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Housing and Regeneration Bill

It has catastrophic effects for children, their families and the wider community. There is a continuous churning of families in temporary accommodation with contracts for some housing lasting no more than 12 months—certainly no more than two years in many cases. I thought that the Prime Minister had been clear about what had gone wrong: we had simply stopped building council houses. I looked at some of the figures from the last 20 years. In 1990, the Tories built 16,000 council properties. I know that because I was campaigning at that time in local government about the scandal of so few being built. Last year, we built 251 council properties. The argument will be made that social housing will be picked up by housing associations and other social landlords. It is not. In 1997, when we were elected, 28,554 homes provided by social landlords were built, and last year that number had fallen to 27,000. We are told that the private sector will make up the difference. The average price of a home is now £219,000, and house price inflation last year was 9 per cent. Many families in my constituency, and I am sure throughout the country, have a debt burden that can only be described as grinding. Individual borrowing is now £1.4 billion. In January alone, £8.4 billion was lent and £7.4 billion of that went on mortgages. It is a massive debt, and it is now predicted that 45,000 families will have their homes repossessed next year. That process has already started in my constituency and I am dealing with those families in my surgeries. Let us look at the Government figures again: 526,000 families, by the Government's assessment, are living in overcrowded conditions. We estimate that 3 million homes are needed, as the Government have said. As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby, the Bill will not fulfil the commitment that the Prime Minister made last year to build council houses again. The best estimate is a trivial 2,500 homes. The Bill will not enable councils to develop the properties that are desperately needed by our constituents, which is why I cannot understand why the amendment cannot be accepted. All it would do is require the Secretary of State to assess local needs and to provide resources to those agencies best suited to providing the homes that we need. In many instances, that will be the local authority. We know what has happened during the past 10 or 11 years when tenants have made decisions about who they prefer as their landlord. We know because it has happened in most of our constituencies. They are clearly told, ““If you don't vote to transfer to the ALMO or elsewhere, you won't get the money to repair and refurbish your properties.”” In any other circumstances, it would be called blackmail. All that the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby would do is to produce a level playing field, not preferential treatment, to enable local councils to satisfy the desperate needs of our constituents. In half an hour, the Prime Minister will go to the parliamentary Labour party to urge a steadying of the ship, and to ask people to buckle down to fighting the local government elections and hold together. One of the ways in which we can restore the Labour vote in constituency after constituency is to go out there and tell people that we will accommodate them decently, build council homes again and treat council tenants fairly again. We will thus restore credibility with those people who put us in power in 1997 and stuck with us throughout the Tory decade and a half. New clause 1 is worthy of further consideration. I hope that the Under-Secretary does not reject it tonight. If he cannot accept it, at least let us have some further consideration. Perhaps we will then get a rational debate in the other place and a rational housing policy once again.