Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between John Healey and Andy Slaughter
John Healey
My hon. Friend and I worked very closely on this and he is right. The kick-start programme of putting public money into re-starting building on sites that were stalled because of the deep global banking crisis and recession was part of building the homes we needed and creating the jobs we needed, and because we also insisted on apprenticeships in return for that support, we got more apprenticeships across the country. In terms of the mortgage rescue scheme, my hon. Friend will remember that in the last Tory recession of 1991 they put nothing in place. They were not concerned about homeowners who were faced with the repossession of their homes, and despite a much deeper recession and much more serious economic problems, our mortgage rescue scheme meant that more than a third fewer people than in the 1991 recession had to lose their homes and lose the basis on which they were building their lives.
Andy Slaughter
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the common thread running through this Bill is an attack on social housing which will exacerbate the social cleansing the Tories are carrying out in London in particular? The so-called starter homes programme will, in the words of Shelter, help only
“those already earning high salaries who should be able to afford”
a home on the open market. A £450,000 home is not an affordable home.
John Healey
My hon. Friend anticipates one of my main criticisms of the Bill. He also anticipates one of the major criticisms of many people who have taken what Conservative Ministers said at face value, because the more they look the less they will like what they see, and the more they look the less they will see support for them and their aspirations in future.
John Healey
Indeed. My right hon. Friend makes a powerful point and speaks very powerfully for the capital. He speaks for the capital and for councils in areas that are led by Labour and by the Conservatives. London and places such as York, where there are high-value homes, are exactly the areas where councils will be forced to sell off houses. In Westminster, for instance, almost three quarters of council homes—nearly 9,000 of them—above the high-value threshold will have to be sold to pay for the policy not in Westminster or in London but across the country, in order to meet the Chancellor’s and the Conservative party’s manifesto pledge.
Andy Slaughter
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. In Hammersmith, the policy applies to 50% of homes—6,500 homes. In Kensington and Chelsea, it is 97% of the stock. Those areas are the most expensive in London and areas in which the crying need for affordable houses is the greatest.
John Healey
My guess is that the Conservative leaders of Kensington and Chelsea and of Westminster have had an influence on the Conservative leadership of the Local Government Association, because it has made it clear that it opposes the plan and it has warned of the consequences
“in particular on council waiting lists, homelessness and housing benefit.”
Alongside this policy, clauses 3 to 6 overturn 25 years of planning law established by the Conservatives in 1990, with cross-party support, to require developers to help to provide affordable homes. So the very system of planning obligations that has delivered nearly 250,000 genuinely affordable homes to rent and to buy in the past decade will be set aside by Ministers imposing starter home obligations only. It is a field day for developers, and a dark day for families wanting to rent or buy an affordable home.