Oral Answers to Questions

John Healey Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I very much agree with the point made by my hon. Friend. We want to see more innovation and creativity in house building in this country, and factory-built, modular, custom-built or prefabricated homes—call them what you will—have an important role to play. I have seen examples of factories in England, such as those in Bedford and Leeds, and I would be very happy to visit one in Kettering too.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

Mr Speaker, from the Labour Front Bench, may I fully endorse the full tribute that you have paid to our dear friend and colleague Gerald Kaufman? Certainly those of us who knew him best will miss him most.

After seven years of Conservative failure on housing, we were told by the Secretary of State that his White Paper would be “a bold, radical plan”, yet when he launched it, he said that his top priority was

“a proper conversation about housing need”.—[Official Report, 7 February 2017; Vol. 621, c. 230.]

After new figures showed that new house building actually fell last year, the White Paper was meant to be a plan to fix the housing crisis, so let me ask the Secretary of State a simple question: how many more new homes will be built by the end of this Parliament as a result of the White Paper?

[Sajid Javid]

Time and again, the right hon. Gentleman gets up at the Dispatch Box and talks about the failure to build homes when the evidence is very different. He never refers to his own track record: we saw housing starts fall to their lowest peacetime level since the 1920s. The right hon. Gentleman asked me about the White Paper and its reception, so let me share with him some responses to the White Paper. The National Housing Federation called it a

“positive step in the right direction”.

The Royal Town Planning Institute said that it welcomed the measures, which it had “long campaigned for”. Another one—perhaps he can guess where this came from—is that

“yesterday’s housing white paper points us in a better direction… the proposals…show some promising signs for Londoners.”

Where did that come from? The Mayor of London.

[John Healey]

All those organisations will be interested in the question that the Secretary of State cannot and will not answer, which is how many extra new homes will be built as a result of what he calls his new measures in the White Paper? In truth, the White Paper was a white flag on housing, especially on help for first-time homebuyers. Home ownership rose by 1 million under Labour; it has fallen under Tory Ministers since 2010, and it is in freefall for young first-time buyers. Given this, why is Help to Buy helping 20,000 people who are not even first-time buyers, and why is Help to Buy helping over 3,000 people who earn more than £100,000 a year? Will he use the Budget next week to target this taxpayers’ help better and do more for first-time buyers on ordinary incomes?

[Sajid Javid]

The right hon. Gentleman will know that we have taken a number of actions since July to boost home building in this country—not just the action outlined in the White Paper, but the £1.7 billion accelerated construction programme, the £3 billion home building fund, the £2.3 billion for the housing infrastructure fund and £1.4 billion extra for affordable homes. The right hon. Gentleman raises the issue of home ownership. As a former housing Minister, he should know that home ownership rates under Labour fell from a peak of 71% to 64%. I have another quote—from him—about the decline in home ownership which, word for word, is that

“I’m not sure that’s such a bad thing”.