Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Simon Hughes and Heidi Alexander

Tuesday 11th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

Last month the Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), called on the Government to launch a full review of family law and justice for children. Has he since been sat on by the Lord Chancellor or can he now stand up at the Dispatch Box and formally announce his review?

[Simon Hughes]

I have not been sat on and I work collaboratively with all my colleagues in the Department. We are committed not only to talking about these things but to doing things. Last month, we introduced a whole set of new provisions that give support to people in the family courts. We have added legal aid for people going to mediation and now for the first mediation. We are reviewing what further steps we can take, and there will be further announcements in due course.

Council and Social Housing

Debate between Simon Hughes and Heidi Alexander

Tuesday 6th March 2012 Westminster Hall

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) for introducing this important debate. I want to make a few points. Having a constituency not very far from that of the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), we share many of the same analyses. Another London MP, the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer), has exactly the same sort of housing need pressure on him as I have had for every year since I have been a Member of this House. The pressure on me has not altered; it has been the same under Labour and Tory Governments and even under this Government. It is still 40% or more of the people who come to see me who ask for help with their housing. They may want new housing because they are living in overcrowded conditions, a first home at a cost they can afford, repairs to be done or whatever. The issue, therefore, remains hugely important.

A few months ago, the Halifax and Lloyds bank sent me—and probably many other Members—some key facts about my constituency. I think I knew them, but I will relay them to you, Mr Caton, for the purpose of the debate. The average house price in my constituency at the time this pamphlet was issued in December 2010 was £310,621. The average national house price was £164,310, which was nearly half the cost of a house in a seat such as mine, where most people come from a working-class background and where many have lived all of their lives, and generations before. The average earnings in a constituency such as mine were £52,755, while the average earnings across the UK were £32,178. Of course London earnings are higher, but they are not so high that they make up for the additional housing costs.

My first point is that for people in high-cost areas—it applies not just to London but to inner-city Leeds, Manchester and so on—the additional money that they earn does not make up for the additional cost of their housing. That is a challenge that can only be met by supported housing. By definition, if people do not have the wages to be able to buy into the private sector as owner-occupiers, social housing must be provided.

Secondly, we are required, therefore, to build as much as possible. All the evidence suggests that if we are to get people into work and keep them in work, we need construction projects, whether it is big infrastructure projects or housing. It is how we can get most people into work, doing skilled and productive jobs, and thus benefiting the local economy. It is a win-win situation: we house people and provide work for them.

Thirdly, I have a pre-Budget plea. The Chancellor could help this situation with some tax changes. If we taxed unused, undeveloped brownfield land as if it had been developed, we would incentivise the owners to use the land. They would realise that there was no point in sitting on undeveloped land because they would be paying the same tax as they would on developed land. Let me repeat publicly the plea that I have made to my colleagues in private. Site value rating—it can be called by another name—which the Liberal Democrats have espoused for many years, is really important. We must incentivise people to put their land on the market so that there is the space on which to construct our buildings. There are many unused sites in my constituency that still could and should be used for housing. We must have a tax system that incentivises proper development of property.

If there is new council housing, and there should be, we must change the rules over right to buy. The discount regime has been varied. It was much higher and was rightly brought down by the Labour Government, and it has been changed again under this Government. The incentive on councils to build new council housing is never going to be great if, immediately it is built, it is bought out of the council housing sector. There is an argument that different rules should apply to new-build council property and existing council property. I have never supported the discounts when they were high. There should always have been a regime in which the whole of the money went back to the council so that the stock could be replaced. For many years, though, the money went to the Government, leaving the council with only some of it.

I am in favour of mixed communities, but mixed use of blocks of properties, either flats or tower blocks, often does not work at all. There is the tenant who, in many cases, is there for life; the right-to-buy person, who will be there for life or a long time; and then the people who rent, either from people who have bought the flat or from people who have bought and sold on. They tend to be there for two minutes—I exaggerate slightly—and have no stake in the community. They are not naturally very good neighbours. They may not be inherently antisocial, but they may be students, visitors or here on holiday. Such a mix does not make for community cohesion, and we may need to have different rules in the future. I appeal to Ministers to think about how we manage multi-occupancy places—places that are not detached, semi-detached or terraced. The system does not work well at the moment. As any local authority will say, managing an estate with that mix of people is really difficult.

[Heidi Alexander]

The right hon. Gentleman is talking about the right to buy. Obviously, his Government have consulted on the enhanced right to buy. For the sake of clarity, I want to know whether he supports the proposed £50,000 limit on the discount that can be applied.

[Simon Hughes]

My instinct is to keep the limit where it is. There is such a need for social rented housing that we do not need to encourage people at the moment.

I have two final ideas. The hon. Member for Great Grimsby and I had an exchange earlier. It is important that we get out the message that it will be up to local authorities to decide whether all or some of their properties will be secure tenancies in the future. I worked very hard to ensure that that was the outcome. My colleagues will remember that in the summer of 2010, the Prime Minister floated the idea that it might be the policy of the Government to end secure tenancies in every local authority.

I was very clear about that from the beginning. I went to see the Minister for Housing and Local Government immediately and he helpfully allowed me to look at the housing policy paper. I was clear that we needed to have a policy that only allowed that if the local authority decided that that should be the policy. We must not frighten people, particularly older people, into thinking that they will lose their security of tenure where they are—that does not apply—or that it will follow that in future council tenancies in Southwark, Lewisham, Grimsby or anywhere else there will not be security of tenure. Councils can decide to keep every property, or 90% of properties or every estate bar one as secure tenancies if they wish. I support that as a principle of localism. I will fight to ensure that my local authority, whoever runs it—it has been run by us and by Labour over the years—retains the security of tenure for those who move into council properties unless there is an all-party consensus in a particular block that it should not be retained, for other management reasons.

Finally, I support the Housing Minister and my hon. Friend the Minister who will respond to this debate in saying that if there are people who end up with high incomes, it is wrong that as council tenants they do not pay for that property the market rent it would fetch on the open market. This is a difficult area. The Housing Minister has said that there should be a threshold of £100,000, which I support; that is an easy starting place. I cannot justify saying to my constituents who are knocking on my surgery door that there is not a place for them because someone with a family income of £50,000, £60,000, £70,000, £80,000, £90,000 or £100,000 is sitting in a council property paying a council house rent. We have to deal with that issue, because that is an inequity that was never intended to exist. These homes were intended to be for people on low incomes who could not afford to go elsewhere. At the moment, we have people in them who are on much higher incomes. I do not suggest that those people should be evicted—that would be inappropriate, because we want mixed communities—but they should pay the full whack.

In conclusion, I say to my hon. Friend the Minister that I am grateful for many of the initiatives that have been introduced, particularly the new homes bonus, which allows all authorities—including mine—to spend money on housing. I understand the difficulties that the Department for Communities and Local Government has had in trying to win the battle to get the money that it needs. I am pleased that the new affordable renting system does not mean that the properties concerned will all be at 80% of market rents; in London, I think the average is 64% of market rents, which is better than 80% of market rents. We must try to ensure that we have the maximum number of properties at lower rather than higher rents.

I will continue to urge my hon. Friend the Minister—as I know he would wish me to do—to argue within his Department and within Government as a whole that we should have more local authority housing wherever possible, or that we should give councils the freedom to build it, because we have a huge unmet need for such housing in many parts of our country. We need more local housing that is not all immediately swallowed up by being bought up and disappearing from the social housing sector. I hope that message is heard loud and clear within Government, and I hope that my colleagues within Government are arguing very strongly for it, so that at the end of five years the coalition can have a better record on housing than that of the Governments that have gone before; I know that that is my hon. Friend’s aspiration.

Localism Bill

Debate between Simon Hughes and Heidi Alexander

Wednesday 18th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hughes]

I stand rebuked, Mr Deputy Speaker. I was tempted by the right hon. Gentleman, but I will not be any more. I will make a few more comments, and then sit down.

The next issue is how exactly the transfer of powers back to London will work. It is certainly right that, as the Bill proposes, we get rid of the London function of the Homes and Communities Agency, which is a quango, and transfer it to a democratically elected Mayor answerable to the 25 elected members of the London assembly. That is a good thing. It is also certainly right that the Government abolish the Government office for London. There is no need for a Government office for London as well as a Mayor, a London assembly and a Greater London authority. All those policies are heading in the right direction.

We now need to solve the further dilemma of how we strike the right balance between London-wide decisions, which are perfectly proper, and the interests of the boroughs. I understand that there is still some unresolved tension in that regard. My colleagues on the London assembly and across London think that, on balance, the Government are heading in the right direction, so today, although obviously the hon. Member for Lewisham East is entitled to make her case, we cannot support her. However, I do not want her to take that to mean that there are not further conversations to be had. Obviously the Bill will go to the House of Lords, and there will be opportunities to look at these things afresh.

I am hopeful that today’s debate will flag up the need to ensure—I am happy to have further conversations with colleagues about this—that the new architecture is the right architecture. I heard clearly what the Minister said about the Mayor’s power being subject to the two-thirds support of the London assembly, and I agree that that amounts to a requirement for a cross-party endorsement or cross-party veto. That will be a welcome control mechanism. I do not criticise the fact that the representatives, particularly the constituency representatives, should be able to speak for their constituencies, including for the borough councils within those constituencies, which is one of their jobs.

[Heidi Alexander]

What does the right hon. Gentleman make of what I see as something of a conundrum in the Bill? If a neighbourhood forum in his constituency came up with a neighbourhood plan, it could be completely overridden by the establishment of a mayoral development corporation, over which his community, councillors and local authority will have had no say.

Decent Homes

Debate between Simon Hughes and Heidi Alexander

Thursday 27th January 2011 Westminster Hall

[Simon Hughes]

That is a real issue. When the London Docklands Development Corporation was developing Rotherhithe and Surrey docks, it contracted with a consortium of six housing associations to develop the place at the end of the Rotherhithe peninsula. That was fine in practice, and all the housing associations were very interested, but when it came to delivering the management of that bit of the borough, it was hopeless because problems arose over the common parts and the public roads. In the end, the housing associations had to agree that one of them would take over the management of all the areas owned by the other five.

My friend, the hon. Member for Vauxhall, argued strongly in favour of tenant-management organisations, which I support and which are often small, bottom-up organisations. Ways must be found of allowing such organisations to retain that degree of autonomy, but within a federation of local housing associations. That may be the way in which we can bring together the small specific housing associations without being draconian and say that they must pass a specific threshold.

It was good that the Labour Government set up the decent homes programme in 2000. For the record, it was sad that they fell short. I understand all the constraints that existed, but in the end the programme did not deliver on its aspiration. It was a judgment call. The result was that the new build of housing under Labour was dreadful—in fact it was more dreadful than under a previous Tory Government. Labour will have to defend that judgment call. The present Government are right in saying—the Minister and I were talking about this only recently—that they have to encourage both new build and the renovation of existing stock. We must do both in parallel; we cannot put all our eggs in one basket.

All local authorities that have social housing—apart from areas in the north-west, such as Burnley, where there is a surplus of housing and where the issues are entirely different—need both new build and renovation. I am talking about all the London boroughs and most of the rest of the country, both rural and urban.

There also needs to be flexibility in the decent homes standard. As Nick Stanton says, there are different criteria for someone on the seventh floor of Lupin Point in my constituency in Bermondsey and for someone in a cottage in a tin-mining village in Cornwall, which may still be local authority-owned. There needs to be the flexibility for that to be defined locally.

When my colleagues were leading the administration in Southwark, they always said that they wanted to apply their own standards rather than the off-the-shelf Government standards. There is also a very different view from the residents. I visited the famous prefab estate in Lewisham—I do not know whether it is in the constituency of the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander)—which is a wonderful place to go. I have not followed every twist and turn of the saga, but I think that I am right in saying that the council has decided to have it demolished. I regret that because, bizarrely, prefabs that have existed since the war were very popular homes for the people who lived in them. They will not conform to all the decent homes standards, but they were warm and had gardens. Therefore, we should be careful about not being over-prescriptive from the centre.

[Heidi Alexander]

Given that the right hon. Gentleman raised the subject of the Excalibur estate, I cannot resist making a comment. He is right to say that the council has decided to demolish and rebuild the estate, but it made that decision after conducting a ballot of all tenants on the estate. The ballot was incredibly close, with more than 50% voting for the demolition and just under 50% voting against it. The costs of renovating the properties and bringing them up to a decent standard were considered. Indeed that was something that many families who live on that estate very dearly wanted. None the less, the difficult decision has been taken.

[Simon Hughes]

I appreciate how difficult the decision was. Prefab homes are often really popular—they were in Southwark—and there are not many left. That prefab estate was the iconic last redoubt of the post-war London prefab.

I make a plea to the Minister and, through him and his colleagues, to local councils. The decent homes programme must always be re-evaluated on the basis of an up-to-date stock condition survey, but other flexibilities are needed as well. The first is the flexibility to which my friend the hon. Member for Vauxhall referred; I heard the exchange between her and the Chair of the Select Committee. It is nonsense that Lambeth has 600 empty council properties—that is the figure that I was given—because they are allegedly not decent homes, so after tenants leave, the council cannot put another tenant in. There must be a non-bureaucratic, non-municipalist way to engage people from the voluntary sector and community groups to make those homes liveable. There are always people willing to do so. We cannot allow only builders and plumbers in; there are lots of people. I can think of a mate of mine who has just retired—he worked in the bus garage in Catford, as it happens—who is a really good handyman. He is looking for things to do in his early retirement, and he has fantastic construction skills. Lots of people are willing to do it. We must engage the community and ensure that homes do not sit empty just because they are not in the council’s programme for 2011.

The other thing that is needed is decent common spaces such as entrance halls, lift lobbies and landings. It makes all the difference. Like my colleagues, whether in Nottingham or London, I can go to two tower blocks in the same borough of identical build and identical height, one of which is clean and pleasant, smells nice, looks nice and has had a touch of paint, the other of which, of the same age, is dreadful and unkempt with peeling paint. We must ensure that councils understand that they should be able to get on with the quick and easy bits of work that can improve people’s quality of life hugely for five years without massive spend: it is not about putting in new lifts or redoing the whole building; it is not about having scaffolding up to the 20th floor for half a year; it is about little things.

Much more inventiveness is needed to make homes in the public and socially rented sector the same quality as we would want our places to be. For me, the test is always, “Would I want to live here and invite my family to come into this flat?” If the flat is great but getting there is like going through a sewer, to be blunt, that is not acceptable.