The Government have announced their intention to change the revenue and capital rules that apply to new council homes in order to remove financial disincentives to new build by local authorities. On 2 September, the Secretary of State announced that we will invite local authorities that continue directly to manage their stock to compete for grant on the same terms as those with special purpose vehicles. In 2007-08, 310 homes were built by local authorities. However, the Government do not publish forecasts for house building.
Hundreds of thousands of children are living in accommodation that is deemed unsuitable for them and their families, and that is a direct result of 25 years of failed housing policies by successive Governments who have refused to allow council houses to be built. Given the collapse of the housing market, if the new private estates are not going to be built, nor will the so-called social housing, 25 or 30 per cent. of which has planning agreement. If the Government can find billions to bail out bankers, why can they not find sufficient money to build the family council houses for those hundreds of thousands of children who are inadequately housed?
I understand and sympathise with the hon. Gentleman’s concern for families who are being brought up in inadequate homes, but the demand does not all have to be met through council housing. We will be happy to see a greater expansion of provision by councils, but many other bodies have been providing social and other housing, and the Government have had a substantial long-term programme for decent homes in whatever sector they are found. I doubt very much whether all the children he is talking about are necessarily in the social housing sector. We have an £8 billion programme over the next two or three years. I understand his concern for what may be happening in the housing market today, but I do not think that he can say that this Government have not done a great deal to address the problems.
In Luton, 8,500 families are on the housing waiting and transfer lists, of whom 6,500 are on the waiting list. This is a crisis by any standards. At the same time, we are still required to sell council houses, and Luton has dozens of empty flats that are now unsaleable. Will my right hon. Friend give serious consideration to stopping the sale of council houses for good in Luton, and to allowing local authorities to buy all those unrented flats?
I would certainly be reluctant to say that we would stop the sale of council houses, but I completely understand my hon. Friend’s basic point. We have a substantial imbalance throughout the country between housing need and what can be supplied, but he will probably know that one of the announcements in September was of a programme for purchase through the Housing Corporation, and if there is need, it can consider expanding that programme. I can assure my hon. Friend that we are looking at all aspects of housing policy to see what more can be done to meet the need.
I warmly welcome the right hon. Lady to her new post and wish her all the best in the challenges that lie ahead. On council house building and other building, can she confirm that the Government will make a major policy statement in the near future saying how they will get the housing market going again?
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his kind remarks. We have already made a number of statements about various steps that can be taken to address different portions of the housing market. We are continuing to look at that to see what more can be done, but what is fundamentally needed are the kind of steps that the Chancellor and the Prime Minister have taken of late to try to stabilise the economy as a whole, within which housing is a key factor.
Will my right hon. Friend look into the situation where thousands are on waiting lists for social housing, yet local authorities such as Chorley are failing to meet the social housing numbers that they are meant to provide? What actions can she take to ensure that those local authorities do not forget that they have a responsibility and that it is taken seriously?
As my hon. Friend will be aware, all local authorities are required not only to take their responsibilities seriously but to have proper plans to meet them. I assure him that when we come, as we are doing, to reassess the position with regard to both need and supply, what is being done and whether people are meeting their obligations is one of the factors that we shall be looking at very carefully.
I also extend a warm welcome to the right hon. Lady to her new post. Does she agree with the Prime Minister’s unusually candid comments yesterday to Reuters about housing and the lack of it, when he said:
“we failed over many years to build enough houses to meet the need that was there”?
As the third Housing Minister whom I have faced across the Dispatch Box this year, will she tell us what she will do to reverse that policy failure?
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should take note of the fact that the Prime Minister was talking about a period of a substantial number of years. [Interruption.] Indeed, the level of need—and the gap between that need and supply—has built up over a very substantial period. Of course, more still needs to be done. However, as I pointed out a few moments ago, we have a £8 billion programme, particularly for affordable housing, over the next three years.
I am, of course, new to this post and I have not yet had the opportunity to study the hon. Gentleman’s remarks as closely as I assure him I will—I am grateful to him for his kind remarks, by the way. However, my understanding is that the only policy that the Conservative party seems to have is to oppose any proposals for further housing wherever they are put forward.
I welcome my right hon. Friend to her new job; when the message “Beckett is back” went out, there was a huge cheer, because few Ministers have had as much grip as she did during her previous time in the Government.
Last year in Yorkshire, two and a half times as many social dwellings run by councils were sold as were let. I invite my right hon. Friend, the Conservative Front Benchers and the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) to consider whether the sacred cow of the right to buy might now need some revisiting. We are in the business of burying Thatcherism; perhaps the right to buy is one sacred cow that might be considered for the sacrificial block.
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his kind remarks. I take his point about the scope of letting; one of the issues that we are looking at is the allocation of council housing. However, I say to him with great respect that I would rather tackle the problem by making sure that we provide more homes than by removing the right to buy.