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Ian Lucas: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one of the biggest difficulties when it comes to dealing with antisocial behaviour, or what has been called learnable crime, is that agencies such as the police, local authorities, community councils do not talk to each other? Straightforward solutions are missed as a result.
Matthew Green: My immediate response is that, if those agencies are not speaking to each other, it must be the role of the local MP to ensure that they begin to do so. Perhaps matters are different in the hon. Gentleman's area. If local agencies in my area were not in touch with each other, I would make sure that they got together and spoke to each other. I would not let them get away with not doing so. It is possible for MPs to have an influence in that way.
One difficulty with antisocial behaviour is that the Government's approach has been to vilify young people. In effect, the Anti-Social Behaviour Bill says that young people are the problem and that a solution can be achieved by hitting them harder with a stick. Some elements of the Bill are necessary and welcome, but the proposal in respect of the dispersal of groups is unacceptable. At its worst, the Bill will punish innocent people for the misbehaviour of others, as those innocent people will be the ones to be dispersed from an area when problems are caused by outsiders. That approach will cause young people to have less regard and respect for their communities and for the forces of law and order. It is not an approach that the Government should be following.
Mr. Edward Davey: On the Sunray estate in Tolworth in my constituency, we have the problem of youth gangs committing antisocial behaviour and terrorising some of the residents. Last week, I held a meeting with local police who told me that they did not want to criminalise young people but to find diversion tactics—other ways to reach out to them and to find other things for them to do—as well as empower the residents so that they could link up and build the sort of community that is the only sure foundation for stopping such antisocial behaviour.
Matthew Green: I thank my hon. Friend for that point. Perhaps the saving grace of the Anti-Social
Behaviour Bill is that the Association of Chief Police Officers has made it fairly clear that it thinks the police will never use the dispersal powers. Once again, we have a piece of legislation that will probably never be used.
Ian Lucas: May I share with the hon. Gentleman details of a case from my own constituency? A letter arrived on my desk yesterday morning from a lady who described how, due to the behaviour of between 25 and 30 young people in her area, she needed protection from the police. They asked her to contact me to make it clear that they wanted dispersal powers to deal with those incidents. Today, I shall write to her to let her know that the Liberal Democrats do not support such powers.
Matthew Green: We certainly do not support the dispersal powers that are currently set out. I am happy to defend that position.
Housing has been mentioned. The right to a roof over one's head is key to people's quality of life. I want to consider three aspects. The first is affordable housing to rent. As we have heard, there has been a decline—especially since 1997, as it happens—in the amount of new social housing that has been built, although that decline started as long ago as 1990. The number of new houses registered to social landlords has been in decline since then.
The situation is exacerbated by the continued existence of the right to buy, especially in areas of high housing demand. Local councils should be given the power to decide both whether right to buy should apply in their area and on the scale of the discount to be offered. That would stop the erosion of housing stock in high-demand areas.
Mr. Hammond: Selling a house under right to buy does not cause that house to be lost from the housing stock; it causes it to be occupied by exactly the same person who occupied it on the day before it was bought and who would have continued to occupy it on the day after it was bought even if it had not been bought.
Matthew Green: The hon. Gentleman is clearly unaware of the number of cases of abuse of the right-to-buy system. People are encouraged to take up that right, but after a couple of years a company acquires the house. There is huge profiteering by people who are not the original tenants.
Richard Younger-Ross (Teignbridge): My hon. Friend may be aware that in rural constituencies, former council houses in small villages have a high value. They can be sold on after four, five, six or 10 years at a large profit and are then lost to the social market.
Matthew Green: My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. My constituency is a rural one and affordable housing is the No. 1 issue. People want more homes to rent. The reason that there are fewer such homes is that too many of them were sold under the right to buy.
Mr. Hammond: Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that his objection is to abuse of the right to buy scheme and
not to the scheme per se? Earlier, he appeared to be saying that local authorities should be able to opt out of the right to buy.
Matthew Green: I said that by removing the discount local authorities would be able, in effect, to opt out. That is giving local choice to local communities, something to which I thought the Conservatives had converted themselves over recent months—to the shock of many of us: local solutions for local problems.
Mr. Andrew Turner: Another aspect of local choice for local communities is that of who should be on their housing list. My constituents complain furiously that people come from the mainland and are housed in my constituency. Can the hon. Gentleman tell us whether the Liberal Democrats support the right of local authorities to determine who should be on their housing list?
Matthew Green: I have to point out that Tory asylum policy is to find an island, as yet unspecified, on which to stick all asylum seekers. With that in mind, the hon. Gentleman should be wary of talking about housing and incomers.
We need more registered social landlord properties, and they can be delivered through the planning system. Several local authorities, including one in my area, have adopted a policy requirement of 50 per cent. affordable homes on sites of two or more houses. That is much higher than the Government's recommendation of 30 per cent. affordable homes on sites of 19 or more. In areas of high demand, especially around London and in the south-east, I encourage the Government to push the figure up to 50 per cent. on sites of two or more houses. In that way, the market can deliver extra rented homes.
We also need affordable houses to buy. The rampant growth in house prices means that in large parts of the country few people can afford to get on to the housing ladder. In London and the south-east, the problem affects key workers. In rural areas such as mine, where wages are low but house prices have risen due to people retiring to the area, local working families can no longer afford to get on to the ladder.
I offer a positive solution. It was dreamed up by South Shropshire district council and has already been adopted in the Dartmoor national park: the use of the golden share scheme, under arrangements set out in section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, to ensure that when a property is built it is bought, at a reduced amount, by people who qualify as local and who need to live in the area because they have local links or work there. However, when they sell the property it cannot go on to the open market; there are restraints under section 106 so that it remains affordable in perpetuity. The system was introduced in south Shropshire in January.
The Minister may not know about the scheme in detail, so I shall not ask her for an instant response, but I urge to look into it. It offers a way to create a middle tier of affordable housing whereby people can own 100 per cent. of their property with no shared equity. Such houses remain affordable for local families.
Houses should also be affordable to live in. The Government could do much more to improve building regulations to ensure that energy use is reduced, through
measures such as the incorporation of natural light and heating in the design of houses. If they were serious about the introduction of micro combined heat and power plants to serve all properties with a gas supply—about 70 per cent. of UK houses—they could replace nuclear power within the next 15 years, as long as they allow net metering. That would produce a dramatic effect; cheaper heat and light will make homes more affordable to live in. There is much that the Government can do about that and I hope to hear positive things from the Minister.We have already discussed post offices, but pharmacies are also under threat. The quality of life in local communities depends on local post offices and local pharmacies. We cannot do without them. The Government must find a way of reversing their course on post offices. We want more post offices to open and to protect the ones that we have already, not the continual decline first of rural and then of urban post offices. Before it is too late, the Government must stop taking the same route in relation to pharmacies. We must protect small, local pharmacies.
Much can be done to encourage small shops; for example, by changes to the uniform business rate. The car parks of large out-of-town supermarkets are, in effect, untaxed, because the business rate is levied only on the building and not the car park. If we changed the taxation system so that it took account of land value rather than rateable value, supermarkets could be taxed on their extremely profitable large car parks and small shops in towns would pay lower taxes—[Interruption.] It is, in fact, Liberal policy.
We have heard about facilities for children. Sure start is a success, which we need to build on, and the Government ought to be making announcements about increasing the extent of that initiative. We also need a coherent policy about play areas and green areas. After all, under Conservative Governments, playing fields were sold off. We need to protect playing fields and local councils need to register them.
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