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Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

The hon. Lady fails to understand that I was talking about the entire 13-year period that her party has been in power. Even before the recession and the credit crunch, the rate of house building was below what it was when the Conservatives were last in Government, and the rate of social house building was half what it was during the last 13 years of the Conservative Administration. This might be unpalatable, but for the hon. Lady's greater benefit I hope she will allow me to reiterate that peacetime house building is at its lowest since 1924; that there are now 26,000 fewer new homes a year than under the Conservatives, taken as an average over the time that Labour has been in office; that home ownership is at its lowest for 20 years; and that we have the lowest number of first-time buyers since 1970. There may be a variety of reasons for those things, but I suspect that they are not entirely unconnected to the fact that we have had nine different Housing Ministers in the time that her party has overseen house building in our nation. The Conservatives believe that we can do better. To begin with, we will get rid of the arbitrary and meaningless targets that are conceived in Whitehall and forced on local communities. That top-down, one-size-fits-all approach has toxified the planning system, which has become a war zone in which communities are pitched against regional quangos, often resulting in deadlock. It has led to the green belt being torn up and urban green spaces, such as back gardens, being replaced with blocks of flats that are well beyond the pockets of the people on the housing list who so desperately need the housing. The number-chasing culture has failed to deliver the kind of affordable homes that young families desperately need. Instead, it has yielded a glut of unsold city- centre luxury apartments and tightly packed units of accommodation that lack the car parking and outside space needed for a young family. That is why the time has come for power to be returned to local people, with the help of those they elect, so that they can define the scale, location and type of new development. It is about drawing people into the decision-making process and giving them a proper platform to be heard. That has to be a more effective way of getting the right kind of homes built in the right places, but we need to give people a stake in local growth. Too often communities feel all the pain, but none of the gain to be had from growth. We want to change that by matching the council tax raised on new homes for six years—and recognising how we need to increase social housing, we will match it to the tune of 125 per cent. for affordable housing.