My hon. Friend is right. The Bill fails to get to grips with the problems of modern life and the crisis of homeownership, especially for young people and families on ordinary incomes. The so-called starter homes are simply out of reach in those areas where people most need help to buy a home of their own. Last week, Tory MPs voted against Labour proposals to make those homes more affordable. The Bill sounds the death knell for social housing, which has had support from all parties for over a century, and for the first time since the second world war, the Chancellor confirmed in the autumn statement that there is no national investment programme to build such housing.
Starter homes will be built in place of affordable council and housing association homes, both to buy and to rent. Councils will be forced to sell their best properties and housing associations will not replace many of their right-to-buy sales with like-for-like homes. That is why Shelter, like the independent Chartered Institute of Housing, predicts that this Bill will lead to the loss of at least 180,000 genuinely affordable homes to rent and buy over the next five years—an extraordinary and an extreme Bill.
We have tried to stop the worst of the plans, but Tory Ministers and Back Benchers have opposed our proposals to give local areas the flexibility to promote not just starter homes but homes of all types, depending on local housing need; to make starter homes more affordable and protect and recycle taxpayers’ investment; to stop Ministers from mandating that pay-to-stay limits hit working households on modest incomes; to allow local areas to protect council and housing association homes with a proper replacement of each; to limit any automatic planning permission from Ministers for brownfield land; and to protect stable family homes for council tenants.
In truth, many of the problems are caused by Ministers who announce first and ask questions later—no consultation and little time for proper scrutiny. More
than 60 pages of new legislation were tabled at the last minute after the Committee had completed its scrutiny. There is a great deal for the other place to do.
In five years of government, we have seen five years of failure on housing under Conservative Ministers. Homelessness is rising, private rents are soaring and levels of homeownership have fallen each and every year since 2010; they are now at the lowest level for a generation. Over the past five years, the Government have seen fewer new homes built than under any Government in peacetime history since the 1920s. After five years of failure, the Bill does nothing to deal with the root causes of those failures; in many areas, it will make the problems a great deal worse.