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Housing and Regeneration Bill

I have taken several interventions and I will happily take more later on, but I hope that Members will allow me to make a little progress for now. Since 1997, we have made important progress in improving existing homes, with investment in the decent homes programme. Investment of more than £20 billion has helped more than 1 million children out of cold, damp and poor housing, transforming their lives as a result. We have seen a drop in the number of people sleeping rough on the streets, and we have also seen low mortgage rates and long-term economic stability help more than 1 million more people into home ownership. We have an ageing and growing population and we have more people living alone, and for more than a generation this country has simply not built enough homes to keep up with demand. We need more market housing, more social housing and more shared-ownership housing. Young families can face the greatest pressures. Many of them struggle to take their first step on the housing ladder, with 40 per cent. of first-time buyers now having to rely on their family and friends to raise a deposit, which is simply unfair, and hundreds of thousands of families are on the waiting list for social housing. We owe it to them to do more. House building has increased substantially over the past few years. More land is being identified for homes, but we need to do more. The Prime Minister has said that by 2016 this country must be building 240,000 new homes per year—2 million homes by 2016 and 3 million more by 2020. This is not just about building more homes, however; those homes must also be more sustainable and in strong communities. The housing Green Paper published in July set out a wide range of measures to support more and better homes, ranging from new eco-towns to better use of public sector land. The Bill is crucial to helping us deliver that vision. Delivering the homes we need depends on the house builders and the private market, and on housing associations and their investment decisions. However, as we set out in the Green Paper, it also critically depends on local councils, through their planning decisions, through allocating land for housing, through use of their own land—for example, through local housing companies—through their assessment of housing need, through their promotion of affordable housing and through their ability to promote higher standards. Councils cannot do that alone, however. Often they need help with funding, with land and with expertise. That is why the Bill creates the new Homes and Communities Agency to provide that essential support and help us deliver those badly needed new homes. The agency will bring together the functions of English Partnerships and the Housing Corporation. Therefore, responsibility for public sector land and public sector investment will be brought together properly for the first time. We are putting unprecedented levels of new investment into affordable housing—£8 billion over the next three years—but we have to make sure that we get the best possible results for that affordable housing.