It is a pleasure to serve under you in the Chair, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) on securing this important debate and on the compelling speech with which he opened it. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi), for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury), for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) and for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) and the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) for participating this afternoon and for a series of powerful speeches.
The debate has covered a range of concerns, many relating to the housing crisis more widely, but, on the specific matter of the affordable homes programme,
most fell within two broad categories—namely, the performance of the programme over recent years and the more fundamental issues of its design and purpose. I want to address each of those in turn.
When it comes to the performance of the programme, there is clearly significant room for improvement. The comprehensive National Audit Office report on the operation of the AHP since 2015, which was published last year, details concerns on to a wide range of issues—including governance, transparency and oversight—many of which were echoed in a report published shortly afterwards by the Public Accounts Committee. I would be grateful if, as part of his response, the Minister could tell the House whether the Department has acted on the eight specific recommendations made by the NAO in its report, and could take the opportunity to update hon. Members on the steps that his Department committed to taking in its response to the PAC.
A particular criticism levelled at the programme by both the NAO and the PAC and referenced by my hon. Friend the Member for Slough in opening the debate was the fact that targets were unlikely to be met. We know that, taken together, the 2016 and 2021 programmes are likely to miss their combined target by approximately 32,000 homes, with a shortfall of 9,000 starts under the 2016 programme compounded by a projected 23,000 shortfall in the current one. There is also a clear risk that the programme will fail to meet its sub-targets on supported accommodation and rural housing.
Opposition Members recognise that some of the factors undermining delivery on the targets are entirely out of the Government’s control, but there are others—such as local planning authority capacity and the need for funding and financing mechanisms to support providers in upgrading their stock—that the Government could take more proactive steps to mitigate. Might the Minister provide us with some assurance this afternoon that the Government are at least actively looking at what more can be done in that regard? Can he also explain whether and, if so, how rules about grant funding under the current programme might be being made more flexible—not least in terms of increased grant funding per unit—with a view to sustaining the Department’s central forecast of 157,000 completions in the face of inflationary pressure?
Lastly, when it comes to assessing the overall performance of the programme, effective scrutiny is still very much hampered by the absence of transparency and open reporting. The Department has now committed to providing an annual report to Parliament on programme delivery, but might the Minister go further today and commit at least to having Homes England publish its annual AHP targets, as the Greater London Authority has already done?
Let me turn to the design and purpose of the programme. One of the more damning conclusions of the NAO report was that the AHP lacks strong incentives for housing providers to deliver affordable homes in areas of high housing need and high affordability pressure. I would be grateful if the Minister could therefore update the House on how the Department is improving the way it works with local authorities to address local need, and tell us whether any further measures are being explored to ensure that more grant-funded affordable housing flows to areas of high need.
Providing more homes in such areas is, of course, not the only wider Government objective in respect of which the current programme is falling short. To me at least,
it simply beggars belief that both the Department and Homes England did not include any specific targets relating to emissions reductions in the 2021 programme, with the result that outside London the Government are financing the construction of new affordable homes that in all likelihood we will have to retrofit in years to come.
The Government have committed to exploring the cost and deliverability of additional net zero requirements, but only in a successor to the 2021 programme.