Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Graham P Jones and Grant Shapps

Monday 2nd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

From the great passion with which the hon. Gentleman speaks, one would imagine that he had a long-term interest in this issue; in fact, he is the eighth Labour shadow Housing Minister whom I have faced. During the time the Opposition have been in place, guess how many Opposition day debates there have been in the Chamber about this important subject? Zero, none—there has not been a single such Opposition day debate. That is because the hon. Gentleman has a very loose relationship with statistics himself. Homelessness is lower than it was in 28 of the last 30 years—and it is less than half the level it was in the 13 years of his Government.

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

13. What assessment he has made of the level of negative equity in the north of England.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Graham P Jones and Grant Shapps

Monday 12th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

8. What assessment he has made of the effect of the number of properties in the private rented sector on young people attempting to purchase a home.

[The Minister for Housing and Local Government (Grant Shapps)]

In 2011, in terms of value, buy-to-let mortgages accounted for just 8% of total loans for home purchases. The biggest barrier to home ownership for many young people is not that, but the need to raise a deposit. That is why I know that the hon. Gentleman will welcome the NewBuy scheme, which we launched this morning.

[Graham Jones]

Obviously, I am aware that over the weekend the Government announced the home buy scheme for new build, which is a shadow of the sub-prime lending that went on previously, so I advise caution. The private rented sector, however, has added about 6% to the value of properties. Does the Minister agree that the issue is rising house prices and the cost of housing, not the availability of mortgages?

[Grant Shapps]

Just to clarify one point, sub-prime lending happened when people who could not afford to pay a mortgage back were lent money, sometimes as much as 120% of the value of the property. That is nothing to do with today’s NewBuy scheme. I know that the hon. Gentleman takes a keen interest in the private rented sector in particular. He makes a lot of very good and serious points about it and I can inform him that this Friday I intend to come and see him in his constituency to see the problems for myself.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Graham P Jones and Grant Shapps

Monday 30th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I know that the architect of the previous system does not like the new homes bonus, but I have to say that he is very mistaken about its impact. Nearly 160,000 new homes have been built—[Interruption.] Twenty-two thousand were brought back into use in the past year. I also know that the right hon. Gentleman is convinced that the new homes bonus does not benefit the right kind of homes, but I can tell him that two thirds of all new homes have been between bands A and C, which is exactly in line with the normal averages. The new homes bonus is rewarding homes throughout the country, and he should welcome the increase in house building.

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

The Minister will be aware that east Lancashire has received some of the lowest new homes bonus payments for the second year running. He will also be aware that there are more properties than people in the region, and that given such a market it is very difficult to build new properties. What is he going to do about the problem? It is not possible for us to receive the necessary amount of money in Hyndburn, yet we are paying into the pot year after year and losing out. Is this not just another example of “Take from the north and give to the south”?

[Grant Shapps]

The hon. Gentleman and I have had many discussions about the issue, and he will know that his local authority is being paid for homes that are returned to use when they have been empty for a long time. I should have thought that the new homes bonus money would be welcome and useful to him in that regard. Moreover, his area has just received all the housing market renewal money for which it asked, but I did not hear him say thank you.

Housing Reform

Debate between Graham P Jones and Grant Shapps

Monday 21st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that second statistic, of which I was not aware. Those empty houses are indeed a scandal, no matter who they have remained empty under. The Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove will lay out more details of the new, enlarged fund to tackle the empty homes. It is important that we tackle them not only through some of the traditional methods, but by taking people who may be unemployed and reskilling them, using apprenticeships and much else, to ensure that we bring as many homes as possible back into use.

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

Satisfaction among people in the private rented sector is certainly way below 85% in my constituency. The Minister talks a good game about the private rented sector and tackling some of the worst rented properties. However, may I remind him that he is the Minister who rolled back regulation on houses in multiple occupation, did away with Labour’s register of private landlords and is about to introduce a universal credit direct payment to landlords, none of which will help my constituents in poor housing? Can he give me some examples of what he will do to deal with the private rented sector in the next year?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Graham P Jones and Grant Shapps

Monday 5th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I say to my hon. and, I believe, gallant Friend that I entirely agree that it is essential that people who have been through armed service for this country should expect not just to have the disadvantages removed of having been away, such as perhaps a lost connection with the local area, but to be positively advantaged. I reassure him that that is exactly what our policy is intended to do. I can tell the House that just this weekend the very first recipients under the Government’s new Firstbuy scheme, in which we aim to ensure that service personnel benefit, were Mr and Mrs Ferguson of Telford, who have just moved into a four-bed home. He was a military policeman in the Army.

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

10. What assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of selective licensing areas.

Property Market

Debate between Graham P Jones and Grant Shapps

Tuesday 25th January 2011 Westminster Hall

[Grant Shapps]

I cannot answer for the 13 years of the Labour Government, but they had adequate time to make whatever changes they wanted on that front. However, the argument about the right to buy is very much yesterday’s argument; it is literally about the ’80s and ’90s. This year, no more than 2,000 people nationwide are likely to exercise their right to buy. The issue is not the right to buy, but the pathfinder schemes—the housing market renewal that destroyed homes and neighbourhoods. It was partly responsible for our ending up with fewer homes than we started with after 17 years.

I want now to make some progress and to answer the substantive points raised in the debate, which were really about whether the new homes bonus will be sufficient to ensure that we get out of the hole we were left in and back to a world where we can build a sufficient number of homes to look after our population. I accept the comment by my hon. Friend the Member for Watford that the new homes bonus will not be enough. Before I address that, however, I want to point out how powerful an incentive it will be.

The new homes bonus represents nearly £1 billion, which is funded through the spending review programme. It will ensure that, wherever a home is built for the next six years, the same amount as is collected on the average council tax band there will be paid to the local authority. Where an affordable home is being built, an additional £350 is proposed in the consultation document, which is currently in front of me and which I am considering. The new homes bonus is therefore potentially an incredibly powerful incentive to get out there and build homes.

For the first time, there is some real benefit for the community of the individual authority. My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) mentioned a potential development that I went to see a few years ago. That development could build homes, bring money and facilities in for local people and be a win-win. My hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), who is not called Peterborough’s champion for nothing, rightly said that housing can have a dramatic and important influence in terms of improving an area if it is done in the right way and not imposed from the top, but not if it is driven by a regional spatial strategy that takes no account of local needs and requirements.

The new homes bonus will be a powerful incentive. As my hon. Friend said, the billion will run out at some point, so the answer is to go and build homes and use as much of the money as possible now. It will then be top-sliced from the formula grant. That, in itself, will be an important incentive to ensure that areas are not left behind as their neighbours develop.

[Graham Jones]

In my constituency, we have 2,500 empty properties. The new homes bonus will not benefit us when the top-slicing comes in. I did not really want to go down this road, because the debate is about under-supply, rather than over-supply, but the housing market renewal pathfinders, which the Minister has just described as disastrous, removed empty properties where few people were living in areas with an over-supply. Will the Minister briefly comment on that?

[Grant Shapps]

The hon. Gentleman and I have regular discussions on this subject in the Lobby. I can assure him that the new homes bonus will in no way disadvantage a community that finds it is having a net loss of population. In other words, it does not penalise it when its council tax base reduces from one year to the next, but it massively aids and helps when the base increases. Let us take, for example, a constituency in which a number of homes have been empty for a period of time. Sefton borough council, which I recently visited, has an area in which there are about 450 empty homes. When those homes are rebuilt and reoccupied, it will be able to claim the money from the new homes bonus. As that will be a guaranteed income stream for six years, it can borrow against that potential income and regenerate an area for which, I am afraid, the housing market renewal money has now dried up. It is possible, therefore, to use the new homes bonus in constituencies in the more heated parts of the country, which are perhaps not the most obvious locations.

In the remaining few minutes, let me return to the central theme of today’s debate, which is that the new homes bonus is not intended to be the be-all and end-all. There is a whole variety of other mechanisms by which we intend to ensure that the housing market and the housing supply are increased. Let me take a few moments to list them. First, and most critically—the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View raised this herself—mortgage finance has been incredibly restrictive. If we look at the root of the problem of housing undersupply and oversupply, or rather of a heated-up market, we would find that between 1997 and 2007, there was no one calling time on the banks. They continued to lend even after they no longer had the balance sheets to sustain such activity. We can pin the blame on a number of factors. One factor in particular that has to be included is the moment at which the Bank of England was given control over interest rates while nobody was given control of regulating the banks. We need to ensure that the supply of credit from the banks is available. At the moment, it has gone completely the other way. The hon. Lady referred to my conversations with the FSA. I can tell her that I say exactly the same thing to the FSA that I say to this House and to the public, which is that there needs to be an adequate supply of lending, particularly to first-time buyers who are the motor that drives this whole issue and who are particularly relevant to housing supply. House builders are unable to build their product and sell it to anyone if there is no competition in the market place. Mortgage availability, therefore, is a very big issue.

Planning reform is another very large area. My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney mentioned the importance of reforming it. Let me reassure the House that the Localism Bill intends to do precisely that. There will be sweeping reform of planning rules. We will no longer have a system in which we go backwards and forwards and in which local communities are overridden by a planning inspectorate. Instead, plans will be put in place by the local community. Let me give one example. The local development frameworks were only filed by 20% of councils because they were too complicated and they did not have local consent. Once local consent is built in to the heart of the system, there is every opportunity for planning decisions to be made much more quickly.

Let me refer to an intervention made by the hon. Lady with regard to whether this Government will be pro-development. The answer is that we will absolutely be pro sustainable development. We have never said that such an aim would be in the Bill; it would be the wrong place to put it. We have always said that it will be in the planning policy framework and that will make it absolutely clear that this Government are in favour of sustainable development. In fact, that is the default assumption.

The changes will create a new attitude towards planning. It will not be us against them—the developer against the local community. It will be people working together to try to improve their local communities through neighbourhood plans. We barely touched on the issue of community right to build, but local communities will be putting forward plans to develop their local areas. Ideas such as affordable rent and reform of the social housing market will help attract private sector finance for the first time. There is a whole range of options; I wish that we had more time to investigate them in greater detail. I will certainly write to all Members present with detailed answers to the points raised. I congratulate my hon. Friend once more on raising this important issue.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Graham P Jones and Grant Shapps

Thursday 21st October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

Will the Minister not accept that the new homes bonus scheme is in chaos? Can he explain what the incentive will be for local planning authorities, which according to the policy that the Government have set out will receive only 15% of the receipts, with 85% being returned to the shire authorities outside unitary areas, which are not involved in the planning process? Will the incentive be 15%, or will it be greater?

[Grant Shapps]

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman is so confused about this. It is actually a very simple scheme, unlike ones such as the local housing delivery planning grant, which his Government used. That was so complex that literally nobody understood it or had any idea how much money would come in. Our scheme is simple. For every home built, there will be match funding for six years at the actual band price at which it is built. By the way, if it is affordable housing, 125% of receipts will be provided. We will consult on the split between district and upper-tier authorities, but something like 80% is likely to go to the planning authority. That will be a massive incentive for this country to get out and build the homes that Labour failed to build during its 13 years.