Lindsay Hoyle
Main Page: Lindsay Hoyle (Speaker - Chorley)Department for Communities and Local Government
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts
Meg Hillier
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I regret that when I spoke earlier I neglected to draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and I seek to rectify that now.
Jeremy Corbyn
I will not give way any more, because I would lose my time.
The second area I wish to discuss is the social rented sector in London—council housing. The problems of housing in London are not new; they were acute in the 19th century and in the early 20th century. It was the inspiration and idealism of the Labour-controlled London county council in the inter-war years that did a great deal to build decent homes for people who were living in appalling slums. Indeed, in my constituency and others one can see the products of the inspirational work done by Herbert Morrison and others. The post-second world war council house building did an incredible amount to give people decent places to live.
I had the great honour of being a member of Haringey borough council from 1974 to 1983 and I remember complaining in 1979 that we had built only 1,000 council houses that year. I was complaining that we could have done more, but 1,000 is more than have been built in the whole of London in most of the past few years. I am critical of my party in government and of the current Government for not doing enough to build new council housing.
The Government’s solution is to suggest to local authorities that they should raise rents to 80% of the market rent to raise some funds to develop new housing. In my borough and those of most colleagues in London, council house rents would more than double. Islington borough council, to its credit, has refused to do that and has managed to develop a substantial building programme on its own land from its own resources. But obviously, there are limits to that programme, imaginative though it is.
We need central Government involvement in the building of new council homes as a matter of enormous urgency. The Mayor of London does not seem fully to grasp all that. In fact, there are quite a lot of things the Mayor of London does not fully grasp, but one of them is the essential need for the building of new council houses. The number of social rented properties—that is, council or housing association properties—built under his watch and by his means has reduced from 11,000 in 2010-11 to only 983 in the current year. Goodness knows how much lower than that the numbers will go in future years. We must kindly ask central Government to get a grip of the situation and do their best to intervene with the Mayor and with borough councils to ensure that there is a rapid increase in the supply of council housing in London. That is the best and most efficient way of solving the housing crisis. It provides jobs, provides homes and helps people to have a secure place to live.
The final area I want to mention was covered in a ten-minute rule Bill that I introduced and it is the private rented sector. In London, 800,000 families live in that sector—it is the fastest growing housing sector by a long way. In my constituency, a third of all households are in the private rented sector and that number is rising fast. Generally speaking, people who live in the private rented sector pay the most to live in the least efficient, worst repaired and worst maintained properties and in the least regulated sector. Not all landlords are bad—some are very good—but the lack of regulation means that those who are bad can get away with it. We need regulation of the letting agencies, registration and regulation of all private rented accommodation and, in my view, rent controls.
The housing benefit cap is acting as an agent for the social cleansing of the poorest people on housing benefit all over central London. They are being driven out of their areas and driven out of London. For that reason, we need not just to control housing benefit expenditure but to control it by controlling the rent levels instead, rather than forcing tenants out of their homes—
Several hon. Members