John Healey
MP for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough · Labour · United Kingdom
“Mr Spock, I think some would say, Mr Speaker! My hon. Friend is right. Despite global conflicts, trade tensions and rising threats in the world, which are pushing up inflation, bearing down on growth and pushing up borrowing costs, the UK economy is demonstrating huge resilience.”
“The Prime Minister and I have been clear that we must cut the costs of welfare. On levels of taxation, we had a period of Conservative Government, with low growth and high debt. They crashed the economy with the mini-Budget, and we had levels of taxation that were putting pressure on business, adding to the cost of living.”
“The hon. Lady is talking to the person who led the work to establish a defence and security partnership with the European Union and bilateral agreements with other countries, on which we now build both our economic strength and our national security strength. On the question of the Budget, I ask the hon.”
“Since day one in the job, the Prime Minister and I have been in lockstep in our determination to meet Britain’s fiscal rules. This is the bedrock on which we build good growth and help give a bit of breathing space to families and businesses.”
“May I start by paying tribute to my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West and Pudsey (Rachel Reeves)? I am proud to have been a member of a Government with the first female Chancellor in 700 years.”
“My hon. Friend speaks up very strongly for his local area. He is right about the importance of pubs, social clubs and live venues, and about the importance of the 20% cut that we announced in July. These are the things that make the places where we live the places that we also love.”
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“It is quite the contrary. I was a strong supporter of the affordable homes programme, and I negotiated with the rest of the Government an unprecedented switch of £1.5 billion from other Departments so that we could build more genuinely affordable rented homes to help bring the country through the recession. If the hon. Gentleman looks at his Government’s record, he will see that eight out of 10 of the affordable homes for social rent that they claim they have built were started and funded through decisions that I made as Labour’s last Housing Minister.”
“I regret that—just as in the last five years of this Government—we did not do enough to ensure that when council homes were sold, there was enough funding to ensure that they could be replaced fully, one for one, like for like, and in the area in which they were lost. That big flaw in this Bill will become more and more exposed in every area, including in the constituencies of Conservative Members, in each of the next five years.”
“There were failings in the way banks and the financial services were regulated in this country and every other developed country. What I do regret is that perhaps our Ministers listened too hard to the Conservative party, which was urging us to cut the regulation of the banking sector. What I am proud of is that when that deep economic recession hit, driven by the global banking crisis, ours was a Government prepared to step in to try to help the country through that deep recession—to help people stay in jobs, to help businesses keep going, and to help people stay in their own homes. I was proud to play a part in that with a £4 billion affordable housing programme building the affordable homes to rent and buy that people needed across the country—£4 billion in 2009-10 cut under this Government to less than two thirds of a billion pounds.”
“They were not concerned about homeowners who were faced with the repossession of their homes, and despite a much deeper recession and much more serious economic problems, our mortgage rescue scheme meant that more than a third fewer people than in the 1991 recession had to lose their homes and lose the basis on which they were building their lives.”
“My hon. Friend and I worked very closely on this and he is right. The kick-start programme of putting public money into re-starting building on sites that were stalled because of the deep global banking crisis and recession was part of building the homes we needed and creating the jobs we needed, and because we also insisted on apprenticeships in return for that support, we got more apprenticeships across the country. In terms of the mortgage rescue scheme, my hon. Friend will remember that in the last Tory recession of 1991 they put nothing in place.”
“My hon. Friend anticipates one of my main criticisms of the Bill. He also anticipates one of the major criticisms of many people who have taken what Conservative Ministers said at face value, because the more they look the less they will like what they see, and the more they look the less they will see support for them and their aspirations in future.”
“My hon. Friend is right. In truth the scale and cost of the housing crisis we face in this country requires every part of the housing sector, from private house builders to housing associations to councils, to do a great deal more, and we need more homes of all types, including social rented homes. The fundamental flaw with this Bill and this Government’s plans is that they put all the chips on starter homes and on home ownership. I am going to come on to why this is such a mistake for the homes we need in the future.”
“This is not an unforeseen consequence; it is the logical consequence of the Conservatives’ policies in the Bill. The danger of giving housing associations this gung-ho freedom and creating a dash to build is that many longstanding housing associations—although not East Thames, which is relatively new—will see this as a green light to become almost indistinguishable from private developers. The big risk is that some of them will lose sight of their social mission and that their boards, trustees and directors will simply not be strong enough to represent their tenants’ long-term interests or to ensure that we get the mix of homes we need.”
“They have no guarantee that the Secretary of State or his successor will not welch on the deal, or that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will not march in with his big boots to override the Secretary of State. Unless the guarantees that they are seeking as a basis for this deal are placed in the legislation, I fear the worst for them.”
“My hon. Friend knows as much about this as anyone in the House, and in her characteristic way she has put her finger on a fundamental problem that the Secretary of State and his Ministers are now facing. It is a problem of trust. Just three years ago, councils and housing associations were given a 10-year guarantee on the rents that would be in place for them and the properties they manage, so that they could plan their businesses’ development and maintenance. How can they now trust this Secretary of State and his Ministers to keep their word in the future? This is a serious problem for housing associations. How can they trust a voluntary deal, the terms of which are not in the Bill?”
“And if the right to buy is not put in place, what will happen to the tenants? The Secretary of State hardly mentioned them in his speech. How can there be a “right” to buy without the legislation to create that right? Without that legislation, and without giving tenants the ability to challenge landlords if they say no, this will not be a right to buy; it will be a right to beg to buy.”
“This is a problem. We are not being given the details of the so-called vote taken by housing associations to enter this voluntary deal. The deal does not reflect the majority, or certainly a large number, of associations, which did not respond or were not consulted. There are serious questions for the Secretary of State about this. Despite many of the housing associations saying that they do not want to sign up to the deal—or not having said that they will do so—the Bill will nevertheless give regulators the power to enforce compliance by those housing associations on “home ownership” measures. How can we take at face value the words of Ministers about this being a voluntary deal for housing associations when behind it lies regulation that will enforce compliance?”
“It is at its lowest level for a generation. The number of home-owning households reduced by 200,000 under that Government, whereas it increased by more than 1 million under the Labour Government before them.”
“I am a little surprised at that intervention, because the hon. Gentleman has had experience of serving on the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government. If he had listened harder to the point my hon. Friend made, he would know that she was talking about tenants who are on intermediate rents and who do not have the sort of protection and rights he claims they have. This is a real problem. This is a straw in the wind. This is potentially a sign of problems to come. Ministers have spent the past Parliament blaming Labour, but they have their own track record now. The inescapable background to this Bill is that that record is one of five years of failure on every front. The Secretary of State devoted most of his speech to home ownership, but that fell each and every year in the last Parliament—each and every year since 2010.”
“Oh dear, Madam Deputy Speaker! Is that really the best the Secretary of State can do? In 2009, when I was Labour’s Housing Minister, we were struggling with the deepest recession, following the global financial crisis. I was putting in place programmes to help lift the economy and, more importantly, to set up the mortgage rescue scheme, which helped homeowners who were struggling with their finances to stay in their homes. It will not wash to have the Secretary of State and Ministers continually coming back to what happened under Labour. They have had five years and it is their record—and on home ownership, young people have been hit the hardest. The number of young people owning their own home now has fallen by more than a fifth since 2010.”
“[Interruption.] The Minister for Housing and Planning is chuntering away, but if he does not take this from the House of Commons, let me draw his attention to his own Department’s statistics. The Department’s live table 213 shows him that the lowest number of homes built under Labour was in 2009, when the figure was 124,980. That was at the depths, following the deepest economic crisis and recession for 100 years, but it was still higher than in 2014, the year in which the highest number of homes—117,720—were built under the Tories. They have had five years of failure on all fronts. This Bill does nothing to correct the causes of that failure, and in many areas it will make things much worse. Let me turn now to the content of the Bill. [Interruption.] Well, I can certainly stop taking interventions from hon. Members.”
“I am not going to give way, as I have given plenty of chances and I will give way later on. I am going to make some progress now. While family incomes have stagnated, ever-rising private rents on new lettings are up by a fifth—by £1,600 a year—since 2010. Homelessness halved under Labour, but it is up by more than a third under the Tories, and it is rising rapidly. Housing benefit costs to the taxpayer have risen by almost £4.5 billion during the past five years, despite some punishing cuts for ordinary people, such as the bedroom tax. At the same time, housing investment was slashed. On house building, I say to the Secretary of State that the House of Commons has confirmed to me that the last Government built fewer homes than any peacetime Government since Lloyd George’s in the 1920s.”
“No, I will not give way, as it is clear that the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues want me to carry on. Young people and families on ordinary incomes face a cost-of-housing crisis. The need for affordable homes has never been greater. This Bill sounds the death knell for our ability to build the affordable homes to rent and buy that are so badly needed in urban and rural areas alike. It strangles the ability and the obligation of the public and private sectors to build affordable homes.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. When I talk about affordable homes to rent and to buy, I talk, in large part, about those shared ownership homes, which are often built because of obligations on developers, and often managed by housing associations, which will get choked off under this Bill. I will come to that point in a moment.”
“No. Clauses 56 to 72 require the forced sell-off of affordable council homes to fund an extension of the right to buy to housing association homes. It is a power for the Chancellor to impose an annual levy on councils. Honestly, this is like some pre-Magna Carta monarch running short of cash for his exploits. There is no prospect and no plan for the proper replacement of these homes. There is no one-for-one, like-for-like replacement with new homes, and certainly not in the area where they are lost. This is unworkable and wrong, and we will oppose it.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She has just heard me describe these provisions as unworkable and wrong. She has just heard me say that we will oppose them in the Division tonight, and we will challenge them at each stage of this Bill through Parliament. I hope that she will help my colleagues and I on the Front Bench do just that. The truth is that, in many areas of the country—both rural and urban, especially in London—the council homes that are flogged off will not go to families who are struggling to buy for the first time; they will go to speculators and to buy-to-let landlords. The greater the demand for affordable housing in an area and the higher the value of the houses, the more the Chancellor will take in his annual levy.”
“Indeed. My right hon. Friend makes a powerful point and speaks very powerfully for the capital. He speaks for the capital and for councils in areas that are led by Labour and by the Conservatives. London and places such as York, where there are high-value homes, are exactly the areas where councils will be forced to sell off houses. In Westminster, for instance, almost three quarters of council homes—nearly 9,000 of them—above the high-value threshold will have to be sold to pay for the policy not in Westminster or in London but across the country, in order to meet the Chancellor’s and the Conservative party’s manifesto pledge.”
“It is a field day for developers, and a dark day for families wanting to rent or buy an affordable home.”
“My guess is that the Conservative leaders of Kensington and Chelsea and of Westminster have had an influence on the Conservative leadership of the Local Government Association, because it has made it clear that it opposes the plan and it has warned of the consequences “in particular on council waiting lists, homelessness and housing benefit.” Alongside this policy, clauses 3 to 6 overturn 25 years of planning law established by the Conservatives in 1990, with cross-party support, to require developers to help to provide affordable homes. So the very system of planning obligations that has delivered nearly 250,000 genuinely affordable homes to rent and to buy in the past decade will be set aside by Ministers imposing starter home obligations only.”
“In order to do so, will the Secretary of State guarantee, as he should, that the draft regulations are available to the House when these clauses are debated in the Public Bill Committee?”
“I say that to the Housing and Planning Minister, who is chuntering again, because he might want to address them when he winds up. Those concerns are heightened, first, by the fact that there has been no consultation on the most radical of these planning proposals; and, secondly, by the fact that so much is left as open-ended powers for the Secretary of State. Clauses 3, 4, 97, 102 and 107 introduce very far-reaching changes. [Interruption.] Instead of laughing, I suggest that the hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) look at those five clauses. These far-reaching changes must be clarified and justified by the Secretary of State, and they should be restricted as the Bill goes through Parliament if they cannot be justified.”
“Secondly, they must put in place a guarantee and a guard against any abuse or dead-weight in the scheme. Let me touch on planning—parts 6 and 7 of the Bill. With Ministers in a political panic about falling so far short of the new build numbers that they have pledged, this Bill gives them wide-ranging powers to impose new house building and override local community concerns and local plans. With a total of 32 new housing and planning powers for the centre, this legislation signals the end of localism. We welcome the measures to speed up the planning process where there is a clear case for doing so and where local decision making is not ignored, but there are serious concerns about some aspects of this Bill that will be shared in all parts of the House.”
“The aim was for it to be a brownfield ‘exceptions’ policy...which would be a welcome addition to existing affordable and other new housing. In the policy as now proposed, starter homes are clearly to be instead of, not additional to, affordable homes to rent”. Those are not my words but those of the previous permanent secretary of the Department for Communities and Local Government, Bob Kerslake—Lord Kerslake. The Government’s own impact assessment confirms this: “Starter Homes will not be additional to housing supply”— the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts). So before this Bill goes through the House, the Government must, as a minimum, change it to do two things. First, they must make any starter homes built through developer obligations additional to affordable homes, not a substitute.”
“That is simply out of reach for most of the middle-income working families who need help buying a home the most. Furthermore, there are no controls on the Bill to stop those who can afford to buy without help from the Government taking advantage of the scheme, so there is a big risk that the people who benefit most will be those who need the help least. As Shelter says of the starter homes programme: “The only group it appears to help on a significant scale will be those already earning high salaries who should be able to afford on the open market without Government assistance.” Let me say this: “When this was first put forward prior to the election, it was clearly intended to be focused on using that land that had not already been designated for housing.”
“We need fresh thinking, radical ideas and a much wider public debate for the future, which is why I have commissioned Peter Redfern, the chief executive of one of the country’s largest house builders, Taylor Wimpey, to undertake an independent review of the decline in home ownership, supported by an expert panel of major figures in housing and economics. The Secretary of State must face the fact that the Government’s starter homes will simply not be affordable and will be a non-starter for families on ordinary incomes. Shelter calculates that across the country a person will need an income of £50,000 a year and a deposit of £40,000 to afford a starter home while in London they would need an income of £77,000 a year and a deposit of £98,000.”
“For organisations with a social mission that have played a big part in providing publicly funded homes for decades, that is almost as shocking as one third of NHS hospitals saying that they are prepared only to take private patients. The Bill is a milestone moment for affordable housing in this country and it is a massive step backwards. Let me turn to starter homes. We welcome the Government’s stated aim of making home ownership more accessible to people on ordinary incomes and to young people in particular. The drop in home ownership over the past five years to its lowest level for a generation means that this is an essential element of meeting the country’s housing needs and aspirations. But what is being done is not working, and these plans will do too little to help.”
“My hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee is right on both counts. His Committee is conducting an inquiry into housing associations and I look forward to the report, as it will have great cross-party authority and will help this House and the other place get to grips with what the Bill means for the future. The Chartered Institute of Housing, the independent professional experts, says that this fire sale of affordable council homes to fund the extension of the right to buy could mean the loss of 195,000 genuinely affordable social rented homes in the next five years. Although housing associations might well build more homes as they sell under right to buy, many will increasingly build for open market sale and rent. Indeed, one third already say that they will no longer build any affordable homes.”
“No wonder the Minister’s Back Benchers look so concerned, because this bluster—this promise of big housing numbers from which the Government are falling so far short—will not wash. He has his own track record. Never mind blaming Labour, never mind the previous Parliament: five years of failure on housing under Conservative Ministers is what he has to answer for. Moreover, he did not answer the important question for this House and for the public about the proper scrutiny of this Bill—that is, whether the draft regulations for these sweeping new planning powers will be available to the Public Bill Committee. He is nodding his head, but I am not sure whether that is a yes or a no. I will give way again if he would like to give us a yes or a no on the draft regulations.”
“Eight out of 10 of the genuinely affordable rented homes that the Minister claims credit for were started under Labour—commissioned under us and paid for with a commitment of investment under us.”
“He ducked the questions that I put to him earlier, but he encouraged housing associations to do the “voluntary” deal anyway. He is the Minister who, as the House has seen this afternoon, has to duck and dive to evade the truth that council and housing association homes sold off under this Bill will not be replaced one for one, like for like, let alone in the local areas in which they are lost. However, I do have some sympathy for the Secretary of State.”
“He was Mr Moderate Centre Ground—the Conservative Minister with political roots in the old Social Democratic party, and the Minister who managed to strike a widely welcomed balance in the national planning policy framework in 2012 between the rights of local residents and the requirement to build more homes. Now he is the Minister explaining extreme plans that will all but end new affordable housing for social rent and overturn 25 years of planning law to let house builders completely off the hook over new affordable homes and mixed developments. The Secretary of State was Mr Decency—the well-meaning Minister whom people felt they could deal with and trust. Now he is the Minister who would have known that the Office for National Statistics reclassification of housing associations was on the cards.”
“I will send the hon. Gentleman a copy of the Lyons report, which contains exactly the answer to that problem. The problem for him now is this: even where councils and local communities have local plans in place, the Secretary of State is taking powers under this Bill to override them—even when they have been consulted upon, agreed and put in place. That should worry the hon. Gentleman. The Bill is an extraordinary personal and political retreat for the Secretary of State. He was Mr Localism—the Minister for city deals, the Minister who signed off the radical devolution of housing finances for councils in 2012. Now he is the Minister fronting this Bill with 32 new centralising powers and a legalised cash grab from councils for the Chancellor.”
“It will be a slow-burn problem all the way to 2020, and we will oppose it in the Lobby tonight.”
“At the risk of disagreeing with my hon. Friend, I do have some sympathy for the Secretary of State. The Bill is driven by the politics of the Conservative party, not the housing needs of the country, and it is not really his Bill. Like the cut to tax credits, this Bill is the Chancellor’s work, with his political fingerprints all over it. It is a Bill that makes the same mistakes as tax credits—divide-and-rule politics overriding good policy; and like tax credits, it faces a looming row on all fronts. Above all, it fails the same low and middle-income working families that the Tories claim they will represent. It will lead to a huge loss of affordable homes to rent and buy, and be a huge let-down to those who believed the Tory election pledges. The Bill will prove to be bad policy and bad politics.”
“The hon. Gentleman has given a list of the SNP Government’s record, but how does he explain the fact that after eight years of that Government, more than 150,000 people are still on council waiting lists and half of all homes in Scotland still fall short of the official quality standards?”
“(Urgent Question): Will the Minister explain to the House the details of the voluntary agreement on the right to buy negotiated with the National Housing Federation and how it differs from his original statutory approach?”
“If the Minister and his party really want to occupy the centre ground, they should drop this extreme policy. It is a bad deal for tenants and a bad deal for the taxpayer.”
“So what is the Minister’s guarantee for a one-to-one, like-for-like replacement for both council and housing association homes sold under this scheme, and how many of these genuinely affordable homes sold by housing associations will be replaced by homes that are not? Finally, this is a challenge for the Chancellor as well as the Minister. This policy fails the test of good social policy and the test of sound economics. It squanders a long-term asset by selling it on the cheap. Will the Minister commit to publishing a full value for public money assessment because taxpayers will bear the cost three times over—first, for the public investment to build the homes; secondly, for the discount to sell them; and thirdly, for the higher housing benefit bill that will come when these homes are bought to let again to tenants at full market rents.”
“What assessment has the Minister made of the number of council homes that will be lost, and when will he publish the full impact assessment of these plans, as he promised the House he would on 29 June, and when will Members be able to vote on these plans, as the Prime Minister promised on 27 May when he opened the Queen’s Speech debate? The Minister has talked about one-for-one replacement of all homes sold—well, we have heard that before. In 2010, the same promises were made for council homes, and it has been five years of failure—not with “one for one”, but with one home built for every nine sold.”
“In truth, this is not a right-to-buy, but a beg-to-buy policy, and many housing association tenants will find next year that they have been badly let down by the Prime Minister’s promises. I strongly back the desire of most of us to own our own home. That is why I commissioned the chief executive of Taylor Wimpey to do a report for me on the decline of homeownership, which has gone down each and every year in the last five years. This right-to-buy policy, however, is bad housing policy. Shelter warned that 113,000 council homes could be sold off to pay for it, with no-go areas for many lower income families to live in in many of our major cities and towns.”
“They are promising 1.3 million housing association tenants the right to buy their own home. How many tenants will not, in fact, have this right next year? What about those in at least 37 housing associations who have said no to the deal, and those many more who have not been consulted and have not replied? What about those in the nine separate categories of the deal “where housing associations may exercise discretion over sales”? What about those caught by the Secretary of State’s weasel words this morning in the written statement, whereby all this will be subject to “the overall availability of the funding of the scheme”? What do tenants do when the landlord says no? How can this be a “right” to buy, with no legislation behind it?”
“I am sorry that I have had to drag the Minister before the House this afternoon. I am disappointed that the Secretary of State made a written statement this morning, but is not prepared to account for himself to the public this afternoon on one of the Prime Minister’s central election pledges. The extension of the so-called right to buy to housing associations, funded by the forced sale of council homes, will mean fewer genuinely affordable homes when the need has never been greater. We will oppose it. This is a back-room deal to sidestep legislation and proper public scrutiny in Parliament. We have said from the start that this is unworkable and wrong—and so it is proving. The Minister’s and the Secretary of State’s statements today are riddled with holes.”
“This is the first Commons Question Time since our Labour leadership election and I am proud to speak for the party with more than 325,000 members behind me, more than double the Conservative membership. I want to ask the Secretary of State about his ex-boss, the Chancellor, who describes the recent decline in home ownership as “a tragedy”. I have new House of Commons figures showing that home ownership has gone down each and every year in the last five years. What does the Secretary of State say to the millions of middle England, middle-income young people and families who desperately want the chance to own their own home, but have no hope of ever being able to afford the escalating costs?”
“What the Secretary of State is saying and what he is doing are simply not working. People need affordable homes to rent and to buy so that they get the chance of a decent start in life. In the last five years, with Conservative Ministers in charge, the number of people getting mortgages is down by over 10%. Last month, Shelter showed that families on the Chancellor’s so-called living wage will find it impossible and unaffordable to buy in eight out of 326 local authority areas across England. [Interruption.] Yes, eight of 326 local authority areas in England. Let me give a warning to the Secretary of State and his Ministers. They spent the last Parliament blaming Labour. That will not wash now. You have a track record of your own, and we Opposition Members will—week in, week out—expose your failings and hold this Government to account.”
“Weak growth means a more fragile economy—we are not saving enough, investing enough or exporting enough—which is why consumer debt is rising and we have the biggest balance of payments gap since records began in 1955.”