Karen Buck (Regent's Park & Kensington North, Labour)

May I say how much I welcome the opportunity to debate social housing? The subject is highly topical, although not for reasons that we would support, but we none the less need to take advantage of that topicality.

I welcome the fact that the Minister is still in place, as she has been extremely supportive and courteous in working with me on the problems of overcrowding, which I shall refer to later. She has visited my constituency and met a number of families who live in wholly unacceptable conditions, which is the thrust of the debate.

Social housing gets a bad press that is not shared by any other public service—so negative is its image that "Little Britain" and Catherine Tate have created an industry out of it. Although it has been mocked and ignored, and more recently treated as if it were in some way a cause of poverty and social exclusion rather than a central line of defence against them, nothing less than a catastrophe has been allowed to unfold.

It is necessary briefly to say that none of those factors can be used in defence of the housing disasters of the past—the great but badly designed monolithic estates, the paternalistic and sometimes poor-quality housing management, and the concentration of families with complex needs in single-tenure neighbourhoods. Serious mistakes have been made over the years, and they have given cover to those who were allowed to dismantle so much that was good over the past quarter century.

Andrew Dismore (Hendon, Labour)

I am listening to my hon. Friend closely and must say that there is always the risk of throwing the baby out with the bath water. We have three big regeneration schemes in my constituency—West Hendon; Spur Road, Edgware; and Grahame Park, Colindale. The net consequence of significantly increasing density, which will have a great impact on local services and communities, is a net loss of affordable homes. The London borough of Barnet, which is responsible for those schemes, is missing a trick. We have to do something about the chronic shortage of housing and the overcrowding in our area, but those schemes do nothing to ease the problems.

Karen Buck (Regent's Park & Kensington North, Labour)

I totally endorse what my hon. Friend says. I fear that Barnet is doing no favours to its own people, and it is also failing to make a wider contribution.

I am saying to the Government that the opportunity afforded by the Chancellor's stated interest in the case for social housing to be included in next year's spending review is almost a last chance to put right the failures of the past. It was comforting to hear the new Secretary of State in this Department emphasise the importance of social housing. I hope that people's ears are open to the case that needs to be made.

Many good things have been done by the Government on housing since 1997, of which the decent homes initiative is the most important. Thousands of my constituents have benefited from the major improvements and renovations that have taken place under that programme, which are much to be welcomed. However, the overall failure to address the problem of housing supply, most especially but not entirely in London and the south-east, has not only caused untold misery for those families rendered homeless or trapped in chronically overcrowded accommodation, but been a false economy to the public purse. It has shifted much of the cost, such as for temporary accommodation, on to housing benefit; contributed to the destabilising of communities; and, sadly—this is why the debate is so relevant—stoked the racism that is a consequence of the competition for scarce resources in an ethically mixed and fast-changing city.

As the director of Shelter rightly said yesterday, the shortage of affordable homes has led to a "blame culture" in which people turn on each other in their frustration and despair. Although the consequences might have been seen most graphically in Barking and Dagenham, we should be under no illusion that such sentiments are confined to one area.

David Taylor (North West Leicestershire, Labour)

Of those Labour Members present today, several represent metropolitan constituencies and one is a distinguished former council leader; I am a provincial among them. The pressures in London are obviously particularly great. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government, despite their pretty sound record generally, must avoid what the National Housing Federation has called a "pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap" policy in responding to those problems? They must balance quantity and quality in responding to people's needs and aspirations as regards the environment and new housing.

Karen Buck (Regent's Park & Kensington North, Labour)

Again, I agree with my hon. Friend, and I shall set those points out from my own perspective.

Ironically, the choice-based lettings system, which is increasingly used to supply housing, and which I wholly support in principle, is making the intensity of the competition that I have described toxically transparent. For example, a rare three-bed property in my constituency was advertised through the choice-based lettings system two weeks ago and it attracted 244 bidders from the already heavily filtered top-priority category A list alone. Given that only six three-bedroom properties have been advertised in the current financial year, most desperate people, even on that list, face an almost endless round of unsuccessful bidding, which is an injection of pure poison into already deprived neighbourhoods.

On the shortfall in supply, targets for tackling rough sleeping and for cutting the number of households in temporary accommodation, both of which are entirely admirable by their own lights, simply squeeze the balloon that is housing need—reducing need in one place, only to see it to pop up elsewhere in the system.

Before I summarise the priorities for action, let me sketch out some challenges. I shall make specific reference to London. The number of social housing lettings has been falling for a decade, and the number of vacancies has fallen because fewer people can afford to buy. In London, the ratio of lower-quartile house prices to lower-quartile earnings has more than doubled, compared with a 50 per cent. increase in the country as a whole. The right to buy is having a continuing impact, reducing the pool of lettings by about 12,500 a year, while the number of completions is substantially down across the country, although I recognise that it is up in London by about 2,000.

Lembit Öpik (Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Affairs; Montgomeryshire, Liberal Democrat)

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. Is she aware that the problems for inner-city areas that she is describing also affect rural areas such as Montgomeryshire? For example, house prices in my constituency have increased by 157 per cent. in just six years, while the average household earns just £23,000 a year. Does she agree that the problems and the solutions, which I hope she will outline, are very much the same for rural areas? Such areas need to close the gap between the housing that families require and the housing they can afford.

Karen Buck (Regent's Park & Kensington North, Labour)

I certainly take the point that rural areas face a serious challenge on housing need. Although London is at the sharp end of the problem, the pressure is distributed across the country, which is illustrated by the fact that, since 1997, the number of people seeking social housing has increased by about half across the country, but by 77 per cent. in London.

The 2004 spending review was projected to deliver an extra 10,000 new social homes annually by next year, but that was substantially below what the Kate Barker report recommended, and it is less than half of what we need. Despite the Mayor of London's welcome commitment to meet housing need, there will be a continuing shortfall in the years to come. The Greater London authority housing requirement study estimated that 10,700 larger affordable homes—those are at the heart of the problem in my area—were needed every year, but the supply is unbelievably low, at 500.

Andrew Love (Edmonton, Labour)

I agree with my hon. Friend about the commitment to reach the target of 10,000 new homes a year, but in London, as she has outlined, we will not reach anything like our target at current rates, given the need for larger accommodation and the level of construction inflation.

Karen Buck (Regent's Park & Kensington North, Labour)

Sadly, I agree with my hon. Friend, which is why I welcome this chance to make the case in relation to the next spending review. The need is urgent, and provision is lagging well behind need.

The Housing Corporation recently made a welcome contribution to recognising the need for family accommodation by upping its share of the social housing allocation for family homes from 27 to 34 per cent., but that is still way below what is needed to meet new demand in the system and to make inroads into the backlog.

Sally Keeble (Northampton North, Labour)

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is particularly important to consider what the Housing Corporation says, because it provides social housing? For many families, affordable housing is no longer affordable, and there is a real need not only for affordable housing, but for social housing for many of those families.

Karen Buck (Regent's Park & Kensington North, Labour)

I agree. Social housing is at the heart of my case, although affordable housing to buy is also priced out of the reach of families who in other circumstances might be able to afford to go into the private market.

As a consequence of the devastating shortfall in supply, particularly of family-sized accommodation, severe overcrowding rose by almost half in London between the 1991 and 2001 censuses. More than half of all severely overcrowded households in the country are in London, and the social sector has for the first time overtaken private rented as the most severely affected. The fact that 500,000 London children live in severely overcrowded homes makes me ashamed.

Sally Keeble (Northampton North, Labour)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for being generous in giving way. Does she agree that there is a real problem in that figures from the former Office of the Deputy Prime Minister clearly show that overcrowding is greatest in areas where there are large numbers of black and minority ethnic communities, especially Asian communities? That is particularly the case in Newham.

Karen Buck (Regent's Park & Kensington North, Labour)

That is right. In fact, my next point is that, despite the pernicious lies of the British National party and the perhaps more understandable willingness of desperate, badly housed families to believe its propaganda, it is black, ethnic minority and Muslim families who are over-represented in the severe overcrowding and homelessness figures, and indeed across the board in terms of housing need, so in a way we have the worst of all possible worlds.

I have made the point about overall supply and, in particular, the supply of family-sized accommodation, but it is also important to say that the supply must be balanced out across London as a whole. That is my area of concern; others will make the case for the country as a whole. The geographical distribution, even of the increased provision in London, does not meet all needs. In fact, there is a danger that it is about to make the situation worse. Despite the fact that Westminster city council—Westminster is one of my two boroughs—has to deal with what is, unbelievably, the third highest overcrowding level in the local authority rented sector, we are unable to obtain adequate direct investment or to access properties through sub-regional allocations.

I am told that housing opportunities in cheaper partner boroughs to my expensive inner-London ones will help to soak up the slack, yet even though I have just put forward two desperately needy families who want to move to Barnet, where they have family ties—Barnet is a borough in the sub-regional partnership—I am told by Westminster that no three-bedroom properties will be available in the sub-regional partner boroughs of Barnet and Enfield this year. Overall, Westminster and its sub-regional partners can expect only 90 properties to be made available to meet the needs of more than 3,000 people on the waiting list alone.

Andrew Dismore (Hendon, Labour)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for mentioning Barnet, which is my borough. The problem is that Peter is trying to rob Paul. In my constituency, there is a desperate shortage of the housing that we are discussing, so frankly I am not surprised that Westminster received the response that it did, because there is no housing for our own people. Such properties simply do not exist in Barnet.

One of my main concerns is that, although there is housing investment in parts of London, other parts of London—where there is a chronic housing shortage, where people want to live, where jobs are available, where there are transport links and where, as a consequence, land prices are slightly higher—are being starved of investment. That is a completely false economic argument. We must invest where the jobs and transport links are and where people want to live, not where those things do not exist.

Karen Buck (Regent's Park & Kensington North, Labour)

That is right. I can understand the logic of saying that we will not invest substantially in building social housing in the middle of Knightsbridge—that would be wholly sub-optimal in development terms—but it is critical that we provide social and affordable housing opportunities across London and that they are not concentrated purely in poorer areas. That is because, among other things, we are trying to get away from lower-income households being concentrated in lower-income neighbourhoods. Let me give two illustrations from my area, and I shall conclude by running through some of my priorities for action.

Mrs. M sent me a letter:

"We are a family of five. We have been living in two single bedrooms since 1993. The boy is fifteen, the girl is nine and the little one 3, living, playing, studying and doing homework in the same room of 2.5 metres by 3 metres. The boy has learning difficulties, the mum has rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes... you cannot imagine how difficult it is to live with 3 kids in the same room."

The father and husband of a second family wrote:

"As you will recall, our family of six—myself, my wife, two daughters and two sons—have been living in a flat with two single bedrooms since 2001. Both my wife's health and my own have deteriorated as a result of living here and my children, the oldest of whom is 14, should no longer be sharing a bedroom. Unfortunately, our landlord is indifferent to our situation... in their waiting lists we are placed in Category B along with 66 other people, and, as such, we can expect to wait for 12 years"—

that is, 12 years during which six people share two small bedrooms.

Remember, that family are not even in category A. The transfer list for that social landlord in my borough says that the longest category A priority wait for a two-bedroomed flat is nine years; the longest category B wait is 16 years. Those are not my worst cases, which involve families of five in a single bedroom. However, at least those cases are defined as statutory overcrowding.

I come to my final example. Mrs. A and her husband are sharing a small two-bed with their three teenage children. Mrs. A's landlord, the Peabody Trust, told me last summer:

"She has been on the Trust's transfer list since March 1997... she is waiting for a 3 bed property and her case receives priority because of her medical circumstances and overcrowding. Unfortunately, last year, the Trust only let one 3 bed property in"

the whole borough. The Peabody Trust continued:

"Mrs. A refers to an empty 3 bed on the Dalgarno estate which needs work doing to it... The Trust has to make some difficult decisions when dealing with such properties and in this case, the property will be sold".

Of course, the Peabody Trust is hugely engaged in selling property. Sales are also made by Genesis and a number of other registered social landlords in my constituency.

What is the solution? I do not often echo Ronald Reagan, but I shall in this instance: the solution is not easy, but it is simple. The issue is supply, supply, supply. We have to increase the supply of socially rented homes, especially those suitable for families, although genuinely affordable shared ownership options and greater availability of smaller units can also relieve pressures on families by offering opportunities to adult children. In the 2007 comprehensive spending review, we need to commit to meeting the Barker target as a minimum.

The 2007 comprehensive spending review might give us more money to build, but we can also buy on the open market. That is my preferred emergency response to the crisis. We can support investment in conversions and extensions, such as loft conversions, of existing properties. One reason why that is hard to do is that many London boroughs, including my own, have taken a relative reduction in housing revenue accounts. On current trends, Westminster's housing revenue account will go into deficit in 2010. We need more assistance to enable such programmes to be carried out by the local authorities, the arm's length management organisations and us.

We have to stop the sale of housing association properties, especially the desirable street properties, on the open market. We have to ensure that we do not promote home ownership at the expense of those in desperate need of affordable rented accommodation. Too much extra investment in recent years has gone on promoting ownership rather than on tackling need.

We must not only make the concept of mixed communities a reality, but ensure that, as we rightly mix tenure in what are currently concentrations of social housing, we simultaneously mix social housing into areas that are overwhelmingly owner-occupied. To echo the points made by a number of my hon. Friends, we need social housing growth everywhere.

We must invest more in tools that will help us to identify under-occupation, promote the cash incentive scheme and make mutual exchange work effectively. That will help us to make better use of existing housing stock. We have been extremely complacent about the effectiveness of such programmes. They can help, but are not sufficient and will not solve the problem on their own. They need proper incentives to match those offered by the right to buy and they need to case manage individuals through the system to encourage them to downsize and exchange.

An estimated 160,000 households living in the social sector could buy in the intermediate market if that sector were providing family-sized accommodation. Intermediate housing tends to concentrate on one and two bedrooms, which is not what families need. The sector could provide this, and it should.

I plead with my hon. Friend the Minister that we must not load the burden on to rents, as London already has the highest rates of child poverty in the country and research clearly shows that higher rents are a factor in work disincentives and poverty. Rising rents in London have already contributed almost£90 million back to the Treasury, which is grossly unfair given the pressures London tenants are under.

We should expand the pilot for turning temporary accommodation into permanent, which would be good value for money and hugely important for unsettled families. The £20 million scheme that is in place is a drop in the ocean. Also, let us find alternatives to the property market as a means to develop assets for those who cannot realistically afford to buy.

Finally, I wish to say something on council leaseholders. Hundreds of relatively low-income council leaseholders in my area, such as on the Warwick, Amberley, Church Street and Lisson Green estates, face major works bills, which can be as high as £68,000 and which in some cases are substantially more than the purchase price of their property.

Home ownership has turned out to have an enormous sting in the tail for many such families, and while right-to-buy discounts and rising property prices have to be seen as part of the context, the reality is that the bills are arriving now and many lessees are devastated by them. There is a further shift towards sub-letting, as families decide that the £425 a week that they could make in housing benefit for renting their properties to homeless families might help to get them off the financial hook, but that does not make sense for the public purse or the wider community.

It is essential that the Government find ways to support initiatives to help the lower-income households now getting caught in this trap and that they recognise that there are costs involved, such as in the form of funding cost caps, interest-free loans, deferred payments, tax breaks on savings schemes for major works, or in some cases funds for buy back.

I apologise for my speech taking so long, although I hope that Members recognise that I have taken a number of interventions. I conclude by saying that social housing is the public service that has been left out in the cold for a quarter of a century, and in my view we are reaping the whirlwind. Please let us take this opportunity to start making radical reparations.

Several hon. Members rose—

Janet Dean (Burton, Labour)

Order. May I remind Members that we have until 10.30 for general debate, before I call the Front-Bench spokespeople? There should be ample time for all who wish to speak to do so, if Members moderate the length of their speeches.

Tony Baldry (Banbury, Conservative)

Ms Buck has made a powerful case for her constituency and for inner London. Also, it is good to see the Minister in her place, although I am a little concerned about her health and I hope she will last out the debate. As one who is still traumatised by Tottenham Hotspur being poisoned at the weekend, I am a bit concerned about everyone.

The hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North rightly talked about inner London, as that is where her constituency is, but may I take the House on to a shire district? In my district, we estimate that we need 700 new social homes each year just to keep up. The biennial Government grant—the grant under the 2004 comprehensive spending review—has meant that we in Cherwell can build only 288 new homes, which is a long way short of what is needed.

We know from parliamentary questions and answers that delivery of affordable housing after 2007-08 will depend entirely on the 2007 comprehensive spending review and the future bidding round held by the Housing Corporation.

David Taylor (North West Leicestershire, Labour)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Tony Baldry (Banbury, Conservative)

I want to be brief and many of the hon. Gentleman's colleagues wish to speak. I do not want to get castigated for taking up time, and the points I want to make are of reasonably narrow compass.

Let us look at what happened in respect of the 2004 comprehensive spending review. A press release issued by the former Office of the Deputy Prime Minister in July 2004 stated that this was one of the most generous spending deliveries ever, providing an extra 10,000 homes a year for social rent and, on top of that, delivering more than 40,000 homes for essential public sector workers and low-cost home ownership in areas of higher housing demand over a four-year period. The fact of the matter is that although that was a£1.5 billion award, it did barely anything for shire districts such as mine.

Ministers have recognised that there is an aspiration for home ownership. In a constituency such as mine, where we fortunately have zero unemployment, pretty much everyone who comes to see me at my constituency surgery and looking for housing is on a low income. They are in work and have almost always lived in the area all their life: having gone to school in Banbury and grown up there, they now work there. They want to get into housing and would aspire to own their own home if they could.

The Government have put forward shared equity schemes, which are really exciting. My only concern is that under the proposals made by the Deputy Prime Minister and the Chancellor in their pamphlet "Extending Home Ownership", the aspirant owner has to take on a mortgage of 75 per cent. of the value of the property. Hometrack has worked out that in Oxfordshire as in London, only about 2 per cent. of those on low incomes could afford a shared equity property on that basis. Practically none of the people on low incomes will be able to take up shared equity.

In my patch, notwithstanding that we are likely to have it trumpeted that the settlement will be generous and so on, if it is anything like the 2004 settlement, practically nothing will happen. We will then be told that there is to be shared equity, but that will also be a false dawn because no one will be able to access it.

I do not understand the economics of housing. Huge numbers of people in my patch are going into the private rented sector, so the state is paying private landlords considerable sums through rent and housing benefit. Housing benefit is still money from the taxpayer and I do not understand why more of the benefit cannot help to ensure that families can access home ownership. The proportion that a family on low income have to put up would be reduced and far more of those hard-working families in my constituency—often with husband and wife both working on low incomes—could access housing of their own rather than being trapped, as many of them are, in permanent shorthold assured tenancies.

Many of my constituents are confronted by a dilemma: they either go to the district council and are told that they can be put in temporary accommodation for an indefinite period, and eventually one of the few new, affordable social homes might become available, or are told to go to the private sector. As soon as they go to the private sector, they are told that they are by definition adequately housed and they fall off the list.

I make my plea to the Minister: over the next year or so, may we perhaps have a gathering of the Council of Mortgage Lenders, Ministers, the Housing Corporation and others to see how we can make shared equity schemes more accessible to a larger number of people? The Treasury should not simply, under a different pot, spend more and more on housing benefit and lock people into private rented tenancy in permanent shorthold assured tenancies that they really do not want.

In a constituency such as mine, if we could make the finances of shared equity work better, we could lever in a lot more money from individuals, families and mortgage lenders. There seems to be a disconnect that I do not entirely understand, but something tells me that we could do a lot better.

Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North, Labour)

I shall be as brief as possible because it is important that all colleagues are able to get into the debate. It cannot have escaped your notice, Mrs. Dean, that the majority of Labour Members participating in this debate represent London constituencies; that is because of the nature of the housing crisis in London which my Friend Ms Buck outlined very well indeed.

I represent an inner-London constituency where property prices are going through the roof all the time. Anyone wishing to buy a property in my constituency, such as a two-bedroomed flat above a shop on a main road, would need about £200,000. I saw an ex-council, three-bedroomed flat on an estate advertised yesterday for £350,000. So-called "shared ownership" properties are so expensive that the possibility of anyone on less than a head teacher's income getting one is remote. In reality, there is a massive housing crisis. Little is being built and some council property is still being sold, fortunately at a slightly lower rate than in the past.

As my Friend said in relation to the choice-based letting scheme, people on the housing waiting list go into a bidding frenzy every Thursday when the local paper comes out. Most of them are sadly disappointed. People come to my advice bureau in tears saying that in two years they have managed to visit one property with 20 other families and did not even manage to get an offer at the end of that process. Such cruelty goes on week in, week out.

To some extent, I welcome the choice-based letting system. However, we should be careful because those who are not computer literate, whose first language is not English and who do not feel confident or comfortable using telephones often simply do not bid. Such people just wait, but they will wait for ever because they have no opportunity at all. While I am not against choice-based letting, we should be cautious because those whose first language is not English are, in my experience, in danger of losing out as a result of it.

Tony Baldry mentioned some of the problems in his area, and I have much sympathy with those, particularly the point he raised about the perverse levels of cost and the way in which investment can deal with the situation. I suspect that my local authority, Islington council, like most other London bodies, houses few people off the waiting list into any new development or vacant property. People tend to be directed into the private sector or into leased properties where the council or housing association take on the lease. Such leases are phenomenally expensive.

Ex-council properties that have been sold under the right to buy are then bought up by property companies or housing associations, or they are leased. The rent for such properties is often up to £300 a week. People in desperate housing need are put into them and the rent is paid by housing benefit; usually 100 per cent. of it is paid in that way, although that is not true in all cases. The family involved then often live in a poor quality property that is badly managed, very unsuitable and, in some cases, downright dangerous in my view. A huge rent is paid by the public sector.

If any member of such a family then manages to get a job—clearly we want people to get jobs and careers—they cannot afford to take it, because they are suddenly saddled with a bill of £15,000 a year in rent alone, and they have lost income support and other benefits. We are building a mad benefit trap that costs the public a huge sum to prevent somebody from working and keep them in a grossly substandard and inadequate form of accommodation. A lot of that money could be spent far more effectively on building new homes for rent for the people in desperate housing need throughout London.

I shall just quickly make two or three points because I recognise that many other Members wish to speak. First, on planning issues, the Mayor of London has rightly said that he wants 50 per cent. of all major developments given over to what he terms "affordable housing". I understand that aspiration, and I support it with one or two reservations. I do so because I want far more homes for rent to be available, but I do not like the use of the word "affordable" because the definition of it is loose. It means whatever anyone wants it to mean. Developers seem to think that something is very affordable when I do not think that that is the case. I would much rather say that we desperately need "places for rent at a fixed level in the public sector".

My local authority, Islington council, was controlled by the Liberal Democrats until last Thursday. Sadly from their point of view it now has no overall control, which represents an enormous step forward for Labour. One issue in the election was the Liberal Democrats' persistence on the policy that they would demand a proportion of social housing only on development sites of more than 14 units. In my borough there are few large development sites; most are very small. The Labour proposal was to go right down to the bottom and insist that all development sites have a proportion of social housing, which is eminently sensible. I hope that that is the new council's policy.

With major developments, developers do not think about the housing needs of people who are desperate to be rehoused; they think of their profits. Arsenal stadium sadly closed last week and the football team is moving to the new stadium. The old stadium site is being redeveloped as Highbury square. The developers, with the agreement of the Liberal Democrat council, are going to put 711 one-bedroomed private flats on that site. That is crazy. There is a desperate need for family housing to keep communities together. What happens is that single people and couples move to one-bedroomed flats and then cannot move to anywhere else in that community, so we end up with a community of either childless couples or old people. Those with children are forced to move out of inner London. I am sure that that occurs in other inner-London constituencies.

My last point is about the need to invest in development. The Library produced an interesting briefing for today's debate, which makes grim reading. The number of new council properties being developed throughout the country this year is somewhere around the zero mark, and the number of housing association properties being developed in the whole of London, which is at a record high for the past 10 years, is just 6,000. We need major investment in housing for rent either by housing associations or local authorities. We should give local authorities the freedom to invest in building properties for rent if that is what they want to do, not skew Government financing of housing investment so that it is impossible for local authorities to build for affordable rent.

If we do not tackle this crisis in London—and it is a crisis—what will be the long-term effect? More homeless people, more people living in grossly overcrowded accommodation, and more children growing up in grossly overcrowded flats. Is it surprising that young people and teenagers who are forced to share bedrooms with their siblings—often siblings of different sexes—do not like to spend time at home because there is simply no space? Is it surprising that families break up? Is it surprising that those young people hang around in the streets because they do not want to be at home in the evening, and encounter all kinds of problems as a result? If we do not deal with the housing crisis in London urgently and invest in the needs of the people, we will be exporting the poor out of London, and creating social divisions and misery for those people who manage to find somewhere—often somewhere expensive and inadequate—to live.

I hope that the Minister fully understands the crisis facing us in London, and the pain that we see across our desks at advice bureaux every week when people ask, "Is it so unreasonable to want a decent flat with a bedroom for each of my children so that they can grow up like all the other children do?" It is heartbreaking to hear what people go through. I hope that the Government will skew investment into new building rather than frittering it away on the profits of private landlords and property companies, which is what we are doing through the perversity of the housing benefit system.

Andrew Slaughter (PPS (Dr Stephen Ladyman, Minister of State), Department for Transport; Ealing, Acton & Shepherd's Bush, Labour)

I congratulate my hon. Friend Ms Buck on securing the debate. She is an acknowledged expert in this field, and her constituency neighbours mine. I do not intend to repeat much of what she said, but I welcome the return of her forensic skills to this issue. The loss to aviation policy is great, but the gain to social housing in London is greater still.

I also compliment my hon. Friend on the timing of the debate, which comes after a series of contentious local elections, for which many of us have spent the past six months knocking on doors in our constituencies. Actually, some of us have spent 18 months continuously doing that—to the extent that many of my constituents are probably seeking an injunction to stop my doing it again in the near future. Along with the cases that we hear of in weekly constituency surgeries, that brought home the real human tragedy caused by housing problems in inner London, particularly as we saw at first hand the conditions in which people live in London in the 21st century.

My hon. Friend gave several examples of the problem. I shall not give details of cases but simply say that they range from the extreme—the consequences of a mother with four children living in a one-bedroomed flat are traumatic and almost unimaginable—to the more common situation, which is perhaps worse because of its chronic nature, in which a whole generation has grown up in overcrowded housing.

It is normal in social housing in my constituency for parents to bring up two or three children in a two-bedroomed flat. The issue that they raise with me is the availability of housing now that their children are leaving college and want homes of their own. In other words, an entire generation has become accustomed to using living rooms as bedrooms, to children of different sexes sharing a bedroom, to daily life, whether it involves doing school work or enjoying recreation, in a space that is so confined that it does not allow for normal living.

It could be said that that situation was common for our parents' generation, and that in fact the population density of inner London has decreased—although it is increasing again. However, there was always some hope in the past, as the market was far more flexible. Today, little hope can be offered to most of my constituents who live in crowded conditions.

The situation is highlighted against a background in which so many things are improving in housing. I cannot remember an election when I have had fewer complaints about housing repairs and conditions, or local authorities and their performance. All those things have improved markedly, and in large measure that is due not only to the local authorities but to the Government, particularly for their decent homes programme, which has transformed entire estates and individual properties and brought them up to a good modern standard after many years of neglect. Even though the programme is not complete, people can now be given a date on which they will have new kitchens and new bathrooms, or their homes will be made weather-tight and more efficient and cheaper to run.

It is also true that several factors that in the past contributed to a lack of social housing have been addressed. One rarely hears about voids; that is, the amount of time it takes to re-let properties. There are initiatives on empty homes, and better allocation policies. Local authorities and housing associations, although they are a mixed bag, have taken action, in so far as they can.

It is right to say that steps have been taken by the Government to introduce more innovative proposals, but not only the Government have been involved. The Mayor of London's policy that 50 per cent. of new units must be affordable is greatly to be welcomed. Indeed, the only thing that I would say against it is that the figure is too low. The move away from building one and two-bedroomed homes to building three-bedroomed and larger homes is also welcome, but as my hon. Friend said, it has not gone far enough.

Proposals such as the relaxation of planning powers to allow extensions to be built on existing properties are often floated. They should be investigated further, as the solution to a problem is often as simple as providing an additional bedroom. I think of a family with an autistic child who lived in a good-quality pre-war council house with a garden. They loved the house and the area, and used the garden for the child's benefit, but they desperately needed an additional bedroom. The solution was staring us in the face, but planning powers at that time simply did not allow an extension.

There are ways of approaching this issue laterally or obliquely, but in the end, as my hon. Friend says, we have to deal with it by supply. That is the only real solution. We know that 54 per cent. of overcrowded families and 60 per cent. of families in temporary accommodation are in London. I have raised that issue publicly and privately with the Minister and her colleagues, and when I ask questions about affordable social housing, I tend to get answers about affordable owner-occupation housing. That is an important issue for young couples who are forced to move out of London and for people who need some form of intermediate housing, but at the end of the day the human misery I see every day and every week in my constituency relates to the lack of supply of affordable rented housing, as my hon. Friend Jeremy Corbyn said. [Interruption.] I am being prompted to sit down, and I shall do so shortly.

I shall conclude with something slightly more hopeful—and something less hopeful; let us not be too optimistic. One local authority that I know intimately because I was a councillor there for 20 years—until last week—is Hammersmith and Fulham. It has an extremely good record on this issue. It is a very small and congested inner London borough, but between 1998 and 2006, 2,000 units of affordable housing were constructed, which is 70 per cent. of all housing constructed in the borough, with another 1,000 units in the pipeline.

In that borough, 99.3 per cent. of capacity was addressed, compared with 2.8 per cent. in Hillingdon, 3.5 per cent. in Bromley and 3.8 per cent. in Redbridge. Many councils either do not have the skills or the will to do that. They need to have their arms twisted to do it far more, but in the end there are some councils—I am afraid this often does come down to party politics—that are not prepared to do it.

On behalf of my constituents who live in overcrowded conditions, I greatly regret that the control of Hammersmith and Fulham changed hands last Thursday. I looked back at the debate that my hon. Friend Meg Hillier secured in this Room on 28 March on the subject of overcrowding, and a very intelligent speech was made by Michael Gove, who was very supportive of many initiatives. He based that speech on a visit he had made to a housing development in Hammersmith and Fulham the day before, and said that it was welcomed by residents in the area and all political parties. Every single affordable housing development in the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham was opposed by the Conservative party during the past 20 years. That does not bode well for what will happen there now. The reasons change, but every single development was opposed.

Planning powers and Government intervention are required, but we are talking about not only individual human misery but social engineering. We are talking about the poor and those who live in social housing effectively being told that they are not welcome in the inner city or in areas that are otherwise prosperous. The gulf between the private sector—owner-occupation, and even private rented accommodation—and social housing is so great, it is impossible, even for those on two or three times the average income, to bridge.

The driving need is for an increase in social rented housing and a form of intermediate social housing. Unless that need is addressed, particularly in London, we are not only condemning another generation to live in appalling and inhuman conditions but changing the nature of London as we know it: a multi-racial, multi-class and vibrantly mixed community. That is my fear, and that is why housing will be such an important issue during the next 10 years. It is a big issue. The solution, as my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North said, may be simple, but it is difficult to achieve. I hope that the Government will now give it the attention it deserves.

Clive Efford (Eltham, Labour)

I congratulate my hon. Friend Ms Buck on securing a debate on this important issue. I, along with other hon. Members, particularly from London, have raised this issue on a number of occasions, with questions to the Prime Minister and in Westminster Hall debates. We have tried to highlight the issue by consistently stating that it has been overlooked on the political agenda and in debates about what should be the Government's priorities.

A number of people have made the point that the Government must be clear about what they mean by affordable housing. In the past, it has been interpreted as a need for schemes to assist people to purchase houses. However, for many people in London, even with the discounts available through various Government schemes, those homes are just not affordable. Often, they require a deposit that is out of the affordability range of most people in desperate housing need.

I am relieved that people such as the Chancellor want to see a case made for affordable housing. I am delighted that we are starting to get some response to the debate, but I appeal to the Government to take it on board from us that the clear but unstated hatred of and lack of trust in local authorities to deliver in this vital area must stop. They are the vehicle for change, and they can deliver the social housing that will change communities and provide the opportunities that families are currently being denied. We must remove the roadblocks in the way of local authorities' delivery of that change.

My hon. Friend is right when she says that supply is the issue. I gave figures for my local authority whereby housing applications for 2004-05 were running at similar levels to those of 1999. The acceptance rate was more or less the same, but the figures for those waiting for housing were up by almost 60 per cent. Demand is not growing and outstripping supply—it is the supply that is wrong.

The figures in my area also mask the underlying problem of those who are trapped in their family homes. Every week, my surgery is full of examples of three generations of a family who live in a house that the Labour party built. The grandchildren and the parents of those grandchildren are trapped in that home, and they are unable to move into housing in the same way as their parents were before them. The grandparents are looking to the Labour party and saying, "We want you to build houses for our children, so that they can have the opportunities that we had to bring up our families."

We have seen right to buy decimate the supply of social housing, but the sad fact is that at the other end, we have not seen any investment in the stock—to the point at which local authorities are building almost no properties at all.

There is also a problem with the way in which we construct the finance for building new social housing schemes, and I believe that we can release much of the equity in new-build for reinvestment in the public sector. Too often, when my local authority sells a parcel of its land to the private sector and then negotiates under section 106 a proportion of the development of that land for social housing, the developer walks away with a huge profit from the sale of the rest of the site. I have spoken to housing associations that say, "We can manage those schemes from beginning to end; we can sell the properties, bring the profits back into the public sector and reinvest them in further schemes in the local area."

We are frittering away our resources through the way in which we set up the finances for the development of social housing. We must tell local authorities that we want them to be more innovative, with self-financing schemes in some respects. We could consider placing a proportion of the rents under a prudential scheme, so that they finance some of the interest that must be paid. We must consider those schemes urgently.

Regeneration of the Kidbrooke area in my constituency will result in 4,400 homes where there are currently just under 2,000, and about 2,000 of them will be affordable. Some will be part buy, part rent and others will be for rent through the social sector. However, it is still not too late to have a greater proportion of social housing in that development. Most of the land is in public ownership, and the financing package could be reviewed to provide more social housing for local people who desperately need it.

People in the eastern corridor of London see beautiful houses being built in the Thames gateway and are fed up that they and their children do not have access to those houses because they are priced out. They are frustrated, and demonstrated that frustration clearly in the recent local elections. That fuels the lies of extremists such as the British National party who want to exploit the situation and people's feeling of desperation. They have done that successfully because we left the opportunity open to them and failed to address the problem of housing demand and the people who desperately need housing.

We must expand the housing stock and provide the opportunity for money to be invested in houses to accommodate larger families. In return, families may have to sign away their right to buy for a period or even in perpetuity so that investment in housing can be made with the confidence that it will not disappear from the public sector. We must look at such schemes.

Overcrowding is fuelling antisocial behaviour and is a block to improving standards in education. Young children who are at school will not sit and watch "EastEnders" with their parents if they live in an overcrowded house and sleep in a bedroom with their younger sister or brother. They will go out on the streets with their friends. They have nowhere to do their homework. We must cut the vicious circle. Only a Labour Government will deal with the problem and people need to receive that message loud and clear. The Government's duty is to tell people that housing is a priority and that Labour will deliver for them once and for all.

Several hon. Members:

rose—

Janet Dean (Burton, Labour)

Order. I remind hon. Members that they have only until half-past 10.

Meg Hillier (PPS (Rt Hon Ruth Kelly, Secretary of State), Department for Communities and Local Government; Hackney South & Shoreditch, Labour)

Time is short so I shall be brief. Irefer hon. Members to my Adjournment debate on28 March for comments about Hackney, where overcrowding contributes to a population churn of more than 40 per cent. in some areas, which has a disastrous effect on public services.

I want to focus on some key points that I would like the Minister to address. Why is there no explicit measure of efficiency for the Housing Corporation based on the cost of people living in a home rather than the cost per house? That defies common sense and has an impact on all the issues that hon. Members have raised. Will she give a commitment that bid support in future will reflect the number of people living in a home rather than the cost per property?

There is also a lack of targeting for large-bedroomed houses in the current London housing strategy and I should be grateful if the Minister commented on that also. Will she look at Housing Corporation funding rules, because we have the crazy situation locally where for every pound that a local authority provides to a housing association the Housing Corporation removes a pound? That defies common sense and needs to be tackled.

I must mention the test case in my constituency concerning the Haggerston West and Kingsland estate. We are hoping to receive good news about providing more three and four-bedroomed properties after a long campaign of more than 10 years by residents, myself and local councillors, particularly Councillor Jamie Carswell, who have fought to ensure that residents receive the housing they need rather than the one and two-bedroomed properties that Treasury rules seem to impose on them.

Sally Keeble (Northampton North, Labour)

Although my contribution will last only a minute so that the Minister can speak, everything that has been said applies to the rest of England. I stress that a massive housing shortage is building up in other parts of England. We must not assume that problems of low pay, special needs, inflation in the private sector and the inadequacies of that sector do not also apply to the rest of England; they do.

I have three pleas for the Minister. One is that she should deal properly with overcrowding, and bring forward consultation on standards, because we cannot let the shortage of housing continue to force people to live in such unacceptable conditions of overcrowding; also, perhaps she could ensure that proper consultation takes place about special needs and the impact of that issue on housing standards.

My second plea is that the Minister should again examine the preventing homelessness agenda. I believe that it is leading to a real problem of hidden homelessness. People are being diverted into private sector renting, and although they should be diverted after their needs have been assessed, they are being diverted as soon as they apply, so that they never appear on the figures. I am very concerned about that. I am also concerned about standards of training among some of the staff who do the work.

My third plea is that the Minister should attend to what is happening in growth areas such as mine. Lots of new housing is being built in Northampton, but it is all private sector housing and developers are subject to a requirement to provide percentages of affordable, not social, housing. As part of the growth agenda we need to ensure that there are, built in, adequate supplies of social housing to rent, not just shared equity properties, about which something has already been said. It should be understood that there is an economic factor. We need a good housing mix in the new communities that are being built.

I hope that the brevity of my remarks will not be taken to reflect my view of the severity of the problems.

Daniel Rogerson (Shadow Minister, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; North Cornwall, Liberal Democrat)

I shall try to keep my remarks short to allow the Minister as much time as possible to respond; I am aware that Labour Members may want to raise additional points during her response.

I congratulate Ms Buck on securing the debate. I know that she has long had an interest in the issues, and has been raising them for some time. I also congratulate the Minister on keeping her post during the recent turbulent period for the Government. I am delighted that she is still speaking on these issues.

Decent housing should be a right, particularly for children but also for all citizens of the country. Poor housing leads to poor health and decreased opportunities in education and employment. In the past century the supply of social housing meant that people who were unable to enter the private renting or home ownership sectors had a realistic chance of being housed. In a time of prosperity such as we are now enjoying, why are so many more people in the UK suffering from inadequate housing, or, indeed, homelessness?

The fact is that successive Governments have sold off the vital resource of social housing for rent, without replacing it. Capital has been moved from housing as capital receipts have disappeared into the Treasury; of £5.5 billion realised from sales of council housing only £3.3 billion was granted through the Housing Corporation in the 2004-06 grant round.

The effects in human terms of housing shortages can be seen every day, and hon. Members have referred to individual cases from their constituencies. In rural areas such as my constituency of North Cornwall there is little prospect for most families of staying in their home village or small town. We heard from my hon. Friend Lembit Öpik, who is no longer in his place, and from Tony Baldry, about instances in their areas. Despite excellent work by housing associations, local authorities and charities to raise the issues and to squeeze the maximum amount of affordable housing and social rented housing from new developments, the shortage of properties to rent is still keenly felt.

In addition to the effect on individual families and households of such circumstances, communities become unsustainable. Vital services suffer, with falls in school rolls and closures of post offices and shops. Voluntary bodies such as the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, the coastguard and retained fire services find it hard to recruit in the areas that they serve, as the age profile changes, with a bias in favour of the capital-rich who can afford to live there.

That frustration is alienating people from the political process. Electors are losing faith in the Government's ability to deliver solutions. We have already heard how that alienation has had another dangerous effect in urban areas. In the recent local elections, we saw a small but significant rise in support for far-right organisations and representatives. In some areas, people who have traditionally lived in strong communities have found themselves unable to do so as the housing shortage pushes them away. Such people are looking for someone who will listen or at least be seen to be listening. They hear a message from an organisation that says that it will work outside the political establishment, which has patently failed to deliver. That offers a scapegoat in other communities that suffer from inadequate housing, as we have heard. My father's roots are in the east end of London and my grandfather worked in the docks for the whole of his working life, so I am familiar with the strong communities that exist in the east of London.

The lack of replacement housing has also been felt in the type of social housing that remains. The right to buy has taken away the larger homes, as well as homes in areas with better transport links and areas that were desirable for all sorts of reasons. The choice-based letting system has reduced the choice for tenants. It has also reduced the flexibility for local authorities to allow for transfers in the system, and for moves up and down the ladder of dwelling size.

The 2007 spending review must begin to address that problem in a more meaningful way. At the end of last year, the number of families waiting for a council house stood at more than 1.5 million, which is a 50 per cent. increase since Labour came to power in 1997. Figures provided by Shelter, in its excellent and shocking report "Building Hope", show that 116,000 homeless children are trapped in temporary accommodation. The Government have set themselves the target of halving that figure by 2010, but the number of new social rented homes that will be delivered on current trends will not allow that to be achieved. Further research undertaken at the behest of Shelter by the Centre for Housing and Planning Research at Cambridge university says that we will need an extra 30,000 new social rented homes each year between 2008 and 2011 to meet that urgent need.

The lack of accommodation is forcing people to move into inadequate housing in the private sector that is often entirely inappropriate to need. Rents there are higher and housing benefit cannot cover the cost. That puts pressure on the Treasury, and the hon. Member for Banbury asked whether that was a sensible use of Treasury money.

Sally Keeble (Northampton North, Labour)

Will the hon. Gentleman also reflect on the fact that private sector tenancies do not provide security? For a single parent with two children to be homeless after six months in one of those short tenancies is a real problem.

Daniel Rogerson (Shadow Minister, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; North Cornwall, Liberal Democrat)

Absolutely. The hon. Lady makes a good point. There was a case in my constituency recently in which a young family who had just celebrated the birth of their first child were served with a notice to quit their shorthold tenancy. That was an incredibly stressful time for them. Despite the council's best efforts to look after that family, they simply joined a list of so many people waiting for housing.

The lack of accommodation pushes people into poverty and can also keep them reliant on relatives for temporary accommodation. We have heard from Labour Members about such situations. Such accommodation is called temporary but is, in effect, semi-permanent. Overcrowding is worsened, and that is not helped by antiquated definitions that do not take account of the real needs of children and parents for privacy and space to work and play. I pay tribute to Meg Hillier for her Adjournment debate earlier in the year, about which we have already heard some comments.

Future developments to increase the overall supply of housing may allow the capital-rich individuals and families to benefit further by taking advantage of new market housing or even moving into buy to let. Significant housing investment could have a dramatic effect on the lives of people and their communities. The letter from the Prime Minister to the new Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government on her appointment says:

"Thirdly, you will need to deliver the Government's policy in response to the Barker review of housing supply. Helping hard working families and first time buyers get their foot on the housing ladder should be a key priority."

Obviously, it is good to hear the Government setting that out. Even if one is being generous to the Prime Minister and his comments—not many have been in recent days—that letter did not appear to say much about social rented housing; it discussed families getting a foot on the housing ladder. I would like the Minister to say more about the emphasis that will be placed on new housing.

The hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North, in her excellent opening speech, discussed creating a genuine mix of tenure to ensure the availability of social housing in all areas, urban and rural. She made some excellent points. Again, my party and I would agree that new investment must not be financed by rent hikes. The affordability of such properties is the key to their value in meeting the need. Several hon. Members have pointed out the difference between affordable housing and social rented housing, and I was glad to hear them do so because it is a key point.

In the 2007 comprehensive spending review, the Government have an opportunity to turn around years of underinvestment in affordable housing. The Treasury's website states that the review involves

"a more strategic approach to asset management and investment decisions, ensuring the UK is equipped with the infrastructure needed to support both public service delivery and the productivity and flexibility of the wider economy."

What could be a more important investment decision underpinning education, health, regeneration and the needs of the economy than setting forth an ambitious plan for new housing appropriate to the needs of the people? The Chancellor has spoken a great deal about renewal; this is his opportunity to act.

Robert Syms (Shadow Minister (Local Government), Communities and Local Government; Poole, Conservative)

I congratulate Ms Buck on raising this topic. Every time I come to debates on housing, Members crowd in, trying to make a contribution. It strikes me that the subject ought to be debated on the Floor of the House, perhaps in a full-day debate. I know that the Whip is not in his place, but I hope that the Minister takes the message back that housing is a live issue. When Members of Parliament discuss housing, one can see that to them the subject is not just statistics; they talk about families sitting in front of Members in their surgeries. Nothing is more frustrating for us than to hear about the continuing need of families who want housing. We know that we will write letters, phone people up and follow up cases, but there is probably little hope of such people accessing the housing that they need. One of the worrying effects of the frustration that people feel was seen in the local elections—people voting for the British National party and so on.

One of the least expected consequences of the 1997 election was that the building of social housing declined substantially. As a Conservative Member, I did not expect that to happen. Although the number of social housing completions is now picking up, the scale of the problem makes that a drop in the ocean. We know that there is a major problem. Owner-occupation, higher house prices and the world of equity withdrawal is one side of a coin that leaves many people who cannot afford to get into that world with difficulties in accessing housing. The homelessness figures and the fact that more than 100,000 families are in temporary accommodation show that there is a real problem. The number of first-time buyers has collapsed from a normal yearly average of about 500,000 to about 320,000 last year, and those who cannot afford to become owner-occupiers become those on the list for social housing.

I am pleased that my hon. Friend Tony Baldry joined the debate to provide the shire counties angle. There is no Member of this House who does not have housing problems in their constituency. One or two Members mentioned the economics of housing, but I am not sure that there are any; it simply seems to be a complicated and complex area. My hon. Friend's suggestion that we examine the whole issue in relation to the way in which housing benefit works is eminently sensible.

Council housing has been little mentioned in today's debate. I remember a debate in Westminster Hall on council housing and the fourth way. Sometimes the former Office of the Deputy Prime Minister was a little more concerned about stock transfer than about dealing with council housing. One of the interesting things that I drew from the Library brief is that the demand for council housing has picked up substantially, by more than 50 per cent. In the south-east of England the relevant figure is 77 per cent. and in London it is 71 per cent. Despite that, there are 700,000 voids. Although a perfect system is not possible, if 1.5 million people are waiting for housing and there are 700,000 empty properties, it should be a great priority of public policy to fill the voids where possible.

Clive Efford (Eltham, Labour)

Will the hon. Gentleman also support a move to allow local authorities to purchase private sector properties that are left vacant for a long time? In my constituency, a number of properties have been left vacant for too long and have become derelict, but the local authority could bring them back into use.

Robert Syms (Shadow Minister (Local Government), Communities and Local Government; Poole, Conservative)

The hon. Gentleman has put his finger on the problem that many empty homes are not accessed by the local community. I am in the fortunate position of being a spokesman for a party with no policies—apart from on the environment—but we are undertaking a detailed policy review. We are also a very broad-based party, so if the hon. Gentleman has interesting ideas on housing that he wants to feed into that review, they will no doubt be taken into account. Given the pressures that we face, particularly in London, it is difficult for communities to be unable to access the many empty homes that they see. There are many initiatives to deal with the problem, including ones to bring flats over shops and elsewhere back into use.

A lot more can be done on many of the estates that have been criticised. There could be more mixed tenure on some of them, and Castle Vale in Birmingham is an example of what can be done. If we manage estates and put a bit of tender care and investment into them, we can make them more attractive places for people to live. Design was also mentioned, and we cannot talk about housing without focusing on design and what can be done to improve some of the existing housing stock.

There is a major problem, which needs substantially more debate. There are no easy answers, however, and public policy must include a range of measures to deal with the issue. None the less, all hon. Members are very much aware of the pressures faced by many families in our constituencies.

Yvette Cooper (Minister of State (Housing and Planning), Department for Communities and Local Government; Pontefract & Castleford, Labour)

I congratulate my hon. Friend Ms Buck on securing the debate and on her tireless work on housing issues over many years. I certainly welcome the expertise and help that she has given me over the past year or so while I have been working on housing issues. I know that she will continue to campaign on them in the House and in her constituency.

As hon. Members will know, the Chancellor said that social housing will be a priority in the coming spending review, so the debate is timely. They will also know that we have made it clear that we need to build more homes for the next generation. That means more social housing, more shared equity housing and more private housing. Although I shall talk mainly about social housing and the issues that hon. Members have raised, I should make it clear at the beginning that the need for more social housing to be built should not be met at the expense of the need for more shared equity housing and more private housing to be built. We need all three.

We must be clear that the long-term, underlying problem—whether we are talking about social housing in London, affordability in Northamptonshire, or the issues that have been raised in respect of Banbury and other parts of the country—is the gap between housing demand and housing supply. In the past 30 years, we have seen a 30 per cent. increase in the number of households and a 50 per cent. drop in the level of new house building. That is unsustainable. Current projections show that about 200,000 new households will be formed each year as a result of an ageing, growing population and, primarily, as a result of more people living alone, but we build about 150,000 to 160,000 new homes every year. That gap is simply unsustainable, and if it persists, the proportion of 30-year-old couples who can afford their own home will decline from more than 50 per cent. today to nearer 30 per cent. in 20 years. If we think that there are pressures on social housing now, imagine what they will be like in 20 years if we do not build the additional homes that we need.

Many people who are waiting for social housing would prefer to be able to buy their own home or a share of their own home, but they will not be able to afford to do so if long-term house prices keep rising beyond their reach. The wider issue, therefore, is that we need to build new homes for the next generation. That has been controversial in many parts of the country and with other political parties, but we must recognise the country's long-term needs and the huge and serious consequences in terms of the demand for social housing if we do not address them. There will be problems with overcrowding, affordability and constraints on people's aspirations for the next generation and the future if we do not address that long-term need.

Clearly, we need to proceed in a sensible way. We must ensure that we fund the necessary infrastructure and increase environmental standards as we do so, but I say to local authorities across the country, including the London boroughs, that they need to recognise their critical role in the planning and housing systems and in supporting the new homes that we need for the future. That is why the Mayor wants to increase the number of new homes in London, and why the Thames Gateway development and other growth areas are so important.

Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North, Labour)

Is the Minister's Department prepared to intervene in major developments in London or elsewhere if there is insufficient housing for affordable rent included in the scheme, and to insist that there should be such housing? Is she prepared to ensure that major applications are called in for that purpose?

Yvette Cooper (Minister of State (Housing and Planning), Department for Communities and Local Government; Pontefract & Castleford, Labour)

We have a call-in process, and on occasion we call in developments on that basis if there are concerns about the level of affordability not meeting the requirements of the local plan and national planning guidance. Although we have those powers, however, we think that responsibility for that lies primarily with local authorities. It is important to recognise that there is considerable flexibility within the planning system that many local authorities do not use. They should use their planning powers to support and promote development and good design, and to ensure that there is a proper mix of affordable housing, including social housing.

I shall talk about social housing in particular, because that has been the main focus of the debate. As part of our preparation for the spending review we are conducting extensive analysis of the future need for social housing and considering not only overall supply and the level of need, but aspects such as mixed communities, the location of social housing, work incentives and the problems of high levels of worklessness in large social housing estates. Some work has been on that done by Kate Barker, and some by Cambridge academics and Shelter. We are also looking at the backlog of need for social housing and people in temporary accommodation and the need to ensure that they can have settled and secure accommodation.

Hon. Members will be aware that we have increased investment and the number of new social homes by50 per cent. over a three-year period, and we have said that we need to go further. We must recognise that there have been major calls on housing capital investment, as my hon. Friend Mr. Slaughter said. In 1997 we inherited a £19 million backlog of repairs and maintenance and there was a need for a massive programme of investment in our social and council housing across the country. Had we not introduced the decent homes programme, we would be here today debating hon. Members' constituency cases of people living in homes without central heating and with no prospect of getting it, or in homes in a shocking state of repair with the windows falling down and leaks in the roof, and no prospect of getting them repaired. We are not having those debates because we have invested so much in decent housing.

Andrew Love (Edmonton, Labour)

I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for giving way and for her comments so far. We talk about building 10,000 homes this year, but everyone knows that that will not be achieved; Barker suggested building 17,000 homes a year, and the Cambridge study suggested an additional 10,000. Can the Minister reassure Labour Members that the Department recognises that there is a substantial gap there? Until that issue is addressed, problem cases will continue to come to our surgeries, and, perhaps more important, housing will become a much larger political issue, and we may well face the consequences of that in the next general election.

Yvette Cooper (Minister of State (Housing and Planning), Department for Communities and Local Government; Pontefract & Castleford, Labour)

My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. We have said that we need to increase social housing. We are already increasing the level of new build of social housing, but we have made it clear that we need to go further and that that will be a priority for the spending review. We have taken Kate Barker's recommendations extremely seriously, but we are doing further work on the issue to assess what levels of investment will be needed in future. That is why I said the debate is timely: it can feed into the work not only in the Department but across the Government.

Sally Keeble (Northampton North, Labour)

On the point about central heating, there need to be clear specifications as to what is acceptable heating. I deal with many cases in which if people have storage heaters or if a previous tenant, perhaps an old person, said that they did not want central heating, the house is ring-fenced and does not get the improvements that it needs. There are still questions about what qualifies for some of the specifications, and the problems remain.

Yvette Cooper (Minister of State (Housing and Planning), Department for Communities and Local Government; Pontefract & Castleford, Labour)

We have set straightforward, decent homes standards, but I am happy to talk further to my hon. Friend about the detail.

We must recognise that construction costs and, in particular, land costs have increased. Part of the reason why land costs have increased is that there is a rising housing market at a time when we are simply not making available enough land and building enough homes. The land costs feed into social housing costs, creating pressure on the social housing budget. That is why all these issues must be seen as part of a wider issue about making available land for new homes and tackling the pressures in the housing market.

We recognise that we are left with significant challenges. We need to increase supply and consider social housing as well as shared equity and private housing. That requires investment, which creates serious challenges for Opposition parties, given their position on the third fiscal rule. Investment in infrastructure is also required, which is why the consultation on matters such as the planning gain supplement is such an important underpinning. Again, that is a challenge for Opposition parties.

I disagree with my hon. Friend Clive Efford that we are hostile to the role of local councils. I have said before that I believe they play an important role in the planning system. I also believe that their role in housing is hugely important. I am not talking simply about the work that they can do through section 106 agreements and partnerships with registered social landlords. Clearly, there are wide differences between the levels of social housing that some local councils are able to achieve through section 106 agreements and those that others can achieve. However, let me say to my hon. Friend Jeremy Corbyn that most of central Government's funding for new homes goes through housing associations, because they can lever in additional independent investment so that we get up to 40 per cent. more homes for the same money. That is worth doing at a time when we need to increase supply.

We could use local authorities far more to create more supply and we are considering a series of ways to do that, such as local authorities using their own land to support new homes—both social housing and shared equity housing, interestingly. We are working with some of the local authorities in London that were previously under Labour control. We hope that, although they have changed hands, they will continue to be interested in this issue, but we do not yet know whether they will be.

We are also examining the use of housing benefit. Hon. Members asked about housing benefit and the fact that, particularly where people are in temporary accommodation in high-cost areas, a lot of money is paid through housing benefit. What more can we do to bring those costs down and use the savings to invest in increasing social housing? We are providing support for an interesting pilot programme in Newham, which involves, in effect, buying back properties to increase social housing over time to help people out of temporary accommodation.

Several hon. Members referred to overcrowding, which we take very seriously. With my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North, I have visited families in very serious circumstances. We must do the consultation on the overcrowding standards, but that will not solve the problem. We must consider a much wider overcrowding strategy. Overcrowding is particularly a London issue, as we can see when we compare the figures for London with those for areas outside London. Overcrowding makes a big difference in London, which is why we are working with the Greater London authority to try to integrate approaches to overcrowding into homelessness intervention strategy.

Janet Dean (Burton, Labour)

Order. We must now move on to the next debate.