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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“Are not these proposals in danger of being a charter for the chattering classes to leave behind the inner-city secondary schools, as they have always done in our education system? What mechanisms will she put in place to ensure that that does not happen?”
“I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for her statement, but may I ask her whether she believes that parent power will in any respect stand in the way of expanding schools and improving them? Where are the schools that want to expand to take on more challenging pupils? Are we not empowering parents who have moved heaven and earth to get near to the successful schools, and who often have moved house to do so? Will they turn round and say, "Yes, expand this school and make it bigger to take on those more challenging pupils," when they feel that they have left those pupils behind through their ability to move closer to the most successful schools? I urge my right hon. Friend to think very carefully about the system we are introducing.”
“Has my hon. Friend seen the Shelter report "Building hope: the case for more homes now", which draws attention to the number of families, particularly children, in temporary accommodation? Across London, 73,000 children are in temporary accommodation. That highlights the need for affordable rented accommodation. The Government intend to halve the number of children in temporary accommodation by 2010. How many of those children will by then be in homes that their parents have been able to buy and how many will be in rented accommodation?”
“Am I correct in recalling that the hon. Gentleman supported the former east London river crossing? He wants to make a strong case against the bridge, which I have consistently opposed, so will he give the House his reasons for changing his mind?”
“If we fail to address the problem in a regeneration programme as big as Thames Gateway, we shall be letting down a whole generation of young families in London. We have to ask who the regeneration is for. At the end of the programme, when the Thames Gateway area is fully regenerated, who will be living there? Who will benefit from all the effort that we, as politicians, have put in to bring about change? Will it be the people we were elected to represent—those who really need to benefit from the regeneration? That is the real measure of whether the Thames Gateway and everything we have discussed, including the Olympic games, will be of benefit to London and its people.”
“No amount of schemes to assist families to purchase, which I fully support and welcome, will address the fundamental problems of overcrowding and the number of families in temporary accommodation. If they could afford to buy, temporary accommodation is certainly an incentive; if they could buy, they would get themselves out of it pretty damn quick. There is a growing need for affordable accommodation for rent and we are not addressing it forcefully enough in the Thames Gateway development. Shelter tells us that we need to build 20,000 additional homes each year until 2010 and that in London we need almost 6,000 homes a year in addition to those already proposed, to deal with our housing problems.”
“In 1997–98, the percentage of people who were in temporary accommodation for over two years was 1 per cent., but that has grown to nearly 10 per cent. The percentage who have been living in such accommodation for more than one year is up to nearly 25 per cent., so it is essential that we deal with the issue of affordable housing in the Thames Gateway area. I am absolutely sick and tired of not being able to help the families who come to my surgery who are looking for housing. Three generations are living in a house. As I have said before in the Chamber, those families are living in houses that were built by a Labour Government, and they are now looking to a Labour Government to give them the start in life that was afforded to their parents. We must address that issue. Those people look to us to provide them with affordable housing.”
“All the studies on the development of children who are in temporary accommodation show that, because their base is temporary and they often get moved, their development falls behind that of their peers, which puts them at a disadvantage. We are developing schemes such as Sure Start, which those children often do not have access to, and targeting education to improve standards of attainment. When that number of children do not have a permanent home where they can study properly, or where they have difficulty in getting the home life that they need to be able to make the best of their education, we have a serious problem in tackling the Government's agenda on developing those young people. Housing is therefore central to the success of the Thames Gateway. A growing number of people are living in temporary accommodation for long periods.”
“Clearly, the Olympics could benefit from input from the community college. In the Minister's future discussions about the development of the Olympics, that should not be overlooked. The major contribution that the development of the Thames Gateway can make is in housing. Shelter's recently published report, "Building Hope: the case for more homes now", highlights the scale of need across the country, including in London. Nation wide, there are 116,000 children living in temporary accommodation. Over 73,000 of those live in London. There are 900,000 children nationally who are in overcrowded accommodation and 261,000 of those are in London. Living in cramped accommodation has all sorts of implications for young people who are trying to educate themselves and to study at home. There are also implications for their health.”
“I have already spoken about the need to improve transport links to that and about the training opportunities. I draw to the Minister's attention the opportunities for training that are provided by Greenwich community college at a unique facility that it has developed with Charlton Athletic football club: it has based one of its faculties, which is called the London Leisure college, at Charlton Athletic for several years. Greenwich community college has positioned itself to develop opportunities for training in the leisure industry. It has started to train stewards for major events and to provide health and safety training and other forms of training, so that people who are putting on large events, including those at Charlton Athletic and the London Arena in the docklands, can employ qualified and trained staff.”
“I was certainly impressed with it, although certain elements could be improved. I do not want to overstate the problem, but we seem to have lost sight of the fact that the Paralympics are the second biggest sporting event in the world, being bigger than the football World cup. They will take place in Stratford, but very little consultation about the development of transport links is taking place with groups representing disabled people, such as DIPTAC. There is an irony in that, and we need to address the matter soon. There are some concerns about the accessibility of transport and whether it is suitable for disabled people. It is essential that we deal with that matter in the near future. The development of the dome by Anschutz will bring a lot of regeneration.”
“The members of the Olympic committee must have heard our arguments about London's transport system and imagined that it was creaking and incapable of accommodating the demand inspired by the games. People who do not live in London and who are not involved in the transport discussion could be forgiven for labouring under that false impression, but we should not lose sight of the fact that more than 90 per cent. of those who work in the City of London travel in and out by public transport. London's transport system is very effective, and the scale of the development already in place must have impressed the Olympic committee enormously when it arrived in Stratford. Moreover, we are not talking about a concept or a model on a table: a real infrastructure development is under way, and it is considerably well advanced.”
“Hitherto, the traditional routes that people take to and from work have resembled the spokes of a wheel, with people living on London's outskirts using the rail or tube networks to reach their places of employment in the centre of the capital. However, with the development of the east Thames corridor and growing demand to access the Thames Gateway, more people in my constituency will want to travel north and east. Therefore, links such as the DLR, which will head south from the river towards my area, will be vital. That is another reason why it is so important to establish the Crossrail transport hub at Woolwich that I spoke about earlier. I must tell the House that I was very impressed by what I saw at Stratford on my visit this week.”
“I went to Stratford this week, to see the preparations for the 2012 Olympics. Since my previous visit, enormous progress has been made in extending the DLR. It now reaches the edge of the Thames, and the next phase of development will take it across the river and into Woolwich town centre. The hope is that the line will open some time in 2008–09. I want however to make sure that the development benefits the wider community. We must consider where the DLR will go next, and there is an argument that the line should move away from the river and take in communities such as my constituency in Eltham. In that way, people there will be able to benefit from the new transport infrastructure links being built.”
“The DLR will reach Woolwich in the next five or six years, but the wider community will still suffer from a lack of direct access to public transport. That makes the development of a local transport hub even more essential, so that people can access all the different modes of transport. In that way, we can encourage the use of public transport and go some way towards dealing with the growing demand for road space in south-east London. That demand will only be exacerbated by the current rate of development. We must consider how we address some of the current problems in my constituency, which is located at the confluence of the A2 and the A20. There are enormous traffic congestion problems there, and improved transport links are absolutely vital. To that end, we must develop the transport hub at Woolwich.”
“This may sound like a whinge—it is a whinge!—but I have to say that if we were talking about west London, bypassing a town centre in that way would not be contemplated. In previous debates on infrastructure projects, I have referred to other examples such as the Hammersmith and City line. Someone who suggested that that line should bypass Hammersmith, Broadway—a transport hub with bus and other links to west London—and stop instead at Ravenscourt Park down the road would have been laughed out of court. Yet that is exactly what is being proposed, even though Woolwich in south-east London is already a big transport hub. The transport links that I have described are even more essential when one considers that my area does not have access to the tube network or to the docklands light railway.”
“It is expected to carry about 250,000 people during peak times such as the morning rush hour and will be essential for linking east London with the more prosperous west and with Heathrow and beyond in the future. As the Minister will be aware, there are currently no proposals for establishing a station at Woolwich, yet Woolwich is a major transport hub for south-east London. It is the nearest place at which my constituents could access the Crossrail service. The current proposal is that it will not stop anywhere between the Isle of Dogs and Abbey Wood—a six-mile stretch of Crossrail. There is no similar stretch without a station in between and it bypasses one of our major town centres.”
“When I spoke previously about the need to improve transport links in south-east London, I referred to young people in my constituency who want to go to the cinema in north Greenwich. It is a three quarters of an hour bus ride away—a large chunk out of a young person's day, especially when he has to use public transport to travel there and back—and represents a serious block on those young people accessing that service. We need to pay more attention to ensuring that these schemes properly link up to the wider community, and we need to take all sections of the community into account. I would be failing my constituents if I did not raise the issue of Crossrail. It is essential for London and will generate about 40 per cent. of the total anticipated capacity needs for transport across London.”
“Transport infrastructure is particularly important because it allows the wider community to access the Thames Gateway regeneration and benefit from the economic activity that it stimulates. I want to mention the peninsula at north Greenwich, which saw the grand opening of the Jubilee line five years ago. One can now leave the dome on the peninsula and get to St. John's Wood more quickly than to my constituency, which is in the same borough as the dome. There has been a serious planning failure in what I call the second phase of development of transport infrastructure. We have not thought enough about how we feed into the new transport hubs that we are creating, which is so important for the wider community's ability to access the benefits.”
“People are starting to talk about what is happening to our public services and the demands made of our local health service, local schools, local police and so forth. I know from talking to my constituents that those issues are being discussed. We need to set out clearly our proposals for meeting the needs of the new population in the Thames Gateway area. Jobs are important. Depending on where one acquires the statistics, between 120,000 and 150,000 jobs will be created in the Thames Gateway area. Hon. Members whose constituencies are close to the area, but are not necessarily part of it, ask the same question as I have consistently raised in debates on regeneration programmes: how do we ensure that the benefits reach the wider community?”
“When I entered the Chamber today to participate in this debate, I did not expect to be taken on a tour of North-East Derbyshire. However, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire (Mrs. Engel) on her maiden speech, and on taking us as far as Skinner's junction—another place that I never knew existed. So I have learned something, and I look forward to working with her as a comrade and colleague. Thames Gateway is changing east London for the better; indeed, enormous and rapid change is taking place. Depending on whom we talk to or whom we get the figures from, it appears that 150,000 to 200,000 homes will be built. Already, my borough has seen an enormous growth in the local population.”
“6. My right hon. Friend is aware that there is widespread concern about the restructuring of primary care trusts, especially in London, where there are plans to remove their link with local government boundaries. May I urge him to review those proposals and, in particular, to reconsider the plans to impose a one-size-fits-all, dogmatic approach to commissioning by imposing a purchaser-provider split? He will be aware that such an approach was an integral part of the internal market of the NHS under the Tories. It became much hated by the public, and is one of the reasons why they will never be trusted with the NHS again. Should we not be wary of going down that road? [19099]”
“For many years, my constituents suffered under the Connex franchise. Since Connex was removed from the management of the franchise, the performance has improved consistently, month by month. That has led to expectations from my constituents and others that when the franchise is finally issued the service will continue to improve. We will need extra capacity on the network and an improvement in services, such as the promised Victoria line link on the Sidcup loop for my constituents, which is much needed and long overdue. Will my hon. Friend pass on my views to the successful bidder when he has an opportunity to speak to them?”
“I sincerely hope that the Select Committee will take on board the arguments in favour of a station at Woolwich on the Crossrail line, and that the Bill will be amended accordingly.”
“The area has been a poor relation of public transport development in south-east London for far too long, and we will not countenance a failure to develop Crossrail there. Woolwich is not included in the proposals because of cost—it is not because of a lack of demand. Crossrail's own briefing says: "Crossrail will establish a brand new network of services linking areas across London and beyond. This will allow existing suburban rail services to run through London, reducing overcrowding on Underground lines and reducing congestion at a number of busy national rail stations." We must make that statement come true. We cannot allow the development of Crossrail to bypass people in south-east London.”
“The lack of public transport infrastructure proved to be a major fault in the development of the royal docks and it was some time before people could experience the wider benefits of the area. I can only demonstrate what we are planning to do with Crossrail by making a comparison with the opening of the Hammersmith and City line. Imagine the trains on that route failing to stop at Hammersmith broadway and the line ending at Ravenscourt Park. Such a proposal would be met with derision. Similarly, if trains on the Jubilee line did not stop at Canary Wharf, people would wonder about the benefits of such a transport link for the communities it was intended to serve. The failure of Crossrail trains to stop at Woolwich will have a similar effect on south-east London.”
“The Thames Gateway is one of the biggest regeneration areas in Europe. A total of 200,000 homes will be built there, and there is capacity to build 30,000 more homes than are envisaged in the Government's housing strategy. Some 150,000 jobs will be developed in the area. Inevitably, people focus on the Thames Gateway when they talk about Crossrail, but we must look at the wider community. According to the Thames Gateway partnerships, development will benefit south-east London, but that depends on how we define south-east London. History teaches us that if we do not pay attention to problems at the outset it is expensive to put them right after the development is complete. The docklands, for instance, were developed before the docklands light railway was built. The Jubilee line was built through the docklands much later.”
“If those young people wanted to use our local bus network to travel to the cinema close to North Greenwich station, it would take two hours out of their day. No young person will consider that. A commuter travelling to London to work will not consider that transport as an option, so a heavy burden is placed on the south-east rail network, on which there is too much reliance. It is frequently overcrowded and that forces people on to our roads. Larger schemes such as Crossrail must meet the wider needs of existing communities as well as communities that will be developed along the Thames Gateway. Buses are not regarded as an alternative for travelling into central London, so access to Crossrail is essential if we are to provide a decent transport network for people in south-east London.”
“I have already mentioned that we do not have direct access to the London underground system. We also face the problem of a lack of planning for surface transport. For example, we have seen no major developments in bus networks. Last week, I spoke to a group of young people who were hanging around in my constituency and asked them what they did with their time. Our local cinema is close to North Greenwich station, which is in the north of my borough. I asked, Do you ever go down to the cinema? Do you ever make your way down to the new facility there?" They said, "It is too far. The bus takes too long." We have had the Jubilee line in my borough for more than five years, but there is no direct bus link.”
“Woolwich is served by 18 bus routes, plus two night buses. The docklands light railway will arrive in Woolwich in 2008–09. The Royal Arsenal is being rebuilt. It is already home to thousands of people who live in the new buildings, and there are thousands more to come. For too long the needs of south-east London have been overlooked. Twelve of London's most socially deprived wards are in the area around Woolwich. The fact that the east Thames corridor has been overlooked for too long is recognised in the Thames Gateway development programme. We cannot overlook the level of deprivation that exists south of the river in areas such as the one that I represent. If my constituents cannot access Crossrail, they will suffer enormously as developments along the Thames Gateway take place.”
“It would make a mockery of the transport policies that have been published over many years, which are full of well-meaning statements about integrated transport, if we did not take the opportunity to make Woolwich a transport hub. We have the opportunity for a major infrastructure development to do just that, to become an integrated transport hub for an area of London that for too long has been deprived. The proposals are for Crossrail trains to travel past Woolwich, the first stop south of the river being Abbey Wood. I welcome the fact that there is to be a station at Abbey Wood. However, that cannot be considered to be a strategic location for a major station and a major development such as Crossrail. Woolwich is bypassed because it is cheaper to do so. Such second-rate planning has dogged us for too long.”
“The cost of introducing a station along the Crossrail route after it has been built would be extremely costly. That is why I want to draw attention to the amendment that was tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford), although it was not selected. He asks in that amendment for a railway station at Woolwich to accommodate the future needs of people from south-east London who will need to have access to the Thames corridor and the Thames Gateway area, to travel to the wider areas to which Crossrail will offer connections. We need a station at Woolwich. Woolwich is in a strategic position in south-east London, where it could become a transport hub for that area. It makes no sense to bypass a strategic centre.”
“People have been living in suburbs and have travelled in on rail networks. If they were lucky enough to live near the tube or "on the tube", they travelled by that means into central London. The development of the Thames Gateway and east London will change that fundamentally. I am already being approached by people who want to work on the reconstruction that is taking place in the Thames Gateway area. They want access to the Thames Gateway for training so that they can have the opportunity of taking the jobs that will be available. The future travel patterns of people from my part of London will change completely as development gathers pace. The need to travel north across the river and possibly go east, rather than west into central London, will become more common. Crossrail needs to recognise the change that will take place.”
“It is estimated that Crossrail will provide some 40 per cent. of the extra capacity that London will need. It will more than double capacity through the central London corridor that is currently provided by the London underground and it will reduce journey times by up to 40 per cent. However, that does not mean that Crossrail should go ahead regardless of the wider concerns of many parts of London. Most of the jobs that will be created over the next 10 or more years will be in the Thames gateway area, the Isle of Dogs, the City, the west end and around Heathrow. Crossrail will be vital for people who want to access these areas. Most of my constituents currently travel towards central London. In the past, London had a transport network that was rather like spokes of a wheel.”
“However, it must be properly planned and the wider benefits for the entire community must be taken into account, not just for those in the Thames gateway or further along the Thames corridor. It has long been the experience of people from my constituency that they look on as developments take place along the riverfront. Such developments are welcome, but the planning for those schemes includes little thought about how the wider community can link into those schemes and benefit from them. London has been dogged for too long by such second-rate planning, with too often the cheapest option taken and the wider benefits unconsidered. The population of London is projected to grow by 800,000 by 2016, and jobs in London will increase by 600,000 by that time. Along with that growth will come the demand for extra capacity on our transport network.”
“I am delighted to have this opportunity to speak in this debate, because I want to speak up for south-east London, which has long been forgotten in terms of transport infrastructure. As I have said on many occasions, we do not have direct access to the London underground. Much investment across London goes into the underground and much of the debate about London's transport is concerned with it. However, many parts of London are not served by it and we rely heavily on Network SouthEast and, where that fails, the only alternative for travel from my constituency to central London is the car. We also have over-congested roads. Crossrail is essential to the future of London's transport network. If London is ever to make a significant attempt to meet the future needs of its commuters, the scheme is essential.”
“It is far more expensive to introduce a station after a line has been opened than while it is being constructed. We must take on board the fact that it will be too late to make a decision about the station after the line is completed. On what basis has my hon. Friend made the decision that the case has not been made for a station at Woolwich?”
“Does my right hon. Friend agree that, in terms of the agenda for the G8, the genie is out of the bottle in a way that it has never been before? Over the past few weeks, I have visited Willowdene and St. Thomas More primary schools, where the children have demanded education for children in the developing world, and St. Thomas More secondary school, which is setting up its own fair trade canteen that will sell only fair trade goods. That is a sustainable development that will help future generations to understand the agenda of the G8 and what needs to be done. Does my right hon. Friend agree that such initiatives place an obligation on the people who are charged with delivering the communiqués from the G8 and future summits to make the difference that people want?”
“When we put together our strategy for 2012, let us not forget those people.”
“May I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his luck in being in the right place at the right time to make probably the easiest statement that any Minister has ever had to make? Some people may still harbour doubts about the bid. Some doubted whether we would win, but those who doubted that we should bid have been proven wrong. I was with 500 children from schools in Greenwich to hear the result announced and anyone who harboured doubts needed only to look at the expressions on their faces when the result came through to know what winning meant to them. May I put down a marker? Up and down the country a community of people are involved in voluntary and not-for-profit organisations delivering sport to young people. They could become an army of ambassadors on behalf of the 2012 Olympics by encouraging participation in sport for all ages.”
“Some of us are not as young as the shadow Chancellor, and we can remember the families who were trapped on benefits when the Labour Government came in. Families in London could not go to work because they were trapped on housing benefit and council tax benefit. There was no national minimum wage, and it would have cost them to go to work. Tax credits have turned that around. May I tell my right hon. Friend about a case that came to me? A constituent received a statement that gave no indication of the basis on which the calculations had been made. May I suggest that in future every communication contains the facts on which the calculations are based and advises people what to do if they are incorrect?”
“I welcome what the Government are attempting to do in respect of affordable housing, but I fear that we are not getting it right with regard to affordable rented accommodation and social housing. Local authorities can play a major part in addressing that problem.”
“Their managers might look after the fabric of the buildings, but there are other issues in the social realm—the area outside the properties. I am sure that we all have such pockets—housing association developments that have been poked in at the end of a development and which are a problem. They are not properly managed or overseen because they are at arm's length from the local authority. That problem has been created by our current housing policy. We need to think of local authorities as a vehicle for regeneration, and as a means of providing more rented accommodation. We can provide the resources if we are creative in the way in which we use the assets that we already hold in order to make provision for investment.”
“It is not impossible for us to allow a registered social landlord to manage the building element of that regeneration programme, to sell homes to the private sector and take the capital receipts, to sell affordable homes at discounted rates under all the schemes that the Government have promoted, and to use the capital to reinvest in social housing. At the moment, because of the shortage of resources, when we want to develop a piece of local authority land we sell it to the private sector and then, under section 106, try to negotiate back a proportion of affordable housing. However, the amount of affordable housing for rent is minimal, and we end up with small pockets of poorly managed housing association property.”
“The net reduction must not continue while there is clearly a problem for people who are trying to access affordable rented accommodation. In our manifesto, we said that we would allow local authorities to build council properties. I do not suggest that we should just say to local authorities, "Build council houses again and that will solve all the problems." We could have another debate about the problems of large council estates. However, we need to think of ways in which we can assist local authorities, possibly in partnership with the private sector or with housing associations, to release their capital assets and to turn them into buildings. For example, a large part of the Kidbrooke regeneration area is local authority land. Some of it has been handed over to English Partnerships as a managing agent.”
“However, that figure includes part own-part buy, assisted ownership and all forms of affordable housing, including the rented sector. There has been a significant net reduction in the availability of affordable rented accommodation as a part of the regeneration programme. Much as I welcome the regeneration of the area, I think that that is a problem. There is also the question of the number of bedrooms. What types of property will there be in the rented sector? How large will they be, and will they be targeted at local need? Those issues have not yet been addressed. I do not oppose the regeneration programme—I welcome it very much—but let me stress that future programmes must address the issues of affordability and the availability of rented accommodation.”
“With the exception of Hillingdon and Wandsworth, which somehow managed to build six properties each, the columns are filled with noughts—apart from those exceptions, local authorities started to build no new homes. In the area covered by me and by my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford), Kidbrooke is being regenerated. That is very welcome and will improve the quality of properties in that area enormously. About 2,000 properties are covered by the regeneration, and completion of the regeneration will create 4,400 properties. Of those 2,000 council properties, there are about 200 leaseholders, so there are roughly 1,800 council rented properties. When the scheme is complete there will be 1,900 affordable properties.”
“At the time of the election in 1983, local authorities were building nearly 30,000 properties and registered social landlords were building 14,000. That trend has continued up to last year, when only 131 local authority properties were built. However, remarkably, the number of registered social landlord or housing association properties was almost exactly the same as in 1979. There is a serious shortage in the supply of affordable rented accommodation. I have figures supplied by the ODPM for the starts and builds for local authorities and housing associations in London over the past two years. One column of figures shows the number of properties started and the other shows the number completed.”
“There is no dramatic growth in numbers exacerbating the problem. The people whom I see in surgeries cannot afford to buy a property, even through the schemes that the Government have come up with. We need to address that problem in our future housing policy. Throughout the country, 280,000 people are waiting for affordable housing and 61,000 are in temporary accommodation. Since 1979, 244,000 homes have been sold under the right to buy. Figures from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister on the supply of homes over a similar period tell a sorry tale. For example, in 1979, 16,200 properties were built for tenure by registered social landlords or housing associations, and nearly 75,000 for local authorities. Since 1979, the local authority figure has gradually fallen, and it has tumbled since the mid-1980s.”
“Young people today are denied that opportunity because of the shortage of affordable rented accommodation. This year, 12,200 people have sought housing from my local authority. More than 4,500 of those are council tenants seeking a move, and just over 7,500 are seeking to become council tenants. Comparing the figures for 1999 and this year for the number of people applying on the grounds of being homeless tells the story of how we are not addressing the core problem of housing need. This year, 3,332 people applied on the grounds of being homeless. In 1999, that figure was 3,700—a very similar figure. The accepted figures were 1,305 this year and 1,302 in 1999. Yet this year 970 people were still waiting to be housed, whereas in 1999 there were 599. The problem is supply rather than a growth in numbers.”