I thank the Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), for what he said about making sure that we have a much more open system for assessing the viability of applications for developments with affordable housing. We have lived in a world where people in communities such as mine have gone to their local authority and developers and asked why the case has been made for a reduction in the original plan for affordable housing, and they have been told that it is all confidential and nothing can be seen. The good news that comes from today’s debate is that the process will be much more visible and transparent. That was called for by Labour Front Benchers, and it was certainly undertaken by my hon. Friend.
I encourage Ministers to consider the fact that we absolutely need to respond to the demand out there in all our constituencies and to go on looking for new
ways of finding more affordable housing. I do not think that there is a single constituency in England where there is not a huge demand for affordable housing, and we have pressures that the Government need to work out ways of resisting. In London, we have lots of purchases from abroad of land to be used primarily for marketing abroad, not for marketing at home. Foreign investors will buy to build and then leave the properties unoccupied. That is unacceptable. It forces up prices, it reduces availability, and it may be new housing but it is not new affordable housing. As my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) said, public sector land, not only in Greater London but elsewhere, is not being brought back into use.
I hope that the Department for Communities and Local Government will work with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to realise the benefits of house building in terms of growth and jobs. It is one of the most certain ways of getting maximum numbers of jobs and apprenticeships into the economy. I hope that the Department will also work with our colleagues in the Treasury to make sure that we have a tax regime that incentivises people to develop brownfield land, not to sit on it. Too many sites in constituencies such as mine have been sitting idle and not used for anything for too long. People want affordable housing and imagination from the Department for Communities and Local Government, but I hope that this Bill is only the beginning of a development that produces far more affordable housing under this Government than was ever developed during five years of the Labour Government.
I did not come to this place just to be critical of a Labour Government who developed far fewer council properties than any preceding Government; I want to encourage this Government to make sure that they do better than our predecessors and develop homes that meet the aspirations of my constituents, who want housing that they can afford and who do not want the only available offer to be the ridiculous costs of some of the new housing currently being built.
Question put, That the Bill be now read a Third time.