Finance (No. 2) Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Wednesday 17th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Leslie]

My hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. Imagine announcing such a scheme, and then delivering only 1.5% of the goal that the Government set out so confidently at the inception of that project, which has clearly failed. We want to see the careful and detailed thought, piloting, workings and evidence that the Government have put into this latest venture.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

rose—

[Chris Leslie]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is now going to assure us that all that careful and thorough work has been done.

[Mr Jackson]

The hon. Gentleman is being most generous in giving way. We would take his critique a little more seriously, had not his Government’s regional spatial strategy delivered the lowest number of homes since 1923, doubled the number of homeless families and built 117,000 homes on flood plains between 1997 and 2005. Is that not the reality of the Government he supported between 1997 and 2010?

[Chris Leslie]

Setting aside the fact that there is probably the lowest number of Conservative MPs here in the Chamber today since 1923, they do not have room to criticise any previous Government on these issues, let alone the last Labour Government. We believe that there is a crying need for housing, which is one of the crucial foundations for future economic prosperity. It is about time Government Members recognised that they have had three years in power, and have their own record to defend. They have to take some responsibility for the decisions they have been supporting.

I do not know whether my hon. Friends recall the infrastructure guarantee scheme, a key feature of the summer before last. It was part of the Government’s emergency legislation, and they rushed it through Parliament. It was supposed to enable guarantees to underpin £40 billion of investment in infrastructure and £10 billion-worth of new homes, including 15,000 new affordable homes. However, so far as I can see—I am sure the Minister will intervene if I am wrong—not a single tangible penny of support from that scheme has been allocated for house building. I am happy to give way to the Minister if he wants to correct me.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Leslie]

I know that the Minister pursues his duty to this House with great diligence and that, in responding to the debate, he will want to update us in detail on the number of extra houses that have been forthcoming as a result of the vital emergency legislation that the Government put through. It would be extremely helpful if he did so. However, it is clear to us that the overwhelming barrier for the housing market to overcome has been the 60% cut in the affordable housing budget made in the 2010 spending review, and of course, matters have been made worse by the subsequent lack of growth in the economy. It is therefore no wonder that the Chancellor felt the need to reboot his various schemes back in March. That is why we come now to the Government’s Help to Buy scheme, the detail of which I want to spend a little time considering.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

I pay tribute to the Minister, who does indeed know what he is talking about, having been, like me, a member of the board of management of the New Local Government Network. If there is a Labour Government within the next year or so, will the hon. Gentleman abolish the affordable rent model and put funding directly back into social rent—yes or no?

[Chris Leslie]

I will come to some of those details because I think it important that we look at the contrasting policy options for housing support. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington has been developing our plans for house building and housing supply in a number of different ways, and I will touch on those, if I may, after having looked at the Government’s approach: the Help to Buy scheme, which consists of two parts, the first being an equity loan element. The Government have said that they want to extend what was known as the First Buy scheme—there are so many names that it is sometimes difficult to keep track—whereby people would purchase new build homes up to a value of £600,000 and could borrow 20% of the value of the property interest free for five years in return for the Government taking a stake in the equity. The fee for that would increase annually, but only in line with inflation, so the Government are essentially committing, they say, up to £3.5 billion over the next three years to this shared equity loan scheme.