Richard Graham
Main Page: Richard Graham (Conservative - Gloucester)
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.
Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), although I disagree with one of the last things he said: that this Government are putting all their eggs in the starter home basket. With respect, no they are not. The most exciting part of this Bill—one alluded to by my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), but otherwise not mentioned at all by any of the six speakers in this debate, or the eight including the two Front Benchers—is chapter 2 on self-build and custom house building. The Bill amends the Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Act 2015, which was my private Member’s Bill that I steered through Parliament and became law on 26 March. I have listened for several years now in this House to debates in which people from different sides have taken their part and shouted statistics at each other. I find it very frustrating, because the system has failed our constituents for at least 30 to 40 years, if not longer.
No one talks about a national chair crisis or a national shoe service to solve the problem we have with our shoes. No one says we need a help-to-sit campaign funded by Government so that we have enough chairs. That is because the supply of chairs and shoes rises to meet demand. The problem for 30 or 40 years—if not longer—is that the supply of houses has not risen to meet demand, and that is the problem we have to solve.
Some 1.2% of the land area of this country is taken up with houses. If we add in gardens, it is probably slightly over 2%. We could double the number of houses in this country, which no one is suggesting doing, and still 97.6% of the land area of the country would not be taken up houses.
Of the first six speakers from the Back Benches, four represent London constituencies. One might be forgiven for thinking that this is a debate about London, and no one denies that there are acute and special problems in London, but of the 65 million people who live in the United Kingdom, 57 million do not live in London and they also need to have their voice heard in this debate.
Richard Graham
Since my hon. Friend encouraged us who do not represent London to offer up our voices, may I point out to him that, just as he has his problems in his part of the country, we in Gloucester have ours, with not a single new unit of social housing built by Gloucester City Homes or the city council during the entire 13 years of the previous Labour Government?
Mr Bacon
That is a very disappointing statistic, but it reflects the central problem. We either have an assumption, as apparently many Opposition Members do, that housing has to be provided in a top-down way by large housing associations, often with chief executives on bloated salaries in excess of £300,000, or we assume that somehow the volume house builders will make up the difference. There is a wide-eyed astonishment among many people that volume house builders construct housing when, and only when, it is profitable for them to do so. What we actually need is to break open the choice for people—break open the supply if someone wants to get a piece of land and build their own house.
As anyone who is a subscriber to Homebuilding & Renovating magazine will know—and frankly everyone should be—the fact is that people can construct a very decent house, to very high thermal performance standards, which will cost nothing to heat, for £140,000 to £160,000.