Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Ruth Cadbury and Marcus Jones
Mr Jones
The number of children in temporary accommodation is below its peak in 2006, but we are certainly not complacent. That is why we have put £402 million into the flexible homelessness support grant over the next two years so that local areas can plan strategically to reduce the number of people in temporary accommodation.
Ruth Cadbury
Three and a half billion pounds has been spent on temporary accommodation in the private sector in the past five years. Most of the cost of this is found from the Department for Work and Pensions, even for households that work. Would this money not be better spent on building and letting council homes whose rent would be less than half that of expensive, poor-quality, temporary accommodation?
Almshouses
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Mr Marcus Jones
My right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster has made several points, and he can feed those into the housing White Paper process.
On the national planning policy framework, which was mentioned, there was a consultation last December on changes to the framework, with a view to increasing the supply of housing. Any changes that will be made in the framework will be undertaken through the White Paper process. Again, I encourage my right hon. Friend and other hon. Members to feed into that. The impact and implementation of section 106 agreements will again be looked at in the forthcoming housing White Paper, and I encourage my right hon. Friend to look into that.
I was a little disappointed by some of the comments made by the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth in the wider context of housing, because her party presided over the lowest ever level of house building in 2009. House building has picked up significantly since then. From 1997 to 2010, the stock of affordable homes in this country fell by 420,000. Since 2010, the coalition Government and the current Government have created 293,000 affordable homes. In this Parliament, we are continuing that, with a programme for another 100,000 affordable homes to rent. During the 13 years that they were in power, the Labour Government built fewer council houses than this Government have in the last six and a half years.
Ruth Cadbury
Perhaps the Minister could explain something relating to the net gain or loss of social rented housing since 2010. In my area, the right-to-buy discount is so high that council houses have been sold through right to buy at a faster rate than new social rented housing, both council and housing association, has been built by our local authority. On his comment about the number of council houses built under the last Labour Government, it is true that council house building was low, but housing association new builds were very high. We also delivered the better homes programme, in which a high proportion of council homes were brought up to the decent homes standard—they had been neglected for many years before that.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Ruth Cadbury and Marcus Jones
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
10. What assessment he has made of the effect of Government policy on levels of homelessness since 2010.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Marcus Jones)
Since 2010, we have enabled local authorities to help prevent or relieve over 1 million cases of homelessness, but one person without a home is one too many. So we have increased central funding for homelessness to £139 million over the next four years and protected homelessness prevention funding to councils amounting to £315 million by 2020.
Ruth Cadbury
I would be grateful if the Minister answered the question and, in particular, if he said why we have had a doubling of street homelessness since 2010 and why there are currently 370,000 households with no permanent home. Does he not see that these are a direct result of a series of Government policies introduced since 2010, and they are set to get worse—the removal of funding for new social rent housing, the bedroom tax, housing benefit caps, a rise in sanctions, the cut in funding for housing benefit for supported housing and the sale of 100,000 council homes?