Affordable Homes Bill

Debate between Tim Farron and Ian Swales

Friday 5th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I want to say a few words in support of my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) and his Bill. He has proudly put forward not just a single-headed, but a double-headed proposal today. We are talking about not only how to tackle some of the injustices and unfairnesses surrounding the spare room subsidy, but about how to look to the creation of more affordable housing and provide greater levels of stock across the country.

It is important to recognise that over the last few years we have acknowledged and seen an explosion in the housing benefit bill. That happened for a variety of reasons, but principally because of the rise in the cost of housing. While the Opposition when in government introduced the abolition of the spare room subsidy for the private rented sector, the coalition parties did so for the social rented sector. We understand the reasoning behind it, but we recognise, too, that the burden has fallen on some of the people least able to cope with the cost. We have not collectively, as either a Parliament or a country, tackled the real problem, which is of course the fact that there are simply not enough social rented homes and not enough homes generally.

I am proud of my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives for bringing this Bill forward, and I am proud of my party for pushing us all collectively to reflect on the proposals before us today. I would like to mention Vikki Slade and Julie Pörksen, who proposed at our conference a year ago that we look again at this policy. Frankly, Members of all parties would do well to admit that, on reflection, things could have been done better. Given that we were put in this economic crisis in the first place, it would be lovely to see from Opposition Members a change of heart and an admission that things did not go as well as they could have done.

Many people will be talking about the spare room subsidy today, and they are right to do so, but the second part of my hon. Friend’s Bill is equally important. The fact is that in 1981, the average deposit for a first-time buyer was 12% of the average income. Today, it is 83%, and nearly 3 million people aged between 18 and 30 are living with their parents, which is likely to go up by another 25% over the next five or six years. We have the lowest levels of home ownership in over a quarter of a century, and if we look at our social rented stock across the country, we see that it has been decimated over 30 years through the right to buy with no compulsion to replace the properties in any meaningful way.

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the record of the previous Government, which saw 420,000 social houses disappear from the stock, was truly shameful?