new to this place but all I would say is that that is like a tired old record: this Government cannot keep blaming the last Labour Government. The hon. Gentleman’s people have been in power for the last five years and they have not got a grip on this housing crisis. They have made it worse and they have particularly made it worse for people on low incomes and, in some parts of the country, for people on middle incomes. I am proud of the record we had in Government, but it is the case that there have not been enough homes built for quite some time—for decades—and I will not take lessons from the Conservative party.
The case for a comprehensive plan to tackle the housing crisis is overwhelming. Indeed, at the homes for Britain rally in March the then Conservative party chairman—who is keen on making commitments—committed his party to publishing such a plan within a year of taking office. I am afraid that we have seen nothing of that so far, however. We will need to judge the Government on the test of whether they tackle the housing crisis in a serious way. That is why we have called for a comprehensive plan today. If the Government want to increase home ownership, not manage its decline, if they want to help private renters, not just ignore them, if they want to build more affordable homes and reduce homelessness and not just talk about it while affordable housing supply plummets and homelessness soars, and if they want to drive the wider economic benefits of building more homes too, they must set out a comprehensive, long-term plan to tackle the housing crisis, as we have put forward in our motion today. That is why I commend this motion to the House.
Greg Clark
I will make some progress but then of course I will give way to the hon. Lady.
I think it is fair to reflect at the beginning of this Parliament on the situation we inherited and that that had gone wrong under the previous Government. The hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East and other hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), have been good enough to admit that not enough was done under that previous Government, but as for the solutions that Labour has suggested, the hon. Lady should again reflect on the fact that she was the shadow Housing Minister in the period running up to the election campaign, and I again might have expected her to be a little more self-deprecating about her own record of promoting solutions to the problems of getting homes built.
Yesterday, one of the hon. Lady’s close colleagues, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), cited Labour’s failure on housing policy as one of the reasons that Labour lost the election. She said that her party’s plans for housing at the election “lacked ambition” and that they failed to explain to the voters how they would help first-time buyers. The prescription that she offered the British people just four weeks ago included a mansion tax, rent controls and restrictions on home ownership. Does she still agree with those policies? Are they still party policy? They would have been a disaster for the people of this country, and that is not just my view; it is the view of the electorate and also of the acting leader of the Labour party.
Emma Reynolds
What about extended stamp duty for first-time buyers on properties worth up to £200,000?
Greg Clark
The verdict on the hon. Lady’s proposals at the election was delivered very comprehensively.
I mentioned the interim leader of the Labour party. She commissioned polling on why Labour did not win the election and said that it
“uncovered a feeling of relief among Labour voters that the party had not won”.
She also said:
“It doesn’t matter how many leaflets you deliver if the message is not right.”
Even senior Labour Members have reflected on the fact that their housing policies at the election were not adequate for the task. I concede that there is one exception, however. The right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), who I gather is running for office, has said very boldly that the last election manifesto was
“the best manifesto I have stood on in four general elections for Labour”.
That gives us an insight into the future of the party’s prospects. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East agrees that it was a manifesto worth fighting on.