Emma Reynolds
Main Page: Emma Reynolds (Labour - Wycombe)
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Brandon Lewis)
My hon. Friend makes a good point. It has been a pleasure to visit and meet the excellent council in Dartford, which is doing some superb work on this. He is right. The number of long-term vacant homes in England fell by some 10,000 in the year to October 2014, so we are at the lowest levels we have seen. That is good work and we want to go further.
Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
I congratulate the Secretary of State on his promotion and join him in his condemnation of the terrorist attacks in Tunisia, Kuwait and France. Our thoughts and sympathies are with the victims, families and friends.
The reason the Secretary of State does not know when he is going to bring forward his housing Bill is that the policies were written on the back of a fag packet during the election campaign and were based on forcing councils to sell 15,000 homes a year. Since then, I have asked his Department how many of these homes will become vacant every year, and it said it does not know. How many council homes will he force councils to sell off every year?
Greg Clark
I do not smoke, so there is no question of writing on the back of fag packets, but what I do know is that the Opposition policies for which the hon. Lady was responsible were very much inadequate to the task. In fact, one of her own colleagues, the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock), has said that the Labour party’s housing policies made his “heart sink”, and each member of Labour’s leadership parade has called attention to the party’s failure to come up with credible policies. We are very clear that extending the right to buy is a way of achieving people’s aspirations. I have yet to hear from the hon. Lady whether she agrees with the right to buy.
Emma Reynolds
We are in favour of people’s aspiration to buy their own home, but we are also in favour of policies that add up and stack up. The Tories are just plucking the figures out of thin air. They have no idea how many council homes will be sold. Indeed, the property specialist Savills estimates that the number is closer to 5,000 rather than 15,000.
This is not just about existing council homes, but about homes that councils are building or planning to build. Is the Secretary of State going to force councils to sell brand-new homes even before those who are on the waiting list—elderly people, families and others—are able to move into them?
Greg Clark
The hon. Lady gives every impression of not being in favour of the right to buy, but she cannot bring herself to say it. I invite her to make her policy clear. Our policy is very clear: on expensive council houses in the top third of the area, it is an efficient use of those assets to sell them in order to be able to allow more homes to be built. That is a very straightforward policy.