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Rented Housing

Indeed, the hon. Gentleman is quite correct. There are some terrific housing associations. There are some that have kept fairly true to their purpose, even as they have grown massively, as a result of recent Government policy. However, some have become, effectively, property management companies, whose particular interest, and only way of keeping afloat financially, is as the hon. Gentleman says to build houses and sell them on. We must in all seriousness ask, about many of the housing associations now operating in the environment created in the past 11 years, what their financial books look like. If much of their financial planning was based on building sets of houses of which at least half would be sold, a quarter would be rented at perhaps a little above market prices, and a quarter socially rented—that financial model is falling apart at the moment. I know that some housing associations are worried about their viability and whether they will survive in the next year. How can they continue to build new houses even at the pathetically low average level of 22,000 a year that they have managed for the past 11 years if their funding is partly predicated on being able to sell at least half what they build to generate more money to build the next lot? The Government's policy of putting all their eggs in that basket has failed over the past 11 years. Waiting lists have nearly doubled; only 22,000 homes a year have been built, which is way below what is needed. Now the approach has hit a brick wall, given what is happening economically. The report says:"““The Government must be prepared, if necessary, to raise investment in new supply still further.””" If that was true in April, before the extent of the crisis that we are approaching became publicly acknowledged—that we are entering a recession with the housing market collapsing and repossessions soaring as the figures every fortnight show worse levels—it is certainly true now. It will be even more true in the next six months to two years. The report states:"““The right to buy has enabled many families to get on the housing ladder who would not otherwise have been able to do so.””" I agree with that, which might surprise those who accuse me of being an old-fashioned socialist dinosaur. The right to buy had potential to be a great ladder to enable people to enter a property-owning democracy. When I was elected as a councillor in Chesterfield in 1987 the Labour councillors who ran the town then—no longer—were all in high dudgeon about Mrs. Thatcher's right-to-buy policies. I used to say to them in discussion, ““I cannot understand why you as a socialist party did not introduce this when you were in government. Surely, you use taxpayers' money to build socially rented houses; people who have lived in those houses for a good length of time buy them at a discount and get on to a housing property ladder that they would never have been able to afford in normal circumstances—or even dreamed of or aspired to.”” I thought that it had a lot to offer. I have discovered since I entered Parliament—or I am told, and hon. Members may be able to tell me whether it is true—that the Labour Government of 1974-79 considered such a policy for the 1979 manifesto, but that Tony Benn, the Member of Parliament who preceded me in Chesterfield, who was at the time rather powerful in the Labour party, stopped it because it smacked too much of capitalism. I think that it would have been a sensible socialist or social democratic policy to adopt. The huge caveat of course is what has happened with the right to buy, both in the 1980s and in recent years. One problem is that the money has not gone back into building new social housing, to replace what has been taken. It has not been recycled into providing more for people who need it. Secondly, although the discounts are lower now, they were ridiculously high when they were introduced. They were massive, and from a purely selfish, personal point of view people would have been foolish not to take up the opportunity to buy their properties. I noted at the time that all the Labour councillors who used to object so bitterly in 1987 bought their council houses over the next few years. The discounts were so big that it was not economic reality. A Conservative Government were giving away taxpayers' money and public investment and property on a massive scale—a scale that we did not see again until the banks were bailed out recently. The discounts were too large and the money was not recycled into building new properties. Local authorities were given no say and no flexibility, and the situation is still the same. A local authority in one part of the country, even today in our current state, might say, ““Yes, we have a place for the right to buy in certain areas of the town and certain types of property. We have more than we need, and we would like to get some properties sold and recycle the money into building new social housing in another part of town.”” Another local authority might not, because as the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) said in an intervention, the scheme has been a disaster in rural areas. Surely very few local authorities representing rural areas such Cornwall, Devon, the Lake district or the glorious Peak district in Derbyshire, on Chesterfield's doorstop, are happy with the fact that they have virtually no social housing. The council houses that used to exist in the Peak national park and other highly desirable rural areas have all been bought, then sold on at a massive profit and are now second homes and holiday homes. Local people such as farm labourers, low-paid workers and the children of people who settled in those areas cannot get into the property market. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Andrew George) will talk about that in more detail if he makes a speech later.