Housing

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Wednesday 5th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jack Dromey]

My right hon. Friend, who has a long and honourable track record on housing, is absolutely right. Tens of thousands of people are in their homes today because we took action when faced with those dire economic circumstances, in dramatic contrast to what happened back in the 1980s.

Unlike this Government, during the recession Labour rightly increased investment in housing to provide the homes that people need and to secure construction jobs. As well as providing funding to build 112,000 affordable homes, we created and maintained 160,000 jobs and 3,000 apprenticeships for young people. Yesterday’s Housing Minister will be familiar with those homes because, extraordinarily, the Government have tried to claim credit for them. However, as the National Audit Office has confirmed, of the 170,000 affordable homes in the next five years that he used to talk about, 70,000 were commissioned and paid for by a Labour Government. Labour is showing the same determination now as it did then, because we intend to put housing at centre stage of our economic recovery plan.

We understand just how important investment in house building is as a means of economic revival. We know that for every £1 of public money spent on house building, studies have shown that the economy benefits by up to £3.50. Money spent on building affordable homes is money saved as unemployed building workers are put back to work, young apprentices are taken on, and less money goes out on housing benefit. We know that in transmission time it is the quickest way to get a sluggish economy moving. Investment is the key.

The Government were absolutely wrong to cut £4 billion from the affordable housing budget in 2010, and no amount of press releases or half-cocked initiatives will fix that. That is why Labour has proposed bringing forward infrastructure investment, including for housing, and why we have called on the Government to use £2 billion from a repeat of the bankers’ bonus tax to fund tens of thousands of affordable homes, not least because public investment can lever in investment from elsewhere.

The National Housing Federation has said that public investment of £1 billion, matched by £8 billion from the housing associations, would build 66,000 shared-ownership homes for people on low to middle incomes, create 400,000 jobs and, in so doing, save the taxpayer £700 million in jobseeker’s allowance, not to mention the added savings from housing benefit and increased tax revenues. The NHF also predicts a boost in growth, generating £15.25 billion in the wider economy. The Government should commit greater investment now—we would—rather than leave it in the pipeline.

Next, the Government need to get the banks lending again. Small to medium-sized firms, including small builders, are crying out for investment, but the banks are not lending. Thus far, the Government schemes have failed.

The Government must also urgently consider the case, proposed by my right hon. Friend the leader of the Opposition, for a British investment bank. The German state bank, KfW, is a good comparison, and a British investment bank could support the funding of new infrastructure.

Next, the Government must encourage innovation among local authorities and housing associations. The Government took a welcome step forward by proceeding with Labour’s plans to free up councils to build the next generation of council homes through housing revenue account reform. Indeed, along with the Labour leader of Southwark council, Peter John, I launched its plans to build 1,000 new, much-needed council homes. The Government must now provide help and support to those innovative councils that are taking advantage of that reform to ensure that they use the headroom to maximise the number of homes built.

It seems that those most in need of support are Conservative-run local authorities. As a freedom of information request by my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has demonstrated, Labour councils are building while Tory councils sit on their hands. A survey showed that five times as many social homes for rent are being built in Labour authorities than in Tory areas.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend will be aware that Islington council is planning to build 750 new council homes between now and 2015. He will also be aware that in inner-city areas such as mine, more than 30% of the population live in the private rented sector. Does he agree that it is past time that we had much tougher regulation of the private rented sector in the terms of tenancies, the longevity of tenancies, rent levels and, above all, the social and repair conditions that tenants have to live in?

[Jack Dromey]

The private rented sector has an important role to play, but not on its current terms. That is why in July we launched our initiative, which was supported by the sector as a whole, to regulate letting agents. That is why we will be bringing forward proposals on effective regulation of the sector. We have to tackle the lack of stability and security, and the ever-rising rents. That is why we will bring forward proposals to ensure that the decent homes standard applies in the private sector as well as in the public sector.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)]

This is an important and timely debate. Time prevents me from commenting on each of the contributions we have heard—there have been some excellent ones—but I shall pick out one or two. My right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) effectively debunked the Government’s flamboyant use of statistics and demolished the claims made about the benefits of the new homes bonus.

I welcome the Housing Minister for the second time today. He clearly has an extremely big job to do. We have not seen a failure to deliver on this scale since another Tory-Liberal Government failed to deliver on their promise to build homes fit for heroes for the families of soldiers returning from the horrors of the first world war.

Conservative Members used to talk about a property-owning democracy, but many would-be home owners are now trapped in private rented accommodation, paying extremely high rents and unable to build up the very high deposits necessary to secure a mortgage. Nowadays Members on the other side of the House talk about “an affordable housing revolution”, but they are presiding over the disintegration of affordable housing as we know it.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Is my hon. Friend aware that in constituencies such as mine a third of the population are living in private rented accommodation, both those in and out of work, are being denied sufficient housing benefit to pay the rent and are being socially decanted out of central London? That is destructive to communities and to family life. Does he agree that the Government have simply got it wrong on housing benefit?

[Chris Williamson]

The Government have absolutely got it wrong, and it is a complete scandal. If we are to have balanced communities, we need to create a situation in which people in different places on the income scale can live in the same community. What the Government are doing is completely wrong.

We have seen a massive fall in affordable home starts and a catastrophic collapse in social housing starts. When I was first elected, I was a member of the Communities and Local Government Committee, and I well remember the ministerial team coming before the Committee. The then Minister for Housing said:

“We believe in house building; we believe we’ve got a better way to get houses built. The idea is to get a system which delivers housing in this country.”

The Secretary of State chipped in, adding:

“And homes that people want to live in so kids can play in the streets and people come home with some pride.”

But they have totally failed to deliver on all the rhetoric on that day and since.

In her contribution, my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) touched on the fact that the Government are failing to deliver. Indeed, every one of the plethora of new initiatives announced by the Government has been an utter failure. As my hon. Friend the shadow Minister for Housing pointed out, in the month following the introduction of the NPPF, planning approvals fell by 37%, which accompanied the loss of 180,000 planning approvals as a result of the meddling in the planning rules by the Secretary of State when he first came to office. That puts into context the cavalier way in which the Government have addressed the whole issue of delivering decent housing.

The Government’s definition of “affordable housing” means that it is not even affordable to large numbers of people. Indeed, the ministerial announcements that we are seeing on various new housing initiatives would not have been out of place if they had appeared in George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” as the product of the Ministry of Truth. Perhaps we should rename the Department for Communities and Local Government.

The reason we face this massive housing crisis today is the abject failure of the coalition parties’ economic plan. They have cut housing investment at precisely the wrong time and, as a consequence, the construction industry is on its knees. It is a very labour-intensive industry and it could create huge numbers of jobs. Moreover, 80% of the products on a building site are procured from inside the United Kingdom. Construction is an engine for economic growth.