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Housing (Greater London)

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) on securing this important debate. No doubt some of the points that he made will be reinforced to a degree. I have four key points to make. First, to state the obvious, the model of affordable house building and delivery, which has in recent years increased the supply of affordable housing—particularly in London under the former Mayor, but across the rest of the country as well—is broken. We must accept that and respond to it. It is broken as a consequence of the crisis that was imported from the American sub-prime market into our economy and because our affordable house delivery programme has been so heavily predicated on section 106 deals and the sales programme of shared-ownership properties. My hon. Friend the Minister will be aware that in London alone, according to the G15 group of major housing associations, there are £1 billion-worth of unsold shared-ownership properties. Because those properties stand empty and unsold, a cash-flow crisis is created for social housing providers and registered social landlords, which makes it impossible for them to proceed with delivery beyond the current financial year. We need a radical Government rethink, in both the very short term and the longer term, about how to get back on target for the affordable housing delivery programme. In my view, that should include the ability to buy on the open market. We also need a rethink of subsidy arrangements for the longer term. We cannot afford to allow the consequences of this financially led crisis to impact on those who are in most desperate need of satisfactory housing, whether the people on medium to low incomes who want to buy and are unable to, or the many hundreds of thousands of people who are trapped in desperate housing need. There is particular pressure on family-sized accommodation. Under the section 106 sales-led delivery programme, such accommodation has not been delivered for a great many years. That, of course, has impacted upon housing need. Although we have seen welcome measures—I am sure that there will more—to inject liquidity into the home ownership market and to assist the restarting of first-time buying, the risk is that the needs of those in housing need will be overlooked. I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for coming to my constituency to meet homeless families in temporary accommodation and families in severely overcrowded accommodation. He has seen for himself the conditions they live in. The threat of the current situation—it was difficult enough before—is that there will be an even greater pincer movement on the availability of social housing, which will make their situation worse. Already, one London household in 10 is on the social housing waiting list. Overcrowding is rising in the United Kingdom, and 750,000 Londoners live in overcrowded accommodation. Although the Government made a move this time last year to introduce new guidance on overcrowding and to put some money into research, it is important that momentum is stepped up on that front. The guidance needs to be issued, because we have two conflicting and incompatible systems of measurement for overcrowding. We need to drive ahead on the information and on measures to tackle overcrowding. That could include deconversions and extensions, which could go a considerable way to helping, as well as cash incentives. We also need to recognise the needs of homeless households. I say again to my hon. Friend the Minister—I have a meeting with him soon, for which I am grateful—that it is absolutely unacceptable to treat homeless households as we do, shipping them out of areas where they have strong local connections. I have sent my hon. Friend information on two such households in my constituency this week. In one, a young mother with post-natal depression whose family has lived for 80 years in the Church street area, was sent to Barking and Dagenham. In the other, a young man who has lived for 27 years on the Lisson Green estate and who has three children in local schools, is commuting every day, as many families do. I wish to make a couple of quick points. As my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North said, the abolition of the borough delivery target threatens progress on affordable house delivery, which was just becoming significant. Westminster city council achieved 11 per cent. of its affordable housing delivery target over the last two years, which is completely unacceptable. However, I very much welcome the £36 million that the Housing Corporation has invested in delivery. The target became legally binding only recently, so it was too early to see its fruits. It is dangerous that it is being torn up. Finally, my hon. Friend touched upon the article on short-term tenancies on the front page of The Times yesterday. I believe that the subject was investigated thoroughly in the Hills review. John Hills was specifically charged with considering that subject, and came up with no evidence to support such a proposal. Indeed, he stated that there were strong arguments against a system of review based on coercion, and that"““A threat to security of tenure…would be controversial, to say the least””." He said that that was so for a number of good reasons, including perverse incentives. I rely utterly on the wisdom and thoughtfulness of the new Housing Minister and of my hon. Friend the Minister here today to ensure that this ridiculous and fashionable dogma that has suddenly reared its head again is crushed, as it deserves to be.