John Healey
Main Page: John Healey (Labour - Wentworth and Dearne)
Greg Clark
We will indeed. My hon. Friend will know that local places have until 2017 to come up with their plans. If they have not done so by then, we will work with local communities to ensure that they have a plan.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
In his autumn statement two years ago the Chancellor said that
“we must confront this simple truth: if we want more people to own a home, we have to build more homes.”—[Official Report, 5 December 2013; Vol. 571, c. 1108.]
Will the Secretary of State confirm that the number of new homes built in the best year of the previous Parliament’s five years was still lower than in the worst year out of 13 years of the last Labour Government?
Greg Clark
The right hon. Gentleman is having a characteristic bout of amnesia, because the worst year for housing starts was when he was a Minister in the Department for Communities and Local Government. That was the worst year for housing starts in peacetime since the 1920s, and 88,000 new homes were started. He has form on this.
John Healey
Never mind the bluster about starts—as the Chancellor said, new homes built are what count. Figures from the Secretary of State’s Department state that 124,980 homes were built in 2009 in the depths of the recession. Five years later in 2014—the Secretary of State’s best year—with a much-trumpeted growing economy, 117,720 houses were built. The answer to that failure was set out in his manifesto pledge, which mentioned 275,000 more affordable homes and 200,000 new starter homes in this Parliament. Will he guarantee that he will not double-count those numbers, and that new starter homes will be additional to affordable homes?
Greg Clark
The right hon. Gentleman’s record has gone down in history—he presided over the lowest number of housing starts since the 1920s. This is not just about a collapse in the total number of houses being built, but about affordable housing. During his time in the previous Government, the stock of affordable homes fell by 420,000. I have been doing my research about the right hon. Gentleman because he has form on this issue, and it is a cheek for him to talk about affordable housing. As he might remember, when he was Financial Secretary he published a report that stated that the Government’s No. 1 objective was:
“Freeing up or avoiding social tenancies.”
No wonder there was a collapse in the stock of affordable housing—he wanted to avoid those tenancies.