[Mr. Roger Gale in the Chair] — Temporary Housing

Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 10:03 am on 26 November 2008.

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Photo of Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn Labour, Islington North 10:03, 26 November 2008

And the numbers are so large because of the lack of building, and the difficulties that local authorities have had in the past with building. We must conquer that problem. However, I am not defending the numbers in private accommodation—quite the opposite.

The Minister may have had the pleasure—if that is the right word—of reading the report on the Mayor's London housing strategy, which has an unusually long declamatory introduction from the new Mayor. However, it is woefully short of detailed proposals, except that he will have negotiations with every London borough to achieve a 50 per cent. target. It contains no word about the results of those negotiations or borough meetings—indeed, I am not sure whether any have been held yet.

The report appears to contain a series of aspirations. The Mayor says a great deal about the necessity—in his view—of people getting on the housing ladder and purchasing property, but not an awful lot about affordable homes and even less about social rented accommodation. I am sure that the Minister understands that the situation in London is desperate. In a normal constituency, such as mine or those of my hon. Friends the Members for Regents Park and Kensington, North and for Walthamstow or of Sarah Teather, the proportion of people who can afford to buy a property in their own community is probably less than 20 to 30 per cent. For very large numbers of people, home ownership in London is simply a pipe dream, so the only way forward is to build homes for rent.

One piece of information in the Mayor's report that is of interest is a chart entitled, "Homeless households: numbers in temporary accommodation and lettings by region." Last year, all regions had a larger number of social housing lets made to homeless families than there were homeless households in temporary accommodation. In the case of London, however, it was the other way round. Nearly 60,000 households were in temporary accommodation, with only 11,000 new lets during the year. That is a measure of how bad the problem is, and it is getting very much worse.

I will be brief because other hon. Members want to speak. The Minister will have seen Shelter's proposals for dealing with housing supply in the current climate. I hope he recognises that Shelter, along with many other organisations, is sensibly proposing that we consider housing as a social priority for the whole country and that we do all we can to invest in new housing for rent at the present time. This is a debate about the supply of temporary and rented accommodation.

My final point—I hope that the Minister will understand its importance—concerns the enormous amount of money that we are pouring into the private rented market through the housing benefit system. I am not in any way critical of people who claim housing benefit. I absolutely support such claims; it is a right and people should enjoy that right.