Nick Boles
Main Page: Nick Boles (Independent - Grantham and Stamford)(10 years, 9 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Nick Boles)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) on securing this debate, which is of vital importance to her constituents and the constituents of many Members of Parliament in London.
It makes a great change for me, as Planning Minister, to face a chorus of opposition from Labour Members. Normally in such debates, I face a chorus of opposition from my own colleagues in the Conservative party. The present position, I must say, is the more comfortable one, though that is not to say that the opposition has not been well argued or passionately felt.
The debate was a fascinating insight into how this House’s proceedings would be improved if 70% of Members were women. With, I think, the exception of the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter), we heard speeches that were passionate but reasonable and that were inquiring and seeking to find the truth, rather than ones that were just delivering a predictable political rant. No doubt we would all be better off if that happened more often.
Emily Thornberry
I register my objection to the Minister’s description of my speech as not being a political rant, because it most definitely was.
Nick Boles
I unreservedly withdraw that slight to the hon. Lady’s political passion.
The hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead asked a number of quite searching questions, but I must be honest: I do not have the time to answer them. Nor am I the Housing Minister, so I do not have the expertise. We shall write to her, however, to give her the full answers she deserves and copy in all hon. Members who have spoken today, but I fear that I will not be able to answer her questions fully right now.
The debate is a fascinating and challenging one. Of course no one in this House, on either side, denies that not just in London but most acutely in London this country faces a housing crisis. It is a subject to which I have given a great deal of attention and energy in the short time that I have been Planning Minister. It is important to understand that houses take a while to build. In our planning system, they take even longer to secure consent for. It is therefore not unfair to say that the seeds of most of what is happening now were laid several years ago.
The one thing that I missed in the excellent speeches of all the Opposition Members was any sense of responsibility for the situation we find ourselves in, or any sense of recognition that the seeds of the current crisis were sown not after May 2010 but decades ago, and they certainly have not been changed since.
Nick Boles
I have very little time, and hon. Members all made good speeches, so I hope they will understand if I do not give way further.
I want to remind the House that the number of housing starts in London from 2007 to 2010 was 70,000 units, which was around 15,000 units a year. We all agree that London’s housing need, at a time when the population was expanding quickly, was dramatically higher than that—we might say that it was 40,000 or 60,000 a year. Under the Labour Government, 15,000 units of housing a year, of all tenures and price ranges, were being built. Let us have a little recognition of the previous Government’s responsibility.
Someone listening to the speeches made by Opposition Members would have heard not only anger about the situation, which is totally justifiable, but the implication that there were some easy answers that could make things better. The first such answer one heard, in a number of different forms, was the suggestion that we should have some form of rent control or rent stabilisation. I would point out that rent controls and rent stabilisation were removed altogether by the Housing Act 1988 and were never reintroduced in the 13 years of the previous Government.
Nick Boles
Opposition Members protest from a sedentary position, but they need to ask themselves why most of them here today, who were part of the previous Government as Ministers or were elected under that Government, did not persuade their Government to introduce rent controls. I think there is a good reason why they did not persuade their Government to do so: it is unclear from the evidence that rent controls or even rent stabilisation, the arguments in favour of which we all understand, will make happen what we know needs to happen, which is to increase the number of new housing units.
If we say to investors who are going to build houses for rent that the amount they can put up rent by is going to be controlled, their ability to compete with other investors who are going to build houses for sale, which are, after all, a large proportion of the market, will be restricted. Their ability to bid at the same prices as people who are going to build flats for sale will be reduced. Then we would have to start controlling the ability of people who were going to build houses for sale to enable competition with people who would not be able to put rents up.
Nick Boles
I am not going to give way, because I have only three minutes left, and the hon. Gentleman spoke for a long time.
That is the first question. If Opposition Members truly believe in rent control, they should say so, and they should say why they were not able to persuade their own Government to implement it for 13 years, and why they think that it is the answer now.
The hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) mentioned the introduction of permitted development for changes of use from offices to residential. He raised a perfectly reasonable concern about the lack of affordable housing achieved by such changes of use. There is the principal argument that people make their contributions to the community when they originally construct a building, but I understand the hon. Gentleman’s argument, and it is a respectable view that many share.
The hon. Gentleman was good enough to say that he has no objection to the particular building he referred to being converted into flats, and he says that that could be a good use. Why was it, then, that the local council, in common with many councils of all political stripes, resisted year after year and decade after decade any proposal to convert that building to residential use?
Nick Boles
I am asking the hon. Member for Islington North a question because he asked me one. The reason why—[Interruption.]
Nick Boles
The hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) was passionate, and I listened to her in silence. It would be great if she was not perhaps silent—I would hate it for her ever to be silent—but could just allow me to speak.
The reason why we introduced the permitted development right was because councils across the country were resisting the conversion of low-value, under-used offices to the houses that all of us agree are desperately needed. Since we introduced the permitted development right, it has been estimated that there were more than 2,000 conversions in less than a year of offices into homes that people are going to live in and enjoy, so that they feel that their housing need has been met. That immensely progressive reform is delivering vitally needed housing in the face of the opposition from local authorities that had no good reason to oppose it.
Nick Boles
May I make this clear? I am not giving way.
I want to address the subject of foreign buyers. Listening to Opposition Members’ speeches, one would think they wanted to prevent foreign buyers from buying London properties, which would be entirely logical given the shortage of properties. Then, listening to the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East, one would think the Opposition were going to make it slightly more difficult to claim, by putting in a table or a chair, that a home was empty—