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Rented Housing

I want to give heartfelt congratulations to the members of the Select Committee for producing this absolutely outstanding report. One reason that I welcome it so much is that it says exactly what I have said for the last seven years, since I entered Parliament. However, the members of the Select Committee are not the usual suspects. Normally in the last few years, when hon. Members such as myself, the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) and a number of other people have stood up in Parliament to say these things, we were all too often dismissed by the Government and Conservative Front-Bench spokesmen as the same old suspects saying the same old things, locked in the same old memory of the past and not living in the real world. However, this report says with great independence and in great detail, which is based on great research and great evidence, exactly those things that I have been banging the drum about for the last seven years, although so far it has been to absolutely no avail because the Government have not listened or given an inch of ground. So I really welcome what the Select Committee has produced, after taking a great deal of evidence from a great number of expert witnesses and others who are involved in the field; I know the process that is involved from being a former member of the Education and Skills Committee and a current member of the Children, Schools and Families Committee. We have just heard an exposition of what the report says and I would just like to highlight some of the points that were made in summary. First, the report says that people in rented housing are 30 per cent. of the people in the UK. 70 per cent. of people are owner-occupiers in the UK, which is the highest rate in nearly all of Europe, although I believe that figure has fallen slightly in the last year or two, to about 69 per cent., and, given the current economic conditions, it will probably fall some more. Nevertheless, the figure for owner-occupiers is among the highest in Europe. As the report says and as we have just heard, there really has been an emphasis from the Government that only owner-occupation matters, and that people who rent are somehow inferior and they should all rush out to buy their houses. Owner-occupation is certainly a worthwhile aspiration. Obviously, most Members of Parliament are owner-occupiers. The aspiration is to own property, invest in property and in the long run to make money out of property, although, of course, as we are seeing at the moment and as we saw in the period between 1990 and 1992, it does not always work that way. For people to be part of a property-owning democracy is a great aspiration and one that should be encouraged. In recent years, however, a number of people have asked repeatedly, ““Have we gone too far? Are we pushing too many people into owner-occupation, including people who cannot actually afford it?”” As we are seeing, we have hit the buffers on housing this year, with negative equity and people who took 125 per cent. and self-certified loans from Northern Rock that they just cannot afford to repay. As soon as problems arise, we get massive, soaring repossession rates and people then come in to councils asking to be rehoused, but the councils have to say, because of Government policies over the last 11 years, ““Sorry, we don't have the houses for you””. I will also return to that subject later. As an aspiration, therefore, owner-occupation is certainly a good thing, but have we gone too far and have we created a lot of problems that we are now reaping the whirlwind of in the current economic crisis and the recession that we are just entering? So I have highlighted those figures on owner-occupation and renting. As the report goes on to point out, the Government have a responsibility to ensure that tenants, as well as owner-occupiers, have the opportunity of a decent home at a price—a rental price, obviously, in the case of the rented sector—that they can afford, and within a sustainable community. We must say that a lot of the remaining social housing in this country has tended to have a ghettoisation effect. It has become housing of last resort; housing for very poor people, and therefore there is a concentration of social problems with social housing. That is because people can only get housing through councils now if they are at the very bottom of the ladder, in absolute desperation and have myriad problems. If those problems are concentrated into limited areas, of course they will multiply and create further problems.