Housing Supply (London)

Sadiq Khan Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2015 Westminster Hall

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

There are 14 Labour MPs wanting to speak in the debate, so it is disappointing that two Tory Back Benchers spent 25 minutes this morning filibustering on an issue that is important to many of us.

There is a housing crisis. Not enough homes are being built, and those that are being built are not of the right sort. There are not enough homes with a genuinely affordable rent—a social rent linked to earnings rather than market value. There are not enough homes being built for which people can pay a London living rent. There are not enough family homes being built, and there are too many being sold off-plan to people in Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia. I have nothing against those countries and the people who live there, but we cannot allow our homes to be used as gold bricks by foreign investors and to sit empty.

It is a con when people talk about the market value of properties. The Mayor has a definition of 80% of market value as affordable. The Valuation Office Agency’s private rental market statistics show that the market rent for a four-bedroom private property is £2,500; for a three-bedroom property it is £1,695; for a two-bedroom property it is £1,400; and for a one-bedroom property it is £1,155. We can see why there is a housing crisis in London, which some people do not want us to talk about in Parliament.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

On that point, does my right hon. Friend agree that that definition of affordable housing makes no sense, given that, in a borough such as mine, only a household with an income of £102,000 could reach the threshold of housing costs as no more than 40% of income? That would exclude the overwhelming majority of people in any housing need.

[Sadiq Khan]

My hon. Friend is right, and that is why there is a crisis. In the King’s Cross scheme, which my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) will know about, one-bedroom properties are selling at £985,000. The price for a two-bedroom property there is £1.7 million. In Heygate in Elephant Park, a studio flat will cost £569,000 and a two-bedroom property will cost £800,000. It is possible to get a penthouse at a discount, at £2.1 million. We now have a city where developments have “poor doors”. There is a door for people who can afford market value and there are poor doors for those who cannot.

Freedom of information tribunals have shown that developers in Heygate, the Greenwich peninsula and Earls Court have taken advantage of the viability con, which means that they can say it is not viable to build affordable homes. I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North talked about Islington, which now has a new scheme that will be open and transparent. Developers will have to publish their viability assessments for schemes. I do not care whether we use the term “rent control”, “rent cap” or “rent stabilisation”. We need to sort out the rental market in London. More than half the disposable income of those who rent—a quarter of Londoners—goes on rent. That is unacceptable and is a reason why last year more than 60,000 Londoners aged between 30 and 39 left London. We have a brain drain from London caused by the housing crisis.

To compound that, we have—even in the words of the two filibustering Tory Members who spoke in the debate— a housing supply crisis in London. What is their answer? It is to sell off housing association properties and force councils to sell off their most expensive properties. That will lead to a situation in which good councils such as Islington and Camden must sell the new properties that they have built. Social cleansing is taking place in London; we are copying Paris and New York for the wrong reasons.

If the Government are going to force councils and housing associations to sell properties, all that we need is that they should require them to build one before they sell one, like for like in the same area, unless there are exceptional reasons not to. Then London will not become a city for the rich only, with outer London for those who cannot afford to live in inner London. Conservative Members who have spoken may think that a modern London of that kind is acceptable, but those of us who have made the effort to come to this 9.30 am debate, but did not get the chance to speak because of the disgraceful filibustering, want change.

[Mr Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order. On several occasions, the right hon. Gentleman has tested my patience by using the expression “filibustering”. Nobody in this Chamber has been filibustering and if they had been, I would have brought them to order. I think it is very disappointing that, having relied on self-regulation, that seems manifestly to have failed and I have not been able to call as many Members present whom I would have wished to. However, we now have to move on to the wind-ups, because under the rules laid down by Mr Speaker we have a maximum of 10 minutes for the SNP spokesman. I call Dr Whiteford.