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Rented Housing

Indeed. What we saw in evidence from Local Space, which is operating in a number of London boroughs is that that organisation has established a housing association that accesses exactly the same money as the private landlord would have accessed and it buys properties and allocates them, through the local authority, to homeless families. It uses the benefits that are provided by the Government, through the local authority, to purchase properties that will eventually come back as part of the social housing stock. I know that there are difficulties: it is still operating on very high rent levels, which creates the disincentive-to-work problem, so it is not a perfect solution, but in terms of money going in to buy the houses for the public sector rather than going into the profits of a private landlord, it is at least a significant and different way forward. The Government have had a look at that, and I think that they have generally welcomed it. I am sure that we could encourage such a system in other parts of the country as well. An issue that we did not discuss very much, but which is clearly back on the agenda, is energy efficiency. In the past, the Select Committee was critical of the fact that the decent homes standards did not go far enough on energy efficiency. I raised that point in the Committee the other day and I will raise it again. Everyone welcomes the additional money available for energy efficiency. We welcome the Warm Front plans, whereby people who are in priority need because they are on benefit or are pensioners in the private sector, whether they are owner-occupiers or private tenants, can access funding if they have out-of-date and inefficient heating systems to install new systems. That money, however, is not available to social housing tenants. That is unfair, and it is discriminatory. These are some of the poorest people in the community, and for all the insulation that is put in, if people still have an inefficient heating system, they will be in fuel poverty. The Government could act quickly to extend those schemes to social housing tenants, then consider standards of energy efficiency more generally when we come on to consider decent homes plus, which I hope the Government will eventually announce. I think that we did a good job. I particularly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, South-West, who chairs the Committee and went to enormous trouble to ensure that we had a comprehensive set of witnesses and that a lot of evidence taking was done outside the House, in various communities up and down the country. We made many recommendations, but I will just emphasise the point on which I do not agree with the hon. Member for Chesterfield. That is not a condemnation of Government housing policy but recognition of the fact that many good things have been done, but there are still many big issues to be tackled. That is what the Committee is suggesting to the Government. We still have a lot more to do and we look forward to a positive response.