Housing: New-build Homes

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Dubs]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to increase the number of new-build homes.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)]

My Lords, this Government are building more affordable homes, helping people to buy new homes and reforming the planning system to make it easier for developers to build new homes of all types. Housing supply is at its highest since the end of the unsustainable boom in 2008, with 334,000 new homes built over the past three years. Housing starts and loans to first-time buyers are up by a third on last year.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

Will the Minister comment on two propositions? First, I am bound to say in all humility that my figures do not agree with hers. Since the coalition took office, housebuilding has been lower than under the previous years of the Labour Government. Further, if, as under the Help to Buy home ownership scheme, money is to be made more easily available for purchases but there is no significant increase in supply, prices are bound to go up without anyone benefiting. Is that not nonsense?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

It is worth making the point in response to the noble Lord that, despite the Labour Government having a target of 240,000 new dwellings a year in England when they were in power, housebuilding across England and Wales under his Government fell to its lowest peacetime rate since 1924 by 2009-10. As for his point about the Help to Buy mortgage guarantee scheme, it is ensuring that people who are unable to fund the high deposit rates are able to buy property. Once you take out London and the south-east, house prices in most places around the UK are going down.