Social Housing Bill (Third sitting)

John Slinger Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 29th October 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Gideon Amos]

I almost echo the “Hear, hears”. However, that money would struggle to add about 1,000 social homes per year to the current 18,000, which is the closest thing to a target that we can divine from the Government’s policy announcements—about 18,000, 19,000 or maybe 20,000 a year. We need a whole lot more than that. The National Housing Federation and Shelter believe that we need at least 90,000 a year. The current level of ambition really is not high enough. I encourage the Government to focus their attention less on issuing thousands more planning permissions. We need planning permissions to keep coming through, but since we already have a million plots with planning permission not built for private housing, they should focus their attention instead on the delivery of social housing and on setting a target—if not this one, a target of some sort.

[John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman was going to come on to this point, but what practical steps would he suggest for his Liberal Democrat local government colleagues? I think it is fair to say that they do not have the greatest reputation for approving housing developments in their areas. He has, admittedly, said that he is more in favour of social home building than private dwellings, but what practical steps would he take to encourage his local government colleagues on his target?

[Gideon Amos]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s question, which anticipates the Liberal Democrats being in government and in a position to ensure delivery of housing. I point him to Eastleigh council, which has taken over a development of 2,000 homes not being delivered by its developer. It has made it a local authority development and is now driving it through. I recently went down to visit Liberal Democrat-run Cornwall council. The previous Liberal Democrat administration set up a housing company that is building 180,000 homes a year—sorry, I mean 180; I wish it were 180,000—and is using the profits from that to build social rent homes.

I invite the hon. Gentleman to join me in my constituency, where we are building 400 council homes on the North Taunton estate and have retained our council housing stock. Sadly, because of right to buy, it is not the 30,000 units it used to be—it is now only 6,000 homes—but we are doing what we can. My colleagues in Somerset council are bringing new council houses to parts of Somerset for the first time in a generation. I encourage the hon. Gentleman to look at the activity of Liberal Democrat authorities on the ground.

New clause 1 would set a target of 150,000 social homes a year, which would something for the Government to aspire to. If not that target, what target will the Government set and when? The new clause does not require that many to be built; it is not a money resolution. It would simply require the Government to publish a strategy for what would be required to reach the target. If the Government are serious about the housing crisis, they should have no objection to setting a target of this kind. In our manifesto, we set an allocation of £6 billion a year towards that achievement. I appreciate that it would take a number of years to reach 150,000.

In the interests of time, I will move on to new clause 4, concerning borrowing restrictions on local authorities. I will give some “Hear, hears” to the Government for the Prime Minister’s words about reviving council housing and delivering a lot more of it, though I fear there are more words than pounds in his pronouncement. Shelter has commissioned research from Savills examining the impact of the housing revenue account debt on councils’ ability to build new social homes. The research found that writing off HRA debt could unlock between 190,000 and 284,000 dwellings.

Shelter also recently published research with Pragmatix Advisory that assesses the economic and financial case for cancelling HRA debt and investing in social housing. The central conclusion is that the policy would be compliant with the Government’s fiscal rules, while generating a substantial long-term economic benefit of £140 billion over a 60-year timeframe. My colleagues in Somerset council told me that if were not for the Government’s self-financing debt rules, they could build out another 630 council houses on top of the ones that I outlined to the hon. Member for Rugby.

I appreciate that the costs of writing off that debt would be significant—I am sure that the Minister has made that point—but if the Government will not write off all that debt, will they write off some of it? In our manifesto, the Liberal Democrats put an extra £2 billion a year into this area. Will the Government put in £2 million to write off some HRA debt? It is important to get councils building again. Those that have their housing revenue account maxed out have the political will, and in many cases the experience, to do so, but they lack the necessary financial headroom. If we want to get councils building, we need to look seriously at the HRA debt.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lewis Cocking]

I am slightly bewildered. I have great respect for the hon. Gentleman, who invited me in a debate in the Chamber to visit a pub in his constituency. I did not take him up on the offer, but maybe I should have, because I could have corrected him on a lot of the things he has just said. I am slightly bewildered by the nonsense that has just been spoken.

I was a council leader. The planning system is not why these houses do not get built. When I speak to developers in my constituency, lots of them say that it is now difficult to employ people because of the day-one employment rights that this Government have brought in. Lots of businesses speak to me about the increase in national insurance contributions. The Opposition have a plan to take £50,000 off the cost of building a new home, which will include social homes and increase the supply. This Government have done nothing to increase supply; all they have done is attack local councils for giving out planning permission. Local councils get punished when they do not have a five-year land supply, which is something that they have very little control over. The Government need to do much more to develop brownfield sites.

[John Slinger]

I very much like and respect the hon. Gentleman, but does he agree that education and health resources, for example, in towns—where brownfield sites invariably are—are often relatively busy or full up, and face real challenges and pressures? Other conurbations such as villages, which admittedly do not have all the transport links that make town brownfield sites the most prominent in the planning system—let us not forget that they are prioritised by this Government—also need additional housing and social housing. Quite often, when I talk to people in those villages, their pubs and schools are struggling because they do not have enough people who want to use them.

[Lewis Cocking]

I thank the hon. Member for his kind words; I have great respect for him too. He makes an interesting point, but it is a wider issue than that. It is about appropriate development in the right place, followed up by infrastructure.

I agree that brownfield sites are usually in the centre of towns. As I said on Second Reading, we are all fed up with driving past sites with all the hoarding up. The sites have planning permission: either they have gone through the planning committee, and the local council has said, “Yes, we will give permission based on these circumstances,” or unfortunately it has not, but permission has been won on appeal. It creates a certain feel in a town centre when someone goes down and sees all the hoarding up on the brownfield sites.

In the heart of my constituency, in Cheshunt, we have a care home waiting to be built. It is a long-overdue facility in the local community that we really want to see built, but it has been left empty for years and years, and we just see the hoarding up. It creates a real sense of loss of pride in a place when someone goes down to the town centre and sees site after site like that. We have sites in Hoddesdon that got planning permission in 2014 and have only just started moving through this process.

Lots of things affect house build-out rates, but this Government could do much more to give powers to local councils to get these brownfield sites off the ground, because there are thousands of sites across the country that have planning permission but remain unbuilt.

--- Later in debate ---

[Patrick Spencer]

The reality is that when one serves with such an august group of gentlemen, one’s own speech gets slowly whittled down after they have made theirs. However, these are pet projects of mine, because as I said earlier, I am one of those on the Committee who represents a rural community, and in Suffolk we have seen the reality of building houses in areas that are just not suited to it. We have had a number of major weather events over the past 10 to 15 years, and I have not read a single section 19 flood report that did not identify urban sprawl and house building in rural areas, on floodplains or on low-lying land as a major contributor to massive flooding risks in rural England.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Melton and Syston mentioned, many homes built in rural areas are not near schools, transport infrastructure or high streets. These are not houses that young people want to move into. I use this anecdote all the time, but in my village, which is in the middle of nowhere, we have had 30 units built on the side of the town. Not only are they too expensive, but we do not have any of the utilities that the young people we are trying to solve the housing crisis for want. At the same time, I have Ipswich in my constituency, and it is a mine of brownfield sites.

The new clause could be a huge opportunity for the Government to align their social housing policy with their broader economic agenda of empowering regions, because our economic future is in towns and cities. That is an inevitability: it is where the jobs will be made and where the growth will happen. That is where educational institutions—those anchor institutions, which are so important for the long-term economic viability of these towns—are based. That should not come as a surprise to hon. Members here representing Rugby, Wolverhampton and Durham. The Members for all those places would say, “We want jobs, young people and institutions that embed economic growth, and”—critically—“affordable homes to sit beside them.” What is the point of a thriving town without affordable housing?

[John Slinger]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the need for social homes—and for affordable homes, although we are talking about social homes here—exists not only in our towns, but in our villages? If we are to deal with the long-standing problems with the high cost of homes on the private market, we will need social homes across the range of conurbations in our country.

[Patrick Spencer]

We would not argue against that statement one bit. I am not trying to expunge social tenants from rural England. Suffolk is not just a load of farms and tractor driving; we have a lot of working-class towns. We need social housing, but we are talking about the future of social housing, the future of our economy and the future of our dynamism. We have always moaned jealously about the French, the Germans and the Americans for having dynamic economies with engines of prosperity outside the capital city, while we are stuck with a unimodal economy that is so rooted in London—it is crazy that I am making the Prime Minister’s arguments for him from the Opposition Benches, but anyway.

Surely this is an opportunity. If we are going to build 50,000 to 100,000 or 150,000 homes, and if we are going to tackle the 1.3 million people who are stuck on the waiting list for social houses, why do we not make sure that that is aligned with our responsibility for economic growth? We are all bored with hearing from experts, friends and family members about the lack of joined-up policymaking across Government. This Bill, which is not an inconsequential Bill but is one piece of a wide patchwork of legislation, is a good example of how we can align with a wider economic agenda that we can all get behind.