Clive Efford
MP for Eltham and Chislehurst · Labour · United Kingdom
“Thank you for allowing me to take part in this statement, Madam Deputy Speaker, given that I was not here at the beginning—I was carrying out my duties elsewhere in the House. I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement. What is she likely to do in my part of south-east London for technical and vocational places?”
“I rise to speak to amendment 97 in my name, which would remove clause 10 from the Bill. Clause 10 gives powers to the Secretary of State to vary the proportion of public and private provision of health services if they consider that to do so is in the interests of the health service.”
“Labour’s 2024 plan to make work pay set out a welcome desire to bring more essential services back into public control—something that is welcomed by health workers across the country, because so far the “biggest wave of insourcing in a generation”, as was promised, has felt more like a trickle when it comes to the NHS.”
“The explanatory notes for the Bill say that this new flexibility is necessary “where there may otherwise be a breakdown in provision of a health service.” Can we imagine a situation where the Secretary of State has concerns about a health service and that an approach to assist a local provider would be rebuffed?”
“There are ample powers to enable the Secretary of State to intervene and resolve breakdowns in the provision of a health service. On clause 10, we must balance what it adds in those situations against its potential misuse by an ideologically driven Government that are determined to privatise our NHS.”
“It was a pleasure to join my right hon. Friend at Greenwich council’s development of 435 council properties in my constituency for the launch of the social and affordable housing programme. Some 70,000 homes are planned, and that is welcome and overdue.”
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“Members of the Government are trying to say that they are listening and that they are not responsible for all this, but I have here the White Paper that was published back in January, the foreword of which was signed by the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Health. They all signed up to it, but all of a sudden we are back to pausing, reflecting and listening. What or who are we listening to? We have heard from the Secretary of State tonight that there are no cuts in the NHS, but let me tell hon. Members the story of Mrs Bell, a constituent of mine who was referred by her GP to a consultant last spring about cataract operations. She received the first operation within 18 weeks, and when she went back for a second consultation about the other eye she was referred for another operation.”
“No one has got up and said, “We are listening,” or, “We are pausing,” or “We are reflecting and we are going to see substantial changes to this Bill.” The Secretary of State is in his place: I would like him to intervene on me and tell me that in relation to GP commissioning, the full £80 billion will be transferred to GPs, as he has frequently stated it would; that they will be in charge of commissioning and that we will not see that altered in any significant way as a result of the interventions of the Prime Minister or the Deputy Prime Minister.”
“I must confess to being somewhat confused about where we have got to with the Bill. I have been here for 14 years and I cannot recall a Bill being halted after it had been through Committee so that we could go back and consult the public. I will be corrected by Members who have been here longer than me, but I cannot remember anything like this extraordinary situation. Yesterday, I listened to the Deputy Prime Minister on the “Andrew Marr Show”. He said: “Let me stress this, it’s not a gimmick, it’s not a PR exercise. We will make changes, we’ll make significant and substantive changes to the legislation”. We have not heard any of that tonight.”
“One of the biggest incentives to drive illegally is the premium imposed by insurance companies. There are various schemes to try to reduce those costs, particularly for young drivers who are a problem in this regard. GPS can measure journey times, the hours of the day when people travel, and who else is in the car. Is the Department in negotiation with insurance companies to progress such schemes so that young people can afford insurance premiums and avoid driving without insurance?”
“Will we have a statement following the outcome of today’s referendum? Even before the polls have closed, the Deputy Prime Minister is under attack for breaking yet another pledge. He said that he would not get involved in the yes campaign, but when he saw it ahead in the polls he became involved, and it suffered from dead Clegg bounce—and now it looks as if it will not succeed today. So can we have a statement—and can it be made by the Deputy Prime Minister, because we really want to take in earnest whatever is said from the Dispatch Box?”
“My local authority has foolishly considered the possibility of fixed tenancies, but its objective is to provide housing for people in employment. Does the hon. Gentleman think that it would house Bob Crow?”
“He will say that Ken Livingstone was a failure because he had a 50% target but only achieved 36%. We have heard all that before, and quite frankly, it is just not good enough. For the past 30 years, Government Members—Labour and Conservative—have, quite frankly, failed on the issue.”
“The hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod) referred to 1.8 million people being on the housing waiting list. That is a staggering figure. I recollect that a petition on the No. 10 website against speed cameras once attracted 1.2 million signatories and received headlines in newspapers throughout the country. So speed cameras generate comments in the national newspapers, but the fact that 1.8 million people are on the list does not. I wonder when those people will get angry. We all marched against cuts a few weeks ago—500,000 people marched through London. When will people start to get angry about this issue? We could all write the Minister’s speech. He will go on about the fact that Margaret Thatcher built more council houses than Labour did in the last 13 years.”
“He referred to articles about how unattractive social housing is, how the failed experiment of building huge monolithic estates of rented accommodation became microcosms of all social ills, and how people with social problems became concentrated in those communities, which were unattractive and difficult for people to leave, but that is not my recollection of growing up in communities full of rented council and housing association accommodation. Back in those days, the Church Commissioners provided social rented accommodation where I lived.”
“Hang on a minute; I have hardly started. We can make excuses—they are good ones—about the amount of money that we invested in social housing over the last 13 years. We should be proud of that investment. Many of my constituents live in far better quality housing as a result of the commitment and money that we invested in social housing, but we lost sight of a growing crisis in the provision of affordable rented accommodation for our constituents right across the capital and the country. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) on securing the debate.”
“I was told “There may be one or two of those, but mainly we’re advertising abroad.” In that regeneration we have knocked down 1,900 local council properties. About 30% or 35% of the 4,400 properties will be social housing, provided through a housing association. Most of the private properties will be targeted at people who are not local. I am not attacking the developer; it works in the market that is out there, and is trying to maximise its profits, as any company would. However, clearly we need to look at how we encourage development, and who we encourage it for, if we are ever to deal with the lack of supply that is at the root of all the problems that we are debating today.”
“I am not attacking the local authority; I am not attacking anyone. As I have said, it simply highlights the fact that the policy is completely and utterly wrong. I have a development in my constituency, the Kidbrooke Regeneration. I visited some of the brand-new properties that had been built as the first phase of that development— beautiful properties. The price is £300,000 for a two-bedroom property overlooking one of my local parks. I asked who the target market was for those properties—who was expected to buy them. Was it local people living in big three or four-bedroom houses who were nearing retirement, whose children had moved on and who wanted to downsize to a comfortable flat?”
“Barclays bank, whose headquarters is in Canary Wharf in Tower Hamlets, has just paid out over £1 billion in bonuses to its staff. I wonder what that £1 billion could have done for the 21,000 local people on the housing waiting list in Tower Hamlets if it had been invested in local housing. Of the houses that were built in the four years between 2006 and 2010, 8,500 were in the private sector and just under 2,000 were built by housing associations. None were local authority builds. Fifty-four per cent. of the properties in Tower Hamlets have been built since 1966, and yet there are 21,000 on the waiting list. There is a very high vacancy rate in the new-build properties in private ownership. So we have been building houses at a heck of a rate in Tower Hamlets, but we have not been building them to meet the housing crisis there.”
“We have failed to tap into those profits to recycle resources and invest in future social housing. As a consequence of that policy, until only a few years ago we saw, effectively, a year-on-year reduction in the units of social housing available for rent. So we need to ensure that the land is made available, and that local authorities are encouraged and given incentives to make that land available for future developments. Where there have been developments they have often been of the wrong type, in which the properties are not available to local communities. Shelter did a study of eight local authority areas. One was Tower Hamlets, and although that is not my local authority the report makes very interesting reading. Between 2006 and 2010, 10,430 properties were built in Tower Hamlets.”
“We end up in the curious situation whereby local authority land is sold to a private developer for it to build a housing estate, so that we can try to get a residual amount of properties through that development for social housing under planning gain—usually through a housing association whose rents are higher than the local authority’s target rents. That is certainly the case in my area. That approach has failed to deliver the number of properties that we needed over the past two decades, and is a major contributory factor to the huge shortage of social housing in London. I do not blame private developers. They do what private developers do. They swim in the sea of regulations that we create for them. The profits that they can make from private developments—buying the land, developing it and selling it on—are absolutely huge.”
“I do not agree that people should be in social housing only at times when they have a low income and that they should be encouraged to move through the system. Such arguments about the management of social housing are to do with the fact that we are managing a limited supply of housing. That is the fundamental problem and we have to increase that supply. One issue with which we have faced problems in the past—successive Governments have been at fault in this regard as well—is the supply of land. We have put too many obstacles in the way of local authorities’ supplying land to build social housing. In fact, we have often put incentives in their way to dispose of it.”
“That is bound to increase the demand for housing there, which could have an impact on the private rented sector and, again, have a negative impact on rent levels if demand goes up. If the private rented sector refuses to rent to people on housing benefit, what will happen to those people and what will be the consequences for local social housing and the level of demand? How will the council deal with that? What the Government propose in their social housing strategy does not add up or make sense and will have very contradictory outcomes in many areas. The fundamental problem behind what we are dealing with is supply. Some hon. Members have argued that we should have flexible rents that change as people move through social housing and that people should move into the private sector as they gain employment and increase their income.”
“The people who cannot afford to find rented housing in the private sector or to buy will, by the very nature of the problems they are facing in their lives at times of crisis when they search for social housing, be likely to get priority and be on lower incomes, so that policy is likely to have an impact on housing benefit if rents of 80% of market rents are encouraged. At the same time, the changes in housing allowances and the new 30th percentile rate will increase the amount that people will have to contribute to their rent if they are in the private rented sector. That will force many people who live in central London to move to areas such as mine where rents are lower, relatively.”
“A myth has built up that there are huge subsidies for council housing, but the housing revenue account has paid its own way for decades. Even my local authority, in its response to the consultation on social housing rents, made the mistake of believing that there was a cost to the taxpayer of providing social housing. It cannot be right, at a time when the Government have stated that they want to cut the housing benefit budget, to introduce a policy of moving social housing rents towards market levels. That has to be counter-intuitive.”
“We have to get this right for future generations. We have heard about the flexibility of having 80% of market rents. To give them credit, many registered social landlords and housing associations are saying that going for 80% of market rents would fundamentally change their ethos. It would mean that they were no longer providers of social housing and they believe that they would be wrong to go down that route. To accept rents of 80% of market rents would be to accept the principle that people who live in social housing should subsidise the future development of social housing—that they should pay for it rather than the general taxpayer or anyone else. For many years, people buying private housing got enormous subsidies.”
“Because of the right to buy, the amount of social housing for rent went down consistently, in spite of the new building that was taking place, until only a couple of years before the previous Labour Government left office. The only time there was an increase was from about 2008 onwards as a result of the investment of the previous Labour Government. Just as we got to the end of our last term in office, we actually got it and finally started to invest in building again, and so the building of council housing began again. There were projects in my constituency and my local authority was successful in bidding for money to start to build council housing again. That is what we have to get back to. It will be no good the Minister’s coming to the Dispatch Box and saying that it has all been bad under both Tory and Labour Governments.”
“I will in a moment. Calm down. [ Interruption. ] Hon. Members will notice that I was more restrained in my comment. Those people did not lack aspiration or exhibit all the problems that people have given as reasons for not investing in building social rented accommodation. We have lost sight of the issue. It has been suggested that such people lack aspiration and that such areas become concentrations of high unemployment, low educational attainment and high levels of crime, particularly antisocial behaviour among young people. Such circumstances become self-fulfilling prophecies as a result of people having to be housed according to priority need. Over the years, the housing supply has been constantly reducing.”
“I am grateful to the Minister for that point, but I am slightly confused because I saw him nodding encouragingly to the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr Offord) when he said that Bob Crow should be evicted. I thought Bob Crow was doing his part to create mixed communities.”
“I would like to know what public subsidy the Minister is referring to; perhaps he will elaborate when he makes his speech. One of the myths frequently peddled about social housing is that it is publicly subsidised.”
“It is not a matter of the tenure, but the people who live there. If we provide employment, we provide mixed communities, whether Bob Crow lives there, the local GP or shop owner, or someone experiencing a temporary period of unemployment. We need a Government who are prepared to stand by people and help to create jobs in those communities and invest in them in order to ensure that we do have mixed communities. They will not be created by flexible rents and social engineering.”
“My final point concerns the social management of council rents and registered social landlord rents in order to create mixed communities. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) said, we have debated that for many years and it has never worked. When I grew up in rented accommodation in Southwark, surrounded by friends who all lived in rented accommodation, we had mixed communities. In those days, under a Labour Government, unemployment was not prevalent. Under the most recent Labour Government we increased employment enormously, and that is the policy that we need to return to, rather than the huge cuts that we see from this coalition Government. The idea that we cannot create mixed communities because we have social rented properties is something that we should put behind us and never return to.”
“That tells us that affordable rented accommodation is not just about people on benefits or on low incomes, people who lack aspiration or are in a crisis in their lives, but is essential to the future of the housing market, particularly in London where deposits will be high. If we do not provide affordable housing at levels at which people who may aspire to become future home owners can reasonably be expected to save at a decent rate, we are undermining the future of our own housing market. To have a home construction industry in the future, we will be relying on developers of schemes, such as mine in Kidbrooke, where they sell to people not from the local community, not even from the UK, but to business people from abroad. That cannot be right. That is not right for the future of our city, and we should not encourage it.”
“Even people in social housing who aspire to buy their own home will have to save for a long time. In a study published in October 2010, the Home Builders Federation came to the conclusion that “In London, first time buyers aged between 22 and 29 cannot pay their rent and save for a deposit—this would cost 10% more than their net monthly income.” It goes on to state: “The average deposit across the UK is 230% that of average salaries—almost 300% in London.” Even if people wanted to become home owners, if they are forced into the private rented sector they can never save enough money to do so.”
“It is an essential part of our communities and economy. To get rid of it in large parts of the capital is a hugely retrograde step that we will all come to regret. Social housing is also essential not just for people on low incomes, but for those who aspire to buy their own homes. We know now that the house lending market has changed—probably for ever, but certainly for a long time. It will no longer be possible to gamble on the future value of a house to borrow 100% of its cost on the understanding that we know that it will be worth more in the future; 100% mortgages are a thing of the past. Any bank or building society will make it clear that no one is lending 100% mortgages any more, and they do not foresee that happening. That means that people will have to be savers for a long time before they can become home buyers.”
“During the crisis in the freezing cold weather, many of us could get to work only because fairly low-paid people in local authorities across the capital got into work early in the morning, driving gritting lorries, clearing roads and so on, so that buses could run and other people could keep the economy moving. Those people are an essential part of our economy. I suspect that they will not qualify, even if they can afford it, for key worker schemes, to buy properties in those areas. They will be forced out by higher rents and the lack of housing benefit designed to support part-time workers who provide essential jobs such as child minding and caring and other roles. Under the policy, they just will not be there. Social housing is not just a benefit that is means-tested and provided by a welfare cheque.”
“There is affordable housing in those areas for people who do all sorts of jobs in the local economy, from driving refuse lorries to sweeping the roads and pushing trolleys in local hospitals or even cleaning floors in posh houses in the leafier parts of central London, but those people will have nowhere to live in those communities if the Government continue to pursue their policies. Those people will not be there to do jobs such as stacking shelves in supermarkets. They are an essential part of our local economy, but they will disappear from many of our communities. The biggest effect on the Tories will perhaps be that their cleaning costs will go up, because of the shortage of cleaners, pushing up the hourly rate.”
“Surprisingly, the Liberal Democrats do not get it either. My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) made a point about how essential it is that people on low incomes should be able to live in mixed communities across the capital. During the earlier spell of cold weather, my local authority kept the roads clear so that people could get to work. I am sure that that was true, too, of Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea and other areas.”
“When the matter is in the media and it is discussed on the 6 o’clock news he appears to stand up to the Government, but after he has been sat on by the Minister and everyone else, he sneaks out a press release a week later saying that he absolutely agrees with their policy—a policy that will result in people on low incomes being moved from large areas of inner London to places outside London where private sector rents are lower. There have been huge clearances of estates, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) will doubtless refer, as perfectly good council housing, in which millions of pounds has been invested under the decent homes programme, will be knocked down to make way for private luxury developments. The Conservatives just do not get it when it comes to housing.”
“Another policy that we must confront is the one that Boris described as “Kosovo-style social cleansing” when it was announced. I have never agreed with him more—but unfortunately, the following week he went on to say: “My consistent position has been that the government is absolutely right to reform the housing benefit system which has become completely unsustainable. I do not agree with the wild accusations from defenders of the current system that reform will lead to social cleansing.” Boris says one thing in front of a microphone when the policy is first announced, but he secretly makes those comments at a later date.”
“I do not know how the Minister will explain at the Dispatch Box how the Mayor of London will hit his 50,000 homes target without building a single home in 2012-13 or 2013-14—unless, that is, the Mayor moves a whole host of Bob Crows. [Interruption.] The shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), is waving an informative graph at me; coincidentally, I happen to have a copy. It is from the Homes and Communities Agency, and she will no doubt refer to it in her speech. It officially confirms the figures that I gave; they come not from a Labour party press release, but from the Homes and Communities Agency. Boris has clearly failed in his objective and his promise to provide affordable housing for people in London.”
“I agree. Buy to let has not been the success that some thought it would be in providing rented accommodation and encouraging people to enter the private rented market; that idea has been consigned to the history books. I hope that we do not go back down that route again. We need to deal with the problem of the supply of social rented accommodation. I point out to the Minister, before he attacks the previous Mayor of London’s record, that thanks to the last Government’s subsidy, the number of affordable house-building starts in 2009-10 was 16,000. Last year that was down to just over 2,000. This year, 2011-12, the figure is 2,000. From 2012-13 it is zero.”
“We need to return to that situation, and I hope that the Government will reconsider their policies on the cuts in housing investment under the Mayor and the cuts to support to new council housing building programmes. I hope that we can start to build the houses that future generations need.”
“I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. It is a fool’s paradise to suggest that we can continue with the policies of the last 20 years or more and just build social housing as a fag end of private sector development. We need to make local authority land available for development, build social housing and create mixed communities by encouraging employment within communities, without messing around with flexible, temporary or probationary tenancies. That is the way forward for housing in London; it is essential for future generations, whether they aspire to be homeowners or not. Affordable rented accommodation, even in communities where property values are extremely high, are absolutely essential if we are to have a thriving economy and thriving communities in those areas.”
“One of the things that the Government have never understood about their cap on the housing benefit limits in the private rented sector is that many in that sector are in work. They receive benefit because of the high rents in their areas. It is those people who will be shifted out of those areas and probably forced into unemployment.”
“Has my hon. Friend read a book by Professor Peter Hennessy, who is now in the House of Lords? One of the points that he makes in the book is that the soldiers who liberated France after the invasion of Europe found themselves liberating people who were living in better conditions than those of their families back in England. The title of the book is “Never Again”. When those soldiers came back, one of the driving issues in the subsequent election was housing. That led to the era of building the communities and housing to which my hon. Friend has just referred. We have lost that sense of mission, but we need to get it back.”
“It is feared in some quarters that the deal brokered in Cairo between Hamas and Fatah is influencing America’s attitude to the new regime there. Has the Foreign Secretary had an opportunity to hold any discussions about that with his American counterpart? In particular, has he discussed the future of aid for Egypt and of assistance with the delivery of free and fair elections in the near future?”
“How can the Secretary of State convince people that he is protecting front-line services when a flagship Bill such as the Health and Social Care Bill is in such disarray? While he is pausing and listening and reflecting on that Bill, will he also consider whether the House will have a further opportunity to consider his reflections, because we are through the Committee stage? Will there be another Committee?”
““No decisions about us without us” could apply to every single person who works in the NHS who has been telling the Secretary of State that these are reckless changes. Throughout the country changes are taking place. Now he says that he is going to be listening. If so, we can anticipate some more changes. Will he therefore instruct everyone in the NHS who is currently restructuring on the basis of the Bill to stop that restructuring until we know exactly what the Government intend to do?”
“The point that my right hon. Friend is making is important. Gaddafi could prove to be very difficult indeed to remove, so we cannot impose limitations on the length of time that the action and the enforcement of the resolution will take. Civilians in Tripoli are as valuable as civilians in Benghazi, so the actions that we take will be measured by the people who support them, which will be a judgment on whether what we are doing is in line with the international agreement. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is an important point we must always bear in mind?”
“Will the Secretary of State distance himself from the comments of Dr Charles Alessi, a GP alleged to have been one of the architects of GP commissioning in this Bill and one of the people invited to No. 10, who is of the opinion that too many people in his area are receiving treatment for macular degeneration? Is that not rationing services and nothing whatsoever to do with providing them on the basis of clinical need?”
“The fact that arms that could have been sold by this country and many other western countries are being used against the people fighting for freedom in Libya highlights the unacceptable nature of the arms trade. Were there any discussions at the European Union about the possibility of international agreement about who we should deal with regarding arms in the future, to prevent such circumstances from coming about?”
“May we have a debate as part of the consultation on the Government’s Green Paper on special educational needs and disabilities? There is widespread concern that the cuts imposed by the coalition on local authorities will reduce the money available to parents to control budgets. If there is no money in the budgets, there is no control for parents and that will be nothing but a con trick on them. We need to have a debate in the House so we can represent our constituents’ views.”
“The Government insist that it is possible to cut 10,000 police posts nationally, and up to 1,500 in Manchester. I should point out to the Minister that they also plan to cut nearly 1,600 back-office staff. We know from an answer that Baroness Neville-Jones gave in the House of Lords that there is no formally agreed definition of front-line police services. If those are not cuts to front-line police services, we would like to know what they are. Can the Minister get to the Dispatch Box and tell us exactly what the definition of police front-line service is, because if he cannot, how can he protect them?”
“The scale and pace of the cuts that the coalition has decided to implement go far deeper and faster than is necessary to deal with the deficit. Can the Secretary of State say whether those cuts are permanent?”
“Will the hon. Gentleman explain why the coalition has taken away the requirement on police officers to record the ethnicity of people whom they stop on the street?”