Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Prisk Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Housing (Mr Mark Prisk)]

The number of new homes started in the year to April 2012 was 105,090. Overall, the net additions to the housing stock stood at 134,900, the highest level for four years.

[Mr Raynsford]

I draw attention to my interests in the register.

I remind the Minister that the number of new starts in 2012 was fewer than 100,000. The latest figures from the National House-Building Council show that private sector housing starts were down 13% in the three months to the end of January 2013, and those for affordable housing starts for the same period showed an annual fall of 19%. Do not those figures show a terrible story of the failure of the Government’s housing policy?

[Mr Prisk]

I am sorry to disappoint the right hon. Gentleman, who was an experienced Minister performing my role in the last Government, but if we look at completions—homes that families can actually move into —we see that there has been a rise of 8% over the past two years. I would have thought that the Labour party welcomed that.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

19. Does the Minister agree that one problem is that developers buy large quantities of land and get planning permission for it, but do not build on it? That means that when the next lot come along and ask for planning permission for more land, they get it because not enough houses are being built. Surely it is time that we had time-limited constraints on planning permission so that developers are required to build on land before the planning permission runs out of time.

[Mr Prisk]

The key issue is that by getting rid of regional spatial strategies and moving towards local plans, under this Government local people and their representatives will have the opportunity to set that agenda. I take my hon. Friend’s point. We want to ensure that planning permissions are used properly.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

With the toxic combination of the biggest housing crisis in a generation and a flatlining economy, Britain badly needs a Budget for jobs, homes and growth. We are now told that there is to be the fourth “get Britain building” launch. Will the Minister confirm that the third launch last September of a £10 billion guarantee fund has seen not one brick laid and not one house built? Will he explain why, if his policies are working, housing starts fell by 11% in 2012 to just 98,000? Has the time not come for the Government to stop talking and start building?

[Mr Prisk]

As always, the hon. Gentleman provides entertaining rhetoric, but the facts are wrong. The net addition to the housing stock, taking into account new homes and our work on empty homes, which we rarely hear about from the Labour party, is 11%. He needs to rehearse his rhetoric more often.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. If the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) had been standing, I would have called her, but she was not, so perhaps I will not. If she wants to, I will.

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

22. I was going to stand on the next Question. Will the Minister for Housing consider a mechanism by which the borrowing capacity of an authority that has chosen not to use or is unable to use all its borrowing facilities can be passed to an authority that, in turn, could facilitate arm’s length management organisations to build housing when there is capacity to do so?

[Mr Prisk]

The hon. Lady is slightly ahead of herself. We are considering such issues when we consider the spending review in the round. I will consider her representations carefully.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

A recent report by Shelter, “The Rent Trap”, shows that rents are rising across the country by an average of £300, but that people are struggling to pay them because of stagnating wages. Does the Minister accept that the housing shortage is putting up rents?

[Mr Prisk]

I accept that the sad loss of 421,000 social homes under the last Labour Government has created, to use the words of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), a deep-seated housing crisis. However, the picture on rents is more mixed than the hon. Lady suggests. In some areas, rents have risen, but the overall evidence suggests that over the past 12 months they have been static.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

9. What steps he has taken to enable social housing managers to provide new housing.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Housing (Mr Mark Prisk)]

The Government monitor the rate of house building very closely. For example, we have completed 58,000 affordable homes in 2011-12. We assess that to be one third higher than the average delivery of affordable homes in the 10 years before the last general election.

[Andrew Gwynne]

But the Prime Minister over-hyped his NewBuy guarantee by saying that it would help around 100,000 families to access affordable mortgages—so far, only 1,500 households have benefited from that initiative. Will the Minister pull his finger out and help the 98,500 families that were promised access to affordable mortgages by the Prime Minister?

[Mr Prisk]

The NewBuy and Firstbuy schemes have helped nearly 20,000 people, which is in sharp contrast to Labour’s social homebuy scheme, which was launched in 2005. It promised to help 5,000 people, but five years later had helped just 384.

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

In the Leeds city council area, developers are exploiting the planning framework to build expensive housing on greenfield land. At the same time, there is an acute shortage of social housing, and there are empty homes, in Headingly and Hyde Park. Will the Minister join me in encouraging Leeds city council to use its powers to buy some of those homes for social housing, which they can do under new powers?

[Mr Prisk]

As a localist Government, we want to ensure that we are not directing councils, but clearly, those powers and the additional funds we have brought forward for empty homes are important tools that should be used by all authorities.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

In answer to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), the Minister seemed to suggest that the cost of rent is a mixed picture across the country. Let me be clear: research from Shelter shows that rents have gone up in 83% of areas. In my community alone, families are spending 60% to 70% of their monthly income on housing. Can I again press the Minister to say whether he thinks that the shortage of housing is causing a cost of living crisis, and what is he going to do to ensure that families keeping a roof above their heads do not have to go without food on their tables?

[Mr Prisk]

Let us look at the figures. Shelter’s numbers relate solely to new rental and not to the whole market—a very small proportion. Have we inherited a crisis? We have taken on difficult circumstances. Unlike the previous Government, under whom 421,000 affordable homes were lost, we are committed to ensuring that there are 170,000 more. We are committed to building more rented, social and owner-occupied housing.

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

14. What steps his Department is taking to support neighbourhood planning.