It is a great pleasure, as ever, to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey). I always enjoy hearing his housing speech. Indeed, I heard it only on Friday, when we were together in Bristol. As ever, he makes some interesting and useful points, as did a number of those on the Opposition Benches. If I do not have an opportunity to respond to all the points that hon. Members on both sides of the House have raised, I will write to them.
The hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) made some very helpful remarks about the need to look at the bundling of land together. I will of course look into the discussions that we have or have not had with the Department of Health in relation to the land to which she refers. Although from time to time I am critical of much of what the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) says, I was delighted to hear him make a robust argument for the great value of further improvements in the energy efficiency of our buildings. Although the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter), who is no longer in his place, was very critical of right to buy, he raised a number of points that the Government would do well to attend to.
Above all, I pay tribute to the excellent Chairman of the Communities and Local Government Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts),
who opened the debate with what my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery) described as an eloquent contribution. Indeed it was. It was eloquent in giving just praise to the report that the Select Committee produced more than a year ago. As I said to the hon. Gentleman in an intervention, in the light of the fact that a year has passed since that report, I have made available in the Library an updated response from the Government, which I hope he and members of the Committee will consider and, if necessary, quiz us on further.
As the hon. Member for Sheffield South East said, it is important that we acknowledge, as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington did, that the Government have done a number of things that are supported in all parts of the House. Reference was made, for example, to the reform of the housing revenue account and to the greater flexibility given to the many excellent arm’s length management organisations. The Chairman of the Select Committee even praised the Planning Minister for his willingness to accept the need for an agreed methodology for determining housing need. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that this is being addressed by Lord Taylor in his report, which we hope will be available in the summer.
The Chairman of the Select Committee pointed out that the Montague report said that guarantees distort the market. May I tactfully suggest that the Montague report was referring in that instance to rent guarantees? If he reads the report thoroughly, as I am sure he has, he will know that it strongly supports the guarantees to reduce the cost of borrowing, which is part of the Government’s package.
On that point, the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich asked what has happened to the £10 billion loan guarantee and where it is. He will be well aware that it takes time to work through the details and to put an offer to the market. We have done all that and I am delighted to tell him that we will make a detailed announcement next month about the appointment of people to run it, so progress is being made. He also challenges us about shovel-ready projects, which he is clearly concerned about. As he knows, because he looks at these matters in great detail, the Get Britain Building fund of £570 million has already signed contracts with 120 projects that will provide us with no fewer than 8,600 homes, and more are on the way. Under this coalition Government, shovels are in the ground. We are delighted that more is still to come.
Like all Members who spoke in the debate, we believe strongly in the importance of building more houses, both to meet the housing need and because of the real economic benefit that that can bring. We agree with so many speakers on all sides who said that there is no single silver bullet to tackle the long-standing under-supply of housing. The Government cannot do it alone and we need to work with others.
The report recognised that a basket of measures is needed, covering all tenures of housing, and we are taking action to deliver that basket of measures: the spending review, the Localism Act 2011, the 2011 housing strategy, the housing and growth package and the autumn statement. But as so many hon. Members have said, a new Budget and a new spending round is due shortly,
when I have no doubt that further announcements on housing will be made. I was not meant to say more than that, but my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley helped to further the leaks that have appeared in newspapers today on what might be covered. We will just have to wait and see what is around the corner. As the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington and others on both sides of the House have said, it is important to recognise that more still needs to be done to take a comprehensive approach, making best use of existing stock, unlocking stalled sites and stimulating new housing supply across all tenures.
I remind my hon. Friends the Members for Meon Valley and for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), who raised the issue of ensuring that within all forms of tenure we take account of older people, that we now have the care and support specialist housing fund of £300 million specifically to develop specialised housing for older and disabled adults.
All Members who have spoken agree that we need more housing, but agree that the politics at the local level can often be difficult. That is why I said that the first thing that we have to do is ensure that we make the best use of the built environment that we already have. That means, for example, tackling empty homes, providing for the change of use from commercial to residential referred to by a number of my hon. Friends, and, as has been debated a number of times in the Chamber, tackling under-occupancy and affordable housing. The new homes bonus gives local authorities not only reward for new homes, but also for bringing empty properties back into use. It is a powerful incentive that is really working. From next month, local authorities will have further flexibility to remove or reduce council tax discounts on empty homes, and in some cases where they have been empty for more than two years, to charge even higher rates.
We have £235 million of direct funding to help local groups to tackle some of the most problematic empty homes that would not otherwise come back into use. I was grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins), who spoke about the need specifically to address properties above shops in our high streets, and he will be aware that we are seeking to do that. There will always be a number of homes that are unoccupied for a short period, and we obviously need that for the market to operate, but the House will be pleased to know that the latest data show that only 260,000 have been empty for longer than six months. That is still far too many, but the figure is now 20,000 fewer than last year, so we are making progress.
We are also taking action to free up land. It was rightly said that Governments of all shapes and sizes have long argued for the need to free public sector land. We are determined to take action on that. We hope to release sufficient land for 100,000 homes, and wherever possible we will use the bill now, pay later deferred payment scheme to help get that under way, but a further announcement may or may not be made in a few weeks’ time. I was grateful to the Chair of the Select Committee who said, in relation to those issues, that local authorities do in some cases need to be quicker with their planning applications, and he will be aware that we are dealing with that in the Growth and Infrastructure Bill. We are also consulting on a package of measures that I think will be welcomed on both sides
of House to make the planning appeals process swifter and more transparent to reduce wasted time and expense and, I hope, lead to quicker development.
The Growth and Infrastructure Bill, which was referred to only briefly in the debate, is very important because it will allow developers to review with their local authorities the viability of the affordable housing contribution on proposed sites. As the House will know, we are committed to a further £225 million, and to the loan guarantee scheme, to ensure that we can meet any reduction in the number of affordable houses that might result from those renegotiations. In addition, we have the £475 million local infrastructure fund—we published its prospectus only a few days ago—which will help local areas to deliver much larger-scale developments to meet need. We want to go still further. The House will be aware that there has not been a single new development of more than 13,500 homes in this country since the 1970s, so we intend to promote and support larger scale garden cities where there is clear local support and private sector appetite. We are currently working through the details on that.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) rightly said, we must support home ownership, and we are doing that with a number of measures. Reference has been made to the Firstbuy scheme. Over 10,000 reservations have now been made towards our target of helping 27,000 first-time buyers into shared equity. Reference has also been made to the NewBuy scheme, which gives prospective buyers the chance to buy a home with a fraction of the deposit normally required. As we have heard, there are already 3,000 reservations and the figure is rising rapidly. As he also said, the Bank of England is crediting our £50 billion funding for lending scheme for increasing mortgage availability and driving down the cost of loans for home owners.
However, I accept the point made by the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich about the need to look at additions to the offers that are made, either developments of existing ones or additions to the products available, and that is what we are doing. We are also looking at the issues that many Members have raised in relation to the right to buy, but it is pleasing to note that sales between October and December topped 2,000, helping to fund the one-for-one replacement of the homes that have been sold.