Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Maria Miller and Robert Neill

Tuesday 12th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I am saddened to have heard the speech by the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), because he and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State are two of the people I have always had the most respect for in this Chamber, but his diagnosis is fundamentally flawed. I am sorry that he has fallen into that error.

The reality is that the Secretary of State has brought forward a Bill that is necessary, proportionate and sensible. Anyone who tries to characterise anything that comes from my right hon. Friend as extreme is, I am sorry to say, not in touch with political reality. In the past—I understand why the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne was in difficulty—we saw a litany of failure by Labour Governments. As a result, when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I, with my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk) and others, walked into the Department for Communities and Local Government, we inherited the worst rates of house building since the 1920s, the worst rates of social housing being built, and a market that was depressed and crushed.

That was particularly so in London, thanks to the very dirigiste and impositional views adopted by the previous Mayor, Ken Livingstone, who choked off the supply of housing, through unrealistic demands for a social element under section 52 agreements on developers and an almost ideological hatred of the private rented sector—a sentiment which, I am sorry to say, slipped through in an intervention earlier. If run properly, the private rented sector has a crucial role to play in the housing mix of London and of any other city or nation. It is sad that we see a retreat not just back to the ’70s and ’80s but to policy of an incompetence that Herbert Morrison would be ashamed of.

[Mrs Miller]

Does my hon. Friend recognise the problems that I experienced under the Labour Government of centrally set house building targets that led to high levels of flatted accommodation rather than the family homes that are being delivered under this Government, with hundreds of families getting starter homes of the sort that they could only dream of under the previous Labour Government?

[Robert Neill]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The London suburbs, in particular, suffered from the ludicrous policy of counting things in terms of units rather than the number of affordable homes. That meant that places such as Bromley, Beckenham and others were swamped with flats being built—one or two-bedroom units—when the real demand was for affordable family homes. That, at last, we are tackling. Good housing associations such as Affinity Sutton in my constituency were happy to sign up to the agreement with the Secretary of State, because it gives them flexibility to be innovative.

I remember when I was a councillor tons and tons of people in my ward wanting to buy their home and the Labour Government stopping them. I find it pretty appalling that someone I would usually respect seeks to obstruct and stop people having aspiration. Aspiration goes beyond being forever a tenant—it goes to having a chance to buy and a chance to get on. It is that lack of aspiration that so characterises Opposition Front Benchers. That is why their opposition to this Bill is so sad and, I would say, such a betrayal of hard-working people—people exactly like my shop steward grandfather, who worked hard to buy his own home and was helped to do so. They are exactly the people this Government are trying to help. We will not take any lessons from Labour Members about social inclusion or equality. They are reversing social inclusion and equality. They set it back, and we should congratulate—