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Mr. Clifton-Brown: Will my hon. Friend explain to Labour Members who are so hostile to the right to buy why their Government preside over the highest number of homeless people in the history of this country?
Mr. Hayes: I do not want to labour the point about the Government's failure in social house building. I have mentioned it twice already and this is the third occasion. To refer to it four times would be excessive. The Minister, the Under-Secretary and the whole Front-Bench team bear the burden heavily. It must be engraved on their hearts that, as homelessness increases, their record on social house building worsens. We should move on swiftly to avoid causing any further embarrassment to Government Front-Benchers.
Jim Knight: I know that the hon. Gentleman has visited my constituency, because he wrote and told me about it when he was a spokesman on agriculture. He may remember from that visit that there is an acute shortage of affordable housing in my area, largely created by the right to buy and the inability to find anywhere in our beautiful natural environment to build any more housing. Is not the effect of the right-to-buy policy on our rural areas, where families are moving out and schools and post offices are closing, written on his heart? Schools and post offices cannot be sustained because of the lack of social and affordable housing that the Conservative party created.
Mr. Hayes: It is flattering that the hon. Gentleman remembers my visit to his constituency. I, too, remember it and I can tell him that the farmers whom I met were complimentary about him, as I was. I advised them not to vote for him and they said that, although they liked him, they did not like him enough to do that. However, they highlighted some of the challenges that faced the area. I know that he feels deeply about the availability of social housing in rural communities. So do I, given the sort of seat that I represent.
The hon. Gentleman knows that the right to buy is not available to people in small rural communities. He will also know that any Government need to have a policy that is targeted at the problem that he highlights. I hope that that applies to this Government but it certainly applies to the next Conservative Government. If one builds houses for renting or affordable market houses and simply sucks people in from outside the community rather than providing houses for people who need to work or have families there, one does not solve the problem.
Squaring that will be a challenge for the Opposition when we are in government. I am acutely aware of that. One method, to which I believe that the hon. Gentleman will be sympathetic, is the exceptions policy. I believe that it is under threat; perhaps the Minister will give us
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an assurance today that it is not. I do not want that avenue to be removed from the communities that the hon. Gentleman described.
Mr. Hayes: I want to get back on stream, but it would be discourteous not to give way to a representative of the minor party before doing so.
Matthew Green: The hon. Gentleman says that the right to buy does not apply in rural areas, but he is becoming confused. When the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) was a Minister, he got an exemption for the right to acquire, which is a slightly different right that is not used anything like as often as the right to buy. The right to buy still applies in rural areas. It has decimated the stock in my area just like any other.
Mr. Hayes: The hon. Gentleman will no doubt be looking carefully at the policies that we intend to introduce, which will assist areas such as his in the provision of high-quality social housing and, indeed, affordable market housing. When we do so, I know that he, in the spirit in which he always greets such things, will support us in his constituency and, I hope, elsewhere.
Back to the Bill, Mr. Deputy Speaker. You have been, if I may say so, characteristically generous in allowing a slightly broader discussion than I had perhaps originally intended. However, I wanted to be generous to Labour Members and I hope that we have been able to explore some issues of principle. Out of that has come living proof of my suggestion that Labour Members are reluctant converts to the right to buy. People who have exercised, or who hope to exercise, that right will have listened to the tone of their remarks very carefully. I do not want to be more critical than that, and I shall move on to our new clause.
There is a problem with the right to buy: although it has been a great success, there has been some tailing-off of uptake. That is a problem, as one wants everyone with the aspiration that I described to see it fulfilled. Another is abuse. In Committee, I made it clear that we have no truck with abuse of the right to buy, and it is indeed right and proper that measures be introduced to deal with it. It is not appropriate for a noble aspiration, as I described it, to be turned into a way of abusing the system for people who are behaving unscrupulously.
The Government have properly recognised that and introduced changes, some of which we welcome. However, consistent with the spirit and intention of the original right to buy legislation, it is important that we simultaneously put proper demands on local authorities that may not be carrying out their proper obligations in respect of the right to buy as enthusiastically as they might.
It is clear from a study of local authorities across the country that some drive the right to buy with enthusiasm while others are reticent in encouraging people to take it up. That can involve the speed with which they deal with inquiries, how they market their local policy and how they value their properties. The Minister will know that a study commissioned by the
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Office of the Deputy Prime Minister found that, in more than a third of appeals against the price of a property valued by the council in the case of a right-to-buy application, the price tag was cut by more than 10 per cent. Indeed, more than three quarters of tenants who purchased from their council under the right-to-buy scheme secured a price reduction.
There is a real problem with pricing not being accurate and that possibly being a disincentive to people who do not appeal. There will be people who see the price and think, "I can't afford that." They will turn back at that stage while those who appeal clearly get a positive result in the vast majority of cases. There is a problem with the right to buy and our new clause seeks to deal with it by proposing that local authorities
"be required to formulate and publish publicly a yearly marketing plan for right to buy sales."
The plan would include targets on the number of properties that the authority planned to sell and how many it had sold, as well as how it would achieve that target. That seems to me a sensible, constructive and measured way to encourage local authorities to think creatively about how to deal with the right to buy. Few local authorities would think that it could not be taken on board at small cost. It would not be a massive exercise, because good local authorities are doing much of that job anyway.
Dr. Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab): I am following the hon. Gentleman's argument carefully. Would not such a plan interfere with the market?
Mr. Hayes: I did not turn a deaf ear to the question. I did not hear it clearly. The truth of the matter, as the hon. Gentleman knows, is that the market is not perfect. [Hon. Members: "Oh."] Let me explain, for the benefit of those Members who are under the illusion that Tories believe that the market is ever right, that that has nothing to do with authentic Tory philosophy. The Tory party, throughout its history, has understood that there needs to be a proper balance between the intervention of government and other agencies and the free market. That is not a revelation. It is the view that has inspired the party of Disraeli, Shaftesbury and Wilberforce—[Laughter.]
The hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) is laughing. He will know that most of the 19th-century reforms were introduced and completed by Conservative Administrations against fierce opposition from the Liberal party. In the 20th century, too, Conservative Administrations introduced many measures, including the right to buy, which aided social mobility and extended opportunity to people who would otherwise not have been able to enjoy it and recognised that government must sometimes stimulate, encourage and temper the market. There is nothing odd about that.
Indeed, one might even argue—I know that there is a certain hostility from some on the Labour Benches towards their Front Bench—that it is not the Tory party but the current leadership of the Labour party that has
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been seduced by the glitz and glamour of power and money. The hon. Gentleman should not therefore be so dismissive of the record—
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