Greater London Authority Bill

I hear another sedentary comment that it is not true, so I shall provide one or two examples. I was not going to do so, but now I shall. What possible motivation, other than one of extreme ideology or electoral manipulation, could there be for an inner-London council to go out of its way to cancel an affordable rented homes programme that had already received funding from the Housing Corporation and already had planning permission? I cannot see any justification for that. Departing slightly from my brief, I shall provide two examples, only one of which indicts a callous Tory council, as the other involves a housing association. I apologise for raising an issue that I have already raised at some length in an Adjournment debate, but I do so because further developments have taken place, which exemplify exactly why the Mayor needs extra powers. The largest single housing development in my constituency at the moment was originally a 75 per cent. affordable housing development. The incoming Conservative council, by way of agreeing small changes to the application, insisted that the percentage of affordable housing be reduced to 64 per cent. Nevertheless, it was still a good scheme: it was roughly a third market, a third shared ownership and a third social rented housing. On one clear working day before the planning committee made a decision, the leader of the council called in the developer and insisted that the rented housing be changed to shared ownership housing. That is a matter ultimately, as I have said previously, for the Standards Board for England. What happened then is an interesting development. The GLA was waiting expectantly for this scheme—it was a large scheme of 450 homes—to be referred to it, but the Conservative councils said that they were not ready and were not sure. Meanwhile, the Housing Corporation had withdrawn the £30 million of public money because the scheme was no longer worthy of being funded. What has happened since that time—about six weeks ago—is that in a Dutch auction the social housing developer, Genesis Housing Group, went to the Housing Corporation and asked what minimum amount of social rented housing could be put on the site in order to get public funding. It literally asked whether it was 70, 80, 90 or 91 units.