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17 Jan 2007 : Column 296WHcontinued
Alistair Burt (North-East Bedfordshire) (Con): I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) on raising the issue in his typically knowledgeable, warm and understanding way. He will indeed be a great loss to the House, and it is essential that somebody of great capability and experience fills his shoes. I suggest Mr. Frank White, who having served as a distinguished Member of this House, has just finished a very good spell as mayor of Bolton. He has been an excellent servant of the Labour party and of the wider public. If the hon. Gentlemans constituency is looking for someone of stature and calibre, which I understand it might be, Frank White would admirably fit the bill.
I thank all Members for their brevity and clarity, which provided a good lesson for all Front-Bench spokespersons. The colleagues who have spoken this morning have a tremendous amount of experience, and I shall briefly run through them, because as the Minister will appreciate, mine will be about the tenth opposing speech she has heard this morning.
The hon. Gentleman spoke about the affordability gap. The hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) spoke about the importance, when targets and quotas are set, of greater local involvement over the imposition of national criteria. The hon. Member for City of York (Hugh Bayley) spoke about the problems for first-time buyers. The hon. Member for Eccles (Ian Stewart) spoke about the growing wealth of his constituency and the surrounding area, which I know well from my spell as a Minister dealing with Manchester and Salford, when we were involved with the regeneration project, City Challenge, and the factors that kick-started the tremendous advances in those cities.
Tony Lloyd: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Alistair Burt:
I shall, but may I make clear at the beginning my policy on interventions? In Westminster Hall, because of time constraints, one intervention is fine. I am very happy to take an intervention from the
hon. Gentleman, and then I shall progress to the end of my speech. I am happy for him to intervene now or later.
Tony Lloyd: I should be grateful if the hon. Gentleman reflected on his own remarks. Will he accept that when I inherited the part of east Manchester about which I spoke earlier, the effects of policies from a Conservative Government of whom he was a member were so devastating that the housing market had collapsed and houses were being sold for £1,000 to get rid of them? That was not part of any regeneration.
Alistair Burt: The regeneration of Manchester and Salford, which has continued apace, and the good work that the new regeneration company in east Manchester is already doing, are part of a process. One cannot do everything at once, as Government Members have found from their own Government. Many have spent their time covering up their embarrassment at the failure of the Governments housing policy by explaining how it was right to deal with improvement at the beginning, but how more must be done now. The regeneration that the Conservative Government kick-started in Manchester, Salford and other great northern cities did a tremendous amount of good, laying the foundation for the many good things that have followed.
Alistair Burt: If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, there is much to get through in a short period. [Interruption.] I am mentioning everybodys constituency. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the problems and difficulties that the growing wealth of his area has caused, and I shall agree with him later about some issues.
The hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr. Blackman-Woods) spoke against the regional spatial strategy and described the problems that it was causing in her constituency. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) spoke about the failure of social renting and about growing waiting lists. The hon. Member for Manchester, Central spoke, too, about the growing wealth of that area and the problem with keeping control of some ongoing regeneration projects. The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller) called for greater local understanding of what was going on, and the right hon. Member for Knowsley, North and Sefton, East (Mr. Howarth) also spoke from experience about the problems in his constituency.
All speakers, most of whom I have known for many years in this place, would admit in a private moment that had they made their speeches 10 years ago, the logical conclusion would have been a denunciation of the Government in office and a call for it to go, so that a new Government could deal with the problems that they had mentioned. They could not make that conclusion to their speeches, so I shall suggest to the Minister that that was the tenor of their remarks.
The problems are in fact slightly worse than they have stated, although they did so constructively and in an appropriate Back-Bencher way. The problems are difficult to deal with. Ten years ago there was a sense from the Labour party that all we needed to do to solve complex problems was elect them and all would be well. But that is just not true.
The hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Rogerson) spoke about the number of houses being built. In the 1990s the number of social housing completions under every Conservative Housing Minister ran at between 23,000 and 30,000 a year. This Government have managed only between 13,000 and 18,000 a year. Shelter and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation have both made good contributions to the debate about the problems of housing difficulty. Shelter reminds us of the problems of temporary accommodation:
The average length of time homeless households spend in temporary accommodation before being made a permanent offer of rehousing increased from 98 days in 1997 to 267 days in 2004.
No one this morning has mentioned first-time buyers problems, which have increased, as the papers reported overnight, because of increasing costs associated with interest rates and inflation. The Independent this morning says:
The plight of first-time buyers struggling to get on the housing ladder is worse than ever, according to figures released yesterday.
The Council of Mortgage Lenders said the average person buying their first home takes out a mortgage worth 3.29 times their income - the highest multiple since the survey began in 1974 and up sharply from 2.4 at the start of 2000.
In a painful double-whammy, more first-time buyers are also being hit by stamp duty56 per cent in November compared with 48 per cent a year ago.
There are costs associated with first-time buying which just did not exist before.
The Governments grip on the issue is loosening as time goes by. They have made some serious mistakes in housing policy, exemplified by what we have heard this morning, and there have been mistakes in planning and in targets. Regional spatial strategy has already been mentioned. The policy of restricting the number of houses needed in one part of the north, because the Government are trying through pathfinders to deal with problems in some of the biggest cities, is not working. The problem of being unable to build homes where they are needed exists not only in the constituency of the hon. Member for City of Durham.
The other side of the regional spatial strategy is the pathfinder programme. It has its merits in certain places, but I urge the Minister to examine closely what is happening in Liverpool. It is time for an inquiry into the problems that have been caused there, because Liverpool suffers from a series of problems.
Allegations include concerns about how registered social landlords have bought up and kept empty properties, which have then contributed to the dereliction of an area, making it more suitable for demolition than repair; the failure of the Housing Corporation to intervene; the scale of demolitions compared to renovation; the cost to the Exchequer, which includes having now to pay inflated prices for property bought cheaply at the start of the process by speculators anticipating that prices would rise as the market moved, and to which pathfinder could not respond; the subsequent delay to the progress of pathfinder as it ran out of money, condemning some areas of renovation to many more years of blight than they had been promised; and last but by no means least, the cost and abuse of the compulsory purchase order
process, bravely halted by Mrs. Elizabeth Pascoe who took on and won in the High Court recently a case involving her concerns about the citys Edge Lane proposals. It is time for Liverpools pathfinder project to be examined seriously.
The answer to some problems is less national targeting, a greater increase in responsibility for local councils, a movement in the planning process from unelected regional assemblies back to elected local authorities, and a lighter regulatory touch from the Governmentprecisely what they will oppose during the passage of the Sustainable Communities Bill and promote during the passage of the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill. Continuing to consider imaginative approaches, I commend what is happening in Coventry and a scheme in Ealing called Safe Haven London, which effectively securitises housing benefit payments to fund the construction of local housing.
A mixture of measures is needed such as a lighter touch, more local control, innovative schemes and continuing work on shared ownership. Furthermore, we should try to deal with the continued stigma attached to social renting, which should not be there. The Government need to show a little humility over their failures and admit that a rethink is needed to deal with the problems that I have highlighted and which have been so well outlined by members of the Under-Secretarys party this morning.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Meg Munn): First, I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) on securing this important debate. It is unusual for so many Members to take part in such a discussion. I think that we have had nine full speeches and a significant number of interventions, which shows how much concern there is about this issue in the midlands and the north of England. Not only is the debate marked by the turnout, but, interestingly, the Liberal Democrat Front-Bench spokesman, the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Rogerson) not unusually took credit for something that the Labour party has done, as too did the Conservative Front-Bench spokesman, the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt).
Let us consider the reasons for the current situation. Some problems are clearly the result of continued economic success. Let us consider also the demographic situation. Household projections up to 2026 for the midlands and the north, calculated under the 2003-based data, were significantly higher than those calculated under the 2002-based data. That illustrates how the demand for housing has increased across the country. The problems of affordability are no longer restricted to the south.
Draft revisions take account of regional spatial strategies. That important point was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr. Blackman-Woods). Public examinations in Yorkshire and the Humber and the north-east have concluded that housing numbers have increased above those in current plans and are more comparable with household projections, although we have not yet received the panel report on the Yorkshire
and the Humber regional spatial strategy. It is important that we look at not only numbers, but where the houses will go. We hear consistently from the Conservative Benches that we need to build more, but not in their backyards.
I shall move on to what we have achieved in housing during our period in Government. We have delivered stability in the housing market and lower long-term interest rates. We have addressed the £19 billion backlog of repairs on affordable housing, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East referred, so that homes meet basic decency standards. We have addressed decline and abandonment in the housing market renewal pathfinder areas and are tackling homelessness which has fallen to a 23-year low.
Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab): May I just say that I endorse everything that my hon. Friends have said about affordability, which is equally relevant in Birmingham? I would like to draw to the Under-Secretarys attention the situation in Birmingham and ask her to comment on the fact that all Birmingham MPs received a letter recently from the Conservative cabinet member for housing in Birmingham seeking substantial changes to council house subsidies. He might have a point, but will the Under-Secretary ask the Minister for Housing and Planning to meet us in Birmingham? That letter came after a marked failure in communication between us and the Tory-Liberal Democrat administration on housing matters. There are significant worries that their figures do not add up.
Meg Munn: I shall convey my hon. Friends concerns to the Minister. I cannot respond to all these issues now, however, and shall write to all Members here about the housing revenue subsidies. It is complex and I cannot explain in detail now how those amounts are arrived at.
Our main housing challenge is to build more homes to meet the needs of our ageing and growing population. That includes more market and affordable homes, and social, rented and shared equity in all parts of the country.
Kitty Ussher: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Meg Munn: I am afraid that I do not have time.
The latest household projections suggest that an additional 209,000 households will form every year until 2026. In 2005, only 168,000 new homes were delivered and the level of new housing actually fell by 50 per cent. between 1970 and 2000. That gap is not sustainable and the result is higher house prices. Just over half of 30-year-old couples can afford to buy based on their earnings. Unless housing supply is increased, only one third will be able to afford their own home in 20 years. Although affordability used to be mainly a southern problem, we accept that every region now experiences it, as I have explained.
Kate Barker's review of housing supply recognised that there had been an under-supply of new housing for many years and called for a significant increase. In response, we set out our ambition a year ago to increase the rate of new housing supply in England to more than 200,000 per year over the next decade. We are making good progress: we announced 29 new growth points,
many of which are in the midlands, which have been allocated start-up funding of some £40 million for 2007 to 2008 for capacity building, infrastructure and essential growth-related studies into, for example, flood risk and water supply . Earlier this month, we announced also a new national housing and planning advice unit to provide independent advice to the regions on the steps required to improve housing market affordability. Furthermore, we have been consulting on a housing and planning delivery grant to help local authorities deliver the housing that they need.
Kate Barker also recommended reform of the planning system, to which Members have referred, to improve its responsiveness in delivering housing. In November, as Members have also said, we published planning policy statement 3 requiring planning bodies to take greater account of affordability and pressures within the local housing market when drawing up plans and ensuring a sufficient supply of land for housing where it is needed.
The statement also requires local authorities to ensure that the right mix of affordable and market homes is being delivered to help create mixed sustainable communities. We are increasingly concerned about the mix of homes being builtanother matter referred to by some Members. The number of one and two-bedroom flats has rocketed in recent years and we need to ensure also that we provide suitable accommodation for families.
Funding for new affordable housing is another factor to consider. The great majority of our funding goes to the social rented sector, and we are on track to deliver a 50 per cent. increase in new social rented homes over three years between 2005 and 200830,000 homes by 2008. There is a wider issue: we must ensure that new social housing meets today's needs, which is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government asked John Hills to conduct a review of social housing.
We are already helping thousands of people to get on to the housing ladder through shared ownership, including key public sector workers and social housing tenants. Those are known as homebuy products and will help some 120,000 households by 2010, aiding the recruitment and retention of staff for vital public services and freeing up rented homes for new tenants.
Local authority waiting lists for social housing are unreliable indicators of urgent housing needsthey include those for whom social housing is a preferred option, not a necessity, and so their accuracy varies, which is why they are not used in the formula used to determine regional shares. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East mentioned the choice-based letting system, which has been successful for a large number of people. We must remember that it is demoralising for those who actively bid for homes for a long period so those involved in providing that service must be honest with applicants about their realistic prospects of accessing social housing and, where necessary, support them in seeking alternative accommodation.
I agree entirely that community land trusts are an interesting and promising new option and encourage local authorities to consider innovative models. The housing corporation, English Partnerships, is working with community groups to develop pilot trusts. I look forward to the results of those.
On the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles (Ian Stewart) about housing market renewal, since the start of the pathfinder programme, more than 30,000 rundown homes have been refurbished and many houses demolished. Again, it is important that we do not just concentrate on houses and that we provide the types of houses that people want, are comfortable in, and will seek to live in and maintain. We have made progress on the number of empty homes.
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