Nick Hurd
Main Page: Nick Hurd (Conservative - Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner)
Greg Clark
I will give way first to my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), because he has been patient.
Mr Nick Hurd (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend, whose line of argument I wholly support. Starter homes, to which he referred earlier, are a very good idea, but I fear that the proposed price cap of £450,000 in London could be interpreted by developers as a price guide, thereby rendering such homes unaffordable to young people and those on low and median incomes in London. What reassurance can he give me on that point?
Greg Clark
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is a cap and not a guide, and we want to see starter homes with prices well below that amount, but it is right to set a maximum.
Mr Nick Hurd (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
It is a huge pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), who I dearly hope will be the next Mayor of London and will have the chance to build on the legacy of my parliamentary neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson).
I rise to seek reassurance on one central point. I support the principle of the Bill. It is designed to make it easier for people to own their home, to build their home and to have better protection from rogue landlords. It will have my support on Second Reading. However, I have a concern, which I would like those on the Government Front Bench to respond to, in relation to whether the Bill will lead to an increase in the supply of affordable homes in London across all tenures. As my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park said, that is the No. 1 political challenge we face in London.
I am a London MP. I represent an area where it is now almost impossible for someone to rent a one-bedroom flat for less than £1,000 a month, or to buy it for less than £250,000. Despite the best efforts of Hillingdon Council, which is as determined and as creative as any, most of what we see built in the area is what the market can pay rather than what the community needs, which is homes that young people and key workers can afford. The clear priority, therefore, is to increase the stock of affordable housing across all tenures. This goes to the heart of the kind of London that we should want to see and hand on to future generations. It must be a city in which people of all ages and incomes can live together in neighbourhoods that are not segregated by wealth, class or nationality.
Mr Hurd
I do not have time to give way, as much as I love the hon. Lady.
As the Secretary of State was very clear in saying, successive Governments of all colours have failed the capital, but none more so than the 13 years under new Labour. The shadow Minister was good enough to express regret—no more—that in those 13 years we lost 400,000 units of affordable housing stock. That is the hole we are having to climb out off, and the Mayor of London deserves enormous credit for starting that process. This is the central prism through which I look at the Bill: will it contribute to the biggest political challenge of increasing the supply of affordable homes? I have to say that I have not yet received a clear enough answer to that question.
There are considerable grounds for optimism. The Secretary of State himself has made it clear today that he is passionate about putting London at the front of the surge in new build that we will see over the next five years. I believe him when he talks about one-for-one replacement. I see huge potential in the voluntary deal he has so cleverly struck with housing associations, but let us push those housing associations to be more ambitious. It is called right to buy, but for them it should also be sell to build. They have the capacity to do much better than one for one.
Mr Hurd
I do not have any time to give way to my hon. Friend.
We should be pushing them to do better than one to one; we should be pushing and encouraging them to look at two for one.
I need reassurance on how money will be recycled from the sale of high-value council assets. I take great encouragement that the Government have overseen an escalation in the replacement ratios that had fallen and lagged so shamefully under Labour. There is still a question, however, about whether there is enough money to go around, given that most properties will be in London, to fund what we want to do: the discounts on right to buy, brownfield regeneration, and the replacement of the housing stock on an ambitious level. My original position was the same as that of the current Mayor of London, which is to argue for a ring-fencing of proceeds. I recognise, however, that that will raise substantial question marks about the integrity and validity of the policy. I support wholeheartedly the change, put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park, to make it clearer that the Bill will do what is needed to meet the big political challenge in London: to increase the supply of affordable homes and make this city the place that we continue to love to live in and work in.