Frank Dobson
Main Page: Frank Dobson (Labour - Holborn and St Pancras)
Jeremy Corbyn
The hon. Gentleman is referring to George Peabody and the Peabody Trust, which has a very large number of properties in his constituency, that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) and many others. The Peabody buildings were of very good standard—very high quality—and they have stood the test of time. It pains me to the quick when I see the Peabody Trust and others being forced, because of their financial situation, to rent at commercial rents or sell off properties that were built for people in desperate housing need. That is not what George Peabody or others wanted to do, and we should look at that.
Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
In my constituency there is a block called Parnell house, which was built in 1848, before George Peabody. The Peabody Trust took it over some years ago and has run it fairly well, but recently has started selling into the open market flats that have been social housing since 1848. That does not really help people in desperate housing need.
Jeremy Corbyn
It seems a sad reflection on the great revolutions of 1848 that we should expunge them on the altar of the housing market in 2011. I shall return to council housing in a moment.
There were consistent campaigns and demands for security of tenure for people beyond council housing. Council housing has traditionally provided the most secure form of affordable tenancy and has provided for effective, stable communities. I commend those councils—I choose Camden because my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras was leader of the council—which did a high level of building when they were able to. They also adopted a planning policy that has ensured that there are stable, mixed communities stretching right into the Camden part of central London—working-class communities alongside the business areas of central London. We should be proud of that record in this city, and I would like to see it reflected in all parts of London. The same does not apply in the case of Kensington and Chelsea and—I hesitate to say it with the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) present—in Westminster where the policies have been different. I think one should commend boroughs such as Camden.
Jeremy Corbyn
I can only agree. If the problem were limited to housing benefit in the private rented sector, that would be bad enough. However, in parallel with the cut in housing benefit payments, the Government have refused to introduce rent controls or even countenance the idea of controlling private sector rents. I hope that we will deal with that when we return to government in 2015 as a new Labour Government—not “new Labour”, but a newly elected Labour Government; I do not want anyone to think that I have changed my ways.
Jeremy Corbyn
Possibly, yes. I would like that Government to bite the bullet, just as Harold Wilson’s Government bit the bullet in the 1960s and 1970s, and were prepared to introduce rent controls and security of tenure in the private rented sector. That policy area needs to be developed.
Another important issue is the increase in the notional rent levels for local authorities and housing associations to 80% of market rates. That has had absolutely devastating effects on the affordability, or otherwise, of council properties in areas where councils choose to charge 80%. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) intervened on me, I shall cite the case of his borough. The average income in Redbridge of non-housing benefit tenants is £381 a week, and the average weekly rent is £102 a week. The median market rent of 80% of 2010 levels is £160 a week, so tenants in Redbridge are looking at a £60 a week rent increase, which is pretty bad, and I question the affordability of paying £160 a week on an average income of £381 a week.
Other boroughs are in a far worse situation. In Kensington and Chelsea, average income for non-housing benefit tenants is £370 a week, and current average rent is £113 a week, with 80% of market levels at £440 a week—in other words £110 a week more than such a tenant earns, so totally unaffordable. The borough with the lowest average income in London is Barking and Dagenham, where income levels in 2010 for non-HB tenants were £329 a week. Current average rent is £91 a week, and 80% of market rates is £148 a week. Even in Barking and Dagenham, which is regarded as “the most affordable place in London”, we are looking at 50% of pay going on rent alone in the public sector, never mind the private sector. The figures are available for every borough, and they make very grim reading indeed. The discretionary payments to London authorities to try to ameliorate the change to housing benefit should be much greater and more permanent, and the Government and the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government should look at rent controls and security of tenure in the private rented sector.
John McDonnell
Some of the smaller ones in the Irish community with which I have been involved, such as Innisfree and Casra, have done a very good job. They have remained relatively small, and have therefore managed to engage their tenants. In that sense, they are manageable. As I have said, however, most of the housing associations with which I deal now are mega-corporations. There is only tokenistic tenant involvement, with no element of real tenant control. When I, along with tenants, attend meetings with housing associations, we become supplicants, as if we were dealing with any private corporation or landlord.
Frank Dobson
I had a hand in the setting up of Community Housing in Camden. At one point, it announced that in future it would not allow tenants to vote to choose their representatives on the board; the board would do that. In a leaflet that it put out, it made clear that anyone who had ever taken it to the housing ombudsman or to court need not bother to apply. It took me a long time to persuade the Housing Corporation and the ombudsman to make it withdraw at least that small element of its anti-democratic approach.
John McDonnell
I was head of the Camden council’s policy unit during the 1980s. I remember with pride the engagement and investment in developing tenants’ associations. They gave us a hard time—they were in your face—but they played an important democratic role in the raising of standards. In the case of the larger housing associations, that whole ethos has completely gone.
Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
Research by the school of medicine at University College in my constituency suggests that apart from smoking, the principal sources of avoidable illness and premature death are overcrowding, homelessness, a poor standard of housing and insecurity of housing. We need to bear that in mind when discussing anything to do with housing.
The previous Government achieved quite a lot in improving the existing stock, but were carried away by the fashionable idea that the first step on the housing ladder is the cheapest place that people can buy. It seems to me that the first step on the housing ladder is somewhere decent to live that meets the needs of the people concerned, whatever the form of tenure. There is no excuse for the state of housing and the massive pressure for further social housing in London, including my area of Holborn and St Pancras, and Camden in general, because we should have a big drive to start building more houses.
It is very simple. We do not need a degree in some fantastical form of economics to conclude that if there are not enough houses, one of the things we do is build more of them. It has been done in the past—admittedly when I was leader of Camden council. I do not say that vaingloriously, but because it demonstrates that things can be done and problems addressed. During the 1970s, Camden council built no fewer than 500 new homes a year, and sometimes started as many as 1,000 a year. We were much mocked when we bought between 5,000 and 6,000 flats from the private sector, largely at the behest of the people living in them, sometimes in real slums but sometimes in mansion flats overlooking Parliament Hill Fields. Those people wanted to become council tenants because they wanted security of tenure and to get away from Rachmanite private landlords. The arrangement had the benefit of giving them security but it also meant that when anywhere fell vacant the council could let the property to people on the housing waiting list.
One of the consequences, which strikes me almost violently, is the difference between what happens at my advice surgeries now and what happened when I was first elected in 1979, at the end of the period of building and of the municipalisation of housing in Camden. When I was first a Member of Parliament, if people came to me and said, “We need somewhere decent for our family”, I would write to the council, which would write back. I used to tell people, “If you haven’t got a new flat in six or nine months, come back and see me.” Hardly any of them had to do that because they were rehoused. If I said that now, they would all be back because hardly anybody is rehoused any more. The problem has been that all those who form the leadership in our politics have not given sufficiently high priority to building and providing social housing for people who cannot afford to purchase a home.
Instead of buying and building property, there has been a lot of selling. Some councils, including Camden under the Lib Dem-Tory coalition—we had some experience of that between 2006 and 2010—sold off valuable street properties to the private sector. The housing associations in Camden, two of which were established as niche organisations to help solve problems, started selling off properties. Circle 33, which was founded in Primrose Hill in the 1970s, grew and grew, became Circle Anglia and started selling off much-needed property in my constituency so that it could use the funds to build social housing in Cambridge. That was not its purpose, in my opinion and that of most of the people I try to represent.
Even under Mrs Thatcher—I must give her credit for this—when public land became surplus, be it from the railways or the hospitals, the local authority was given first choice of whether it wanted to buy it for socially useful purposes. That prevailed for a long time when Mrs Thatcher was Prime Minister. Subsequently, doubtless at the Treasury’s behest, things were sold to the highest bidder. It is about time we went back to giving first go to using surplus public land for public social purposes.
In my area, it is as if someone has declared war on the prospect of providing more social housing. There is a proposal, which I support, for the biggest laboratory and research centre in the country to be located behind the British Library in Somers Town in my constituency. It is a combined effort by the Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK, the Wellcome Trust and University College. It will undoubtedly make a major contribution to medical research worldwide, but it is located on a site, a substantial part of which was originally designated for housing. All the time that the talks were going on, I argued that some land that the Medical Research Council owns at the National Temperance hospital should be made available for the housing that would be displaced from the laboratory site. However, the Government have decided, “Oh, no. It should be sold on from the public sector.”
Similarly, when properties became surplus after the new University College hospital was built, a proposal, which local people and the council overwhelmingly supported, was made to knock down buildings and build decent housing on what was known as the Middlesex hospital annexe site. Two and a half years ago, a proposition by English Heritage to list the building was duly turned down. The law states that if a Minister wants to reverse that decision, they cannot do it within five years unless something new comes up. Someone managed to cobble together a connection between this ex-workhouse and Charles Dickens and claimed, at one point, that it was the workhouse described in “Oliver Twist”. Well, they had obviously not read even the first page of that book, because Oliver had to leg it to London from the workhouse in a country town often believed to be Kettering.
Stephen Pound
I am reluctant to intervene on my right hon. Friend, but as one who spent 10 years as a hospital porter at the Middlesex hospital, I can assure hon. Members that the connection is that Charles Dickens frequently gave public readings that funded the hospital’s building. That is the connection, although on Kettering my right hon. Friend is spot on.
Frank Dobson
But no one claimed that famous connection. Indeed, English Heritage was quite happy to nod through the demolition of the whole of the Middlesex hospital—we are talking about the annexe that was left. Anyway, that programme for a large number of new flats has been set back for God knows how long.
Similarly, there is meant to be the building of a lot of social housing on the King’s Cross railway lands behind King’s Cross station, but I understand that the project has been set back because Ministers are not prepared to help the private developer comply with the section 106 agreement that the developer entered into in order to get on and build some new flats. As a final encore from the Government, they are proposing not just to prevent the building of new social housing, but to knock down social housing for 360 people who live in the blocks of flats that will have to be knocked down if High Speed 2 is going to come into Euston, which is itself a ridiculous proposition.
We feel a trifle beleaguered in Camden. We are massively affected by the ludicrous increase in property prices in our area and the ludicrous increases in commercial rents. However, at the same time as rents are soaring out of sight, the Government, including those caring Liberal Democrats, have proposed the slashing of housing benefits. To demonstrate just how out of touch they are in setting the new housing benefit maximum levels, I will provide a simple illustration. A Member who lives outside London and needs to rent a single-bedroom flat in London is given the money—rightly—by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. IPSA has decided that the going rent in London for a single-bedroom flat is £340. That is the most it will pay. However, £340 appears to be a magic figure among public bosses these days, because the Government have decided that £340 is also the maximum housing benefit that can be paid to anybody in London for a three-bedroom flat. So officialdom now says, “One-bedroom flat for an MP: £340. Three-bedroom flat for a family: £340”. The fact is that the going rate for a one-bedroom flat probably is £340, but for a decent privately rented flat in London, £340 goes nowhere near towards meeting the costs of family accommodation.
There are all sorts of arguments about what we should do about this problem. My point is this: If in that great centre of capitalism, New York—so that includes Wall street—they still have rent controls in the private sector, I see no reason why we should not reintroduce rent controls in this country. If that upsets a few property developers or if the Gaddafi family’s property portfolio suffers from a cut in rental income, I do not really mind. I want rents to come down and there to be a massive increase in housing for those most in need, because as my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) pointed out, there are legions of people whose daily contribution to the life of this city makes it a tolerable place to live.
Frank Dobson
I would rather not. I will just get on, because other people want to speak.
There is no chance now of a tube driver, an ambulance driver, an ordinary police constable, a nurse, a midwife or, in some cases, a junior doctor meeting anything like the going rate for a private sector home. They are out of that market altogether. If we want such vital people to contribute to making living in London tolerable, we have to go much further than we have in the past, under Governments of all persuasions, because otherwise the place will be torn apart. I know that the leader—at least for the time being—of the Liberal Democrats, the Deputy Prime Minister, objects to the term “social cleansing” in relation to driving up rents and removing security of tenure, but as the inventor of the phrase, I make no apologies for it, because that is what will happen. If people’s security of tenure is removed, and if rents are driven up and subsidies for them are also removed, they will be driven out.
People say that we are spending far too much on housing benefit—and indeed, one could not make a more truthful statement. I think the figure is £22 billion, and it is that high because the rents are too high. If we want to cut the amount of money going into housing benefit, the best thing would be to cut the rents. Rather than trying to cut housing benefit, we should cut the entitlement by ensuring that we reduce the rents.
Jeremy Corbyn
Is my right hon. Friend aware that the Government’s claim is that when the housing benefit allowance is cut, the tenant can negotiate with the landlord, who will understand the situation and therefore reduce the rent? The Minister himself told me that in his office. I expressed some astonishment and decided to check up with Islington council, which has tried to negotiate rent reductions with landlords. The council tells me that, sadly, it is very difficult to do that, if not well nigh impossible, even for the most well-meaning and determined people. Surely the answer is not only controls, but investing £10 billion in housing, rather than £22 billion in housing benefit. That way we would all be a lot better off.
Frank Dobson
I entirely agree. Even if we transferred the money from the housing benefit account into the account of, at least, the public sector landlords who are charging high rents, that would bring rents down and be to everyone’s benefit.
My final point is this. Large numbers of places have been sold under the right to buy—certainly in my area—that have then been sold on by those who bought them or their children, following which the buy-to-let people have moved in. Therefore, somebody will have bought the flat with a massive subsidy from the taxpayer, then someone else will have bought it with a tax incentive and now they will be charging a rent that is two, three, four or five times higher than it would have been had the property never been transferred from the council’s ownership in the first place. So when people talk about public subsidy for housing, they should remember that the biggest imaginable public subsidy involves those who own or are buying a buy-to-let property that was formerly a council flat. That is the sort of thing that we need to stop, rather than rabbiting on about taking away security of tenure from all sorts of other people.
I hope that the Government will eventually take this matter seriously. One of the biggest housing programmes in my constituency was carried out by Neville Chamberlain when he was Minister of Health. Indeed, one of the buildings is called Chamberlain house. Tories should not be ashamed of their distant past record on social housing; all they need to do is revert to type and stop being mad marketeers.
Heidi Alexander
I entirely agree. Many people look forward to that sort of thing in later life. We need to ensure that, whatever policies are in place in future, we recognise that issue. I would say, however, that I sometimes meet constituents who are living in a large three-bedroom house and find it too hard to manage and cope with. Lewisham has a positive record as a local authority in providing the assistance needed to make a move easier. More can be done about under-occupation, but it will not solve the problems in London, as I said. In the rest of the country, it could make a significant difference, but not in London because of the scale of the challenge we face.
Frank Dobson
In my area, those who, like my hon. Friend’s constituents, want to move out of a large place—perhaps a widow or an elderly couple—are often reluctant to do so because the front room of the one-bedroom place they are offered is simply too small. One of the practicalities of dealing with the issue, then, would be to provide a bigger front room in those properties, as people are often reluctant to get rid of the nice furniture that they have had with them for a long time.
Heidi Alexander
My right hon. Friend makes a very good point, with which I entirely agree. Interestingly, I spoke a few months ago at the launch of the National Housing Federation’s “Breaking the mould” report, which looked at the housing needs of older people or those moving into later life. Given that one in five children born today will live to the age of 100, it is important for us to ensure that, as more people move into later life, we provide housing that meets the specific needs of our population.
Campaigns are sometimes mounted against the building of extra care housing. When I spoke at the launch of that report a few months ago, I encountered a gentleman who had been trying to build such housing through a church-sponsored scheme in north London. He was amazed at the degree of opposition that the scheme had generated in the local population, who said that the development was too big, too ugly and too wide. I could not help thinking that their concerns might be genuine. There is a desperate need for new forms of extra care housing, but we must give thought to the specific type of housing that is required, whether it is social or private sector housing. I shall say more about that later.
The hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod), who is no longer in the Chamber, referred to the amount being invested in the national affordable house building programme. I asked her how that compared with the level of investment over the past three years. She declined to give me the answer, but I can give it to the House now. The national affordable house building programme has been cut by 63%. Between 2008 and 2011, £8.5 billion was invested in it, with a target of building 155,000 affordable homes. In the current comprehensive spending review period, between 2011 and 2015, £4.5 billion is being invested, and the Government have a similar target, namely the building of 150,000 affordable homes. That represents a halving of the programme. The budget has been slashed, and, whatever Boris Johnson or Government Members may say, that has dealt a devastating blow to the future of house building.
I mentioned Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London. I want to say a little more about some of his pronouncements about his record of building affordable homes. We have seen him on television recently, standing in front of new flats. I often scream at the television—I do not know whether other Members do as well—