Housing (London)

Robert Neill Excerpts

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)]

Will the hon. Gentleman answer my hon. Friend’s question?

[Mr Slaughter]

I see the coalition in action.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Hollobone, as it was to see Mr Turner earlier. I congratulate the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) on securing another debate about housing in London. We do not always agree on the solutions, but I pay tribute to the assiduousness and seriousness with which he regularly addresses the issue. Like other hon. Members, he has raised important points with which I will endeavour to deal. This has been a wide-ranging debate, and I will do my best to pick up the detailed points made.

I accept that housing matters to everybody. It is important politically and socially. Having a home that meets one’s needs is fundamental to achieving one’s aspirations for oneself, one’s family and one’s community. I hope that that is common ground for all parties in the House, and I want to make it clear that the Government regard it as a key objective to help people to achieve those aspirations. I will deal with general issues as well as points about London specifically.

We as a Government are committed to increasing the number of houses available both to rent and to buy. That includes affordable housing, but we must be imaginative in choosing models to use. We need to consider greater flexibility in social housing to ensure best use of stock and help people stand on their own two feet. We must also consider how to protect the vulnerable and disadvantaged and address homelessness, which the hon. Gentleman fairly and properly mentioned. We want to support people to stay in their own homes.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

The Minister will be aware that homeless charities in London—particularly Shelter, but also the Mary Ward Centre and others—have serious financial problems at present. Their grant funding has been cut, although they are trying to retrieve it from London local authorities. The cut in housing advice provided to homeless people by those organisations is devastating and can lead to only greater homelessness. Is the Minister prepared to look into the matter, receive a delegation and consider whether extra help can be given to ensure that those vital agencies remain open?

[Robert Neill]

I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Local Government will happily get in touch with the hon. Gentleman. It is worth putting it on record that we are working with the National Homelessness Advice Service to ensure that front-line advice workers have the support that they need. We have established a cross-Government ministerial working group to examine the underlying causes of homelessness and we continue to invest in the Places of Change hostel improvement programme. We are attempting to address the problem, but I appreciate the seriousness with which the hon. Gentleman raises the issue, and I will ensure that the appropriate Minister is in touch with him. I will return to the broader issues of homelessness in due course.

We make no apology for saying that home ownership is at the core of people’s housing aspirations, and it should be at the core of our policy. It is a good thing. It gives people responsibility for their own needs, financial security and confidence. I think that it is good that housing wealth now accounts for nearly half of all household wealth, up from about 25% in 1980. Some hon. Members have criticised the right to buy and related issues in this debate, but I do not apologise for the right to buy. In the 1980s, I was a parliamentary candidate twice in Dagenham, which had one of the largest housing estates in Europe. I thought that it was utterly liberating for ordinary people—good hard-working families—to have the chance to own their home. Not everybody will always manage that aspiration, but we need to make sure that it is there, that we help people in that way, and that we also assist those who, for a number of reasons, will not be in a position to meet it.

[Chris Williamson]

Will the Minister concede that, although the right to buy was liberating and gave access to home ownership for people who perhaps previously would never have been able to aspire to it, the decision to prevent local authorities from building, or to make it difficult for them to build, alternative affordable accommodation contributed to the massive housing crisis with which we are confronted?

[Robert Neill]

Those decisions were very much of their time and in response to it. I am not sure how much that in itself contributed, but I accept that, in the current age, we need a flexible approach to giving local authorities and housing associations the ability to build as is appropriate. That is why we are where we are now. It does not undermine the thrust of a policy that I think was necessary at the time.

[Mr Slaughter]

The average price of a property in Hammersmith is now more than £500,000, and 40% of my constituents have incomes of less than £20,000. It will require quite a degree of flexibility if the Government’s policy of prioritising home ownership is going to go ahead. They are just empty words, are they not?

[Robert Neill]

The hon. Gentleman is as specious as ever. I am sorry that he has managed to lower the tone of the debate, while his hon. Friend the Member for Islington North dealt with the issue in a serious fashion, as usual. The contrast between the two hon. Gentlemen is always instructive. Of course, as I have said, there will always be those who will not be able to own their own homes—the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) rightly recognised that as well—so we need a policy that embraces that, but I shall not go down the route of point scoring which is so characteristic of the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter). The fact is that it is by no means incompatible for us to encourage home ownership and also deal with those who, for a number of legitimate reasons, will never be in a position to own their own homes.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Robert Neill]

The hon. Gentleman has only just arrived, but he is an old chum so I will happily give way to him.

[John McDonnell]

I apologise for being so late. I was discussing another issue with one of the Minister’s ministerial colleagues and could not get here any sooner. Will he address an issue facing a number of us in London, particularly outer London, namely that of the growing number of homeless and rough sleepers? It is hitting the outer London boroughs on a scale that we have not experienced before. Inner London has had high numbers but the issue is beginning drastically to affect London boroughs as a result of the policies of housing suppliers in particular.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Neill]

It is worth looking at the fact that we are consulting on and overhauling the way in which rough sleepers are counted. We need to get a better and more complete picture of the issue, because the previous system did not do it effectively. It is also worth saying that, although there has been fluctuation, the current figures suggest that, overall, statutory homelessness remains at historically low levels. However, I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point that we need always to press down on the issue. It is not an easy area to cover accurately, and I know that the Department will happily keep in touch with him on this serious and important issue.

To return to the point that I was addressing before the hon. Member for Hammersmith intervened, I accept that poor affordability and difficulties with affordability create a gap for aspiring first-time buyers, which is exactly the point made by the hon. Gentleman. Average house prices have increased, so we need to address that. I believe, however, that the way to do that is not necessarily through more and more intervention—although some intervention is always appropriate—but through giving communities control of development in their area and greater freedom, which is the reverse of what the hon. Gentleman was advocating. That is the way forward and I have more faith in the ability of Hammersmith and Fulham council than in that of the hon. Gentleman to tackle their area’s housing needs.

The Government are determined to encourage local authorities, developers and housing associations to work together with communities to deliver the homes they need through schemes such as the new homes bonus, which is a powerful tool. The Government have set aside nearly £1 billion for that scheme over the period of the comprehensive spending review. In fact, hon. Members may want to look at the new homes bonus calculator on the Department’s website, which shows how any particular local authority can benefit from it.

[Mr Slaughter]

Will the Minister give way?

[Robert Neill]

In a moment. I would like to make a point, if I may. In addition to that scheme, we are introducing the community right to build, which will streamline the arrangements where there is local support for neighbourhood planning. That is often thought of in terms of rural and parish areas, but there is no reason why it should not also apply to communities in London and our other great cities.

Yesterday, my Department, together with the Homes and Communities Agency, published the affordable homes framework. It sets out details on giving housing associations much more flexibility on rents and use of assets, for which they have been asking for some time. The key part of that is the new affordable rent model, which will be a constructive and useful tool that is expected to deliver up to 150,000 new affordable homes over the next four years. The old, rigid models did not always work. We need to be prepared to think more imaginatively.

[Mr Slaughter]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. He is right that Hammersmith council knows how to co-operate with developers. The west Kensington development that I spoke about earlier is a joint venture between the council and Liberty International, which is one of the biggest property firms. It will see the demolition of 750 good quality, newly modernised council homes, and the building of up to 8,000 luxury, high-rise, 30-storey blocks. Last year, the Minister said:

“Instead we want to see communities coming together to take responsibility for meeting their own housing ambitions…This is about giving communities real power and real influence.”

In the community under discussion, however, 80% of the tenants do not want their homes demolished. They want the power from this Government to take over their homes in the way described by the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake). Will the Minister support the tenants rather than the property developers who want to destroy their homes?

[Robert Neill]

As usual, the hon. Gentleman makes a serious issue simplistic. The Government are determined to make sure that those precise issues can be determined at a local level. He knows that it is probably not appropriate for Ministers, particularly in our Department, which has responsibility for oversight of the planning system, to comment on developments that might go through the planning process and end up being considered by our Department. It is appropriate to have a greater degree of nuance and flexibility in the system than was the case in the past, when rather rigid developments sometimes imposed unacceptable developments upon communities. The hon. Gentleman will, therefore, understand why I will not go down the same route as him.

The affordable homes framework is a bold initiative, and I believe that it will enable communities. It is also worth remembering that this Government are providing considerable funding towards the issues. We are investing more than £6.5 billion in housing, and we are investing considerable moneys in London, which has particular pressures that we all recognise and with which we seek to deal. That is why we are handing the Mayor of London the ability to take over the Homes and Communities Agency operations in London, so that he can align delivery more effectively with the strategic housing pot available, in co-operation with the London boroughs. That seems to us to be the right thing to do.

We need to address the issue of overcrowding. As the hon. Member for Islington North has rightly said, there are a significant number of overcrowded households. Although that applies to the private sector, I would not seek always to run it down, because responsible private landlords have a key role. There are also some 258,000 overcrowded households in the social rented sector, while 430,000 households in that sector are under-occupied by two or more bedrooms. That is why it is wrong to rule out our proposal to look at issues such as flexible tenancy. In some cases, people’s housing needs will change as their life histories progress, and it is sensible to give them the means to reflect that. It is not the right approach to have too rigid an adherence to subsidy based purely on bricks and mortar.

I have been generous with interventions, but I am running out of time, so I will write to hon. Members on the other specific and important points that they have raised.