Housing and Planning Bill (Tenth sitting)

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Thomas]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. Perhaps I should caution him not to go for the expensive and well oiled lunch that perhaps is a feature of interest for him from Tuesday to Thursday. I am not quite sure that I have convinced him on this amendment and I fear that I will have to try a little harder to convince him of other issues during the course of the day.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Thomas]

On this occasion, as I am growing increasingly fond of the hon. Member for Peterborough, I will give way.

[Mr Jackson]

Not necessarily to the advantage of either of our careers, I suspect. May I bring the hon. Gentleman back to amendment 146? Given that there was some debate earlier about the differentials in earnings and affordability across the country, does he not think that it is somewhat prescriptive to put a reference to key workers on the face of the Bill? The affordability of key workers in the north-east, north-west or east midlands might be entirely different from that in the south-east. Would it not be better to leave the Minister to make the appropriate regulations in respect of affordability on the issue of right to buy, rather than to put it on the face of the Bill?

[Mr Thomas]

Certainly when I was a Minister, I used to think that leaving it to the Minister’s judgment was sensible but, having spent some time on the Back Benches for a while, I am increasingly of the view that Parliament should try to limit the discretion that is purely at the hands of the Executive and might be outwith the full scrutiny of the Committee. I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman does not want to try to help the police, and those who work for the national health service and careworkers who cannot afford a starter home or to buy on the open market, and who therefore need affordable housing. Why can he not see it within himself to offer them protection?

[Mr Jackson]

I am merely being Christian and charitable in trying to assist the hon. Gentleman towards seeing the error of his ways. I believe that, if his amendment is on the face of the Bill, it may very well give rise to legal challenges between some people who say they are key workers and others who say they are not. The definition of key workers will be problematic if it is put on the face of the Bill, rather than being left to the experience of right to buy over a course of time and the Minister then laying appropriate regulations or guidelines in respect of keyworkers.

[Mr Thomas]

It is precisely because the hon. Gentleman is so Christian and charitable that I have decided to add him to the very small list of Conservatives whose careers I am going to champion. I strongly believe that we need to give keyworkers protection. I recognise his point about the need to get definitions right, but I think there is sufficient recognition of the case for helping those who work in our police forces and the national health service, and our careworkers, for me to push the Minister to give additional help to protect properties for such workers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Thomas]

I was going to suggest that the Minister, if he has not already done so, might like to read what I am told is an excellent book by the hon. Member for South Norfolk. It is called “Conundrum: Why every government gets things wrong and what we can do about it”. Life is too short, sadly, for me to read it, but I gently suggest to the Minister that he might seek inspiration and understanding of why one should seek outside sources to validate or at least challenge the assumptions that one has come to oneself or that one’s civil servants have encouraged one as a Minister to come to. I gently say to the Minister that Opposition Members, in the amendments that we have tabled, are seeking only to do what the late Margaret Thatcher did with the Housing Act 1985. Even she conceded that there was a need for exceptions to the right to buy, and they were included in legislation, not least in the 1985 Act, as I have set out. It seems to us entirely sensible to put in the Bill similar provisions on exceptions to the right to buy. We would be helping housing associations and, indeed, helping the Government in legislative terms by making clear where housing associations stand.

[Mr Jackson]

I fear that the hon. Gentleman is over-egging the pudding. Surely the centrepiece of the voluntary agreement between registered providers and the Government is the portable discount concept, which retains a solid commitment to the right to buy, but at the same time allows housing associations autonomy to judge locally what is applicable to them and what it is appropriate to retain in the form of specialist housing or other types of housing. The hon. Gentleman is exaggerating the effect of the Bill, because that is the centrepiece of the voluntary agreement.

[Mr Thomas]

I gently suggest to the hon. Gentleman that part of the purpose of opposition is to address the question of the law of unintended consequences for any legislation that the Government propose. I gave the example of housing associations that are registered housing providers but provide all their homes in a housing co-operative format. How do they offer a portable discount to their tenants? They cannot do so. Housing co-operatives are excluded in theory under the deal, but there is uncertainty as to whether the question of a portable discount still stands, so to provide absolute clarity, for the benefit of housing associations, for registered housing providers, for the benefit of the regulator of social housing as set out in clause 58 and for the Government—to enable everyone to know where they stand—it is surely sensible to include in the Bill a certain number of exceptions.

In the context of amendment 89, it is wise, given the decline in the availability of sheltered and specialist housing for those who are most vulnerable and particularly those who are older, to put in the Bill a sensible exclusion in that respect. For that reason, tempted as I am to agree with the Minister, I cannot do so on this occasion and I intend to press amendment 89 to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Thank you, Sir Alan.

Whatever point the hon. Gentleman is trying to make, and I am not completely sure what it is, it is absolutely clear that independent assessment shows that the coalition had a less than impressive record on delivering replacement housing under the right to buy.

The House of Commons Library emphasises that the

“single most contentious aspect of the statutory”

right to buy

“has been the failure to replace the sold stock since the scheme’s inception.”

That was echoed strongly in evidence to the Committee. For example, PlaceShapers said that, although it supports the right to buy in principle, its greatest concern is to ensure that sold social housing stock is replaced on a like-for-like basis in the same location wherever possible. It adds that that will be a challenge for the sector, particularly where the replacement costs are higher than the market value of sold units—exactly the point I made to the Minister on the last group of amendments.

That is a critical issue because of the policy’s legacy in the social housing sector. Some 1.8 million properties in England were purchased under the right to buy between 1980-81 and 2013-14. The number of dwellings owned by local authorities declined from 5.1 million in 1980 to 1.7 million in 2014. Some £45 billion was raised through the right to buy but, sadly, very little of it was reinvested in replacements, which is the point. The figures speak for themselves, regardless of what the hon. Gentleman says.

[Mr Jackson]

The hon. Lady’s complaints would have a lot more credibility if, during a 13-year period of benign economic growth, the Labour Government had deregulated the housing revenue account, released capital and allowed local government to build new municipal housing. It is a fact that more council homes, rather than housing association homes, have been built since 2010 than were built during the 13 years of Labour government. Let us bear that in mind if we are looking to apportion blame for the lack of social housing as a consequence of the right to buy.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

The hon. Gentleman obviously was not listening to my earlier point. It is clear that no Government built enough housing, particularly social rented stock. It is important that we do not keep going down the party line: “Everything you did was bad, and everything we did was good.” As I made clear to the hon. Member for Croydon South, of the £45 billion that was raised, the Labour Government put at least £32 billion into ensuring that the remaining stock was of a sufficient quality for people to live in, which is not an unimportant or irrelevant point. After 18 years of Conservative government, the stock was in an absolutely deplorable condition and often was not fit to be occupied. Necessarily, the Labour Government concentrated on ensuring that people could actually live in the social-rented stock that was available.