A manifesto for housing?

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Published: 21 October, 2010
FORUM: Opinion in the CNJ

‘Rebel’ Lib Dem Simon Hughes admits the coalition needs to think again on housing but suggested this week there is a way to prevent poor Londoners being evicted

WHEN, after the election, no party ended up in overall control and we made our decision to go into government because that was the only way there was going to be a majority, I remembered the promises I stood on as a Liberal Democrat and they included promises about housing.

I don’t invent these things, I can read them to you: it’s a short paragraph in the manifesto: Investigate reforming public sector borrowing requirements to free councils to borrow against their assets in order to build a new generation of council homes and to allow them to keep all the revenue from these new homes. Over time we will seek to provide a greater degree of subsidy as resources allow to increase the number of new sustainable homes.

It can’t be clearer: a need to make sure that we change the rules about funding to build more council stock and, as the economy improves, to increase the number of affordable homes. I’m clear about my starting point and that was one of the issues that was discussed. We did what we could to keep that commitment but we couldn’t get it written into the coalition agreement. In coalitions, you can’t get everything you want and we are left with the legacy.

I’m not going to give you a great lecture about the legacy in terms of debt. You know the score. I’ll give one figure because it’s relevant. Every year we have to spend more on interest on debt repayments than we spend on our national defence army, navy and airforce – a massive job and we’ve got to do it.

Whoever was in government had to deal with it. 

I personally accept – and I’ve always accepted – that not everybody wants to be, or should want to be, an owner-occupier. 

We need to provide more affordable housing. Either, and in my book preferably, run by councils or secondarily by other accountable affordable housing providers doing so on a not-for-profit basis. 

That is a crucial test. They should not be making a profit that they then take out of the housing sector.

There is one problem with the law on council housing.

There is still the Right To Buy legislation. I’ve always supported the reform of it and what I am pressing for is for England to have the same system that has been agreed for Wales. 

In Wales, signed off by the housing minister of this government, since the election, is a system which allows the councils to make their own separate decision as to whether to keep or not to keep the Right To Buy. I would like councils in England to make that decision for themselves.

It would be a good political debate locally. 

People who buy and then sell on a place that is then sub-let brings people who have no real commitment to the block or the estate. 

I’ve made it very clear that the wonderful halcyon idea of these mixed communities, full of people who have sold on and sub-let are all happily living together, is not my experience.

Land that is sitting empty ought to be taxed as if it had been developed – which means there is a huge incentive to develop it, which releases land for development, which by definition increases the supply of housing and brings the price down. .

I’m pushing to make sure the government has a longer-term as well as a short-term view to make sure we tax land and make planning easier to accommodate the sort of social housing we are talking about.

For London in particular there are… particular problems with the housing benefit proposals. People in 2013 who have been on jobseekers’ allowance for a year will have their housing benefit cut if they are not in work over 12 months. That needs to change. It cannot be as straightforward as that. People can look for work and not find it. We have to change caps and rent assessments because they won’t deliver people stability. When the legislation comes we will make the argument and I have every reason to believe that we can win the argument because the argument is overwhelming.

You have to interpret what I’m saying. The message has been delivered. The present rules as planned are not sustainable. There won’t be money growing on trees. There won’t be huge amounts of money poured into the system but there can be a system in London and elsewhere that doesn’t have people thrown onto the streets because the housing benefit won’t pay the rent.

• Simon Hughes MP was speaking at a meeting organised by Defend Council Housing at the Commons on Monday