Julian Knight
Main Page: Julian Knight (Independent - Solihull)(8 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Tim Farron
That is a very interesting observation. Given that this will be counterproductive in trying to tackle the housing crisis, it can only be ideological. It is massively ironic, as well as totally and utterly counterproductive, that outfits such as Lakeland Housing Trust, which looks after 100 or so affordable homes, many of which are gathered through bequests from very well-meaning, decent people who want affordable homes in their communities, will be put under Government diktat that means that, in future, we will be unable to recruit the benefactors who will enable us to provide affordable homes in places such as the Lake District.
The right-to-buy extension is being funded through the sale of high-value council houses. That is an outrage. It will again reduce the homes available for social need without a guarantee of replacement. If this is to happen, councils should be allowed to retain 100% of the sales of those homes to reinvest in housing in their communities —but they will not be permitted to do so.
The Government have stopped councils and housing associations from building thousands of homes that they were planning to build. A 1% cut in social rents is a good thing if it is done fairly, but the Government did not do it fairly; they chose instead to be generous with other people’s money. A rent cut is right, but to make housing associations and the often vulnerable users of their services pay for it is pretty mean and massively counterproductive. In Hampshire, for example, 400 fewer new homes will be built than planned, as a direct result of this policy. At a time when councils should be expanding their building projects, they are being forced to cut back. Consequently, the housing crisis is set to get even worse. At a time when new homes should be encouraged from every direction, the Government are relying on a broken market to deliver, skewing the building of new homes away from being affordable. While we should make home ownership an option for as many as possible, we also need to ensure that there are homes available for those for whom that is not within reach.
Rural areas such as mine in Cumbria face particular challenges in housing. Land for building is hard to find.
Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman has been talking about fewer homes being built as a result of the change to the relationship with the housing associations. When four leaders of housing associations were before us in the Communities and Local Government Committee, I asked them whether more or fewer homes would be built as a result of these changes. Three out of four said that more would be built. Would the hon. Gentleman like to comment on that?
Tim Farron
The idea that the income and borrowing of a housing association is reduced and it can then therefore build more utterly beggars belief. That is not the experience of housing associations in Cumbria or those anywhere else that I have spoken to. I would be very keen to look at the Select Committee report and see the angle that those folks come from.
Tim Farron
The hon. Gentleman is talking about creating more garden towns, and it is important that we take a cross-party approach to creating more garden villages, garden towns and garden cities. The danger is that if somebody comes up with bold ideas, others will knock them down. I will not play party politics, but towers and towers of Conservative leaflets have been delivered across south Cumbria over the past 10 years, all aimed at stopping the building of affordable homes. It took bravery from my Liberal Democrat colleagues on the council to stand up against that and build affordable homes. As a result, hundreds and hundreds of families have a place to call their home. Sometimes it is right for local and national Governments to do the right thing, even when it is difficult.
Julian Knight
The hon. Gentleman is being most generous in giving way. He mentions how parties are opposing the local council in his own constituency. As soon as we try to build anything in my constituency of Solihull, we have the same from the Liberal Democrats, who always try to oppose on almost every issue. Will he communicate with his grassroots—what remains of them—and let them know that they should in future get on board to produce more homes?
Tim Farron
I would be very interested to look at the detail of that. I am also keen to recognise that we have to take the community with us, which takes bravery at every level. It sometimes seems that we have to tackle this issue, as Harold Macmillan bravely did in the 1950s, by not looking at it from an ideological point of view and by not scoring points. I would be pretty surprised if anybody on the Labour or Liberal Benches did that back in the 1950s. There are more people on the Liberal Democrat Benches today than there were on the Liberal Benches in the 1950s, which is progress. [Interruption.] There may have been three Members, depending on whether or not Megan Lloyd George had left by then.
The point is simply that if we are brave and do not look at this issue through an ideological prism—such as by saying that we can move forward only by having all social rented housing or by flogging off social rented housing—we can take people with us and minimise the number who will oppose us in the planning process. However, if we have a Government, as sadly we do, who look at this issue purely through an ideological prism, rather than by asking how we can solve the crisis, we will always land ourselves with opponents.
Brandon Lewis
The right hon. Gentleman will appreciate that, as the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale said, we have built more social housing in the past few years than was built in the entire 13 years of the last Labour Government. In fact, we built more social housing in 2014-15 than was built in those 13 years.
Members may recall that during the last Opposition day debate on this matter I said that there was an appropriate film for the return to his old brief of the shadow Housing Minister, who I notice is missing yet another housing debate. I said that it was rather like the Soviet version of “Back to the Future”. It would be unfair to deprive the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale of a cultural reference of his own. Hon. Members will, by now, have realised that I like to use the odd film analogy. On account of his completely forgetting that politicians do occasionally talk about housing, I suggest a film from 2007 called “Goldfish”. It may be a little-known film—I admit that it is hardly a box office smash—but it is highly rated by the few people who have bothered to watch it. I admit that the plot bears little relevance to today’s debate, but if you will bear with me, Madam Deputy Speaker, I can explain its relevance. Crucially, there were just eight people in the official cast.
Most hon. Members will know that housing issues are given great prominence in this House, and that is entirely welcome.
Julian Knight
The Minister just mentioned 2007. Is he aware that in 2007, under a Labour Government, housing associations and local authorities built 12% of the new housing stock? Last year, the proportion was 22.6%.
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend makes a good point. To be fair to him, the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale referred to that fact. We should be proud that the coalition Government were the first Government in a generation to see an increase in affordable housing by the end of a Parliament, unlike the previous Government. My hon. Friend highlights the work we are doing and the changes we are making that are seeing housing supply go up. I will come to that in a few moments.
The Government are determined that everyone who works hard will be able to have a home of their own. After all, 86% of the population want to own their own home. Whoever you are and wherever you live, we want to support your ambition and aspiration to own your own home. That is not just a manifesto commitment of the Conservative party; it is an aspiration that is shared by the vast majority of the British public. That is why we are embarking on the largest Government house building programme for some 40 years. We aim to build a million homes by 2020 and to help hundreds of thousands of people to take their first steps on to the housing ladder. We will consolidate and expand on the progress that we have made since 2010, when we inherited a housing market on its knees.
Let me remind the House what our inheritance was—our shared inheritance: a burst housing bubble, an industry in debt, sites mothballed, workers laid off, skills lost, a net loss of some 420,000 affordable homes, rocketing social housing waiting lists and a collapse in right-to-buy sales, with just one home being built for every 170 sold.
Those failures were accompanied by a post-war low in house building by councils, a sustained fall in home ownership—the shadow Housing Minister was quite “pleased” about that, if I remember his quote correctly—and chaos in the regulation of lending. Underpinning that gigantic sorry mess was a planning system in disarray, presiding over the lowest level of house building since the 1920s with just 88,000 starts. The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale may struggle to remember that, but I know that the right hon.—and absent—Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) will have no such problem, because he was the Minister in charge at the time.
It is terrifying to think of where we would be today if we had not gripped those problems and applied the right solutions. In the previous Parliament, the number of first-time buyers doubled, as did the number of new homes built and public support for new house building. We helped more than 270,000 households buy a home with Government schemes, provided more than 270,000 affordable homes for rent—with nearly one third of those in London—and we were the first Government since the 1980s to finish their term with a higher stock of affordable homes.
We spent £20 billion on our affordable housing programmes, achieving the same rate of delivery with half the grant required by Labour policies. We built more, it cost less, and we did it faster. As the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale said, twice as many council homes were built in the five years of the coalition Government than during 13 years of Labour, and I reiterate that his party should be rightly proud of its role in achieving that progress.
Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
I am pleased that the issue of housing has once more been brought to the Chamber. It seems to be virtually a weekly occurrence now, and I am glad about that, because the housing crisis is one of the greatest challenges that has faced our country in recent times.
Members across the Chamber will know the impact housing has on our constituents’ lives. My advice surgeries, my inbox and my office phone are always busy with the problems of people suffering from the housing crisis: rising rent costs; poor standards in the private rented sector; ever-increasing homelessness—statutory homelessness and rough sleeping—across the country; a Government committed to seeing an end to the social housing sector as we know it; fewer homes built than at any time since the 1920s; and a generation of young people priced out of the property market.
Julian Knight
The hon. Lady mentions the social housing market, so would she like to explain why, in 2001-02, the number of homes completed by local authorities was only 0.1% of the total? Moreover, that record continued from 2001 right the way through to 2007, so will she explain why?
Teresa Pearce
When figures are quoted on social housing, it is often council housing that is being talked about rather than the full social housing register, which includes housing association properties. When we have these debates, we trade statistics back and forth every time, but the problem is that trading statistics does not build homes and it does not take people off the housing waiting lists. Simply saying “You did this, but we did that” will not help anybody.
Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)
The crux of the problem that we face, and which we have faced for many years, is the fact that we do not build enough homes. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times we have built enough homes to meet the formation of new households, whether that is the result of divorce or the fact that we lead more solitary lives with more solitary households. Perhaps migration features around the edges, but those are two quite major issues. That means that we have not built anywhere near enough houses. This is not a new phenomenon, as it is a generational issue.
Many social aspects have been touched on by other hon. Members, so I shall discuss the considerable economic damage caused by building too few homes. It exacerbates the north-south divide, and means that demand for land and housing is concentrated in the south-east and they become more expensive, which damages the mobility of labour. It also leads to boom and bust. The recession of the late 1980s and early 1990s was domestically driven, and was caused by the shock of interest rate rises to combat inflation caused by an asset bubble.
An asset bubble in housing skews the way in which people invest in other assets. We have a low propensity to save partly because of the housing asset bubble and the fact that it predominates in our personal finances. It drains money away from other assets, and interest rates are kept artificially low, because of the debt that comes with housing. That is why we have so few savings, and so little confidence in our pension system. The housing asset bubble also divides the generations, and we can see that acutely today—many of us will have seen it in our surgeries.
Owning a home is a great thing, and is a moral good that has raised the wealth and life chances of millions. Like many Conservative Members I am from a council house background. Without the property-owing democracy of the 1980s, I would not be standing in the Chamber today, such are the opportunities that have arisen in my lifetime for my family.
Mr Bacon
Does my hon. Friend—by the way, I was born in his constituency, in Browns Coppice Avenue—think that it is instructive that we have heard a number of contributions from Conservative Members who were brought up in council houses? Those who strongly oppose the right to buy, although some of them are no longer in the Chamber, come from a wealthy background, and have been to top public schools. Whether or not they might one day have the chance to own their own home has never been an issue.
Julian Knight
I completely agree. It is ridiculous politics for people on the housing ladder to seek to pull it up and not allow others on. That is terribly two-faced, and entirely wrong.
Help to Buy is a fantastic innovation and is a good measure for an emergency. Our housing industry was dying, which is why we introduced it. The Government should be commended for continuing with that policy. Social mobility is aided by the measure, but this is not a demand issue. It is a problem of supply.
James Cartlidge
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. He is the first person to make the wider point that I think we should focus on, which relates to issues such as the pensions system and the price of money. We often talk about supply, but the price of money is an issue too. After the crunch there was a complete collapse in economic activity, and Help to Buy was given a huge boost, with maximum prices of £600,000 and so on, which was necessary to rescue the economy from what would have become a depression.
Julian Knight
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. Help to Buy is very similar to the car scrappage scheme, which helped to rescue a major industry in 2008-09. The measure was introduced to allow house builders to get rid of dormant stock. As an economy, we are held captive by the lack of supply. Responsible Governments look at the supply side—that is what we did in the 1980s—for solutions, and that is what we are trying to do. We are trying to get more homes built: the Government aspire to 200,000 a year, or 1 million in total. It is good to have stretching goals, but if we could just produce enough for the new families being formed, that would be satisfactory. In my constituency, we are stepping up to the plate. We have a local plan in place, unlike many areas represented by Opposition parties. We have met the challenge and are looking to build more homes, be it through direct build, right to buy or getting housing associations to build more homes—they have not been building enough. I believe that devolution, through the combined authorities, can also help.
Finally, I turn to our opponents. The hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) said she did not want to trade statistics, so I will not delve into them, but I will say one thing: the real shame of the 1997-2010 Labour Government was that their flagship policy was home information packs. That was basically it on housing. All those people waiting on the housing list, looking for a home to follow their dreams, had to wait, because the homes were not being built for the households being formed.
Labour has commissioned a report into housing, as it did in 2004, and I presume that this time the findings will again be ignored. I will be interested to read the report—I do welcome it—but instead of commissioning a report, the Government are getting on with building houses. They can truly say, “We are the builders”.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I want to bring this debate back to the reality I see in my surgeries week after week, as families come to me pleading for help.
Last Friday, a family with two children came to see me. The father had become ill and had lost the ability to pay his rent in the private sector. He is now living with his family of four in a hostel for the homeless. His children are stigmatised by that experience. That is no way for children to grow up in our country. It is a family full of aspiration who just want a home of their own—somewhere safely to bring up their children. Following that, an intelligent gentleman came in. He was homeless. He was desperate to get a job, but he needed a home. He was desperate to get a home, but he needed a job. He was in a vicious circle. Homelessness, as we have heard, is on the increase, and that is unacceptable.
Those are not unique stories. I am confronted by similar ones every week. In York, 1,624 people are desperate for a home, so I want to reflect on the housing crisis there, some of the challenges and some of the fortunes we could turn around. Over the past 10 years, York has built only half the number of homes it needs. We need to be more ambitious. The housing market in York is collapsing, and people are being forced into the private rented sector because there is not enough social housing available. Some 26% of housing in my constituency is now private rented. The average price of a private rented house in York is £988 per calendar month—we are moving up rapidly to London-style prices—but the average wage is just £473, which is way below the national average. People aspire to a home of their own, but social housing is not available and they cannot engage in the private rented sector.
Julian Knight
Is the hon. Lady aware that in some parts of the country, such as Hull, the private rented sector is actually cheaper than the social rented sector? In some parts of the country, the private rented sector is sometimes a better option.
Rachael Maskell
That is not the experience in my constituency, where people are being priced out of the city, which is having an impact on the local economy. Businesses are saying that it is really difficult to recruit and retain the vital staff they need because people cannot afford to live in our city. The NHS requires improvement, not on account of the excellent care provided by NHS staff, but because it is unable to recruit the staff it needs—doctors, nurses and physiotherapists.
Our care sector, too, is in crisis at the moment because careworkers cannot afford to live in our city. It is impacting on discharges from hospital. I know of someone who was in hospital for seven months, trying all the time to get out. We have seen care homes shut down, and we know that it costs more to keep people in the NHS than to care for them in the community, but if we do not have the care staff in the community, people are going to be left in hospital, which is totally unacceptable. What is happening to our public services and to businesses in our city is impacted on by our housing crisis.
We know how much demand there is for homes. We have two universities in the city, which means 22,000 students all looking for homes, on top of the 1,624 people who simply do not have a home in our city at the moment. Under the Government’s right to buy scheme, the situation is going to get worse. The City of York Council will be asked to sell just short of 1,500 homes. It will stretch opportunity further and further away from people because of the price of housing in our city.
We have heard a lot about the opportunity to buy homes, but again this is largely inaccessible for many people in York. Starter homes can cost £209,000 and we know that people cannot afford the deposits. An average income of nearly £59,000 is required, but the average wage in York falls less than half of that. Buying does not provide the solution that people in my city are looking for.
It is not all bad news in York. We have a great opportunity because of the “York Central”—not to be confused with my York Central constituency—which is a 72-acre brownfield site looking to develop alongside the expansion of the National Railway Museum and the enterprise zone, which is coming in to build the opportunities for business in the city. The problem with the “York Central— Site, which is public land partly owned by the City of York Council, Network Rail and the museum, is that the council is looking at developing somewhere between 1,000 units and 2,500 units, depending on the size of the business area, but for high-value apartments. That will not at all address the social needs of my city. We are told that building on the site will be expensive because it is a brownfield site and that social housing cannot be considered. Expensive infrastructure in the form of access roads is necessary. The local housing associations have said that they simply cannot afford to build there. The situation is challenging, which is why I ask the Minister to look again at the principles of how to develop housing on brownfield sites as we move forward.
The reality in York is that recent housing developments are being sold off so that people can come and have somewhere to stay on race days. People have bought homes to use at the weekends or for holidays, or for commuters to use so that they can reduce the time of the journey down to this city to less than two hours, but none of that helps the 1,624 people who are on my city’s housing waiting list. The opportunity to build houses will be lost if we do not change planning priorities.
I would like to see put behind all planning an analysis of the housing need in the city, and, secondly, an analysis of the impact on the local economy of what is happening in the housing market. Then we should use those priorities to apportion the way in which housing is developed. I am calling on York First to make sure that the priorities of the people who live in my city are taken into account, so that housing on public land can address their needs. We first need to ensure, then, that the priority is building homes for the most vulnerable in our community—the elderly and the homeless, for example—and making sure that supported housing is affordable. We also need homes for social rent, which is the aspiration of so many. We cannot ignore the real needs of people who simply want a roof over the heads, and are being denied that at the moment. And, yes, we can then build starter homes and other homes. We know that that is possible. The Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust, for instance, has a fantastic development in our city, Derwenthorpe, to house a mixed community.
I ask the Minister to ensure that the Government think about the priorities of the city, rather than the priorities of those who want to make an asset out of land.