Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Lyn Brown and Nick Hurd
Mr Nick Hurd (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
It is a huge pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), who I dearly hope will be the next Mayor of London and will have the chance to build on the legacy of my parliamentary neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson).
I rise to seek reassurance on one central point. I support the principle of the Bill. It is designed to make it easier for people to own their home, to build their home and to have better protection from rogue landlords. It will have my support on Second Reading. However, I have a concern, which I would like those on the Government Front Bench to respond to, in relation to whether the Bill will lead to an increase in the supply of affordable homes in London across all tenures. As my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park said, that is the No. 1 political challenge we face in London.
I am a London MP. I represent an area where it is now almost impossible for someone to rent a one-bedroom flat for less than £1,000 a month, or to buy it for less than £250,000. Despite the best efforts of Hillingdon Council, which is as determined and as creative as any, most of what we see built in the area is what the market can pay rather than what the community needs, which is homes that young people and key workers can afford. The clear priority, therefore, is to increase the stock of affordable housing across all tenures. This goes to the heart of the kind of London that we should want to see and hand on to future generations. It must be a city in which people of all ages and incomes can live together in neighbourhoods that are not segregated by wealth, class or nationality.
Mr Hurd
I do not have time to give way, as much as I love the hon. Lady.
As the Secretary of State was very clear in saying, successive Governments of all colours have failed the capital, but none more so than the 13 years under new Labour. The shadow Minister was good enough to express regret—no more—that in those 13 years we lost 400,000 units of affordable housing stock. That is the hole we are having to climb out off, and the Mayor of London deserves enormous credit for starting that process. This is the central prism through which I look at the Bill: will it contribute to the biggest political challenge of increasing the supply of affordable homes? I have to say that I have not yet received a clear enough answer to that question.
There are considerable grounds for optimism. The Secretary of State himself has made it clear today that he is passionate about putting London at the front of the surge in new build that we will see over the next five years. I believe him when he talks about one-for-one replacement. I see huge potential in the voluntary deal he has so cleverly struck with housing associations, but let us push those housing associations to be more ambitious. It is called right to buy, but for them it should also be sell to build. They have the capacity to do much better than one for one.