Council and Social Housing

Martin Vickers Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2012 Westminster Hall

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Clark, and I congratulate my neighbour—indeed, my own MP—the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) on securing this debate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) said earlier, the hon. Member for Great Grimsby has a long history of campaigning on these issues.

I was first elected to Great Grimsby borough council in 1980. That seems a long time ago, but the hon. Gentleman was already entering his fourth year as a borough member. I was put on the housing committee and I recall that we had some rather heated exchanges. Many of the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues were strongly opposed to the right to buy, and frustrated many of his constituents in their aspirations to buy their council property. He will correct me if I am wrong, but I recall that he always favoured the right to buy. In the 1970s, Great Grimsby borough council had an enlightened Conservative administration. I must declare an interest because my parents bought their council house at that time. I speak, therefore, as a council house Tory, of which there are a number in this House, and I can bring some personal experience to the debate.

We lived in a privately rented property in Cleethorpes. My parents were then allocated a council house in Grimsby, when I was about five or six years old. I can remember my mother telling me many years later that one of the most important things about the move from the private to the public sector at that time was the security that it gave them.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole pointed out, he and I joined the hon. Member for Great Grimsby in the Lobby opposing reductions in tenancies. The situation that the Government have arrived at now is much more acceptable than was originally the case. As the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) pointed out, we now have a satisfactory situation. However, security is important, not only from the individual tenant’s point of view but, as the hon. Member for Great Grimsby pointed out, for creating settled communities.

We must recognise that, as with most things in life, there needs to be a balance—a mix between the private and public sectors. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that more public sector housing is needed. I think that it is perfectly acceptable to have a mix involving housing associations, direct council building and various other partnership arrangements that can enter the equation. I very much favour the Government’s plans to extend the right to buy. We need to recognise the aspiration of many tenants to get a foot on the property ladder, and the benefits that that can provide. However, security, as I said, is important. We must recognise that homes are not just bricks and mortar. They are genuine homes and they contain all the memories of the tenants.

A week ago, the hon. Gentleman and I were in north-east Lincolnshire with the Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark). Indeed, we drove from Grimsby to Cleethorpes and were pointing out to him the urgent need to bring more commercial properties that are no longer used as retail outlets into the housing market. I know that the Government intend to ease the planning classifications that restrict that, but more needs to be done. We need to recognise that many commercial properties, as I pointed out on the route from Grimsby to Cleethorpes, are no longer in retail use. They are sound properties and could be brought into use, at a reasonably modest cost, as residential properties. Some sort of partnership between the private and public sectors could determine that.

The other point that I want to make was touched on by the hon. Gentleman. This issue affects Shoreline Housing, the main social landlord in our north-east Lincolnshire area, which receives no Homes and Communities Agency funding at all during the current four-year period. As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, that is because of the low rents in our part of the country. That makes it virtually impossible to balance the books, as it were, in strictly economic terms. I have written a letter to the Minister of State, following his visit last week, on that issue. We need to keep a close eye on it.

To sum up, the points that I want to make are these. We need a mix. We need to provide security for tenants. We need to bring commercial properties into use as residential properties. I hope that the Minister will take away the points that I have made specifically about funding in north-east Lincolnshire.