Mark Spencer
Main Page: Mark Spencer (Conservative - Sherwood)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Andrew Stunell)
I am delighted to have the opportunity to respond to my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) and to discuss an important issue that he has pursued in the House for a long time, on the Opposition Benches and on the Government Benches, with great vigour. I thank him for his support for the coalition Government’s action and plans in this area, which I hope on the whole he will find acceptable.
The Government believe that enabling people to have a home of their own is a high priority. The problem that we face is that the current system does not deliver that, and my hon. Friend has outlined some of the impacts of the current circumstances on his constituents. He may want to look at the speech that my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing made at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors this morning, which covers some of the points. Perhaps I will not duplicate all of them here.
My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives made a wide-ranging contribution on an important topic. Mine will not be quite as wide-ranging. I am not the Chancellor of the Exchequer, so I will not be commenting on capital gains tax. There may be some other things that my hon. Friend will find are missing, too, but on the issue of the disqualification of councillors from taking part in planning decisions and other decisions at their council because they have an opinion about it—so-called pre-determination—I hope that I can give him some comfort. It is absolutely the case that it is wrong for local representatives to be barred from taking part in decisions, even if they have a clear predisposed view. The fact is that despite the advice that is often handed out to them, it is not wrong for councillors to be predisposed towards a particular view, or to express and publicly voice it. They may even have been elected on a particular issue, and it would of course then be deeply frustrating for them to receive apparently professional advice that disqualifies them from taking part. The Government certainly understand the concern that the issue causes to councillors, and if necessary, we will legislate to ensure that councillors are not prevented from speaking up on issues on which they have campaigned. I hope that that is useful news for my hon. Friend and his councillors.
On housing supply, my hon. Friend seemed to suggest that the changes that we were making were intended to produce fewer homes. That is not the case at all. We want homes in the right places, and our view is quite clear: we have not built enough homes. Indeed, this year, house building is at its lowest level since 1946 or, if one discounts the war, since 1923. There is a huge gap between supply and demand, and it is the Government’s policy to address that. The long-term demand for housing is strong, even if, as he rightly says, it is at the moment a little hard to make that market work properly.
Andrew Stunell
Yes, but I have very little time, and I have to be fair to my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives.
Mr Spencer
Just a small point: obviously, the housing ladder has a bottom and a top. In Sherwood, there are many single people living in five-bedroom houses who want to stay in the village in which they live, but who, unfortunately, cannot find elderly accommodation locally. Building the right property in the right place is a big advantage and a big assistance to people who want to come out of a large property and who would free up spaces on the ladder so that people could move up.
Andrew Stunell
My hon. Friend makes a good point, and I am sure that he will pursue it in debates in future.
We need to recognise that the under-supply of housing has consequences. It impacts on the affordability of homes. I will not rehearse the arguments, but the fact is that first-time buyers are pretty much out of the market at the moment unless they have the support of parents or friends, or there are outside circumstances; the average age of a first-time buyer is now 37, and that is obviously not acceptable. We have a problem with housing market stability, too. A volatile housing market can quickly translate into instability in financial markets and the wider economy.