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Affordable Housing

I accept your strictures, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and in view of the number of interventions that I have already taken, I shall certainly not take any more. Let me conclude as quickly as possible. Chesterfield council was told that it had too much money in council house rents, so in the last financial year £3.2 million— 14 per cent. of all the rents paid by Chesterfield’s tenants—has been taken away to spend somewhere else in the country where it is desperately needed. Yet if the council privatised tomorrow, the privatised landlord could keep the money. How can it be that today the money must be redistributed elsewhere in the country, but tomorrow, under a private landlord, we could keep the lot? Chesterfield council was told that 70 per cent. of its right-to-buy receipts must be taken from it by the Government to spend somewhere else, yet if it privatised the system tomorrow it could keep all the money. How can it be that today a total of £9.2 million must be taken from Chesterfield to be spent elsewhere, including—insultingly—on the Olympic infrastructure in London two years ago under the former ODPM, yet tomorrow it could stay in Chesterfield, with a private landlord? The situation is ridiculous. Why is the policy so incomprehensible and vindictive? First, there is the new Labour dogma that the public sector is bad and cannot deliver anything, as we see with Labour’s increasing attempts to privatise both education and the national health service. Secondly, the root cause is the Chancellor and the public sector borrowing requirement, which was confirmed by senior officials at a meeting of the Defend Council Housing group on 21 November, attended by several Labour MPs. Only yesterday, the Chancellor was boasting about how low our PSBR is. I do not understand that claim. If public borrowing builds hospitals, schools or council housing it is debt, and therefore bad, but if it is private borrowing it is economic growth, and therefore good. The money is the same, although it costs more to borrow privately than publicly—but private is good and public is bad. That is voodoo economics of the highest order. Recently, localism has been a popular buzzword with both the Government and the Conservatives. If the word means anything, however, it must mean a shift in the balance—from London to the regions and local councils. The UK, and England in particular, is the most centralised democracy in the western world: 90 per cent. of the money raised by the Chancellor, in London, is handed out with strings attached. In Scandinavia, France, Germany or any state in the USA, people would react with blank incomprehension if we described our system. They run their local services, borrowing locally, prudentially, to raise money for them. They would not understand the idea that Oslo, Paris, Berlin or Washington should tell local communities how to run their health, police, fire, housing or education services. In the last financial year, £9.2 million was taken from Chesterfield’s council tenants. The council could be building new houses with that money and refurbishing its stock. The council could be prudentially borrowing and using rents to meet the tremendous housing needs of Chesterfield. Under a local system, Birmingham, Southport, and all the other places we have heard about that are in the same position, could meet local needs. Will the Minister explain why a Labour Government continue vindictively to penalise and punish people in Chesterfield, which is primarily a poor working-class community?