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20 Feb 2007 : Column 39WHcontinued
As well as the problem of people registered with local authoritiesthose cases that we are generally talking aboutthere is the problem of the hidden homeless. I look forward to hearing the Ministers opinion on that. Crisis estimates that as many as 400,000 people might be unregistered and living in hostels, squats and bed and breakfasts, and sofa surfing. We are talking about social cohesion, and they are among the most socially excluded in society. Altogether, the increasing number of those listed in temporary accommodation in local authorities, those in unsuitable accommodation and the hidden homeless are creating a dramatic social divide and a section of
society, comprising people without a decent home to call their own, in which they can raise their children and pursue their careers.
The simple reality, as borne out by the Joseph Rowntree Foundations research, is that we are not building enough homes for either owner occupiers or social housing. That will inevitably lead to a degree of breakdown in social cohesion. The hon. Member for Hemsworth mentioned that that leads to division, as the various groups in our society might perceive unfairness in the allocation system. I am sure that that has been reflected in the experience of my Leeds colleagues.
Jon Trickett: Does the hon. Gentleman fear, as I do, that extremist political parties might seek to scapegoat minorities, without explaining adequately that everybody is treated fairly? The simple problem is that there are not enough houses for people to have access to, which creates the unfavourable conditions in which extremist parties may grow.
Greg Mulholland: I could not agree more. The issue is vital for many of us in the region and nationally, and I note that the hon. Member for Dagenham (Jon Cruddas) made similar comments recently. We must take the issue seriously. However, if we do not have adequate housing, we cannot address those problems or the need for more social cohesion on economic and aspirational lines. It should also be pointed out that, as the hon. Member for Leeds, North-East mentioned, without those social houses being replaced, the right-to-buy policy has been a disaster for the social housing network in this country. It led to a generation of children living for periods in entirely unsuitable accommodation. We have heard many examples of that.
The figures are quite damning. I was disappointed with the party political points that the hon. Gentleman made. It is extraordinary political logic to point the finger at councils whose hands are so clearly tied by a Government who will not give them the opportunity to build more social housing. The problem is a failure of Government policy. Since 1997, 449,807 social homes have been sold in England alone under the right-to-buy legislation, but in the same period only 151,255 social homes have been built in England, while 500,000 extra households are now on council waiting lists. That is the legacy of a failure of Government policy.
I am delighted, however, that the hon. Gentleman supports Liberal Democrat policy, which would finally allow councils to use the right-to-buy receipts for those currently without a place to call home. That would lead to £1.5 billion nationally, which would be a healthy sum to start the process, as I am sure he agrees. I also echo the comments about the Tory Government who created a social housing crisis, but they have been replaced by a Labour Government who have failed to address it in any meaningful way.
All of us, in all political parties, need to have a much bolder vision of housing. That applies to allowing people to get on to the property ladder, but also means considering how we treat social housing. The issue is not just about supply. We often get bogged down with supply, particularly when it comes to homes to buy and own. We also need to look at the kind of supply. We need more mixed-income communities, not only more housing per se.
For example, Liberal Democrat-run South Shropshire district council has taken an interesting approach, specifying that 25 per cent. of the homes in any private development must be affordable homes and that 25 per cent. of the homes must be social homes to rent. Crucially, however, those homes must be of the same sort as the private homes being built, so if the homes for sale are four-bedroomed family homes, the social and affordable homes must also be four-bedroomed family homes. What tends to happen otherwise is that, even when private developers are obliged to provide social and affordable housing, they often stick it in the corner of developments, as a token gesture. Such homes are often much smaller properties, so that there is still division of the sort that we are surely trying to avoid.
We need a bolder approach, as we should all accept, but the issue goes back to the biggest problem, which is the crisis in social housing. I echo the comments that the hon. Member for Pudsey made. The drive for people to own their homes and get on that first rung of the property ladder is a laudable aim with which we would all agree, but social housing is not a rung below that. We must not allow the laudable drive to enable people to get on the property ladder to come at the expense of those who, realistically, cannot afford to do so, and in some cases will never be able to afford to do so. It is time we stopped seeing social housing as second best.
I conclude by quoting Michael Hall, the chair of the Leeds Tenants Federation. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the high-profile right to rent campaign in Leeds, which we all support. Mr. Hall said:
The stigma surrounding social housing had been created by successive governments that have treated the sector as little more than a welfare safety-net. These policies have led us to the housing crisis we now face...where the scarcity of affordable rented homes is causing misery for thousands who need a decent place to live.
We want social housing to be available to everyone no matter what their needs. Social housing should be a main-stream choice, up there alongside home ownership or private renting as an option for everyone in this booming city.
That is the right approach for Leeds, the rest of Yorkshire and the whole country, if we are to have a more socially cohesive Britain.
Michael Gove (Surrey Heath) (Con): I congratulate the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) on securing the debate, which he opened with customary grace and passion. I shall turn to one or two of his substantial points and try to explain where I agree and respectfully disagree with him, before putting one or two challenges to the Minister.
I am the first and, I suspectgiven that the Minister represents a Sheffield constituencythe only Member not from Yorkshire who is participating in the debate. For that I can only apologise. As one might guess from my accent, where I was brought up we considered Yorkshire to be part of the soft south. I recognise the specific concerns, not least those outlined by the hon. Member for Hemsworth, that affect the housing market and social cohesion in Yorkshire. However, many of the issues acutely delineated in his speech also affect the country more broadly.
The hon. Gentleman was particularly moving in his account of what happened to the mining communities
that he so well represents. It is appropriate for all of us to look back at that period of the 1980s and consider where the Government might have gone wrong, where their tread was too heavy and where, in their desire to revitalise the economy, they behaved insensitively to communities that had contributed a huge amount to the country. However, it is also appropriate to recognise that the conflict of the miners strike was in part due to the leadership of the National Union of Mineworkers at that time. Although it is appropriate for him to point out that the then Conservative Government made mistakes, it is also appropriate that we draw certain lessons about where irresponsible trade union leadership can take good men and women.
The hon. Members for Leeds, North-East (Mr. Hamilton) and for Pudsey (Mr. Truswell) drew our attention to a number of moving and important individual cases and illuminated the problem of hidden homelessness, to which the hon. Member for Leeds, North-West (Greg Mulholland) also pointed. It is no reflection on them as Members, but their speechescertainly the details that they enumeratedcould have been presented to this Chamber by many Members of every party. The problem that they describe not only weighs heavily on their consciences and in their postbags, but reflects the concerns of many of us as constituency Members of Parliament.
The hon. Member for Leeds, North-West emphasised that for all of us, the link between housing and community cohesion is important. We recognise that unless housing policy is geared to promote genuine, sustainable communities, we shall all suffernot only the communities that we represent, but the nation as a whole.
The hon. Member for Hemsworth pointed out the significant increase in house prices in his constituency. Again, although Yorkshire and the Humber have outperformed the national average of house price increases, all of us have had to face house price inflation rises significantly above the level of inflation in the rest of the economy during the past 10in fact, probably 14years. Although that has been a bonanza for property owners, it has contributed to a social divide across our country. The nature of that divide has been described by the Minister for Housing and Planning, who has pointed out that if a person is on one of the rungs of the property ladder, or their parents are, they have access to an asset that means that their wealth will increase faster than that of those without such an asset. That means that those with access to the bank of mum and dad can get on the property ladderor, more accurately, the property escalatorto greater wealth, while those who do not are locked out.
When it comes to property ownership, I depart from the criticisms of the right to buy made by some hon. Members. Spreading the ownership of assets as widely as possible is a matter of social justice. That is why the Minister for Housing and Planning was right to have drawn attention to that growing social divide and why the former Secretary of State for Health, the right hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Milburn), has been absolutely right to say that future housing policy should be geared towards spreading asset ownership as widely as possible and allowing more people an equity share in their own home.
Greg Mulholland: I was not suggesting for one minute that the right to buy was not beneficial, as the hon. Gentleman suggests. However, if it had run in parallel with a policy that allowed social housing replacement, it would not have caused the crisis that it has.
Michael Gove: I take the hon. Gentlemans point, which is well made. However, although all hon. Members acknowledged the importance of home ownership, all so far have tended to concentrate on the negative side of the balance sheet when discussing the right to buy. I have no idea what this Minister will say, but I want to put on record the positive side to the right to buy.
I was rude enough to intervene on the hon. Member for Pudsey and ask him about housing completions in the social sector. It might have seemed as if I was making a shallow partisan pointperhaps I wasbut I wanted to illuminate the fact that as the Conservative Government introduced right to buy and encouraged wider home ownership, they were also engaged in presiding over a house building programme that puts this Government to shame. Every year that the Conservatives were in power, the number of housing completions in both the private, market sector and the social sector was higher than during the 10 years or so that Labour has been in power.
That brings me to my fundamental criticism of the Governments position. I want to mention Bill Clinton. Those who remember working with that US President often used to remark that he liked nothing more at the end of an evening than putting his feet up, pouring himself a can of Pepsi and saying, Well, if I were President, Id do this and that and that, until an aide eventually cut through the flow and said, But Mr. Presidentyou are the President.
When I listen to the Chancellor of the Exchequer or the Minister for Housing and Planning saying, We need a massive extension in home building and a significant increase in the number of people taking advantage of low-cost home-ownership schemes, I ask myself about who has been in power for the past 10 years and what has happened in that period. As the hon. Member for Leeds, North-West pointed out, has there been any relaxation in the rules that allow receipts to be spent on new building? Has there been a significant increase in new construction or any real dynamism in the low-cost home-ownership programme? Reluctantly, we are forced to conclude that there has not.
One of the statistics to which I always return in debates on home ownership is the take-up of social home buy. The Governments own low-cost home ownership scheme has cost hundreds of thousands of pounds but has so far had a take-up only in the low 20s. I shall not delay the Chamber with the variety of detailed reasons why I believe social home buy has failed, but the Government, in their anxiety to press on us how vital it is to embrace low-cost home ownership, should first consider their own poor record and explain why they have failed before, as they so often do, either revisiting the 1980s and talking about the problems of right to buy then, or blaming Conservative local authorities for somehow standing in the way of peoples aspirations. We all know that some individuals in local government
may not always take the most enlightened view of the national interest, but they come from all parties. One of the things that I find difficult to take is how Ministers continually demonise Conservative, Liberal Democrat, and sometimes Labour, local authorities, when the fundamental responsibility, given the centralised nature of so much planning power and the role of the Treasury, rests with the Government and their failure.
Jon Trickett: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the legacy in 1997 was 2 million houses of a below decent standard? Does he accept that in the past 10 years, Labour has made them a priority? Some 1 million houses that were not up to a decent standard in 1997 now are. Is that not a justifiable priority?
Michael Gove: The hon. Gentleman makes a very fair point. I am always ready to acknowledge that the decent homes standard has contributed to an improvement in the quality of stock and that it was a legitimate Government priority. My specific concern is that the Government, understandably, are trying to take credit for that while saying that we also need a massive expansion in house building. We might have had significantly more expansion in house building if the Government had targeted that as well. They made a tough choice by privileging decent home standards over supporting the expansion of supply, but, having made that choice, they are attempting to take credit in both areas. The Minister is attempting to have her cake and eat it, and in the next 10 minutes she might explain precisely how she can manage that feat.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Meg Munn): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) on securing this important debate. I have the privilege of knowing his constituency well. I am not the only Member of Parliament in this Chamber who previously worked for Wakefield council, and I visited the constituency on many occasions and know from personal experience the kind of conditions and homes that he discussed. The issues that he raised are important because they have an impact on social cohesion, and the Government understand and share his concerns. I shall set out what we are doing, both in a national and regional context.
It is always tempting to spar with the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), but many important points have been raised by my hon. Friends about issues in Yorkshire and Humberside, and I shall concentrate on responding to them.
Let me first set out what we have achieved in housing. We have sustained an unprecedented period of economic growth, coupled with mortgage rates at their lowest since the 1950s. On average, £4,000 a year has been cut off mortgages. Home ownership has continued to flourish, with 1.8 million new home owners since 1997.
We have also reversed the legacy of decades of underinvestment. We are tackling the £19 billion backlog of repairs to social housing that we inherited in 1997. In Yorkshire and the Humber region, the number of non-decent homes has fallen by some 150,000 since 1997. That not only improves living
conditions but helps build social cohesion and contributes to sustainable communities.
We are also tackling areas of decline and abandonment through the housing market renewal programme. My hon. Friend specifically mentioned Girnhill lane in Featherstone. As he said, it was a National Coal Board estate. It has 174 properties in mixed ownership and suffers from extensive abandonment. Negotiations with the sole private landlord, a major landholder, have been somewhat protracted, although the local authority is now more optimistic that a settlement can be reached soon without the need to use a compulsory purchase order.
A funding agreement with English Partnerships, which is progressing well, will enable the local authority to buy up further properties and land from the private landlord. It is seen as a major step forward for the project, which has stalled in recent years due to lack of funding and/or unwillingness to co-operate on the part of the landlord. The area is the subject of a master planning exercise that will be crucial to getting the local community on board in respect of future developments. The acquisition of owner-occupied properties is continuing, and there are plans for some demolition work that will be funded by the West Yorkshire housing market renewal project and other complementary funding from the regional housing board.
Jon Trickett: I am grateful for those comments about Girnhill lane. They show the Governments depth of understanding about this particularly acute problem. Will my hon. Friend the Minister give me an assurance that the Department will continue to support local people in ensuring that progress is much faster than it has been in the past, and that it will keep a finger on the pulse?
Meg Munn: I can certainly give my hon. Friend that assurance.
On the wider issues of housing market renewal, homelessness has fallen to a 23-year low. We have also ended the use of long-term bed and breakfast for families, which was so detrimental to their quality of life.
The main housing challenge is to build more homes. Our ambition is to increase the rate of building additional homes to more than 200,000 per year during the next decade. New homes in Yorkshire and the Humber will be part of that. The figures reflect growth in the number of households, which is at its highest for more than 10 years because of changing household size.
My hon. Friend raised the issue of migration. Continued international migration, including increased numbers of economic migrants from the European Union accession states since 2004, is a contributory factor. More than 90,000 new migrants have registered for national insurance numbers since 2001 in Yorkshire and the Humber, with 21,500 in 2005-06 alone. Local economies have benefited from the influx of migrant workers, who are meeting demand for staff and skills not previously satisfied by local people. They are filling unpopular low-paid, temporary or shift-work jobs.
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