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Social Housing in London

Research by the school of medicine at University College in my constituency suggests that apart from smoking, the principal sources of avoidable illness and premature death are overcrowding, homelessness, a poor standard of housing and insecurity of housing. We need to bear that in mind when discussing anything to do with housing. The previous Government achieved quite a lot in improving the existing stock, but were carried away by the fashionable idea that the first step on the housing ladder is the cheapest place that people can buy. It seems to me that the first step on the housing ladder is somewhere decent to live that meets the needs of the people concerned, whatever the form of tenure. There is no excuse for the state of housing and the massive pressure for further social housing in London, including my area of Holborn and St Pancras, and Camden in general, because we should have a big drive to start building more houses. It is very simple. We do not need a degree in some fantastical form of economics to conclude that if there are not enough houses, one of the things we do is build more of them. It has been done in the past—admittedly when I was leader of Camden council. I do not say that vaingloriously, but because it demonstrates that things can be done and problems addressed. During the 1970s, Camden council built no fewer than 500 new homes a year, and sometimes started as many as 1,000 a year. We were much mocked when we bought between 5,000 and 6,000 flats from the private sector, largely at the behest of the people living in them, sometimes in real slums but sometimes in mansion flats overlooking Parliament Hill Fields. Those people wanted to become council tenants because they wanted security of tenure and to get away from Rachmanite private landlords. The arrangement had the benefit of giving them security but it also meant that when anywhere fell vacant the council could let the property to people on the housing waiting list. One of the consequences, which strikes me almost violently, is the difference between what happens at my advice surgeries now and what happened when I was first elected in 1979, at the end of the period of building and of the municipalisation of housing in Camden. When I was first a Member of Parliament, if people came to me and said, ““We need somewhere decent for our family””, I would write to the council, which would write back. I used to tell people, ““If you haven't got a new flat in six or nine months, come back and see me.”” Hardly any of them had to do that because they were rehoused. If I said that now, they would all be back because hardly anybody is rehoused any more. The problem has been that all those who form the leadership in our politics have not given sufficiently high priority to building and providing social housing for people who cannot afford to purchase a home. Instead of buying and building property, there has been a lot of selling. Some councils, including Camden under the Lib Dem-Tory coalition—we had some experience of that between 2006 and 2010—sold off valuable street properties to the private sector. The housing associations in Camden, two of which were established as niche organisations to help solve problems, started selling off properties. Circle 33, which was founded in Primrose Hill in the 1970s, grew and grew, became Circle Anglia and started selling off much-needed property in my constituency so that it could use the funds to build social housing in Cambridge. That was not its purpose, in my opinion and that of most of the people I try to represent. Even under Mrs Thatcher—I must give her credit for this—when public land became surplus, be it from the railways or the hospitals, the local authority was given first choice of whether it wanted to buy it for socially useful purposes. That prevailed for a long time when Mrs Thatcher was Prime Minister. Subsequently, doubtless at the Treasury's behest, things were sold to the highest bidder. It is about time we went back to giving first go to using surplus public land for public social purposes. In my area, it is as if someone has declared war on the prospect of providing more social housing. There is a proposal, which I support, for the biggest laboratory and research centre in the country to be located behind the British Library in Somers Town in my constituency. It is a combined effort by the Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK, the Wellcome Trust and University College. It will undoubtedly make a major contribution to medical research worldwide, but it is located on a site, a substantial part of which was originally designated for housing. All the time that the talks were going on, I argued that some land that the Medical Research Council owns at the National Temperance hospital should be made available for the housing that would be displaced from the laboratory site. However, the Government have decided, ““Oh, no. It should be sold on from the public sector.”” Similarly, when properties became surplus after the new University College hospital was built, a proposal, which local people and the council overwhelmingly supported, was made to knock down buildings and build decent housing on what was known as the Middlesex hospital annexe site. Two and a half years ago, a proposition by English Heritage to list the building was duly turned down. The law states that if a Minister wants to reverse that decision, they cannot do it within five years unless something new comes up. Someone managed to cobble together a connection between this ex-workhouse and Charles Dickens and claimed, at one point, that it was the workhouse described in ““Oliver Twist””. Well, they had obviously not read even the first page of that book, because Oliver had to leg it to London from the workhouse in a country town often believed to be Kettering.