Cost of Living
Debate between Jim Dowd and Meg Hillier
Meg Hillier
Does my hon. Friend have the impression that the Prime Minister may be in power but not in control?
Jim Dowd
I see quite easily how a logical person could reach that conclusion.
I myself am in favour of a referendum on the question of Britain’s continuing relationship with the European Union, but I believe that it is a matter for the next Parliament. I hope that we can prevail on the Opposition Front Bench to include a manifesto commitment, but of course the manifesto for the next election is still two years away.
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
The cost of living in my constituency, as in others up and down the country, is a real concern. Wages have been depressed, unemployment is still too high, and many of the new private sector jobs that the Government like to trumpet are zero-hours contracts or part time, with no opportunity for increased hours. I will not repeat the comprehensive list that my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) gave from the Front Bench about the challenges that face our nation.
I want to focus on housing, particularly private rented housing in my constituency, where the social rented sector accounts for 44% of households. Around 26% of my constituents are owner-occupiers and 29% are in the private rented sector, which has increased exponentially. The number of people in the private rented sector is projected to be double the number of people who own and occupy their own home in the next 15 years or so. Rents are high and growing.
On Saturday I hosted the Hackney housing summit, bringing together a range of people who are experts in their field and on living in Hackney. We said that enough is enough. We in Hackney think that the Government should listen to some of our solutions, but sadly the Queen’s Speech did not include any of them.
My constituency epitomises the challenge facing private sector renters—generation rent—who have no opportunity to get on the housing ladder, if that is what they want, and are trapped in an endless cycle of poor housing and high increases in rent, evictions or the like through extortionate rent increases. As a percentage of London rent, my constituency, across nearly all the quartiles, has more than 100% the average rent for properties of every size in London, except for the highest priced four-bed properties. All my constituents pay more than the average and the cost is going up. Costs are high, rents are increasing without limit and housing supply is woefully low.
This Government have a poor record: house building is down, homelessness and rough sleeping are up, people are struggling to get mortgages and to get on the housing ladder, and the rapidly growing private rented sector has so little security, with people having to pay increasing rents at a record high—not just in my constituency, although it epitomises the worst of it—and suffer poor quality accommodation.
On Saturday we heard very moving testimony from Rosie about Digs, a private rented sector body in Hackney that has been set up to campaign against the challenges. In nine years living in Hackney, she has had to move nine times and only one of those moves was voluntary. She also spent £50,000 on rent during those nine years. In order to buy an average sized home we would need an income of £81,000 and a deposit of £17,000. There are, however, many Rosies out there; she is not alone.
The Government must look again at the issue. I urge them to look at Treasury borrowing rules. A strong message from Saturday’s summit was that they should give local authorities the freedom to invest in new homes. It would provide construction jobs and homes in the private rented sector. Why not allow a good local authority to be a private rented landlord? The assets could ultimately be cashed in to pay off the initial investments, or they could be sold to the individuals, thus increasing home ownership, or, in boroughs such as mine, I would like to think that they could be turned into socially rented properties at affordable rents for local people so that those on the lowest incomes are not driven out of my borough.
In addition to those housing costs there is the huge challenge of paying for child care. This Government have reduced tax credit and child benefit for those on higher incomes, as well as other work-related benefits. No wonder there is a high turnover of population in my constituency, and no wonder young families are priced out of the area. We have to take a serious look at what sort of balance we want in our inner cities. People must not be driven out. We need an increase in housing supply, on which the Government have a woeful record. Their record on new starts over the past two years is the worst of any peacetime Government since the 1920s. In the past year alone there has been an 11% decrease in housing starts.
The proposed consumer rights Bill, which has not yet been mentioned, is a real opportunity to improve the rights and the lot of private tenants. Their rights should increase, including a right to repair and protections against landlords who evict or who increase rents exponentially after reasonable requests for basic repairs. We should also tackle the practices of unfair letting agents, particularly with regard to fees taken at source, not just after the event, which has been addressed by a welcome amendment that was agreed to the other week. The decent homes standard should be applied to the private rented sector. We also need to see the licensing of landlords and to look again at section 21 notices, which are not fit for purpose, because they frequently are misused by landlords to evict people on spurious grounds.
I also call on the Government to look at rents. We need to grapple, on a cross-party basis, with the issue of spiralling rents in the private sector without any notice of the impact on tenants and their homes.
Jim Dowd
Does my hon. Friend accept that another facet of the spiralling cost of rent, particularly across London, is the increased pressure it is putting on social housing and local authorities? I am sure that she, like me and many other MPs for London and for other parts of the country, is visited by more and more people asking for assistance with regard to social housing on the grounds of cost.
Meg Hillier
Absolutely. Without the supply, none of those issues will be solved. One man who came to see me was a kitchen porter struggling to support his family—he had two children. The jobcentre asked him to go for jobs further afield, but the combined cost of extra travel and child care meant that he could not afford to travel a couple of boroughs away. That is the reality of the cost of living and life in constituencies such as mine. This Government’s Queen’s Speech was detached from the lives of people who want to work hard but who often cannot get the extra hours and of private renters who cannot ever hope to earn in the required bracket.