Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Tulip Siddiq and Greg Clark
Greg Clark
What the hon. Gentleman describes is not the experience across the country, including in Brighton and Hove. Councils are overwhelmingly able to build extra properties as a result of the sale of existing homes. I am not aware that Brighton and Hove proposes to return the money to the Government, which means that it is confident that it will be able to provide the extra homes.
Greg Clark
I am going to make some progress.
Before I took the interventions, I was saying that if we are to find the land, grant the planning permission, finance the development and build the homes, it is essential that the various players in the housing market come together to do it. It cannot be done individually. The Bill will help with that.
Let me take the example of the right to buy. Home ownership is an aspiration for 86% of people in this country. The Bill will make it possible, through the agreement that the housing association sector has made with the Government, to extend the right to buy to all 1.3 million tenants who currently do not have the right to become homeowners. That agreement is good for
“residents, for housing associations and the nation’s housing supply. Residents will get the opportunity to realise their dreams of homeownership and housing associations will be able to replace the homes sold, boosting the nation’s housing supply.”
Those were the words of the head of the housing associations’ collective body, the National Housing Federation.
It has been a 30-year injustice that council tenants have had the right to buy their homes but housing association tenants have not. I strongly believe that when they signed a tenancy agreement, housing association tenants did not sign away their aspirations to become homeowners. Housing association tenants share the same hopes and dreams as everyone else. They live on the same streets, they shop in the same stores, their children go to the same schools. It is only right that they should have the same opportunities as council tenants.
Greg Clark
I shall make some progress, if I may, as I know many Members want to speak.
What our generation has taken for granted has been slipping out of reach for many younger people. Planning policy has long recognised the need for local councils to provide for affordable housing as part of their plans. Paragraph 50 of the national planning policy framework sets out this requirement. Housing for affordable rent will always be important, but until recently public policy has had too little to say to those who would like to own their own home yet struggle to do so.
During the last three years, the Help to Buy scheme has helped 120,000 people with a deposit to buy a home, 80% of whom are first-time buyers. We need to go further locally, too, so the Bill introduces a requirement in planning law for councils to provide, through their planning functions, starter homes available to first-time buyers. During the next five years, we want to ensure that public policy recognises, as it always should have, that providing more affordable homes to buy is an important objective of policy if we are not to shut out the next generation from the opportunities that our generation has enjoyed.
Greg Clark
I shall give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) and in a few moments to Opposition Members.
Greg Clark
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is a cap and not a guide, and we want to see starter homes with prices well below that amount, but it is right to set a maximum.
Tulip Siddiq
The Secretary of State read out a long e-mail earlier. Perhaps he would like to listen to an e-mail that I received from a single mother who is worried about the new threshold that is being applied to the “pay to stay” measure, as a result of which families such as hers, on middle incomes, will be pushed into high levels of poverty in places such as Hampstead and Kilburn.
Greg Clark
I should be happy to see that e-mail, and if the hon. Lady speaks to me after the debate, I will of course take the matter up. However, I think it only fair to expect those who are fortunate enough to be earning a decent salary not to continue to benefit from the subsidy that would otherwise be available to housing associations. The revenues raised by it will remain with housing associations so that they can build up more properties.