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Housing and Regeneration Bill

Let me first declare an interest as a member of a local authority that is still, fortunately, a housing authority. Let me take the House back to the beginning of the debate when I asked the Secretary of State about the change in the housing revenue account subsidy. Other Members suggested that it was in the Bill, but they cannot have read it. My city of Portsmouth, which was proud to build 31,000 council houses, now has fewer than 13,000. As others have said, that residue comprises houses that were not bought because they were in unsuitable locations and were undesirable. We have been left in an appalling situation. Whether Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat, our local authority prided itself on honouring its commitment to tenants to keep well maintained properties and to keep rent at respectable levels, but it is now being punished. Unless there is a substantial change in how the housing revenue account subsidy works, we will have lost £7 million in council rents by the end of this year and £97 million if it continues to 2013. All that money will have been stolen from Portsmouth's council tenants in order to subsidise authorities that have not done what they should have done—look after their properties properly. The Secretary of State says that it is all about balance and that some did well. Of course some did well, as they had huge problems. The shame of my city is that there are more people on our housing waiting list today than there were in 1945, when half of the properties in the city were either demolished or so badly damaged by the Luftwaffe that they were uninhabitable. Yet today, we are writing to people saying, ““Your wait on the housing list is going to be so long that it is pointless for you to be on the list. Please do not ask for housing.”” What have things come to when a country such as ours cannot provide people with somewhere decent to live? Members who believe that the housing subsidy problem will be resolved by the Bill should read the small print. They should read the Local Government and Housing Act 1989; they should look at where exceptions are made. It is a shame that the Secretary of State did not read it and tell us who would be the beneficiaries. It will certainly not be local authorities such as mine or many others represented by hon. Members present. I enjoyed and greatly shared the sentiments of the speeches made by the hon. Members for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mr. Purchase) and for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn). Both touched the nerve of what the debate should be about. It is about housing need and giving people a reasonable expectation that in a reasonable amount of time they can have the opportunity of living in a decent house. I was brought up in a council house—like other Members, I suspect—and I am proud of it. Parker Morris gave me things that kids who I went to school with envied, such as a bathroom that was a separate room—indeed, a bathroom that was inside the house. Many of my contemporaries who lived in privately rented properties did not have that luxury, and I shall always be grateful to Mr. Parker Morris for the council house standards that he introduced.