Housing (London)

Tom Brake Excerpts

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is difficult, at a time when attacks are being made on the national health service and on state education at every level—from Sure Start to tuition fees—and when we are having to deal with the big society cuts to the voluntary and advice sectors, for housing to be given sufficient attention for us to see exactly what is happening as a result of Government policy; but what is happening in housing is as disastrous in its own way as it is in those other areas. I am therefore grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) for securing this morning’s debate, as it gives us an opportunity to talk at greater length than usual in Westminster Hall about the Government’s housing policy and its effect on London.

I shall not repeat what my hon. Friend said; he has many more years’ experience as a constituency MP and in dealing with housing problems in London than I do, but I adopt entirely the arguments he put forward, in particular regarding the pernicious effects he spoke of—the bad, insecure, inadequate and overcrowded housing that all London MPs must see every week in their surgeries. Those effects go far beyond housing conditions; they cover health, education and quality of life. It is a national scandal that they have been allowed to develop over far too many years.

I shall deal briefly with four aspects of housing. The first is the private rented sector; the second is the effect of housing benefit changes; the third is the Government’s policy on social rented housing; and the last is planning policy. One of the early decisions taken by the coalition Government was to abandon the previous Government’s proposals that resulted from the Rugg review—a national register of landlords, regulation of letting and management agents, and compulsory written tenancy agreements. When the Government made that announcement, the Association of Residential Letting Agents said that it was extremely disappointed. It said:

“This move risks seriously hampering the improvement of standards in the private rented sector, the sector's reputation, and the fundamental role it plays in the wider housing market as well as failing to protect the consumer who has nowhere to go when there is service failure or fraud”.

That is the view of the industry. My view, as a constituency MP, is that we are seeing a return to Rachmanism in parts of London, with appalling conditions of social rented housing. Perhaps the difference this time is that local authorities are colluding with bad private landlords, with things such as direct letting schemes and, now, the ability to discharge their obligation to the private sector permanently rather than temporarily.

I hear what was said by the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes). He is no longer in his place; he tends to pop in and out of these debates. I hope that Members on both sides will try to mitigate the effects of the housing benefit changes that his Government are introducing. It would be better if the Government were to withdraw and review those changes than to give a sop to those who, in their thousands, will be forced to move out of their homes from April onwards. I do not know how we are going to find adequate replacement housing for those hundreds of families in areas with property prices at the levels of Islington and Hammersmith—unless it is in more overcrowded, less salubrious streets and flats. There are few of those, however, because gentrification in inner London has meant that there really are no places where cheap property is available to rent.

It is social engineering. It is gerrymandering. It will force out poorer families who have made their homes in wealthier areas, perhaps over generations; gentrification has crept up on them, and they are now being told that they are not welcome in those areas but must move further out. I hear what the right hon. Gentleman had to say, but they are crocodile tears and warm words from the Liberal Democrats.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

On the subject of crocodile tears, does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that it was his party’s policy to consider the level of housing benefit? I presume that that review was intended not to increase housing benefit but to decrease it.

[Mr Slaughter]

I have heard the hon. Gentleman many times try to cling to the Labour party as a way of excluding his lamentable failure in supporting a Government who are systemically attacking poorer constituents.

[Tom Brake]

Is it true?

[Mr Slaughter]

The hon. Gentleman must have some poorer constituents, even in Carshalton and Wallington, but perhaps not as many as I do. It would be better if he kept quiet in these debates rather than making such inane points.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Slaughter]

I see the coalition in action.

[Tom Brake]

He’s not going to answer.

[Mr Andrew Turner (in the Chair)]

Order.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

Thank you for calling me to speak in this debate, Mr Turner. I apologise for missing the opening remarks of the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn).

[Jeremy Corbyn]

You have heard them before.

[Tom Brake]

Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) said that I had perhaps heard some of the hon. Gentleman’s comments before. I was in a meeting with the Peabody Trust and some of its residents to discuss housing, which is why I was late for the debate. I know that the hon. Gentleman has been a passionate and consistent defender of housing under successive Governments, whatever their political colour. Therefore, he is right to say that I have heard him make those comments before in the 13 years since my election to this House. Nevertheless, the fact that I have heard them many times before does not mean that they do not have great merit, and I suspect that I would not differ much from his analysis of the problem in London, albeit that we might have some differences of opinion about possible solutions.

I take a different view about the comments made by the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter), whose proposals seem to exist in a vacuum. His proposals neither take into account the financial environment in which we are operating nor acknowledge that his own Government planned to examine the level of housing benefit being paid to people in London and other parts of the country. I asked him a question about that issue, but he carefully evaded answering it. He failed to acknowledge that issue, when it would have been the decent thing for him to have done.

That brings me to decent homes. The Minister will know that Sutton Housing Partnership, the arm’s length management organisation in my area, has submitted a new bid for decent homes funding. It is a scaled-back bid compared with the bid that was originally proposed. The partnership had secured a limited amount of funding in the first year of the programme from the previous Government, and I hope that, under the new bidding arrangements, it will succeed in securing substantial funding during the lifetime of the programme that it needs to implement to ensure that social housing in the London borough of Sutton benefits from that funding, as it should do. In many respects, social housing in Sutton has not benefited from the substantial programmes that local authorities in other areas have implemented to repair windows, bathrooms, kitchens and the like.

Many parts of my constituency would have benefited from those repair programmes. For example, the St Helier estate was built in the 1930s. It stretches into Mitcham and Morden and into Sutton and Cheam. It requires investment: it would be unfair to say that many of the properties on the estate have not been touched since the 1930s, but many improvements need to be made. I hope that the Minister will be able to say a little about the progress of the programme to improve that estate.

My second point is about the meeting that I have just had with the Peabody Trust and some of its residents on the St Helier estate. What those residents are trying to achieve is very much in keeping with what the Government are trying to do in relation to the big society. In other words, those residents want to take responsibility for the management of their estate. However, the difficulty arises because that estate has a mixture of tenants, shared ownership, residents and leaseholders. Therefore the structure of tenure is very complex, and I acknowledge that.

[Mr Philip Hollobone in the Chair]

I am pleased that we have someone from the Department for Communities and Local Government attached to that programme, who is working with the residents of the estate, because Sutton is one of the vanguard boroughs when it comes to the big society. That person will try to find ways to work through those problems with the support of the Peabody Trust, which is also keen to address them. The residents feel that they will be able greatly to reduce the costs associated with the maintenance of that development—the Beddington Zero Energy Development or BedZED, which many hon. Members will be familiar with—if they are able to achieve some type of voluntary arrangement to manage those properties. As I understand it, a voluntary arrangement is required to work within the complicated tenure structure that exists on the estate.

Another issue that I hope the Minister will respond to is that, as I understand it, housing associations in the UK abide by European regulations when they advertise for contracts in a way that housing associations in other European countries do not. That means that housing associations in the UK face an additional financial burden as a result of following the appropriate EU process for advertising, which housing associations in other EU countries do not have to follow. If it were possible to remove that burden from housing associations in the UK, it would clearly reduce the costs involved from the point of view of tenants, the Government, shared owners and leaseholders. I hope that the Minister is examining that issue.

I know that the Minister cannot take any action on the final issue that I want to discuss, but he might want to comment on it. It is the issue of planning applications, and specifically the speed with which they are processed. From both a job creation point of view and the point of view of providing housing, particularly if that involves converting or extending properties, the quicker that planning applications are processed, the sooner the builders can get on with the work. I have had representations about that issue myself. I had one on Saturday from a local builder, who is waiting for the completion of four planning applications. He said that, apart from holding him and his staff back from doing their jobs, it is having an impact on the people who will occupy those properties or conversions, once they are completed. Those are the specific issues that I want the Minister to respond to.

I conclude by saying that although I did not hear—regrettably—the comments of the hon. Member for Islington North when he opened the debate, I am sure that he made some salient and pertinent points about the importance of trying to address the substantial housing deficit in London and about the potential consequences of the changes to housing benefit, of which I know that hon. Members from all parts of the House are aware. I hope that the Minister can reassure us on those points this morning.

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[Chris Williamson]

I could not agree more, because my hon. Friend is absolutely right. Again, research has demonstrated that the private rented sector is far and away the worst in terms of providing adequately insulated accommodation. That adds to the burden of people living in such accommodation, obviously, but it also has significant environmental implications for our cross-party commitment to reduce carbon emissions and address climate change. The private rented sector clearly has a big part to play. My hon. Friend has made a forceful point and has provided another reason why more must be done to regulate the private rented sector.

In conclusion, I return to the importance of investing in housing and of a bricks and mortar subsidy rather than a personal subsidy. We should be seeking to turn the juggernaut around and emphasising building new houses and providing subsidy for affordable housing in London in order to supply the homes that people desperately require. That would provide a huge economic stimulus and create many jobs for local people as well as, most importantly, homes.

Good quality homes would also have huge implications for educational outcomes for the many people living in overcrowded circumstances who would be able to move into more appropriate accommodation. Again, my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North made that point. We could also address the health of people in inadequate housing by investing more in providing more and better affordable housing. Crime and antisocial behaviour would be reduced, because people would be living in better circumstances rather than being forced out on to the streets in the evening, where young people get into mischief. It would certainly make a big difference to the quality of personal and family life, which would have a massive, beneficial knock-on effect on the wider community.

[Tom Brake]

Is the hon. Gentleman about to be more specific about what financial commitment his party would make and how many additional properties they would build? Also, would he exclude the sort of option that is occurring in my constituency, for instance, where a housing association’s regeneration of Durand close depends on the sale of private properties as part of the development? Admittedly, those properties are in the same place, not in a different location. Is he excluding the proposed option to give housing associations additional funding to build more properties?

[Chris Williamson]

There is a desperate need for public investment in social housing. On the previous Labour Government’s record, although we certainly could and should have done more in terms of new build during the first part of our Administration, our record on bringing existing housing stock up to a decent standard shows that it was a worthwhile policy initiative and that, in large measure, we achieved it. I know that some areas in London—maybe the hon. Gentleman’s constituency is among them—still have not benefited from the decent homes initiative, but 90% of affordable, social and council housing throughout the country and in the capital has benefited.

We must get away from examples such as the one that the hon. Gentleman mentioned, in which housing associations develop market properties, sell them at a profit and use the money elsewhere. In my view, we ought to exclude that, because it is not the way forward. That is not where housing associations ought to be. The main thrust of what I am saying is that expenditure on housing benefit in this country is massive. We must find a way to shift from personal subsidy in the form of housing benefit to a subsidy of bricks and mortar, so we can build more affordable housing for the sake of all the economic and social benefits that would flow from that. That is what the Government should be considering. I will be interested to hear the Minister’s comments.