Finance (No. 2) Bill

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 18th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jones]

I do not disagree with the right hon. Gentleman, but unless we do some work on where we are going to house these people and families, we will be throwing them out to the market. That is why the last Labour Government introduced the early support for members of the armed forces who wish to purchase their own property, a move that was cancelled in the first Budget in 2011. There is a mixture here: some members of the armed forces want to buy, while others will want to rent as they move around.

To do this without any thought about how we are going to provide the housing behind it is a little strange, and I cannot understand why this measure is being brought in now. The right hon. Gentleman said people are not going to be forced, and I agree, but if they think it is attractive and then suddenly realise it is not, will they be able to go back?

Instead of having a piecemeal approach like this one, or putting the cart before horse, we should have waited for the new housing model before this proposal was brought forward. As part of this mix, I would also like people to be able in some cases to opt not for rental allowance, but for support for mortgage payments; we introduced that, but it was cancelled in the first Budget in 2011.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I am doing the armed forces parliamentary scheme, which gives me the opportunity to speak to Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force personnel. The issue that comes up all the time is accommodation for families. If we do not get the accommodation right for families, we will not retain the personnel. We need to retain the personnel, so does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need to work on those issues and that the introduction of this policy could provide an opportunity to ensure that Army personnel can be retained and that the accommodation is up to standard?

[Mr Jones]

I do agree with the hon. Gentleman. Anyone with a close involvement with the armed forces, as he has, will know that we rely on those men and women to go on operations and that a key issue for morale is to ensure that their families are supported during those times.

I am a bit wary about this proposal for another reason. When the Australians introduced this type of rent allowance, they did it gradually, over a 10-year period. There was therefore a transition period with new starts and other people coming in. The proposals in the Bill seem a bit piecemeal, and if they are not done in a thought-out way, we could end up in a situation in which Annington Homes retracts the existing accommodation and people’s options become limited. Again, I think this is the right move forward but it is not being done in the right way. Anything that the Treasury can do to extract the Ministry of Defence from the Annington Homes contract would be universally welcomed—[Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead is shaking his head. He has obviously looked the same thing as me. Let us wait and see what the new housing model delivers, but let us hope that it adopts a joined-up approach that will be of benefit to members of our armed forces.

I want to turn now to stamp duty. My right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (John Spellar) asked the Minister which regions would benefit the most from this proposal. The Minister, as usual, sidestepped the answer, but it is in fact quite clear. The average house price in County Durham is £138,000. In London, it is £488,000, so it is quite clear where the money will go. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) said, the Government are completely ignoring the idea of trying to eradicate inequalities throughout the regions. Indeed, they will actually increase them through these moves.

There is a broader point, however. I passionately believe that people who aspire to own their own home should be able to do that, and we should be able to help them to do it. The problem with this Government, however, is that they have one trick in their armoury, which is the idea that the private sector should deliver all this. They believe that the only way to achieve the mythical 300,000 new homes is to allow the private sector to deliver them. Well, I am sorry, but if they are going to rely on the private sector to do that by supplying 300,000 new homes for purchase, that will not deliver the homes that we need in most areas—not just in London but throughout the regions.