Housing

Debate between John Healey and Kerry McCarthy

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

It is the most obvious sign of a broken market, when house builders are making bumper profits and bumper bonuses building homes that ordinary workers cannot afford to buy. These are the fundamental facts. These are the hard truths about the Conservatives’ record on housing, which Ministers cannot deny or disguise, and which, come the next election, the Conservative party will not be able to dodge.

Given that record over nine years, it is little wonder that, when asked, three in four people say that they believe the country has a housing crisis. They are right, of course. Everybody knows someone who cannot get the home they need or desire. They say that the crisis is getting worse, not better, and they are right. Even many Conservatives have lost faith in the free market fundamentalism about housing, because it is failing on all fronts. That is why the Conservatives have been losing the argument and have been forced to cede ground to Labour, from legislating to outlaw letting fees, to banning combustible cladding on high-rise blocks and lifting the cap on council borrowing to build new homes.

However, those are baby steps. The biggest roadblock to the radical changes needed to fix the housing crisis for millions of people is the Conservative party itself. It is largely the same ideologically inflexible Conservative culprits who are making the Prime Minister’s life so difficult over Brexit who will not countenance the Government action that is needed to deal with the other big challenges our country faces: social care, falling real wages, deep regional divides and, of course, housing. So after nine years, we must conclude that the Conservatives in government cannot fix the housing crisis, and that it will fall to a Labour Government to do that.

Here is the plan. We will build 1 million genuinely affordable homes over 10 years, the majority of which will be for social rent, with the biggest council house building programme in this country for nearly 40 years. We will reset grants for affordable housing to at least £4 billion a year. We will scrap the Conservatives’ so-called affordable rent and establish a new Labour definition linked to local incomes and not to the market. We will stop the huge haemorrhage of social rented homes by halting the right to buy and ending the Government’s forced conversions to affordable rent.

We will end rough sleeping within five years, with 8,000 new homes available to those with a history of rough sleeping and a £100 million programme for emergency winter accommodation to help to prevent people from dying on our streets. We will legislate so that renters have new rights: to indefinite tenancies; to new minimum standards; to controls on rents; and to tougher enforcement. We will give young people on ordinary incomes the home ownership hope that they deserve, with first-buy homes, with mortgage costs linked to a third of local incomes and with first dibs on new homes in their area.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I am sure this is already on my right hon. Friend’s radar, but disability groups in Bristol are worried about the shortage of accessible homes in the UK. They say that something like 1.8 million households require some sort of adaptation or the addition of access features to their homes, but very few of them get that at the moment. Is it part of the future Labour Government’s plan to build more accessible homes?

[John Healey]

It is indeed, and if my hon. Friend looks at the big Green Paper plan that Labour has published, “Housing for the Many”, she will see that we talk not only about building more but about building better. We talk about doing what the public sector has often done in the past—namely, building to better standards. We want these to be the highest standards of design, accessibility, energy efficiency and high tech, so that in future, Labour’s affordable homes will become people’s best choice, not their last resort. Finally, we will create a fully fledged new Department for Housing, both to reflect the scale of the crisis and to drive our national new deal on housing. This will be Labour’s long-term plan for housing that will help to fix our country’s housing crisis. Where this Government have failed, a Labour Government will bring in the radical change that so many millions of people now want and need.

Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill

Debate between John Healey and Kerry McCarthy

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

It is almost obligatory for a Minister or shadow Minister rising at the Dispatch Box to respond to a debate to say that we have had a fascinating discussion, but I can genuinely say that our debate has been very engaging with lots of issues discussed and clear differences expressed between Labour Members and those on the Opposition—or, rather, Government—Benches. If only they were still in opposition; then we would not be in this position of having to try to defend measures such as these against attack from them.

At least the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) was brave enough to speak in the debate, unlike many of his Conservative counterparts. I do not think a single Liberal Democrat spoke, and it was very disappointing to see the lack of interest from them.

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

It was a lack of support.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Yes, we have to wonder whether the absence of so many Members from the Government Benches was due to a lack of interest or the fact that some of them have serious reservations about what is being proposed today. It was particularly noticeable that very few women Members from the coalition parties attended or spoke in the debate. I hope that that shows some concern on their part.

The hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys suggested that children would be better served by a piggy bank in their bedroom than a child trust fund, which shows a shocking lack of understanding of the issues. The hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) showed a similar lack of understanding by saying that an individual savings account was a better form of saving at zero cost to the taxpayer than a child trust fund. I gather from his CV that he worked for Baring Asset Management; I suspect that a background of working for Barings is not the best qualification for advising other people on how to manage their assets.

My hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) made an eloquent speech in defence of the child trust fund. I want to congratulate her on becoming a grandmother today—[Interruption.] Has it not arrived yet? Well, I hope mother and baby do very well when it does finally come along. [Interruption.] Yes, there should now be a pregnant pause in my speech, as the shadow Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), says.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and his colleagues from Northern Ireland showed how important they thought the child trust fund was for the people of Northern Ireland. He mentioned that it is backed by the credit union movement, which is obviously well developed there, and that it has cross-party support. We very much valued his support on that point.

The hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) described the contributions of Labour Members as “hysterical”. I have to say that that word is often used by a certain type of man when women express strong views. I am sorry if this makes him uncomfortable, but Labour Members are not desiccated calculating machines and we care passionately about defending the measures that the Government are trying to abolish in this Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) gave, as always, an awe-inspiring speech. She has impeccable credentials on this point and demonstrated the eloquence that comes from truly knowing her subject and caring passionately about it.

My constituency neighbour—in all other senses he is probably from another planet from me—the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), talked about these measures involving “pitiful” amounts that are “too small” to make a difference. It may be that in the world that he inhabits these sums are pitiful, but I ask him to cross the constituency border and come to meet some of the people whom I deal with in Bristol East, because he would then learn some lessons about how much difference these small amounts of money can really make.

That was something that my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) showed in a well researched speech full of statistics. She described just how investing small sums can create substantial assets for a child in its future.