Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between John Healey and Stephen Hammond
John Healey
I am not going to give way, as I have given plenty of chances and I will give way later on. I am going to make some progress now.
While family incomes have stagnated, ever-rising private rents on new lettings are up by a fifth—by £1,600 a year—since 2010. Homelessness halved under Labour, but it is up by more than a third under the Tories, and it is rising rapidly. Housing benefit costs to the taxpayer have risen by almost £4.5 billion during the past five years, despite some punishing cuts for ordinary people, such as the bedroom tax. At the same time, housing investment was slashed.
On house building, I say to the Secretary of State that the House of Commons has confirmed to me that the last Government built fewer homes than any peacetime Government since Lloyd George’s in the 1920s. [Interruption.] The Minister for Housing and Planning is chuntering away, but if he does not take this from the House of Commons, let me draw his attention to his own Department’s statistics. The Department’s live table 213 shows him that the lowest number of homes built under Labour was in 2009, when the figure was 124,980. That was at the depths, following the deepest economic crisis and recession for 100 years, but it was still higher than in 2014, the year in which the highest number of homes—117,720—were built under the Tories. They have had five years of failure on all fronts. This Bill does nothing to correct the causes of that failure, and in many areas it will make things much worse.
Let me turn now to the content of the Bill. [Interruption.] Well, I can certainly stop taking interventions from hon. Members. That is what has held me up.
John Healey
No, I will not give way, as it is clear that the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues want me to carry on.
Young people and families on ordinary incomes face a cost-of-housing crisis. The need for affordable homes has never been greater. This Bill sounds the death knell for our ability to build the affordable homes to rent and buy that are so badly needed in urban and rural areas alike. It strangles the ability and the obligation of the public and private sectors to build affordable homes.