Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Tim Farron and Sadiq Khan

Tuesday 12th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

It usually takes a parliamentarian years to become out of touch, but the hon. Gentleman has done it in six months. Shelter says that for someone to be able to afford a £450,000 starter home, they will have to earn an annual salary of £77,000 and have a deposit of £98,000. Let us put aside for the moment the nurse, the junior doctor and the bus driver—people who get a starter job in a top FTSE 100 company in the City of London will not be able afford one of the Government’s starter homes. That is how out of touch the Conservative mayoral candidate and the Government are.

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

The right hon. Gentleman makes a good case. I understand entirely why he is focusing on London, but we must not allow the Government to pretend that London is a specific and solitary special case. There are many parts of the country, particularly the Lake district, the Yorkshire dales and many rural parts of the United Kingdom, where house prices are incredibly expensive, wages are low and the availability of social rented housing is essential to the social mix of those communities. Does he agree that that is not just a problem in London?

[Sadiq Khan]

I agree completely with the hon. Gentleman, but I would go a step further. I do not think that the Government are making a special case for London; I think that the combined effect of the Chancellor’s autumn statement and this Bill shows that the Government have it in for London.

As I have said, I visited Camden today, where the average cost of a property to rent is 73% of the average income there. So much for the Conservative mayoral candidate being in touch with Londoners. We also discovered last week that the Government are watering down the definition of what is affordable to include starter homes that cost 17 times the average British salary. By comparison, my amendment 89 would guarantee a new home for social rent to replace one that has been sold.

In short, amendment 112 is, to quote once more the hon. Member for Richmond Park, “elastic and misleading”. My amendment is clear and firm. It meets the tests that Londoners expect and I urge Members, especially anyone who claims to understand the housing crisis in London and who wants to help fix it, to ignore the overblown claims about amendment 112 and instead support my amendment 89.