Under-Occupancy Penalty

Kris Hopkins Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2013 Westminster Hall

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

What a pleasure and privilege it is, Mrs Riordan, to serve for the first time under the chairmanship of a fellow Yorkshire MP. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) on securing this important debate and on the passion with which she delivered it. We may not agree on some of the points, but I know how sincerely she presented her case, and I appreciate that.

The hon. Lady raised two constituency issues relating to Ashley, who is disabled. If she will write to me about them, I will attempt to give her a formal and proper response, rather than just having a discussion across the Chamber. She talked about the 1 million new houses that the Labour party proposes to build. I presume that the money will come out of bankers’ bonuses at some point. I realise that after some 13 years in government and the many decades since Macmillan was in power, we have never actually hit the figure of 240,000 houses. I am not sure how Labour will pay for them. Perhaps we have a common aspiration to deliver that number of houses during the period when we are in government.

[Emma Reynolds]

Will the Minister admit that, in terms of completions, the Government have done a very poor job? Since the Government came to power, housing completions have been at their lowest since the 1920s—only 107,000 properties in 2010-11. That is simply not good enough. In our period in office, in 2007-08, we hit 170,000 properties, and we have said that we will aim to build more than 200,000 a year by 2020. That is a realistic objective.

[Kris Hopkins]

Let me say that Labour presided over a period of massive boom, yet it still managed to secure fewer affordable houses by the end of that period—420,000 houses. I appreciate the aspiration, but now I want to make some further comments and respond to the Members who have spoken.

The hon. Members for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore), for Inverclyde (Mr McKenzie) and for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) talked about arrears. That is a matter that we are watching and we are keen to understand the consequences of the new system. A review will be published next spring that will help us in that regard.

The hon. Members for Edinburgh East jested about portaloos and outside toilets. In the lead-up to the 2010 general election, I visited a house with an outside toilet. They are not a fantasy, or even an issue to jest about; they exist. Some of the housing stock out there is appalling, which leads me to the meat of my speech.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Will the Minister clarify whether some of the worst housing is in the private rented sector? As far as I am aware, in my city and throughout Scotland, no homes in the housing association and council sector have outside toilets.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kris Hopkins]

The hon. Lady is right. The house that I was talking about was in the private sector. In my period in local government, the housing stock in my city was absolutely appalling. The then Government rightly wanted to intervene, but the then Labour-led council refused to support such intervention. The idea that—[Interruption.] I want to conclude this section and move on to the rest of my speech. It is being suggested that we had a utopian social housing model before 2010 and then somehow we made a transition to an uncaring world, where no one cares about social housing. Let me tell Members that my parents were brought up in a council house. I lived in a council house and I care about those individuals. I want to talk about—[Interruption.] I will continue, because we do not have much time.

I will make one final point on the interventions and the comments that were made. The hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) talked about Mr and Mrs Smith, and I understand why she talked about people in that anonymous way. Again, I say to her that if there is anything I can do to respond to the concerns of those individuals, I will do so. I would be grateful if she wrote to me, and I would seek to get an appropriate response.

[Hywel Williams]

I refer back to a point that the Minister made earlier when he referred to research into the charge, to understand what has happened. Will he concede that the usual progress of social policy is that there is research first, then planning, then implementation and then a review? That is the usual way that it is done.

[Kris Hopkins]

There was a significant amount of research into the whole issue of welfare reform, which was debated at length, so I do not think that anyone came to this view without understanding the issue. However, we can only evaluate a process after it has been in place.

[Hywel Williams]

Will the Minister give way on that point?

[Kris Hopkins]

No, I will carry on, because I want to make some progress.

I will just pick up on a point made by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East, who said that I had said that there was no crisis. Just to provide some clarification and so that this myth does not continue, I will say that I was asked about a housing bubble in London and whether or not there was a crisis, and there is not. I actually used the backing of the Governor of the Bank of England, who says there is no housing bubble, and that was what I was specifically referring to. Also, the Chancellor has put in place the means to intervene on any of the measures that we have in place, through the Financial Policy Committee; if a bubble was emerging, he could intervene at that point.

An issue that has come out in the debate is the comparison between, “We’ve said it’s about saving money,” and, “You’re saying now it’s about supply.” There is a need to save money. We inherited a bill that had doubled to some £24 billion by the time we came to power, and it was important that we addressed it because we ended up with a deficit where we were spending—in fact, despite a reduction of a third, we are still paying £120 million a day in interest and we have a responsibility to address that.

[Kate Green]

Will the Minister give way?

[Kris Hopkins]

I am sorry, but I will not give way.

Despite the fact that we have this huge deficit, we wanted to ensure that the burden that was placed on this sector was as small as possible. In fact, it is 0.3% of the deficit reduction strategy that was put in place.

Answering the question about supply, the Government have already delivered 334,000 houses; we have made a commitment of £20 billion to deliver 170,000 houses before the end of this financial spending period; and we have made further commitments of £23 billion to deliver another 165,000 affordable houses. So I am afraid that the idea that money is not being raised or that councils or housing associations do not have the ability to deliver affordable housing is false. Despite the limited resources that are available, the Government have been absolutely committed to delivering affordable housing, and we will continue to deliver it.

Rather than talking about imaginary numbers of a billion houses over the next period, let me say that Labour clearly failed to deliver in a time of boom. For a period of 13 years—it was 11 years of boom— Labour failed to hit the target that it was talking about. And it has not said how it would fund its plan to address this issue.

On the ground out there at the moment, there is real growth in supply. The construction industry is running at a six-year high; the construction sector has said that it has had a higher expansion in the past six months than it has had for some time; and most of that construction growth is from housing. So the supply issue is being addressed by Britain getting out and building, and we have resourced that.

The Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply has said that we are experiencing the highest rate of building for a decade and that housing supply is now at its highest since the end of the unsustainable housing boom of 2008. As I said, some 334,000 houses have been built.

[Emma Reynolds]

On what figures does the Minister base the statement that he has just made, because even if we look at starts and completions, it simply cannot be the case that this Government have done better than the previous Government? We built more than 2 million homes and 500,000 of them were affordable. He keeps talking about 300,000 houses, but that is over three years. That is an abysmal record, and he needs to face up to it.

[Kris Hopkins]

First, I made the point that Labour was building in a period of boom and still managed to reduce the number of affordable houses by 420,000 and that, in a very difficult period, we have grown the number of affordable houses and we have delivered them. We said that we would deliver 170,000 houses on the basis of a public and private investment of £19.5 billion. We have already delivered 84,000 houses, and as I said before, we intend to go up to 2018 with a further investment of £23 billion, which will deliver another 160,000 affordable houses.

[Hywel Williams]

I am very grateful to the Minister for giving way again; he is so generous. I wish to make a genuine inquiry. Will he congratulate the Labour Government in Cardiff on their success in house building, and even possibly the Scottish National party Government in Edinburgh as well?

[Kris Hopkins]

I have great passion for those two areas of our wonderful country, but I cannot bring myself to congratulate those two Governments.

[Dr Whiteford]

The Minister may not be aware that the Scottish Government have taken on a very ambitious programme of house building in Scotland that far exceeds anything that went before in the devolution era. However, the private sector housing that is coming on stream is significantly more expensive than the housing that people are currently living in, so I do not believe that the policy that we are discussing today is saving any money. I hope that he will be able to say categorically today that it is saving housing benefit costs.

[Kris Hopkins]

What I will say is that, in my early days in this post, I assure the hon. Lady that if I can learn anything about building more houses, because that is really important to the economy of our country, I shall inquire—

[Mr McKenzie]

Will the Minister give way?

[Kris Hopkins]

No, I will not give way. In fact, I will give way in a second or two, but not just at the moment.

I reiterate that we recognise that this is about reducing the burden on the Government and the amount of debt that we have in place. It is important that we do that. We cannot continue to subsidise a million spare rooms. It is important that people out there—the taxpayers out there—understand that everybody is absolutely making a contribution to this process.

I feel extremely uncomfortable that people are turning around and saying that this is an uncaring and—[Interruption.] What I can say is that I know my commitment to addressing the number of houses that we have out there and to ensuring people out there have access to affordable housing.

[Ian Lavery]

The Minister is saying that the Government are not uncaring. If they are attacking 400,000 disabled people, by reducing their benefit when they have nowhere else to go, how is that caring?

[Kris Hopkins]

In any transition from one state to another, we need to take responsibility to ensure that there are sufficient resources to make that transition happen. That is why, despite the difficult financial circumstances that we find ourselves in, we have invested some £405 million, including £25 million of discretionary payments to disabled people, to make that transition right.

With the process that we have gone through, what is important is that we understand the issues involved—I particularly want to understand the issues about arrears—and make sure that we are building the supply of houses and continuing to grow it. When the opportunity comes to understand further, when the interim report is published in April next year, I hope that we will be able to address many of the issues that Members have raised in Westminster Hall today.