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Local Government and Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

That is true, and the Government must take account of the point that my hon. Friend makes. How can authorities participate if they find themselves in that trap, where they are left to rot by the Government? A form of gap funding should exist that enables them to fill the gap between the revenue and resources that are available to them and the costs involved in refurbishment and regeneration and in meeting the decent homes target. Gap funding along those lines is not provided to councils, but only to the private sector. That is another weakness, and the local authorities affected should not be left in that position. It is true that the Government are undertaking an experiment at the moment, with six local authorities keeping the revenues from housing revenue accounts. However, the indications are that the experiment is not going well, and the six authorities are certainly not being treated very generously. Moreover, it will take time to survey the results of the experiment, and the problem is one that faces us now: unless local authorities' housing revenue accounts are put on a firm basis so that they can participate in programmes such as the ones that have been described, they will not have the good will, or the ability, to build the houses that we need. A fourth criticism has to do with our obsession with ownership. The research done by Professor Blanchflower indicates that the countries with the highest levels of home ownership also have the highest levels of unemployment. I suppose that that may have something to do with labour mobility, but the money that goes into home ownership programmes for key workers merely adds fuel to the flames of rising house prices. That money is quickly discounted by the local market and is effectively wasted. It also is used for buying shares in RSL properties, even though people are frankly not keen on that. If they opt for a share-buying scheme, they have to pay rent and meet the cost of a mortgage, as well as pay for repairs. The housing associations do not want to do it, and the customers do not want to do it either because two thirds of them are on benefit. What would be the benefit of such a scheme? Shares will be difficult to sell when people do buy them, so money is being poured into the scheme and it is being wasted. The main commitment must be to build more council houses and more RSL houses—more social housing generally. The demand now is for housing to rent, not to buy, because people cannot afford to get on the ladder. A Shelter survey has indicated that people's first priority is affordable housing, which could be rented or low-priced housing. Their second priority is safe communities. Ownership is only the third priority of people who want housing. So why are we foisting so much effort into ownership schemes when we should be building much more public housing for rent? People cannot afford to get on the ladder now, so there is no plan A unless we build more public rented housing. If the market collapses, as the International Monetary Fund has warned us that it might well do, there is no plan B because once repossessions begin and people face negative equity, where are they going to go if we are not building houses for the public rented sector? My fifth criticism is of the 15 local housing companies, which are a top-down enforced arrangement. They are effectively a means of forcing local authorities to disgorge their land that could be used for building council houses so that at least half of it is lost through public sale and the other half is lost through transfer to a private sector company that the council cannot control. I am not happy with that. Let us end these failed programmes. Let us give the Minister the boost that she deserves and the money that she must have to go through with the housing drive that the country needs. There is only one slogan to end on, and that is, ““Build, build, build””.