I will not take a further intervention from the hon. Gentleman for the time being, if that is okay.
Each week, people ask me why they should have to live in damp, overcrowded and extortionately priced private flats, why their children should be subject to the insecurities that come with short-term tenancy after short-term tenancy, and who is going to help them in their housing need. Many more people will find their situations made much worse as a consequence of the Bill than will be helped by it.
A family who came to my surgery late last year is typical of many who contact me. The mother is a part-time teaching assistant who is studying to become a teacher, while the father is a pharmacy technician. They live in a two-bedroom housing association property with their four children. The two older girls, who are both at secondary school, share a top bunk, while their two younger siblings share the bottom bunk. The parents described the toll that the situation is taking on their relationship. Their older daughters, who are model students, are often tired and stressed at school. The family works hard and could not have more aspiration for a better life, but their situation will be made worse by the Bill. They will not be able to afford to exercise the right to buy their housing association home, and even if they could, that would be a pretty big gamble, since it is not suitable for their needs. The family home that they desperately need is likely to be exactly the type of home that will either be sold under right to buy, or that councils will be forced to sell to fund the right to buy for other housing association tenants. The Bill delivers nothing for this family, nor for many other residents like
them who cannot raise a mortgage but nevertheless have significant housing need that should not and must not be ignored. I sat and wept with this family as they described the sheer unfairness and impossibility of their situation.
During yesterday’s sitting of the Communities and Local Government Committee, I was dismayed to hear senior CLG officials confirm that they have not yet completed any analysis of the likely sums that will be raised from right-to-buy sales and the forced sale of council homes. The Government therefore simply do not know whether the funds will be available to replace housing association homes that are sold under right to buy, and still less at a rate of two for one. The Select Committee heard evidence from an officer at a Conservative-led local authority in Cambridgeshire who said that the council was up to the limit of the borrowing cap against its housing revenue account. When its high-value homes are sold, the first call on the receipt will be HRA debt repayment. Once the subsidy for right to buy has been deducted, there will be almost nothing left to deliver new homes. Members are being asked to vote on a major housing reform without any evidence that it can or will deliver what the Government promise that it will.
There are further attacks on affordable housing in the Bill. The pay-to-stay clause, which is introduced with no taper and no lead-in time, is simply a Conservative tax on hard work and aspiration. There is a deep inconsistency within pay to stay. On the one hand, the Government have decided that a household comprising two people earning the new minimum wage outside London or the London living wage—by definition the minimum required to live on—is “high earning” yet, on the other hand, the Government take a different view of the high-earning threshold for tax purposes. The two are not the same figure.
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The impact of pay to stay will be that rents rise to market levels overnight. I cannot see any justification at all for requiring the rent paid by residents living in social housing and earning the minimum wage or the London living wage to be doubled or, in some parts of London, much more than doubled. Pay to stay will break up communities and it will price people out of their homes although there is no private sector or other affordable housing for them to move into. It will increase homelessness and act as a disincentive to seek promotion at work or to take on more hours. It is a Conservative tax on aspiration.
Finally, there is the measure to end secure tenancies, which was introduced on the final day of the Public Bill Committee, meaning that members of that Committee had no opportunity to hear the views of residents or councils about the proposal. That shoddy way of legislating shows contempt for this House and for the constituents and communities we serve. Councils already have freedom under the Localism Act 2011 to end secure tenancies, but the compulsory imposition of the ending of secure tenancies is yet another anti-localist measure that slashes councils’ freedom to respect and respond to the views of their tenants and residents, and to address local housing need in the best way for their local area. I have received emails from constituents who are terrified about the
possibility that they will be forced to move home, to move their children to a different school in a strange area, and to seek new jobs and childcare arrangements.
The solution to the housing crisis is not to engage in a race to the bottom on security of tenure, nor to recognise only the aspirations of those who are able to raise a mortgage. The solution to the housing crisis is to build more genuinely affordable homes across all tenure types and to regard social housing as an investment that pays for itself many times over, both financially in comparison with private renting, and in the social benefits that it brings.