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Housing and Regeneration Bill

It is very good that the Government are inching forward on such matters, but they are taking other powers back at the same time. The UK is the most centrally controlled state in Europe, and we need that to change completely. Local authorities should be given back the power to raise funds and to borrow prudently, but the Bill does not do that. Some clauses in the Bill offer a slight redefinition of the right to buy, but why are local authorities not allowed to decide? Some authorities with housing surpluses and people whom they want to move around are happy with the present arrangements, but others—especially, but not only, those in rural areas—believe that the right to buy is anathema because it has destroyed their ability to provide family houses. We should allow local authorities to take decisions about housing on behalf of the local communities that democratically elect them. The detail of the Bill shows that that will not happen. Sops were given in the Green Paper and over the summer to Labour activists who were getting edgy as the conference season approached. For three Labour conferences in a row, those activists had voted for the fourth option on council housing—that is, for power to be restored to the 200 local authorities whose tenants had said that they would not do what the Government wanted them to do. In response, conference rules were changed so that there could not be any more votes on the matter. Moreover—and in advance of the election that never was—a lot of the activists were bought off with promises that councils would be allowed to start building again, using money out of the housing revenue account. We can explore the details in the Public Bill Committee, but the Government's notes that accompany the Bill estimate that about 2,500 houses will be built as a result of letting councils make their own decisions about building. That compares with the 400 houses that were built last year. That will not make a big difference to a waiting list of 1.63 million. It is a tightly controlled and limited experiment. Ten, or possibly 14, hand-picked local authorities will be allowed to set up private vehicles to experiment with building—only 10 or 14 from the 140 that directly manage their stock and the 60 ALMOs. That is only a small percentage and the exercise will not restore freedom or power to democratically elected local authorities. Reference has been made to the housing revenue pilots. Cambridge was one of the authorities that carried out a paper exercise and has done the number-crunching. As I have told the Minister in previous meetings, the current proposal is a complete non-starter. The money that authorities would have to borrow from the private market to buy out their outstanding debt and pay off the Government—a debt the Government would write off if a housing association were taking over—would eat up all the money from right to buy and rents that they were allowed to keep. They would not be a penny better off; they would be no more able to repair houses or build the new ones that local populations are desperately crying out for. That is central control, lock, stock and barrel, with sops to buy people off. As we have not had an election, there will be a couple of years for Labour activists to find out they were duped and they will get very restless. One part of the Bill covers the regulation of social housing and the introduction of Oftenant, which was recommended in the Cave review. Most people would describe it as a good move forward. The provisions have a hollow ring, however. The Bill talks about putting tenants at the centre of the process and empowering them, yet when half the tenants in the country—more than 2 million—voted not to be transferred to registered social landlords, the Government said, ““Tough, you're just going to sink. You'll have no money to do up your houses and we won't build new houses in your area.”” They told those tenants that they would be ignored and punished because they had the wrong views—their views did not fit with the Government's. Saying that tenants will be at the centre of things is rather hollow; they certainly will not be the council tenants—more than 2 million families. The measure will plug a gaping hole for RSLs. At present, when council stock is transferred to an RSL, tenants have no influence at all over their new landlord. The introduction of Oftenant will give them some power to have a say. It may be limited—[Interruption.] It may be effective; we shall have to see, but it will at least give the tenants of RSLs the opportunity to have a say in the management of their houses. They will not be able to change their manager, or landlord, as they can if it is the council because they can elect someone else, and they will not be able to opt back into being council tenants because they were forced down a one-way street, but the regulator is a step in the right direction. The Audit Commission has put in a bid to provide the regulatory body, so when the system is extended to councils—as we are told will probably happen in a year or two—they will find that instead of a simpler process they will be subject to two inspection regimes. The functions of Oftenant could have been wrapped up with the work of the Audit Commission. Will there be a level playing field? When Oftenant is inspecting a council, will it say, ““You're not doing a very good job at meeting your tenants' needs, not like that nice housing association down the road””? Of course, the nice housing association down the road keeps all the rent to spend on its houses. In Chesterfield, the Government already take £3.2 million away from us and over the next few years, as they increase rents by inflation-plus to try to reach market rents, every extra penny will go not to council housing in Chesterfield, but to the Government. They will be taking £5 million from council tenants in Chesterfield, and the same process applies to 70 per cent. of the councils that run housing; their tenants' rents are taken away to be spent by the Government somewhere else—not on local housing need. That is a moral outrage and a democratic disgrace. Oftenant may judge that councils are not doing as well as housing associations, but that is because councils are not allowed to keep the rents to spend on their houses. Clause 68 refers to the definition of social housing. I have talked to the Minister about that point and we shall certainly be pursuing it in Committee. The clause notes that social housing is accommodation ““made available for rent””, that"““the rent is below the market rate,””" and, crucially, that"““the accommodation is made available in accordance with rules for eligibility designed to ensure that it is occupied by people who cannot afford to buy or rent at market rate.””" That provision has rung alarm bells in a huge number of organisations. Of course, that could fit in with Smith Institute proposals of a couple of years ago, with proposals that were trailed prior to the publication of the Hills review, although they certainly were not in that review, and with proposals from a Conservative think-tank published this summer: that as soon as the circumstances of someone in social housing for rent improve—their wages increase, for example, or they get a job—they should be moved on. It has been proposed that people in such circumstances should be shifted out of social housing, as that should be the housing of last resort for the people who really cannot afford it; it then becomes a stigmatised source of housing, which is what it has very much become in the past 10 or 20 years. We shall certainly probe the Government on that in Committee. Finally, let me explain why we will not vote for the Conservatives' amendment. They argue that the Bill"““creates a top-down, centrally-driven approach to development and regeneration””." It does not. It adds a little finishing touch to what the Conservative Government of the 1980s started and new Labour has developed over the past 10 years, but it certainly does not introduce the earth-shattering process that is described. The amendment also criticises the Bill for allowing the Homes and Communities Agency"““to ride roughshod over local””" government, but the briefing of the Conservative-controlled Local Government Association does not share that Conservative Front-Bench view. The LGA supports the broad aims of the Bill, on balance thinks that the creation of a single regulator is a positive step, and supports the creation of Oftenant—so there is not an awful lot of evidence that people in local government share this apocalyptic view of what is involved here. Another reason why we will not support the Conservative amendment is that it twice focuses on shifting the right to buy to tenants of RSLs. Have the Conservatives thought about how that would destabilise RSLs' finances and ability to maintain borrowing from the private sector, just as it did with councils? We should, perhaps, be looking at removing some of the right-to-buy provisions. Should we not let councils remove the right to buy where there is huge local need and it does not fit with local circumstances, instead of imposing it willy-nilly on RSLs, whose whole financial structure is based on secure rents to secure their private-sector borrowing in order to provide the social housing that this Government have so abysmally failed to provide over the past 10 years?