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Affordable Housing

The hon. Gentleman once again shows his attachment to the parliamentary Labour party brief—he would be lost without it. I am proud of the early-day motions that I have signed. That particular early-day motion expressed concern about the insensitivity of development. I have had a meeting with the Minister for Housing and Planning to draw attention to the lack of development in my constituency. I asked her to take action to deal with the problem caused by the way in which Natural England—formerly English Nature—has instituted a moratorium on all residential development in my constituency. I want a bipartisan consensus on lifting that moratorium. When the Minister makes her speech, perhaps she will turn her attention to what the Government are doing to jolly along Natural England, which is one of their quangos, to ensure that there is more house building in my constituency. In a Westminster Hall debate—sadly, the hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Khan) could not be present—I called on the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn), to press the Minister for Housing and Planning to find out what could be done to ensure that there was more house building in my constituency and neighbouring constituencies. I await the Minister’s comments with interest. As the debate has demonstrated, there is a widespread consensus in the House that we need to increase housing supply, not least because projected future household growth outstrips the growth in new housing completions. That is a problem both for those who want to own and those who want to rent, whether that is in the private or the social sector. For those who want to own, the price of the average house is such that both partners in any relationship would need to earn more than the national average wage of £24,000 to have even a chance of getting on the housing ladder anywhere in the country. As many hon. Members have acknowledged, we have a problem with social housing. The Chancellor has indicated that when it comes to the comprehensive spending review, he might turn from the clunking fist into Father Christmas. However, as several hon. Members have pointed out, the Government should not be over-proud of their record on social housing. Some 94,000 people are in temporary accommodation today, but the figure was half that—only 41,000—in 1997. The Chancellor has a target of halving the number the people in temporary accommodation. That is an admirable goal, but if it is met, we will only be back to where we were when this Government took over. The number of social housing completions has been consistently lower under this Government than it was under the last. I admit that housing policy was never perfect under previous Administrations. However, even in the 1990s, the number of social housing completions under all Conservative housing Ministers ran at between 23,000 and 30,000. The figure has never reached that level under this Government; it has ranged between 18,000 and 13,000.