Oral Answers to Questions

Kris Hopkins Excerpts

Monday 21st October 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Kris Hopkins)]

The Government are committed to supporting people’s aspirations to own their own home. In just six months, our Help to Buy scheme has helped over 15,000 households reserve a new home for themselves and their families. The scheme is proving extremely popular with first-time buyers.

May I also take this opportunity to pay tribute to my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk), for all his hard work, commend him for the gracious way he has handled himself and thank him for his generosity towards me?

[Paul Maynard]

I welcome the Minister to his new post. Many critics of Help to Buy point to the possibility of a housing bubble, but they clearly have not visited the north-west, where house prices have fallen over the past year. Why should first-time buyers in Blackpool North and Cleveleys be prevented from getting on the housing ladder because of metropolitan snobbery and petty envy?

[Kris Hopkins]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I agree that at the moment there is a huge media focus on London and the south-east. As a northern MP, I know that if we remove London and the south-east from the national figure of 3.8% for price rises, we get 2.1% for our part of the country, but several other parts have seen no increase at all, so we need to stick up for the Blackpools, Burnleys and Bradfords as well.

[Miss Smith]

The average earnings for my constituents working full time last year were under £23,000, so they know all about why it is right to cap benefits in order that people who work hard are not undermined by those who live off the taxpayer. Meanwhile, the average home in Norwich North sells for around £145,000. Does the Minister agree that Help to Buy can help make the dream of home ownership a reality for those people?

[Kris Hopkins]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. Since the housing crash in 2008, many families in her constituency have struggled to get on the housing ladder, and the Help to Buy mortgage guarantee scheme, in particular, helps people like those she has mentioned. The tremendous response that RBS, for instance, has had, with some 10,000 inquiries in the first four working days, demonstrates that the Government are on the side of hard-working people and will support people such as the constituents she mentioned.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

I welcome the Minister to his new responsibility. Last week the Communities and Local Government Committee had the Department’s permanent secretary and officials before us. We asked about the impact of the Help to Buy scheme on new house building. They said that the equity share element would add a maximum of 5,000 new homes a year, but they could not give us any assessment at all of the impact of the mortgage guarantee element. Is that because the Government, like everybody else, now believe that the scheme will have a minimal impact on house building but a significant impact on house prices?

[Kris Hopkins]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words and look forward to working with the Select Committee. The Government have delivered 334,000 houses so far, 84,000 of which are affordable homes, and put a range of mechanisms in place to deliver houses. That is what is really important to people out there.

[John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con)]

23. The Government are absolutely right to help first-time buyers, but of equal importance are those who wish to move up the housing ladder but cannot do so without the first-time buyers entering the market. Does the Minister agree that the second-hand market is therefore as important as the sale of new homes, and what will he do to support it?

[Kris Hopkins]

New build is really important, but my hon. Friend is right that we must also stimulate the existing housing market. The mortgage guarantee scheme covers existing housing, so I suggest that he goes out to promote it to residents in his beautiful city of Carlisle.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

One of the real problems for first-time buyers is that simply not enough homes are being built to meet demand. In Lewisham, of the 15,000 homes that have been granted planning permission over the past six years, more than 9,000 are yet to be built. Is it not about time that developers were told, “Use it or lose it” when it comes to planning permissions?

[Kris Hopkins]

I want to promote investment in the housing market and to give developers confidence. The reality is that we have delivered 15,000 new homes through our Help to Buy scheme, and 1,000 of those were in London alone.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

4. What steps he is taking to encourage local communities to fund social enterprises through crowdfunding and other new forms of finance.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)]

T2. My constituency is home to a great many members of the armed forces. As is well known, levels of home ownership are below average among this group, not least because credit is difficult to obtain for a whole slew of reasons particular to the profession. Will the Minister update the House on the progress made in addressing this problem?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Kris Hopkins)]

As a former soldier, I thank my hon. Friend for asking that question and applaud him for his interest. Every day, a military family is taking up home ownership as a consequence of the Government’s intervention. To date, 780 families have taken advantage of First Buy and our home loan equity plan.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

In April, the Secretary of State imposed a council tax increase on more than 2 million people on low incomes, because of his changes to council tax benefit. In response to a survey from my office, 112 councils revealed that 156,000 people, including the disabled, carers, veterans and war widows, have already received court summonses. Citizens Advice is seeing people who are having to choose, as it puts it, between staying on the right side of the law and feeding themselves. Since the right hon. Gentleman is responsible for the position they now find themselves in, what advice would he give them about what they should do?