Greg Clark
Main Page: Greg Clark (Conservative - Tunbridge Wells)
The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Greg Clark)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Every Parliament that is elected has a responsibility to the future and to do all that it can to ensure that the lives of the next generation are better than those of past generations. Nowhere is that more important than in ensuring that the next generation have the homes they need. Indeed, it is not just about the next generation. The impact of much of the public policy that we debate is on the here and now or the next few years ahead. If we look around any city, town or village in Britain, it is obvious that housing endures for many decades and, in some cases, for hundreds of years. Every home that is built is much more than a pile of bricks and mortar or concrete and glass. The homes that we build shape the lives, for better or for worse, of generation after generation of people who live in them.
As Churchill said:
“We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.”—[Official Report, 28 October 1943; Vol. 393, c. 403.]
Providing the homes that we need is a responsibility that unites us all in this House. For many years now, we have not built enough homes in this country. That is true of successive Governments and has been true for many decades. New households have been forming in Britain at a rate of about 200,000 a year, yet the last year in which we built 200,000 homes was 1988.
Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that over 4,800, or 7%, of children in Enfield live in temporary accommodation? I fear that his Bill, which damages the number of affordable homes available, will make this problem immeasurably worse.
Greg Clark
As I hope the right hon. Lady will recognise from my remarks, our purpose and intent in this Bill is to increase the number of homes—that is our absolute objective—so that those children have the prospect of a roof over their heads in the years to come.
I was reflecting on how it has been many years—more than a generation—since this country built the number of homes that we need. During the financial crash, house building in Britain suffered what might be called a cardiac arrest, because in the third quarter of 2008 we were fewer than 20,000 homes away from stopping building altogether—the lowest rate of peacetime house building since the 1920s. It was not just that the banks would not lend, though they would not; it was a reckoning for a decade in which we had a top-down planning system, which the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), when he was Planning Minister, was magnanimous enough to concede had few friends. When that was imposed, it built bureaucracy and resentment but not many homes. It followed a decade in which the number of affordable homes fell by nearly half a million, and in which fewer than 200 council houses a year were built in the whole of England. It was a lost decade in which the rising level of home ownership fell into reverse in 2003 for the first time since the 1960s.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State explain how selling housing association properties, subsidising that sale by selling council properties—half the stock, in the case of my local authority—reducing local authority incomes to build properties by reducing rent, and allowing developers to get away without building any social homes helps the thousands of people in housing need in my constituency?
Greg Clark
I will come on to address those points, but I say now that the reason it helps is that we are requiring a new home to be built for every home that is sold to council tenants, and that will improve the housing stock in London.
We had a decade when the housing market almost ground to a complete halt and home ownership fell for the first time since the 1960s. It was a period in which the Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who is in his place, said, reflecting the shared view, that the Government whom he had supported for 13 years did not build enough homes. Other Labour Members, including Front Benchers such as the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), agreed, concluding that Labour did not do enough when in government. We agree. As is obvious from what I have said, Governments of different parties did not do enough over the years.
During the previous Parliament, home building revived and we got Britain building again. We scrapped the regional spatial strategies and we reformed planning policy. That was fiercely resisted at the time. Some of us, including the hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods), who I believe is to wind up for the Opposition, will remember those debates, in which Members were very critical of our proposals. Now, three years on, nearly 250,000 homes a year are receiving planning permission—up by nearly 60% since 2010.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State send a very clear message to councils that there is a huge demand from people who want to be homeowners for affordable homes that they can purchase, and that councils can hit their affordable home targets by bringing those forward?
Greg Clark
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. If we reflect on years past, we see that when 86% of people aspire to become homeowners it is not just homes for rent that are needed, but affordable homes for purchase. We are correcting what has been a historical anomaly.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
The Secretary of State quoted what I said in a debate during the previous Parliament, when I did accept that the Government whom I supported for 13 years did not build enough homes, but if he looked at the remainder of the quotation, he would see that I said that the problem was that the coalition Government built even fewer.
Greg Clark
The hon. Gentleman knows very well that since the previous Government the number of homes being built has increased substantially. In fact, it has increased by over 50% since we came to office. Planning permissions, as I mentioned, are now running at almost 250,000 a year, for the first time in many years getting to the level we need to provide homes for the population as it rises.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
Given that the Bill fails to include any legal commitment to replace social homes that are sold under right to buy on a one-to-one basis, does the right hon. Gentleman accept that selling off valuable council homes to fund the extension of right to buy means that we are losing two social homes to rent in return for just one social home to buy? That is an overall loss.
Greg Clark
The hon. Lady will find that the rate of additional stock that is being provided in response to the reinvigorated council right to buy is running at over one for one, and the agreement that we have been able to reach with the housing associations—if she has not had a copy of it, I will make sure that she gets one—makes it very clear that these homes will be replaced on at least a one-for-one basis. I should not say “replaced”, because the homes continue to be occupied; they trigger an additional home that is being built.
Greg Clark
I shall make some progress, then I shall give way. I am coming on to talk about London, and the right hon. Gentleman will no doubt have something to say then.
We scrapped the regional spatial strategies and we saw planning permissions increase as a result of those reforms. We have allowed local communities to have more of a say through neighbourhood planning, and now over 1,600 neighbourhood plans have been adopted or are in production. We built 260,000 affordable homes, nearly a third of them in London, and in the next five years we will build 275,000 more, the most for 20 years. We have helped hundreds of thousands of people achieve their dream of home ownership, with Government schemes such as Help to Buy doubling the number of first-time buyers in the previous Parliament.
Sir Alan Duncan (Rutland and Melton) (Con)
On affordable homes, when a council insists on a certain percentage of any project having to be affordable, the consequence is that the developer has to pay for them in cross-subsidy by building an extra number of larger homes. The effect then is to squeeze out the smaller two-bedroom and three-bedroom homes, thus cutting away the middle of the housing ladder. Can my right hon. Friend assure me that he has considered this consequence and has addressed it, both in his policy and in the Bill?
Greg Clark
When we wrote the national planning policy framework, one of the things that we intended was that a local community should reflect the entirety of the planning needs in its area for all types of accommodation. That is reinforced in this Bill.
Sadiq Khan
On affordable homes in London, does the right hon. Gentleman accept his Department’s own figures, according to which, over the past three years, 9,025 homes have been sold in London under right to buy and there have been 1,310 starts on replacements? That is seven homes sold for every home started. If that is the Government’s record, why should we believe that things will be different going forward?
Greg Clark
I was going on to say that in London during the first year of the reinvigorated right to buy, 632 homes were sold and already, a year before the deadline for councils, 1,115 starts have been made. The rate of provision of additional homes in London is running at nearly two for one. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will celebrate that.
When we reinvigorated the right to buy for council tenants, we ensured that every home sold to a resident would allow another home to be built. It is as much a policy for expanding the housing stock as it is for extending home ownership, desirable though that is.
Several hon. Members rose—
Greg Clark
I shall make some progress.
Nationally, of the 3,054 additional sales made in the first year, 3,337 new properties have been started within two years, and councils have three years to be able to build—a rate of more than one for one. As I said to the right hon. Gentleman, in London the rate of provision of additional housing is running at around two to one. It is worth saying that under Labour, during the time when so few council homes were sold, the rate of new build for every house sold under the right to buy was one in 170. I would have thought that Labour Members could show more humility about that.
David Mackintosh (Northampton South) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree with me, as someone with some experience in this, that the barriers to building new council houses are not about replacing right-to-buy properties, but lie in the planning processes that will be dealt with in the Bill?
Greg Clark
My hon. Friend is right. From conversations with local authorities right across the country, I have found that one thing they intend to do—to do what Members on both sides of the House want, which is to provide homes for the next generation—is make sure that the planning system is speedier and more accommodating of the need for more homes, especially on brownfield sites, for which the Bill will provide a major boost.
If our task in the last Parliament was to rescue the housing market, our task now is to renew it. Building even at the current rate is not enough. The lost years of housing deficit—building fewer homes than the rate at which new households are forming—has led to a chronic shortage of homes compared with what this country needs. That means getting back to building homes at the rates we last saw in the 1980s and previously, giving hope to the 86% of people in this country who want to become homeowners and taking steps to ensure that properties available for rent are properly managed, with no place for rogue landlords.
To provide these homes will require us to work together—Parliament, central Government and local government, house builders and housing associations—to find the land and grant planning permission, as my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (David Mackintosh) said, as well as to finance the development, build the homes and give people the chance to own or to rent them. The Bill helps us to do that.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State accept that the failure of the Government to deal with the housing crisis has meant that private rents have reached an all-time high of £803 per month—and more in London—and have continued to rise, with a 20% increase since 2010? Yet wages have failed to keep up with that increase.
Greg Clark
The hon. Lady makes my case for me. The consequence of such a long period of failing to provide the homes we need is of course reflected in their price. That is why the purpose of the Government—and, I hope, of the House—is to build more homes to make sure that they are available in quantity to the next generation.
Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that, for all the howling from Labour Members, the fact that house prices went up threefold to fourfold during the Labour Government is why young people find it so hard to get on to the housing ladder, with house prices accelerating way beyond salaries? Of course, that was during Labour’s alleged economic miracle.
Greg Clark
I could not agree more. It is economics plain and simple. I do not know whether it is Corbynomics, but it is certainly the laws of economics: if we do not build enough homes, prices will go up and get beyond the reach of ordinary people.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
The Bill recognises the aspirations of those who want to own their own home, but does the Secretary of State also recognise the hopes of homeless Londoners who want a decent roof over their heads? Will he recognise that St Mungo’s has signed up and agreed to the housing association right to buy, but will he also recognise the importance of receipts remaining in London to cross-subsidise the vital work done by St Mungo’s in helping vulnerable Londoners?
Greg Clark
I have said that it is important that we provide more homes across the country, but particular in London, where we know that demand for homes by people of all types—families and single people—is very acute. The purpose of the Bill is to allow us to provide more homes in London, as I shall go on to say.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Mrs Gillan
May I extend a warm welcome to this long overdue legislation? May I point out to my right hon. Friend that in my local authority area, Chiltern District Council, we have some of the highest average property prices in the country? Even with the 20% discount applied to properties known as starter homes, it will therefore be jolly difficult for some of our young people to afford those homes. In addition, will he tell us how my local council can prioritise those homes for local people?
Greg Clark
We need to provide homes of all sorts. It is important to continue to provide homes for rent and to provide homes for purchase. My right hon. Friend will have constituents who have grown up in her constituency, who have had family connections there for many years and whose friends and relations are there, and they have to leave her area not because they want to, but because they have to. It is important to provide more homes in areas such as hers, as well as across the country.
Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)
In areas such as Brighton and Hove, where land for development is extremely constrained, it is likely that the money that is raised from the right to buy will be spent elsewhere, outside the city. Will the Secretary of State confirm that the money raised through right to buy will be spent in the city?
Greg Clark
What the hon. Gentleman describes is not the experience across the country, including in Brighton and Hove. Councils are overwhelmingly able to build extra properties as a result of the sale of existing homes. I am not aware that Brighton and Hove proposes to return the money to the Government, which means that it is confident that it will be able to provide the extra homes.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Greg Clark
I am going to make some progress.
Before I took the interventions, I was saying that if we are to find the land, grant the planning permission, finance the development and build the homes, it is essential that the various players in the housing market come together to do it. It cannot be done individually. The Bill will help with that.
Let me take the example of the right to buy. Home ownership is an aspiration for 86% of people in this country. The Bill will make it possible, through the agreement that the housing association sector has made with the Government, to extend the right to buy to all 1.3 million tenants who currently do not have the right to become homeowners. That agreement is good for
“residents, for housing associations and the nation’s housing supply. Residents will get the opportunity to realise their dreams of homeownership and housing associations will be able to replace the homes sold, boosting the nation’s housing supply.”
Those were the words of the head of the housing associations’ collective body, the National Housing Federation.
It has been a 30-year injustice that council tenants have had the right to buy their homes but housing association tenants have not. I strongly believe that when they signed a tenancy agreement, housing association tenants did not sign away their aspirations to become homeowners. Housing association tenants share the same hopes and dreams as everyone else. They live on the same streets, they shop in the same stores, their children go to the same schools. It is only right that they should have the same opportunities as council tenants.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
First, will the Secretary of State confirm that the National Housing Federation does not support the sale of council housing property to fund this policy? Secondly, will he confirm that the purchase of housing association properties will be available to EU nationals after paying taxes for just three years?
Greg Clark
The previous Government reduced the residence qualification for overseas nationals. We have proposed extending it. The combination of the residence requirement for social housing and the requirement to be a resident for three years before the right to buy comes in means that it will be seven years before there is any entitlement for an overseas national.
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State for the way in which he and his Ministers, especially the Minister for Housing and Planning, have engaged with colleagues across the House as the Bill has come together. I was pleased when we announced the extension of the right to buy in our manifesto and I will support the Bill tonight. However, some rural communities in my constituency want to know whether the current exemptions in respect of rural exception sites will continue in the extended right to buy. Can the Secretary of State reassure me and my constituents?
Greg Clark
I certainly can. This shows the benefit of having a conversation with everyone who is affected. Colleagues across the House wanted to be reassured that, in those areas where it simply is not possible to provide a new home, a solution could be found to allow their housing stock to be maintained while at the same time allowing those in rural communities, who have the same aspirations as others, to own a home of their own. What we have agreed with the housing association sector, through its proposals, is that, while an association will be able to say that it is not possible to build a new home in certain areas, people will be entitled—this is a real opportunity for our constituents across the country—to apply their discount to a new home that the housing association will build in the nearest area in which it is possible to build one. That is a real result for every rural area in the country.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State confirm that, if housing associations decide to sell off higher-value properties in rural communities, there must be like-for-like replacement in those communities? Otherwise, the demographic loss of young people from small rural communities will continue.
Greg Clark
The advantage of reaching an agreement with the housing associations, which are locally based and whose mission is to provide homes in their areas, is that they are positively enthusiastic about it, as the head of the National Housing Federation made clear to the Communities and Local Government Committee the other day.
Greg Clark
The Labour party’s approach, not just in this area, but to our devolution proposals, is genuinely disappointing. I and my colleagues have found that it is entirely possible to talk to and to come to consensual agreement with people who have the same interests as us. The Labour party, however, seems to set its face both against that kind of dialogue, whether it relates to devolution or the matter under discussion, and against our approach to establishing consensus on the best way forward.
Boris Johnson
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the arguments he is making. Does he not find it perverse and incredible that the opposition to extending the right to buy to people on low incomes in this country should be mounted not just by the Labour party, but by people who are overwhelmingly owner-occupiers of their own homes?
Greg Clark
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. For anyone who has any doubt about the policy’s personal impact, I will illustrate it by reading an email I received from a young mother on the day on which our right-to-buy agreement with housing associations was announced last month. She wrote that,
“during the middle of the economic crisis in 2009…I was…made redundant from a job that I had been in for twelve years. I was left with a six year old, a three year old and a newborn baby and life was pretty much as grim as it could get.
For the past five years I have lived in a housing association home. At the time—it was very much a lifeline and I am enormously grateful for the safety, security and peace-of-mind that it brought me.”
She went on to say that,
“up until April of this year—I had simply accepted that this was my life now and would always be. I would forevermore be ‘just about’ comfortable: ‘just about’ paying the bills, ‘just about’ paying for Christmas. ‘Just about’ living.
But in late April that completely changed for me. I heard somewhere that the Conservatives were going to allow housing association tenants the right to buy their own home…I had completely written off ever being able to achieve that goal.
I voted Conservative in May because of that hope.”
She continued:
“I watched and read intently all about the Conservative’s crazy, ridiculous policy. I read the negative fall-out from Housing Associations, from Labour, from literally everywhere…And of course—all of these associations, politicians, media have far bigger voices than people like me. By September I had resigned myself to the fact that this looked like a lost-cause.
I am absolutely eternally grateful to everyone in the Conservative government that helped push this forward. I absolutely cannot wait until the point, hopefully in 2016, where I can be holding the keys to the house that I own. A house that will be my savings for the future. A house that will allow me to pass something onto my three girls.
Please, please pass on my very heartfelt gratitude to everyone involved in ensuring this was made a reality. For me, it’s life-changing.”
As this lady made clear, this policy, agreed with the housing associations, is giving people up and down the country the chance to fulfil a dream they thought was beyond them. As my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) said, it is disappointing, therefore, that the Opposition are turning their backs on such people’s aspirations and trying to take away the hope of home ownership that they have nurtured and which the Bill introduces.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
The Secretary of State will know that housing associations have a long, proud history as independent bodies and that the main reason many signed up to this voluntary deal was to avoid their reclassification as public bodies by the Office for National Statistics, but it has now done just that. When did he know that this reclassification was on the cards? Was it before or after he made the agreement with the housing associations?
Greg Clark
I am astonished by the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention, because the ONS, completely independent of the Government, has made it clear that the reclassification, which we intended to be temporary, has nothing to do with any action by the Government. The reason for the reclassification is the clumsy—I might even say clunking—provisions of the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008, taken through the House when he was a Minister. He should be apologising for the predicament into which he put housing associations. As hon. Members will have noticed, one benefit of our agreement with the housing associations is the ability, as reflected in the Bill, to deregulate the housing association sector to correct the damage he did when he was Minister.
John Healey
The Secretary of State gives the House partial information. He will know also that the ONS made this decision in the light of government accounting changes introduced in 2011, not just the provisions of the 2008 Act. So I ask him again: what does he say to those housing associations that believe he has acted in bad faith, knowing this reclassification was on the cards but still willing to do the deal with them?
Greg Clark
It is quite the reverse. It shows the benefits of a voluntary agreement. If we intend, as we do, to recognise the historical voluntary nature of housing associations, we are not going use legislation to thrust them into the public sector, as the right hon. Gentleman did when he was a Minister; we are going to legislate to remove those regulations that put them temporarily in the public sector. If ever there was a vindication of the voluntary approach, rather than the clunking reaching for legislation, which Labour favours, it is in this agreement.
Several hon. Members rose—
Greg Clark
I have been speaking for more than half an hour, so I will make some progress, but I might give way later.
I pay tribute to the housing associations for having the vision and foresight to see that extending home ownership is completely consistent with their historic mission. The lazy assumption that there is a contradiction between supporting the dreams of homebuyers and ensuring new homes are built must end. I look forward to equally positive engagement with councils—indeed, I have it already—during the passage of the Bill. Their objectives are the same as mine: to ensure that as they release the equity in their high-value properties, they can make sure that more homes are built, adding to the housing supply as well as extending home ownership. At councils’ request, we have included in the Bill a flexible approach that does not require the immediate sale of particular properties, but gives us a chance—if they wish to take it—to agree with councils an approach that meets our mutual objectives.
I want to say a word about London, which has come up already in this debate. Building homes in the capital is a priority not only for my hon. Friend the Mayor but for me. Benjamin Disraeli once described London as a “roost for every bird”. Like many of his observations, it has turned out to be a prophecy—100 years later, the birds are still flocking and the roost is still growing.
Last year, new housing starts in the capital were a quarter higher than when we came to power, and nearly a third of all affordable homes achieved during the last Parliament were in London. As I have said, after we reinvigorated the right to buy for tenants in London, nearly twice as many homes were built as were sold to their tenants—but I want to do more.
The Mayor has set out the most ambitious plan for house building in the capital since the 1930s, but I want to go further so that a quarter of all the homes we build in England are built in London during the years ahead—a quarter of a million new homes over the next five years. I want the right to buy scheme to be a major part of that, and I will talk to anyone in London local government to ensure that that happens, just as it was possible to have a meeting of minds with the housing associations.
Greg Clark
I want to make some progress.
Other measures in the Bill will help. The Mayor has the power to establish development corporations and development orders to speed up the development of new housing across the city. I am absolutely determined to make sure that the Mayor has the ability to deliver the homes that London needs to maintain its position as London’s premier world city.
Greg Clark
Speaking of world cities, I shall give way to my right hon. Friend who represents two world cities, the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field).
Mark Field
I thank my right hon. Friend; it seems I am very greedy in that regard. I greatly welcome the fact that the Secretary of State recognises the exceptionalism of our capital city. Much of the Bill makes important progress nationally, but will he also recognise that we need to tailor elements of it to the particular constraints that exist in the capital city? That is relevant to London Members of all parties.
Greg Clark
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I hope I have made it clear from the Dispatch Box today that the constructive approach that we found easy to accommodate with the housing associations is absolutely open to representatives of London local government—indeed, we are already having some productive conversations.
Let me deal with starter homes. During the last 20 years, the proportion of homeowners under the age of 40 has fallen by a third.
Greg Clark
I shall make some progress, if I may, as I know many Members want to speak.
What our generation has taken for granted has been slipping out of reach for many younger people. Planning policy has long recognised the need for local councils to provide for affordable housing as part of their plans. Paragraph 50 of the national planning policy framework sets out this requirement. Housing for affordable rent will always be important, but until recently public policy has had too little to say to those who would like to own their own home yet struggle to do so.
During the last three years, the Help to Buy scheme has helped 120,000 people with a deposit to buy a home, 80% of whom are first-time buyers. We need to go further locally, too, so the Bill introduces a requirement in planning law for councils to provide, through their planning functions, starter homes available to first-time buyers. During the next five years, we want to ensure that public policy recognises, as it always should have, that providing more affordable homes to buy is an important objective of policy if we are not to shut out the next generation from the opportunities that our generation has enjoyed.
Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)
The Secretary of State is generous in giving way. I welcome many of the measures in the Bill, but following on from the comments about the exceptionalism of London, Oxford now has the most expensive housing compared to income in the country, yet the local area delivered zero affordable homes in 2013-14 and only 10 in 2014-15. It must be accepted that there are some significant local problems, so as the Bill progresses I ask my right hon. Friend to consider how to deal with problems in such high-cost areas.
Greg Clark
I will indeed. I have been clear about the constructive approach we intend to take, as exemplified in our dealings with housing associations. I think it is incumbent on all councils, including Labour councils, to play their part. This is an imperative for all of us in positions of political leadership to do what is needed to provide homes for the next generation.
Greg Clark
I shall give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) and in a few moments to Opposition Members.
Oliver Colvile
We are talking about aspiration, but does my right hon. Friend recall that Herbert Morrison, the Housing Minister and Peter Mandelson’s grandfather, said in 1945 that his Labour Government would end up trying to
“build the Tories out of London”?
Greg Clark
He did indeed say that. Our approach is to make sure that our period of government is associated with one of the successes that every successful Conservative Government achieve, which is to house the people of our country for generations to come.
Several hon. Members rose—
Greg Clark
I think the hon. Lady will agree, on reflection, that I have already been generous in giving way to London Members.
Mr Speaker
The hon. Lady has, in a sense, advertised the claims of London Members, and I am sure that they will be at the forefront of the Secretary of State’s mind.
Greg Clark
The record will show, Mr Speaker, that I have been generous in giving way to London Members, including the Labour mayoral candidate. If that does not illustrate a fair approach, I do not know what does.
Greg Clark
I will not—I am going to make some progress—but the right hon. Gentleman is plucky in his endeavours.
During the last Parliament, we reformed and streamlined the planning system. We abolished more than 1,000 pages of central policy, and revoked the regional spatial strategies. Local councils have responded well to that devolution of power, as we knew they would: 82% of councils have published plans, compared with just 32% in May 2010. Since we introduced the national planning policy framework, the number of new homes planned for locally has increased by 23%, and 1,600 neighbourhood plans are in production or have been adopted.
It is right to continue in that direction of reform, which is why the Bill takes steps to simplify and speed up the process of adopting neighbourhood plans and giving them earlier force. It helps councils to galvanise development in their areas, whether through improvements in the compulsory purchase system or through the establishment of development corporations. In return, however, it tells the 18% of councils that have not yet produced a local plan that five years after the publication of the NPPF in 2012 they will have had enough time in which to do so. If plans have not been produced by then, the Government will have the power to intervene and, working with local people, help bring the process to fruition.
All Members want brownfield land to be prioritised for development. The more of it that is brought back into use, the more our countryside can be safeguarded. The Bill establishes a new strategy register for brownfield land so that councils can have an up-to-date and publicly accessible source of information about land that is suitable for housing.
Several hon. Members rose—
Greg Clark
I will give way first to my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), because he has been patient.
Mr Nick Hurd (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend, whose line of argument I wholly support. Starter homes, to which he referred earlier, are a very good idea, but I fear that the proposed price cap of £450,000 in London could be interpreted by developers as a price guide, thereby rendering such homes unaffordable to young people and those on low and median incomes in London. What reassurance can he give me on that point?
Greg Clark
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is a cap and not a guide, and we want to see starter homes with prices well below that amount, but it is right to set a maximum.
Tulip Siddiq
The Secretary of State read out a long e-mail earlier. Perhaps he would like to listen to an e-mail that I received from a single mother who is worried about the new threshold that is being applied to the “pay to stay” measure, as a result of which families such as hers, on middle incomes, will be pushed into high levels of poverty in places such as Hampstead and Kilburn.
Greg Clark
I should be happy to see that e-mail, and if the hon. Lady speaks to me after the debate, I will of course take the matter up. However, I think it only fair to expect those who are fortunate enough to be earning a decent salary not to continue to benefit from the subsidy that would otherwise be available to housing associations. The revenues raised by it will remain with housing associations so that they can build up more properties.
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)
I join the Secretary of State in applauding the advent of neighbourhood plans, which have been adopted with enthusiasm by many communities in my constituency, but will he bear in mind that the one organisation that has the power to destroy his policy is the Planning Inspectorate, and will he urge it to respect the wishes of the local community and stay well away when a neighbourhood plan is being developed or is in place?
Greg Clark
I will take my hon. Friend’s injunction very seriously. Part of the Bill entrenches the rights of neighbourhoods to produce a neighbourhood plan against, as is sometimes the case, a less than enthusiastic district council. I hope we will see less and less of that, but the measures in the Bill will help.
Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)
The Secretary of State may know that there is some concern among general aviation users and rural communities that they may lose small and medium-sized airfields if they are to be re-designated as brownfield sites. Under planning policy guidance 3 and planning policy statement 3, it was held that even though there was a building that had been previously been developed, the open land around it would not constitute a brownfield site. I hope he can reassure me, and those who share my interest, that airfields will not be classified as brownfield sites.
Greg Clark
I understand my hon. Friend’s concern, which he expresses very well. As I think he knows, there is a review of the status of airfields. I will ensure that his views are communicated strongly to my colleagues undertaking that review.
All Members want to see brownfield land prioritised for development. That is why the Bill establishes a new statutory register for brownfield land, so that councils can have an up-to-date and publicly accessible source of information and land for housing. We want to see planning permission given for 90% of those sites by 2020. That will be of particular benefit—this is important —to smaller firms that unfortunately, over recent years, have become fewer and fewer in the housing sector, and which, in particular, often cannot afford to endure the costs, delays and uncertainty associated with applying for planning permission.
As we build more homes and support homebuyers, we want to ensure that existing housing is managed fairly. The Bill will do something that many tenants and landlords have been calling for for many years. It will take action to crack down on the rogue landlords who can make tenants’ lives a misery and who blacken the reputation of the great majority of responsible landlords. We will establish a database of rogue landlords and letting agents to help councils to tackle problems in their area, to extend fines for serious breaches of the law and to ban prolific offenders who put the lives of their tenants in danger.
Britain has come a long way in the past five years. Halfway through what the Prime Minister has called the turnaround decade, we have gone from having the biggest budget deficit in the developed world to the prospect of a budget surplus. We have more people working than ever before in our history. We have put the housing market crash behind us and Britain is building again. We have much further to go, however. Providing the homes that our country needs is a defining challenge for all of us in this House. The Bill advances us towards that goal: it is a plan for more homes and more homeowners; a plan that the country voted for six months ago in the general election; a plan that we are now putting into effect; and a plan that offers the next generation what previous generations have been able to look forward to—a home of their own. I commend it to the House.
John Healey
I am a little surprised at that intervention, because the hon. Gentleman has had experience of serving on the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government. If he had listened harder to the point my hon. Friend made, he would know that she was talking about tenants who are on intermediate rents and who do not have the sort of protection and rights he claims they have. This is a real problem. This is a straw in the wind. This is potentially a sign of problems to come.
Ministers have spent the past Parliament blaming Labour, but they have their own track record now. The inescapable background to this Bill is that that record is one of five years of failure on every front. The Secretary of State devoted most of his speech to home ownership, but that fell each and every year in the last Parliament—each and every year since 2010. It is at its lowest level for a generation. The number of home-owning households reduced by 200,000 under that Government, whereas it increased by more than 1 million under the Labour Government before them.
Greg Clark
Does the right hon. Gentleman still take the view that the fall in home ownership is not a bad thing? That is what he said when he was Housing Minister.