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Housing and the Credit Crunch

The Government are obsessed with the idea that they have failed miserably after 12 years to build enough social houses because of someone else, but they are misleading themselves. To answer the hon. Lady directly, I believe that local communities will accept much more housing, and much more affordable housing, if there is something in it for them. She asked how my constituents would feel. As I have said on many similar occasions, my constituents cannot be told to accept 10,000 or 15,000 new homes—that is specified by regional spatial strategy for the eastern region—when their local hospital is being closed. The two things are simply incompatible. Until the Government try to join those things up, they will never succeed in building new homes. In fact, I am confident that a future Conservative Government will build far more than, say, 250 affordable homes in my constituency, but we will do it with people rather than against them. Some Government schemes are outlined in the report, which is welcome, even if detail on performance is lacking. We have heard the enthusiasm of the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich for the rent-to-homebuy scheme, whereby a person can rent a home and, over a period, buy the house if they want to. Although the scheme undoubtedly sounds like an excellent idea and a good way to help people gradually on to the housing ladder, he did not mention—perhaps he does not have the figures to hand, but I was given the information in a parliamentary answer just the other week—that £87 million has been spent on the scheme in more than a year, but not a single person has moved into home ownership. The rent-to-homebuy scheme is not a spectacular success so far, at an average cost of £33,000.