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Housing and Regeneration Bill

I am grateful for the hon. Lady's intervention, because she reminds me that the Conservative Government introduced what I believe was called the development corporation in my city centre. It introduced those density levels, which resulted in the flats that were built. I remember the wife of a footballer who got a job in the city when Leeds United was doing rather better coming to my advice surgery to tell me that she had moved into a flat that had been built for Porsches and not for prams. What could the families there do—there were no doctors' facilities or shops? The flats were costing more than £200,000 to buy, but for the needs of the rich even they were inappropriate. I simply suggest that there is an imbalance and mismatch between the type of housing that has been built and what is needed. We ought not to get the balance wrong again. There are plans to provide 3 million extra houses, but we must ensure that we do not simply build new units. We must build the right sized homes to meet the need. If we neglect that issue, we will make no progress. I welcome the recognition that the first rung on the housing ownership ladder is now so far out of many young families' reach that the need to build affordable homes to rent should be acknowledged universally as a priority. We have made some progress. I also welcome the proposal to set up the new Homes and Communities Agency, and in particular the merger with English Partnerships. I say that because it brings together the land problem and the provision of buildings problem. When the former Deputy Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott), promised that he could build houses for £60,000 for first-time buyers the problem was that the value of the land was never added into that cost. Once that was done, the house cost much more than £60,000 and was again beyond those people's reach. So bringing together the land and development issues will be helpful. However, if we put the whole package together from the outset, it is also essential, as I believe the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South mentioned, that regeneration remains an essential part of the whole process. Elements of the Bill on regeneration cannot be overemphasised, particularly in respect of inner-city neighbourhoods, where derelict and semi-derelict brownfield land could be brought into use for small-scale housing development now. Some of the housing associations have done an excellent job with what we called ““pepper-potting”” or ““infill sites”” to show that neighbourhoods can be built and to enable people who want to live near their parents or grandparents to live within communities again. There is a focus on communities rather than on simply suggesting that development be large-scale and further away. Perhaps English Partnerships could intensify its work with local councils to begin to identify inner-city brownfield sites. I live in the inner city, and I am not asking for my neighbourhood to be concreted over, as someone suggested the other day. Plenty of space is available to use; derelict sites could be brought into use while leaving us new green spaces and play areas to redevelop neighbourhoods in the city. It is ludicrous that a young woman with a pram and two kids has to walk nearly a mile and a half up a hill to go to care for her elderly parents but the points system does not allow her to move into a house four doors down, which would enable her to do her care work on a daily basis. We should start to ask whether the housing development that we are putting together serves the needs of local communities and to put that focus back in. We can do that while insisting that we do much more to increase the supply and extend the number of properties that have been built. I have heard no one in this debate suggest that we go back to the tower blocks of the 1960s, the ““system build”” houses, and the high density developments and the large estates beyond the ring roads that were generally soulless and did not have community facilities. Much more can be done with careful analysis. We can use brownfield, inner-city sites without creating a panic about building on, and encroaching on, the green belt. There is no reason why the only options are either new houses on green belt or no new houses. Much more can be done to redevelop inner-city neighbourhoods such as mine. Rebuilding local communities must be sustainable. We should take much more account of one element in the Bill—the idea of the sustainability code. One of my Labour colleagues suggested that it be made mandatory, because simply putting the units up and not building in the future environmental and energy efficiency will be short-sighted in the extreme. We will end up where we have ended up every time that we have gone for a building push—we put up houses that we then knock down within 50 years. How often has that happened? We have put the houses up, found a fault, knocked them down again and wasted resources. Will we think a bit more long-term this time and build in that environmental sustainability? I am not only talking about the sustainability of the building. Will we begin to think more holistically about the sustainability of local communities? I have always believed that Leeds is a city of urban villages. People can say which side of the street belongs to which neighbourhood and which street divides the neighbourhood. People on one side of a street come from Bramley whereas people on the other side of it come from Armley. Those clusters still exist even with a high turnover of 30 per cent. of the people moving through the neighbourhoods every three years. It is a high turnover area, but still has strong local identities, and we should focus on those much more. We should get English Partnerships to work with local authorities to identify where we could start the pepper-pot, infill building. We should restructure housing finance. The sale of council houses was a massive discount sale, and the best third of the stock went—that is why there is such a drastic shortage. When I was a councillor, an old councillor dredged up some comments made when the first council housing in the country was built in my city in the 1930s. A Conservative councillor, who opposed council housing on principle, said, ““Make the people buy, and then we will force them to vote Conservative directly.”” I hope that that old argument is by the way now, and that we are not playing politics with whether a home is to rent or to buy. I suggest that the balance between renting and buying is out of sync and unsustainable economically, socially and in terms of providing neighbourhoods for the future. I hope that we can have all-party support, for once, for the proposition that building affordable, decent homes to rent is the right approach. At least the Bill sets a bit of a trail in the right direction.