Karen Buck
Main Page: Karen Buck (Labour - Westminster North)
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
I must also start by apologising for having to leave before the end of the debate; I have a pressing engagement with an AV referendum in my constituency.
I should like to congratulate all the speakers who have taken part in the debate so far. They have made some heartfelt contributions. I particularly want to congratulate the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), who has an admiral record of consistency in campaigning on this issue. Come rain or shine, come Labour or coalition Government, he is there, trenchant in his criticism and committed to his solution. I do not want to simplify his solution, but I would describe it as a heritage Labour solution involving more public spending on building social housing.
I also commend my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod), who has not yet had time to build up an admirable record of consistency on these issues, but is clearly making a very good start in defending her constituents. I am sure that, in the years to come, she will build up a record similar to that of the hon. Member for Islington North.
The right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) set out the problems in her constituency. I would like to point out, in regard to those problems and those in my own area—there are about 4,000 households on the housing waiting list in the London borough of Sutton—that many of those families have been there for many years. The problems have not arisen in the past 12 months; they have been a long-standing challenge that successive Governments have failed to address. The right hon. Lady put forward certain solutions—I think that they were actually Ken Livingstone’s solutions—including one involving bonds. Those solutions could have been implemented by the previous Government, and it is regrettable that that did not happen when her party had the opportunity, because there were some good ideas there.
I want to thank Centrepoint, which I am sure has sent briefings for the debate to other Members as well. I want to thank it in particular because, a couple of weeks ago, it took me round a couple of its schemes in the London borough of Sutton that focus on supporting young people. The first scheme that I visited comprised a number of bed-sits in a large house. There was a small Centrepoint office in the same residential property, so that the residents—typically 16 and 17-year-olds—can get help and advice on a range of issues from managing their bills to employment issues, whenever they need it.
I met a young man of 17 there who was just beginning to come to terms with living by himself. He was looking for employment and was hoping to start work with a firm of scaffolders when he turned 18. I thank him for explaining to me how the scheme was helping him to build up his confidence. We then went on to another scheme close by, which was made up of independent houses and flats for young people starting out in their own first full property by themselves. The Centrepoint schemes in my constituency and elsewhere are clearly making a significant contribution to supporting young people.
In return for Centrepoint helping me by showing me its local schemes, I should like to mention some of the points that it has raised in the briefing that it sent out to Members for today’s debate. I recognise that the coalition Government are, of necessity, having to take steps to address the budgetary problems that we face. I am afraid that Labour Members still do not recognise that, while the coalition Government are talking about saving £16 billion in the coming year, Labour had plans to save £14 billion. The ratio is, therefore, that for every £8 that we plan to save, Labour intended to save £7. There has to be some recognition of the need to tackle the financial deficit, but there has not been much evidence of that from Labour Members’ contributions today. When the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) responds on behalf of the Opposition, perhaps she will not only set out Labour’s genuine concerns about the state of social housing in the UK—and particularly in London—but outline to us her solutions, so that we can assess their effectiveness or otherwise.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
One of the issues that I will set out later is the absurdity of cutting—indeed, slashing—spending on social housing construction and consequentially driving up the housing benefit bill by pushing more people either into the private rented sector or into properties whose rent is set at 80% of the market rent. Would the hon. Gentleman like to comment on the logic of trying to reduce the deficit by increasing it?
Tom Brake
I understand the point that the hon. Lady is making, but that does not really address the budgetary situation that we face. Unfortunately, I will not be able to listen to her speech later, but I will read carefully the full range of solutions that she sets out to see whether her party is now in a position to deploy effective solutions. I think that the hon. Member for Islington North would accept that Labour did not tackle the housing crisis very successfully when it was in government.
Mr Offord
I was enjoying my colleague’s contribution. She certainly has some relevant experience in her constituency, but I want to continue by talking about the current system’s inflexibility in providing social tenants with heavily subsidised rents for the duration of their time in the sector regardless of their changing needs and ability to pay. Perhaps, again, Mr Crow is one of those people.
Inflexible lifetime tenancies contribute to significant imbalances between the size of the households and the property that they live in. A one-size-fits-all model for rents and tenancies is not the best answer to the wide-ranging needs and circumstances of those who access the social rented sector.
I understand—I hope to hear from the Minister about this later—that the Government believe that we must make far better use of existing social housing, by ensuring that we target our support where it is needed most. Given the huge pressures on the public finances, we must ensure that we get more for the money that we invest in new social homes. My colleague’s point about investing in family homes is a serious and important one, particularly for people in my constituency.
I hope and believe that the Government will create a more flexible system of social housing—a system that recognises that everyone’s needs are not the same, that offers stability when needed, that helps people to move when they start to work, for example, and that protects the most vulnerable people in society.
Ms Buck
The hon. Gentleman makes quite a lot of an anecdote about Mr Crow—we could all make policy by anecdote—but does he recognise that the average income of social tenants is dramatically lower than that of private owners and tenants and therefore that Mr Crow’s house and those of a handful of others like him will not house the 1 million people who are on social housing waiting lists?
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
I begin, as many others have done, by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) on introducing the debate. How the years slide by, and I think of the first time that we spoke in the Chamber on housing in London, joined by my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) and others, who have all been habitual attendees of housing debates. How we wish that the problems that we were so exercised about in 1997 were the problems that we face now.
I am also delighted to place on the record my thanks to the Backbench Business Committee for giving us the opportunity to discuss this issue on the Floor of the House. We often have our debates in Westminster Hall, but it is important to be able to use the main Chamber to reflect on an issue that is so important to many of us. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) said that we so often address with great passion the welfare concerns involved in education and health policy, but housing, which is at least as critical and stands alongside those issues in importance, tends to be marginalised.
I thank the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray) for making an important point. She said that London was often not understood in the context of national politics. Although, sadly, there are housing pressures and problems in every part of the country, London is unique and faces particular cost pressures. It is good that we have had an opportunity to bring London Members together to talk about London problems, but we want colleagues from other parts of the country to hear more about why London is different and why the pressures are so intense here.
We have heard outstanding speeches from Opposition Members. I am thinking of my right hon. Friends the Members for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) and for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) and my hon. Friends the Members for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), for Eltham, for Hammersmith, for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), for Edmonton (Mr Love) and for East Ham—
Ms Buck
I am sorry; I meant my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown).
All those speeches addressed, with slightly different emphases, the impact of the housing crisis on people—on families in overcrowded accommodation, homeless families and families forced into constant moves and changes of address. The statistics matter, but it is important that we should remember that people are at the heart of the issue. I suspect that most of us in the Chamber, on both sides, have sat in advice surgeries with people weeping with distress as they have talked about the conditions in which they live and the number of times they have been uprooted and forced to move. They crave only a stable home.
Opposition Members drew out something important about social housing policy—that it has come about as a consequence of market failure. It is precisely because the private housing sector could not meet the needs of low-income and vulnerable people that council housing came about—and before that, there were the great social housing developments of Peabody and Octavia Hill. Subsequently, the housing association movement grew up in response to the catastrophe of the private rented market, particularly in places such as my previous constituency, the home of Rachman and Hoogstraten.
As the hon. Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison) said absolutely rightly, most landlords are not bad landlords at all—I am happy to place that on the record. However, the grim truth is that a substantial minority are, which brings the entire sector into disrepute. We already know from the English housing survey that 40% of private houses are below the decent homes standard and the conditions in the private rented sector are worse across the piece; a larger proportion of them fail to meet that standard. That is a particular challenge if vulnerable people are in the part of the market that has failed. That is exactly why the housing association movement developed. It is sad to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith how some housing associations seem to have strayed so much from their original purposes.
Mr Slaughter
I want to get something off my conscience; I promise that this will be my last intervention. Last Friday, I got a planning application—again, I am afraid, from Notting Hill Housing—for 41 high-quality houses, including four new five-bedroom houses on St Peter’s square. They go for about £3 million each. Not one of those 41 houses will be an affordable home because there is not enough equity in the scheme. That is what some of our housing associations have descended to.
Ms Buck
My hon. Friend is right, and that is extremely sad. In some cases, there appears to be a deliberate straying away from the original aims and objectives; in others, the kind of thing that he describes is a response to the constraints under which housing associations now operate.
All my right hon. and hon. Friends critiqued aspects of Government policy. A number of them drew particular attention to the risks inherent in the cuts to the local housing allowance. We heard from Government Members extreme examples of high-cost private sector tenancies. We agree. Indeed, the Labour manifesto stated that measures would be taken to deal with some of those extremely high costs. I completely accept that, but if it was the objective of Government policy why was it not confined to tackling the relatively small number of high-cost cases? I think I am right in saying that the Government have not even been able to tell us how many, if any, properties cost more than £100,000 a year, yet throughout the country—not just in London—nearly 1 million households will have their local housing allowance cut.
My hon. Friends the Members for West Ham and for Edmonton raised concerns about what would happen when people are displaced, particularly from the central London broad market rental area where only 5% of accommodation will remain affordable, and a knock-on displacement moves those families to highly stressed, poorer communities on the fringes of London and beyond. Many Members talked about social housing investment and tenure, and I shall return to those issues briefly.
We heard thoughtful and reasonable contributions from Government Members. I single out particularly the hon. Members for Ealing Central and Acton and for Battersea (Jane Ellison), not least because they are still here. They made good points. In some cases, there is shared understanding of the impact of the housing shortage, particularly in central London.
From the hon. Ladies and from the hon. Members for Hendon (Mr Offord), for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod) and for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), we heard support for Government policy on market rents and the end of security of tenure, which it is asserted, without significant evidence, will deal with the shortage of social housing that we are all concerned about. Frankly, that assertion is a triumph of hope over experience, and I shall spend a moment or two deconstructing it.
I am sorry that the hon. Member for Hendon is no longer in the Chamber. He revealed a little of the attitude towards social housing and social tenants that permeates so much of the Government’s thinking about the problem—that secure and affordable social housing traps individuals in deprivation and unemployment, and the language of welfare dependency reinforces that belief. However, as several of my hon. Friends said, the fact that social housing is now such a scarce resource means that people with social problems are concentrated in it. Far from being the problem for many vulnerable and poorer families, it is an essential part of the solution.
We all agree that the problems facing social housing in London are complex, long term and difficult to resolve. Anyone who claims to have a magic bullet is lying. We know that the supply of social housing has been squeezed for decades, principally through the non-replacement of right-to-buy stock during the 1980s and 1990s, but in retrospect it is a shame that more properties were not built under the Labour Government, as several of us have pointed out. It would be hypocritical of me not to say that, as I lined up many times during the Labour Government to make exactly that point. However, as has been said, we can be proud of the substantial investment made during those years in the decent homes initiative, which brought millions of homes to a decent standard.
The decline in supply is not the only problem. London is a global city; foreign, national and business money distorts the market, and the fact that house prices have risen so much over the decades has its consequences. One striking issue about social housing is that between 10 and 15 years ago there was a steady outflow of tenants buying their home, sometimes through right to buy but often in the private market, which has effectively silted things up, as people on modest incomes are no longer able to afford a house. The relationship between the private housing market, owner-occupation and the social market must be properly understood. The Labour Government invested in decent homes and new buildings, so by 2009, the lead-in time for planning and investment led to a high of 16,000 starts in London. We now know that that was the golden age.
The coalition Government have a package of investment and policy suggestions, which are likely to combine to cancel out almost all the hoped-for objectives. They want more social homes—don’t we all?—but they have made, as we heard, a 63% cut in the affordable housing grant. Consequently, the 16,000 starts peaked in 2009-10 and will fall away to nothing, according to the Homes and Communities Agency, in 2012. The Government want housing benefit to take the strain—to fill the gap in the affordable housing grant—but they also want housing benefit expenditure to fall. Those two things are incompatible.
The Government want to improve work incentives—don’t we all?—but they propose 80% market rents, which will make work incentives much harder to achieve. If it is hard to make work pay when rent is £100 a week, how much harder will it be when rent is £400, £500 or £600 a week? They want more social homes, particularly, as the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton said, more family-sized homes, but the overall benefit cap means that housing developers and housing associations do not want to build family-sized homes. The set of policies is completely incoherent. Something has to give.
The Government want mixed communities—don’t we all?—but they suggest throwing people out of their homes when they achieve a certain amount of income. What could be a worse work disincentive than saying, “If you earn a certain amount of money, you’ll be out on your ear”? What nonsense that makes of the concept of mixed communities. However, the Mayor of London proposes a £60,000-plus ceiling for access to socially assisted housing, which cuts across the stated objective of not allowing people with a decent income to be assisted with housing.
The Government want to tackle under-occupation—don’t we all?—but they are doing so in a way that possibly even some of my hon. Friends have not yet fully internalised. They propose doing so through a cut in housing benefit for social tenants who have one or more bedrooms more than they are deemed to need. That will hit 150,000 London households with an average of a £21-a-week loss in benefit. I do not have the London figures to hand, but I know that, nationally, if every single person affected by the proposed cut in housing benefit tried to avoid that penalty, it would mean that every one and two-bedroom property allocated in the social housing sector for the next five years would have to go to those households. That is clearly nonsense and would lead to a catastrophe of homelessness and overcrowding. Indeed, the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) let the cat out of the bag by making it clear that the policy’s intention is not to tackle under-occupation, but to save money. As far as the Government are concerned, the fewer people who move, the better.
The Government also want to end security of tenure. When I, like my hon. Friends, was on the campaign stump last year, and warning people that a Conservative Government would mean a move to market rents and the end of security of tenure, we were howled down and accused of lying. Our only error in robustly defending that position was not realising how quickly it would happen.
I have been remiss in not making the point earlier, but shadow Communities and Local Government Ministers, who are out campaigning today, are rightly opposing those measures in the Localism Bill.
The Government’s policy is fundamentally flawed and deeply incoherent. It will have the opposite effect, almost across the board, to what it seeks to achieve. At the very least, we know that the Mayor of London’s re-election campaign is on a cliff edge as new housing supply drops to nothing. We therefore look forward to a campaign that will replace the Mayor, who has talked the talk, but is not walking the walk. He will not deliver new social housing; he is not standing up for London tenants or those who face a housing crisis.
Although the crisis has been long building and slow burning, it is reaching one of the most critical points that I have ever known. Whether for people in social housing, people in the private sector waiting to obtain social housing, those in the queue or those facing homelessness, it is clear that the Government’s policies will do nothing to resolve that crisis. It will take a Labour Mayor and a Labour Government to resolve the crisis of social housing in London.
Robert Neill
I will finish this point, then I need to make way for the hon. Member for Islington North.
Some of the more alarmist comments about churn in a city that has a great deal of population churn anyway are unjustified.
Ms Buck
Will the Minister confirm something for the record? I understand, following the consideration of the Localism Bill in Committee, that existing tenants who voluntarily downsize to smaller properties or move from overcrowded properties will, after the new rules are introduced, be subject to short-term tenancies. That does not seem to me to be consistent with what he and others have said about current tenants not being affected.
Robert Neill
The point is that it is a voluntary change in the arrangements, not what exists at the moment. At the end of the day, we must be sensible and recognise that, if we want more new homes, either we go down the route of pumping more and more public money in—when, thanks to the actions of the previous Government, there is no public money—or we go down the alternative route of using a bit more common sense and imagination and being prepared to look at more flexible models for dealing with the situation.
Ultimately—I am conscious of the need to allow the hon. Member for Islington North time to respond to the debate—this Government are strongly committed to housing in London. The current Mayor is committed to housing in London and there has been a 35% increase in the number of affordable starts since Mayor Johnson took office. Increasing the number of family-size properties is another important issue and there has been a 40% increase in three-bedroom houses, so we do not think that we have anything to be ashamed of in respect of our housing policy in London. I am confident that, when we debate the subject again in perhaps a few years’ time, I shall be able to defend Mayor Johnson’s record after he has been re-elected. I am sure that the hon. Member for Islington North will still be there to raise housing issues with the same passion and vigour. I hope that I have left him enough time to conclude.