HC Deb 13 June 2000 vol 351 cc781-4
8. Ms Rosie Winterton (Doncaster, Central)

If he will make a statement on housing investment. [123996]

10. Mr. Gareth R. Thomas (Harrow, West)

If he will make a statement on the housing investment programme. [123998]

The Minister for Housing and Planning (Mr. Nick Raynsford)

The Government are committed to delivering major improvements in the quality of housing and in the performance of social landlords to deliver our vision for housing as set out in the recent housing Green Paper. We have substantially increased the resources for housing investment—around £5 billion extra over the lifetime of this Parliament—and we ale ensuring that the available resources are used as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Ms Winterton

I very much welcome the extra resources to which my hon. Friend refers, which have meant that Doncaster council's housing investment allocation has increased by 51 per cent. this year. That has allowed the council to make repairs and improvements to the housing stock in greatest need. However, over and above the immediate capital improvement, the problem remains of long-term changes in housing requirements that arise from demographic changes. For example, more accommodation for single people is needed in Doncaster. What steps is my hon. Friend taking to ensure that local authorities can meet those new challenges?

Mr. Raynsford

My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point about the need for local authorities to be conscious of changing demographic trends. In our housing Green Paper, we encourage local authorities to develop a more strategic role in which they will oversee the need for all types of housing in their areas, rather than concentrating solely on the provision of social housing, which many have in the past. There will be further increases in housing investment programme allocations in the coming year, in which the comprehensive spending review provided for an additional 25 per cent. uplift on top of this year's very considerable increase. I hope that my hon. Friend will see the real benefits of that in Doncaster.

Mr. Thomas

I, too, welcome the extra investment in housing that my hon. Friend has announced and congratulate him on his success in securing the funds from the Treasury, but bearing in mind the fact that high house prices in London have pushed up the demand for affordable housing and the previous Government's neglect of social housing—I think of the Rayner's Lane estate in my constituency—can he assure the House that he will continue to press the case for the extra investment that London's affordable housing stock so desperately needs?

Mr. Raynsford

My hon. Friend makes an extremely fair point, and I am grateful to him for his kind remarks about the uplift in the housing investment programme allocation in Harrow, which was no less than 66 per cent, up on the previous year. Of course, that means that the local authority will be able to do substantially more to tackle the backlog of poor conditions. He makes a very fair point about the continuing severe pressures in London and the south-east. He will be aware that in our housing Green Paper we have set out several proposals, including a starter home initiative to assist those who wish to buy their homes but are unable to do so because of exceptionally high prices. We believe that that, together with continuing increases in the improvement of the existing social housing stock and the provision of new social housing through registered social landlords, will make a significant contribution to tackling those real problems.

Mr. David Curry (Skipton and Ripon)

Why does the Minister think that the Chancellor of the Exchequer rejected his Department's representations before the Budget to harmonise the rates of value added tax—in particular, to bring them down—on housing repair and renovation of derelict sites? Does not he agree that the absence of such a measure makes it harder to achieve the objectives of his Green Paper? Does he intend to return to that subject in the urban White Paper, which appears to be the last opportunity to put that essential piece of the jigsaw in place?

Mr. Raynsford

The right hon. Gentleman will be well aware that the Chancellor of the Exchequer said in his Budget statement that he would welcome a debate on the use of economic instruments to encourage regeneration and specifically proposed consideration of changes to the stamp duty regime for brownfield areas. The matter is under debate and I have no doubt that the right hon. Gentleman will continue to campaign on it vigorously, as he has in the past, because there are real issues about how we best attune economic instruments to work with the grain of Government policy to encourage brownfield development and the regeneration of our cities.

Mr. Ian Bruce (South Dorset)

I am sure that the House welcomes the Government's decision to follow on from the previous Government and to use private finance to take over council estates—Conservative Members certainly do—but what are the Minister's thoughts on encouraging private landlords to put their houses up for rent further to allow people to get into family homes? In particular, do the Government have any plans to solve the problem of people refusing to pay rent? Those bad tenants are difficult to remove from private tenancies, which puts many people off renting out their houses.

Mr. Raynsford

As the hon. Gentleman will know from reading our housing Green Paper, we attach considerable importance to working with the private rented sector to improve its supply and its quality. He will be aware that, at its best, it provides good-quality accommodation on favourable terms that people welcome. Equally, there are terrible abuses at the wrong end of that sector. There are some poor tenants, and also some poor landlords. We are working to improve standards by encouraging investment by responsible landlords and through arrangements such as the approved letting scheme, on which I have recently focused to encourage high standards. We are also committed to introducing licensing in multi-occupied houses to bear down on abuses at the bottom end of the sector.

Angela Smith (Basildon)

Like many others, I welcome my hon. Friend's commitment to extra investment in housing, but may I put a special case to him? Will he consider the problems of new towns and new town housing stock, much of which is the same age and needs repairs and maintenance at the same time? That makes it extremely difficult for councils to have a rolling programme of repairs and, if left, minor repairs become major. Will he meet me and representatives of my local authority to examine ways to find the funding to do the much-needed repairs in my constituency?

Mr. Raynsford

My hon. Friend raises a perfectly fair point about the characteristics of some new towns in which the housing stock was developed in a particular period when the emphasis was very much on the need for family housing. There may be a need to make changes in the housing stock to respond to changing demographic patterns—a point to which my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Winterton) also alluded. The Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin), and I have met delegations from new town areas and other areas with similar characteristics to discuss the impact of the new housing finance arrangements that we intend to introduce from next April. I am happy to consider representations from my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon (Angela Smith) and her constituency on that subject.

Mr. Archie Norman (Tunbridge Wells)

I am sorry that the Deputy Prime Minister is not here to respond to this question as I know that he takes a close personal interest in low-cost housing.

On housing investment, can the Minister explain why he dismissed the Serplan recommendation that 40 per cent, of the new houses to be built in the south-east should be affordable homes? Will he now clarify what he meant in The Sunday Telegraph when he implied that he would punish councils in the south-east of England that voted against his proposals to concrete over the countryside of the south-east? Does he not realise that the purpose of consultation is to listen and that the purpose of decentralisation is to let local people decide? Does not his arrogant and petulant response to yesterday's vote illustrate that he is out of touch with people of the south-east of England and that all his claims to have decentralised and to have moved away from predict and provide were a hollow sham?

Mr. Raynsford

The hon. Gentleman will be well aware of the piece in The Sunday Telegraph in which the description was an accurate statement of his personal view of the process. However, it was not in any way an accurate representation of my views and I should like to put it on the record that there was serious misrepresentation in it.

As the hon. Gentleman knows only too well, I have made it quite clear that we shall listen to all representations on the RPG—regional planning guidance—for the south-east. We shall listen to the views of the 39 Serplan authorities that voted according to the hon. Gentleman's whip, and to the 30 that voted the other way. Personally, I regret very much that, as a result of the hon. Gentleman's intervention, a body that previously operated on a consensual basis to try to bring agreement on these important issues is split on party political lines. That does no service to the sensible process of trying to reconcile two hugely important issues: housing provision for people in need and the protection of the countryside. The Government are committed to those objectives and, as the hon. Gentleman knows only too well, we shall pursue policies that respond to those responsibilities.