Housing and Planning Bill

Gareth Thomas Excerpts

Tuesday 5th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point that we reiterated again and again in Committee, but alas the Minister took no notice.

These concerns are spread across all parties and are reflected in the amendments tabled by the hon. Members for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), for South West Devon (Mr Streeter) and for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). We broadly support those amendments, as they very much back up the arguments we made in Committee.

In Committee, we attempted to point out very clearly to the Government that we need to build houses across all tenures if we are to address the housing crisis. The largest number of houses we built recently was the 214,000 houses built in 2006-07, but that compared unfavourably with 1969 when 357,000 houses were built. What that demonstrates is that if we are to get something like the 250,000 homes we need, about half of them should be delivered by the public sector. However, there are simply no measures in the Bill to produce those much needed public sector homes. That is why we have tabled amendment 31 on Report.

Amendment 32 seeks to ensure that additional housing is supported with adequate infrastructure. This is a really important amendment.

[Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Before my hon. Friend moves on to the substance of her remarks on amendment 32, she will remember that on amendment 31 one of the few chinks of light in Ministers’ otherwise disappointing responses to our amendments was on housing co-operatives. Does she not think that tonight, in the Minister’s wind-up to this group of amendments, there might be an opportunity for him to update us on the progress he has made on offering local authorities useful guidance on how more mutual co-operative housing stock can be built?

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, one I hope that the Minister listens to and responds to this evening.