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16 July 2009 : Column 188WH—continued
The pledge also strengthened the local authority role in the delivery of affordable housing. The rules governing council housing finance were changed to allow local authorities to retain the full rents on new-build properties and the full capital receipt when any of those properties are sold. We propose to reform the council housing
finance system to embed those reforms. Several hon. Members commented on that during their speeches. I understand that the hon. Member for Brent, East raised the matter while I was out of the room. I am sorry about that. I gather that she was unhappy about the length of the consultation period.
Sarah Teather: I am concerned that the consultation will be published after the House rises. If there are issues in our boroughs that are raised with us as constituency MPs, not Front-Benchers, will we be able to raise them with the Minister before the close of the consultation? Will the consultation close before the House returns in October? I am concerned about that, and I am also concerned that, frankly, this should have happened five, six, seven or even 10 years ago rather than now, at the end of a parliamentary term.
Mr. Austin: Despite the hon. Lady's comments about when the consultation happens, I am sure that she welcomes the fact that it is now happening. Also, I am sure that she will not be on holiday from next Tuesday until the House returns in October, and I can assure her that neither my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing nor I will be either. It is fair to say that she has never been slow to put her views forward, so I am sure that she will take the opportunity to express her views and those of local people. Obviously, if she wants to write to us or respond to the consultation, her views will be considered.
The changes were underpinned by additional investment through the pledge in the local authority new build programme, which provides funding for local authorities to build affordable housing on their land. The Chairman of the Committee asked about environmental standards, and whether they will be relaxed as a result of the pressures on the house building industry. I can assure her that it is not our intention to do that because of the recession. The housing pledge will create some 45,000 additional jobs in construction and related industries over the next three years.
Grant Shapps: Again, this needs to go on the record. The Minister talks about the housing pledge, and the additional homes to be built as a result of the £1.5 billion, but is he aware that in launching that pledge, the Government, without having ever mentioned it anywhere else, automatically downgraded their previous target of 70,000 homes?
Mr. Austin: The extraordinary thing about this debate is that I do not understand how the hon. Gentleman expects anybody to take seriously anything that he says about these numbers or these programmes if he is not prepared to tell us how much his party would allocate for investment in housing, how many homes they would provide and how that programme would be delivered. All this vague stuff that he talks about, such as greater freedoms, getting rid of targets and all the rest of it, does not mean a single thing. It does not mean that a single brick will be laid, a single home will be built or a single family will be rehoused. Until he is prepared to provide that sort of detail, no one is going to take seriously the points that he is making. He is point scoring on these issues.
I say to the hon. Gentleman that I think that he and his party are in for a rude awakening when the next election comes. It is interesting that they continually try to present themselves as adopting the approach that our
party adopted in the mid-1990s, when we were campaigning for government after a long period in opposition. They try to suggest that they are adopting similar techniques and campaigning methods, learning from what we did and all of that. However, there is a big lesson that he should learn.
Grant Shapps: Talk about housing.
Mr. Austin: When the hon. Gentleman's leader talks about being the "heir to Blair", for example, and so on-
Joan Walley (in the Chair): Order. I just want to remind Members that we need to restrict the debate to the Government's response to the Select Committee report.
Mr. Austin: I will be very brief. I was simply going to say that all of the plans that we set out before the 1997 election were absolutely clearly costed. We were absolutely clearly open with the electorate, and that is why they trusted us and voted for us. The lack of detail is what is going to cause the hon. Gentleman and his party a big problem when the next election campaign comes.
Dr. Starkey: I wish to concur with what Ms Walley has said. May I urge the Minister to respond to the issue that both I and my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) raised?
Dr. Starkey: That is the issue of the asset-backed security guarantee scheme and whether the Minister and his Department will talk to the Treasury about modifying it to make it more effective, given that the Treasury Committee is on the same line and will doubtless make similar recommendations in due course.
Mr. Austin: I listened with interest to the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe made and I have read the points that have been made in the report. I know that the Treasury is aware of those points too and I will ensure that he gets a more detailed response from the Treasury.
However, I wanted to move on quickly to the issue of skills, because I think that the report is absolutely right to identify that it is essential that we do not repeat the mistakes that were made in the last recession, when skilled workers left the construction industry. They did not come back even when conditions improved, which left a real gap between the level of skills that the industry needed for the longer term and the skills that were available. It took about 15 years for the industry to recover.
That is why we have taken significant action to help the construction industry to maintain skills and outputs. As part of that approach, we have brought forward significant amounts of Government spending to build new social housing, to repair and upgrade existing social housing and to ensure that even more privately rented homes are of a decent standard. On top of that, through the Homes and Communities Agency we allocated £350 million last year to buy 9,600 unsold new homes from private developers for use as affordable housing.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich is absolutely right to draw a distinction between that work and the housing market package in the early 1990s. I worked for a housing association at that time and although I had nothing to do with property acquisition I remember being sent out to drive round the estate agents of the west midlands, in what was really an arms race with other housing associations to buy up as many homes as possible. That package from the early 1990s can hardly be compared with the strategic and targeted approach that the Government are taking now.
More recently, as part of the Budget package for housing we put in place the £400 million kickstart housing delivery programme. That programme will help to restart stalled construction activity across the country by using equity, infrastructure, gap and affordable housing funding to leverage in private development finance. It has now been strengthened by the housing pledge to deliver approximately 22,000 homes, of which a good proportion will be affordable.
We are also promoting apprenticeships on Government projects such as the 2012 Olympic games, with an apprenticeship matching scheme that is led by ConstructionSkills. We expect the Olympic games to create 250 construction apprenticeships. We are also working with the HCA to put targets for apprenticeships in place across the broad range of HCA projects. By maintaining the supply of homes, affordable or otherwise, all of that investment supports skills and capacity within the house building industry.
Before I finish, I wanted to pick up on the point that the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield made about
rough sleepers. I was planning to write to him in more detail on this issue, because I do not think that the situation is nearly as simple as he pretends that it is. The key point to make is that, whatever one thinks about the figures and however they are calculated, they demonstrate a trend of massive reduction, by about 75 per cent., since we embarked on our programme for rough sleepers. I think that anybody would concede that that is the case. The challenge for him and his party is to tell us if they will match the 2012 target, because that is another subject on which they have been entirely silent.
Before I conclude, I must say that it is important that we do not lose sight of the bigger picture and continue our vital work to put in place the conditions to accelerate a sustainable recovery. That includes ensuring a sufficient supply of deliverable land, an efficient and proportionate planning system, co-ordinated infrastructure provision that is aligned with housing plans, a strong and diverse house building sector and regulations that help to facilitate more homes that are better designed and green. I am confident that our suite of sustained investment and support will enable us to meet our future challenges and to emerge with the homes and communities that we need for a stronger and fairer Britain.
Joan Walley (in the Chair): Does Dr. Starkey wish to reply to the debate?
Dr. Starkey: No, Ms Walley, I do not.
5.26 pm
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