Localism Bill

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Monday 17th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Siobhain McDonagh]

That would be a shocking spectacle and I cannot imagine that any person in this House would find it acceptable.

We must consider the consequences of our actions. Private sector accommodation is, for most families, completely unaffordable. Most families who approach local authorities as homeless are young families at the start of their family life and with the lowest earning potential that they are likely to have in their lifetime. They will have to go on to housing benefit, so we will make families who could otherwise afford to pay their way welfare-dependent. We are saying to families, “You will be on housing benefit and if you try to better your life—if you take the extra day’s work or the promotion—you will lose so much housing benefit that it will not be worth your while.”

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that that does not fit well with the Government’s apparent concern about the size of the housing benefit bill?

[Siobhain McDonagh]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend and I wonder whether we are seeing joined-up government. What is worse than the pointless spending of that money is the fact that we are doing it to the detriment of those families. I appreciate that this is a slogan, but it means a great deal and many hon. Members of all persuasions could sign up to the idea that any social policy should be considered through the prism of whether it is giving “a hand up or a handout”. If the Government discharge homeless people into the private sector, they will be giving them a handout that will keep their aspirations low, because those people will know that they can never afford to go into work. Professor John Hills calculated that a couple with two children and a private rent of £120 a week would be only £23 a week better off if their earnings rose from £100 a week to £400 a week. That cap on aspiration will not only force people to stay down but will make them risk-averse. Would a single mum with two or three children who pays rent of £1,000 a month take a job that she might not be able to manage, or do the extra hours that might make her children’s care collapse, if it meant she would then have to give up that job, go back on to housing benefit and experience the delay that we all know happens with benefit assessments?

I ask Government Members to consider whether that is what they want to do to the most vulnerable families. Does it help to have taxpayers paying more in housing benefit and to alienate more families? Our job should be to encourage, and perhaps sometimes to force, people to work if they can, but this measure will prevent that from happening to hundreds of families.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Of course, I welcome the intention of the Bill—we are all in favour of more local autonomy—but I have struggled to make sense of it. The Bill is a hotch-potch of ideas and prejudices that in many cases pander to passing fashions.

I have one underlying and unifying concern. There seem to be insufficient guarantees within the Bill for the poorest and the weakest and those without a voice. They are not sufficiently protected, and I very much fear that unpopular causes and disadvantaged communities will be left behind.

I want to highlight two issues that cause me particular concern. The first relates to social housing, which the Government seem to see as a residual housing solution only, and not the bedrock of strong families and communities that it could be. Removing regional spatial strategies, limiting the length of social tenancies perhaps to two years only and requiring homeless people to take up accommodation in the private rented sector—accommodation that might be unstable or unsuitable for their family’s needs, and accommodation from which they might be forced to move repeatedly—will be bad for communities, children and families, and many people will simply fail to put down roots. It makes more likely poorer outcomes for those families and communities, and I am at a loss to understand why a Government who have said they care about neighbourliness and community strength would want to go down this route.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Does it not strike my hon. Friend as odd that a Government who have said that above all else they want to encourage people back into employment are providing that someone who gets one of these desirable housing association properties and finds employment might lose their house? Will that not be a disincentive to finding employment?

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend makes my next point: there is a complete lack of logic in people who better their circumstances by moving into employment running the risk of being moved out of their home. I cannot understand why Ministers feel that that supports their objectives and ambitions for increasing employment, and I hope that in responding to the debate the Minister will pick up on that point. I am also at a loss to understand what possible incentive there will be for people who think they might be in social tenancies for only a very short period either to maintain the quality of that housing—to care for it, keep it clean, well decorated and well maintained—or to participate in community activities, as the Government desire.

I also have questions about the proposals for the planning system. I want to question Ministers about the strength of their commitment and seriousness. I must warn them that local people are interpreting for themselves the references to considerable levels of influence and autonomy in making local decisions, and I want to know whether Ministers can guarantee—and intend—that level of influence and autonomy. I have an example of a live issue in my constituency: an active local campaign group, the Breathe Clean Air Group, has been campaigning against the location of a wood incinerator, against which hundreds of residents marched to object only last weekend. Local campaigners are already pointing to the Localism Bill as a means to give them the ability to stand up to what they see as a large commercial interest. Will Ministers give us clarity and assurances about what exactly they mean when they say that local people will have a voice?

I consider the Bill to be poorly thought through and irresponsible, often reflecting only knee-jerk populism and being in danger of raising false hopes. I am particularly concerned for people in Stretford and Urmston, who have lost out repeatedly in trying to ensure that under Tory-led Trafford council the poorest wards in my constituency are properly protected. I am very concerned that the Bill serves merely to legitimise such an approach.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts—or perhaps it should be gifts of jars of pickles; I am not quite sure.

In Scotland, we have more than three years’ experience of what the end of ring-fencing means. Its end was welcomed by a lot of councils of various political persuasions, although I am glad that the Labour group on my own council did not fall into the trap of thinking that it would get more power as a result. That did not happen. At a time when a council tax freeze was being imposed on Scottish councils, taking away ring-fencing did not increase the freedom of local councils to make decisions; rather, it reduced it. More importantly, it prevented some important policy initiatives from being pursued. An example is the Supporting People programme, which was funded to provide preventive services to help people to stay in their own homes for longer and to prevent new tenants from being evicted because they did not have enough support to learn how to budget and manage their tenancies.

Ending ring-fencing in a financial climate in which a Government’s priority often has to be the statutory and crisis services has resulted in the slow-burn, long-term preventive work suffering. I predict that the same will happen up and down the country, especially as the past three years have been relatively benign in Scotland, compared with what is about to hit local authorities in England and, because of the Barnett consequentials, in Scotland.

We have also heard about the community right to buy, and, yes, we already have that in Scotland, as the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) pointed out. Without funds to buy, however, it becomes an empty gesture. A community group in my constituency is setting up a community development trust, and it is very keen to go ahead. It knows which buildings and facilities it would like to take over, but at the moment it has absolutely no hope of any funding to enable it even to get started. When I was down here last summer, I took the opportunity to visit Shoreditch community development trust, which I had heard a lot about. It has done some fantastic work, well in advance of the big society, but the crucial factor in getting it started was the £3.8 million of Government funding that enabled it to take the first steps towards acquiring facilities that it could use to lever in more investment and facilities. Without funding, these proposals could become an empty gesture.

On the housing provisions in the Bill, I have no objection to alternatives to traditional social housing if they constitute a genuine addition. If not, they will make the situation worse, not better. However, partly as a result of the Bill and partly through what has already been announced, the burden of paying for new housing is now going to fall on tenants, who will have to pay higher rents. They will also find it harder to get work, or might find that there is a disincentive to get work. There is a role for mid-market housing. We have some in my area, and there is a group of people who need and want it, but it is not a substitute for subsidised, low-cost housing.

Nor is it right that people who move into the new housing now being built should be expected to move on after only a short time. To those who say that that will apply only to new tenants and that it will not affect others, I say that this is just the start. Various Conservative think-tanks have made this proposal over the past few years, but when I told people in the housing movement about it before the election they just laughed and said it would never happen. People should not believe that this will stop at new tenants; before we know where we are, security of tenure will be gone.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Hollingbery]

I do not think I shall, as I have been asked to be extremely rapid.

Tenure reform was essential, and I believe that a change to a potential 80% of market rent in social housing is also very sensible for the simple reason that it is about recycling assets. It is about building more social housing; getting more income from people means more social housing being built in the future. That must be welcomed.

[Sheila Gilmore]

rose—

[George Hollingbery]

No, I am not taking any interventions.

Finally, let me end with a few remarks on neighbourhood planning. I very much welcome the clauses on neighbourhood planning, which could seriously re-engage local people in deciding how their area looks and feels. I have some specific issues with the drafting. What is a neighbourhood forum? Who is in it? Who do they represent? Is it based on geography, is it a political group or is it a religious group? The Bill does not speak to that. At the moment, it requires only a constitution, three people and the interests of local people at heart. It does not refer to all local people, just local people. I think that those terms need to be pulled together and local councils need a better rubric against which to judge applications so that they can be rejected securely. The same applies to local areas. At the moment, a local area could be as small as a single street, which is not terribly helpful. I believe that that provision could be tightened.

Finally, a referendum to approve a neighbourhood plan or a neighbourhood development order will have no turnout restrictions. Where a small street has only 150 qualifying members, only 20 or 30 people might need to turn out to approve a neighbourhood development order. We need to make absolutely sure that the Bill provides for consultation to be as wide and as in-depth as possible, which will not happen unless the orders are modified.

Given the time available and in the interest of other Members speaking, I shall finish there.

--- Later in debate ---

[Toby Perkins]

I do not know why you were the recipient of that attack, Madam Deputy Speaker, but, assuming that the hon. Gentleman was talking about the Labour Government, I think that he should have listened to what I was saying. What I was saying was that local authorities will not have the capacity to influence their areas when faced with spending cuts as great as those with which they have been hit at this point. That is the fundamental difference.

As we have heard today from speaker after speaker, the removal of the housing targets will mean the building of less housing. In the context of a massive housing crisis and a growing population—

[Sheila Gilmore]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is ridiculous to suggest that transferring the cost of new housing from the state to the tenant will give councils and housing associations more money with which to build houses?

[Toby Perkins]

Absolutely, but that is by no means the most ridiculous suggestion that we have heard today. According to the hon. Member for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery), there is to be an affordable housing boom. He believes that tons more houses will be built, although successive Conservative speakers have rejoiced in the fact that local authorities will now be able to tell developers to clear off and prevent the increase in housing provision that we so clearly need.

In the face of a savage housing crisis, when local authorities are being hit by the toughest funding settlement in living memory, we are expecting the enactment of legislation which—as the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) made clear—ensures that, ultimately, those in the greatest need will bear the greatest burden of paying off the debt. What the hon. Gentleman said at Question Time at the beginning of the current Parliament is coming true, and the Bill is just one example of the way it will do so. We are seeing the Government abdicating all responsibility for housing targets. We are seeing—