Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between John Healey and Joan Ryan
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “That” to the end of the Question and add:
“this House, whilst affirming its support for helping more people, particularly young people, to own their own homes and welcoming measures in the Bill that restrict the operation of rogue private landlords and letting agents, declines to give a Second Reading to the Housing and Planning Bill because the Bill will not help most people struggling to buy their own home, will mean a severe loss of affordable homes for local communities across England, will centralise significant powers in the hands of the Secretary of State and deprive councils of the capacity to meet the housing needs of their communities and local people of a proper say in the planning process, and will weaken the obligation of private developers to contribute towards affordable homes for local people.
After five years of failure on housing under Conservative Ministers, we desperately needed a Bill to give people who have been hit by the cost of housing crisis some hope that things will change. This is not that Bill.
There are some parts of the Bill that we welcome, but I have to say that they are few and far between. We welcome steps to control the worst private landlords, to help young people get their first foot in the housing market, and to speed up compulsory purchase. We aim to make those steps much stronger as the Bill goes through Parliament. However, if you are a young person or a family earning an ordinary income and trying to get on, then this is a bad Bill. If you want to buy your own home, then these so-called starter homes are a non-starter for you, and they are unaffordable to most people on average incomes. If you are a working family on modest wages in a council or housing association home, then you face your rent being hiked as a result of the Bill. If you are worried about rising rents and insecurity in your private rented home—one in four families with kids in England now brings them up in private rented accommodation—this Bill does nothing for you.
Joan Ryan
Average rents in Enfield now consume 46% of average weekly income, which is unsustainable for families. We need an increase in affordable homes. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, unless it is significantly amended, the Bill will lead to a decrease in affordable homes and do nothing to help those families?
John Healey
My right hon. Friend is right. The Bill will lead to a decrease in the number of affordable rented homes, as well as affordable homes to buy, and to a huge loss in such numbers, particularly in areas such as Enfield. She is right to point to the problem that those in private rented accommodation now face with ever-rising rents, but if she looks at the Conservative manifesto, she will not find a single word about the millions of people who face spending their whole lives in private rented accommodation. That is why the Bill does so little for them and is such a big missed opportunity.