| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
5 Mar 2003 : Column 859—continued
Matthew Green: Shropshire district council has a £4 million social housing programme for next year, using the last of its capital, which it must try to rush through in three months, including planning permission. If too many councils throughout the country do the same, it will still be at the discretion of the region to decide whether they may proceed or to prioritise something else. If that happens, it will be a scandal.
Mr. Davey: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The Government say that they are thinking about long-term strategies for sustainable communities, but they present policies that fall apart under initial scrutiny. A few weeks after announcing them, the Government try to patch up their collapsing framework. I hope that the Minister can assure the House that his Department's continual mistakes are not repeated.
New clause 3 seems to address the problems of clause 11 and is offered to the Government as a compromise. In Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Sue Doughty) made a powerful speech outlining that the likely effect of the proposals on her debt-free authority and others would be to prevent them from dealing with the key issue—recognised by the Government in their sustainable communities statement—of a shortage of affordable housing. New clause 3(2)(b) will ensure that grants repaid to authorities could be used to secure social housing. We explored that issue in great detail in Committee and the Government admitted that that was the case. New clause 3 enables the Government to put into practice their intention, so loyal Labour Members should support it.
New clause 6 is a bit of a curate's egg. I can support the second part but subsection (1) is bizarre, in that it goes against what was said by Conservative Members on the Select Committee that examined the problem of empty homes— when that matter was the responsibility of the then Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions—and reported on the need to improve the quality of information. We are passionate about that issue because there are more empty homes in every region of this country than there are homeless people in every region of this country. If that huge resource were used properly, the homeless problem could be tackled quickly, cheaply and in a sustainable way.
The Select Committee said that there was a need to improve the accuracy of data on empty homes, particularly in housing investment programme returns,
and to use geographical information systems to enhance the quality of information—something on which the Government are now moving. The Committee reported also a problem about the way in which council tax data could be used. The Information Commissioner took one view and Poole borough council obtained counsel's opinion that council tax data could be used for the purpose. The Committee sought clarification and called on the Government to end the confusion and bring forward legislation.The Government have done so in the form of the Bill, but I wonder where the hon. Members for Mole Valley (Sir P. Beresford), for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh) and for Leominster (Mr. Wiggin) are to be found, because they agreed to the Select Committee's report, in direct conflict with new clause 3. I hope that Conservative Front-Bench Members will sort out their position.
3 pm
The Conservatives may say that new clause 6 is tightly drawn because it relates the use of such data only to the notion of compulsory leasing, a proposal that was aired in the sustainable communities plan, which we shall have to debate on another occasion. We support the Government on those proposals, provided that there are appropriate safeguards, such as those for compulsory purchase.
Mr. Hammond: What safeguards would the hon. Gentleman propose?
Mr. Davey: It would be completely wrong for there to be no safeguards and I shall give the hon. Gentleman an example. Recently, I discussed with Jonathan Ellis, the chief executive of the Empty Homes Agency, the profile of people who leave their properties empty. The picture is mixed. Some of those people are extremely wealthy; they have a huge property portfolio and have never quite got round to dealing with it. They are absentee landlords and they simply do not bother. Others, however, are elderly and do not have enough money to maintain their property. They may be asset rich but they are income poor. They do not want the hassle of getting involved with bureaucracy. Other elderly people may be sick; they may suffer from dementia and have gone into a care home so they did not get round to putting their property to rights and letting it.
Such cases must be managed appropriately and the legislation must ensure that no local authority could treat such owners insensitively.
Mr. Raynsford indicated assent.
Mr. Davey: I am glad that the Minister agrees.
Such provisions should not, however, prevent us from adopting a public policy whereby empty properties are used to tackle homelessness. The Conservatives should agree. They may point out, rightly, that many empty properties are in the state sector, but that is true of only 10 per cent. of empty homes in London and the south-east. Of course, even that is too much and the problem needs to be tackled. We need to hold the Government and local authorities to account for that.
In my constituency, however, 90 per cent. of empty homes are in the private sector. Yes, local authorities could do a better job by using voluntary agreements. They could promote best practice and provide grants to repair and renovate homes so that they could go back on the market. Local authorities could act in partnership with private letting companies to ensure that owners receive a rental income. However, there is a question that the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge will have to face up to, because it is not covered in new clause 6. If best practice is adopted and there is an empty property strategy, if grants are offered and people are given support to use their assets, is there to be no backstop? If a person has a property that is desperately needed, should not the community take measures to put it back into useful possession? It would be difficult, even on libertarian grounds, to argue against that.
Mr. Hammond: We already have a well established procedure for compulsory purchase of property where it is required for a public policy purpose. The Government are significantly extending the scope of such procedures. My view, however, is that compulsory purchase is a different order of imposition on the rights of private property than compulsory leasing. Compulsory leasing requires an individual to finance the capital cost of an asset, of which the Government then dictates the use. That seems quite different from compulsorily purchasing a property where it is required for a public policy purpose.
Mr. Davey: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me an early opportunity to put right the Conservatives' flawed economic logic. The point is that the property owner will keep the asset, so that must be less damaging than compulsory purchase. We have not yet seen the final proposals, so the hon. Gentleman may have a point, but the idea currently being debated by the Empty Homes Agency and others is that the rental income will be shared with the owner. Indeed, it will all go to the owner once the state's costs have been met; for example, the costs of repair, renovation and administration. The proposals could be extremely beneficial for property owners. This is potentially a win-win situation.
Mr. Hammond: If it was in their interest, owners could do those things themselves.
Mr. Davey: In many circumstances, people have neither the competence nor the capability to do that for a variety of reasons. I look forward to future debates with the hon. Gentleman when I can give him some concrete examples. I urge him to talk to the Empty Homes Agency, which has commissioned a MORI poll of the type of people whom we are discussing so that we have a true profile. That information will be important in getting the measure right.
It is important to safeguard people's property rights, but it is wrong that there should be whole streets where properties are left empty—there is one such street in my constituency in an area of highly priced properties—when there are such huge homelessness and housing problems. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for
Runnymede and Weybridge keeps saying "Compulsory purchase". That is the illiberal position. The Liberal position is to go for compulsory leasing.
Mr. Hammond: If the hon. Gentleman would accept that there must be an option for a person who is compulsorily required to lease to require the authority to purchase his property, he may overcome my objection. Would he support such a safeguard?
Mr. Davey: That is a sensible proposal in principle and I hope that the Government will give it serious consideration. We might need a different regime to ensure that the system was slightly quicker than some of the compulsory purchase procedures, but the House should debate such matters to ensure that we get the legislation right. I hope that Conservative Members will at least agree that it is vital to use such resources, especially where there is high demand for housing and we need to tackle homelessness.
New clauses 7 and 16 require reports on housing revenue accounts and overhanging debt. We have no problem with that and I shall not rehearse the detailed and technical arguments with which we dealt in huge detail in Committee. We have some concerns about the way that the Government are going about housing revenue account reforms. As some of the money could go to the Secretary of State and would not be ploughed back into housing in local authorities, it is important to monitor the Government's policy. New clause 7 would do that, so we support it.
There were fierce debates in Committee about the Government's overhanging debt proposals. Following the views of the Select Committee and of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, I argued that, in effect, the Government were giving local authority tenants an extra incentive to opt for a housing transfer. There was some discussion of how the analysis was to be carried out and the Minister has written to me about that issue. However, I am still not convinced that an extra bribe is not being proposed. The Liberal Democrats are not against stock transfer. In many cases, it is appropriate and we have argued for it, but the key public policy issue is that stock transfer decisions should be based on a level playing field for different types of landlord. We fear that the Government's proposals will skew the balance in favour of stock transfer simply because they have failed to win some stock transfers.
The Government's analysis is wrong. Where stock transfers were lost, it was not because there was no bribe, but because the actual proposal did not make sense and tenants were right to vote against it. Where the proposals are put to tenants in a way that makes sense to them, they vote for them. I suggest that new clause 16 is right and that the clauses on housing issues are wrong.
I said that I would touch on the local authority social housing grant because it is crucial to these issues. I want to reiterate the shock and anger in many communities. People have been labouring away—whether in public sector housing authorities, registered social landlords or other stakeholders—to try to put together proposals, often with private developers, to build affordable housing on the back of the promise that local authority social housing grant will be part of the financial
package. Suddenly, the Deputy Prime Minister told the House in the middle of February that those people could not have the grant on which all their work had been done and on the basis of which their money had been invested. That was an absolute catastrophe.We are not over-emphasising the problem: affordable homes will not be built, and we are experiencing one of the biggest crises in respect of the shortage of affordable homes probably in the past 100 years. So not enabling proposals that are already halfway down the pipeline to go through seems not only wrong, but to go completely against the thrust of the Government's policy.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |