Greater London Authority Bill

To respond to the hon. Gentleman’s second point, it all depends on how the question is put, although I am sure that Conservative-controlled London Councils—or whatever it is called now—asked it in an impartial manner. I have seen the wording of the questions in the GLA survey, which seemed absolutely clear. The survey revealed that Londoners supported the extension of planning powers. They see the terrible mess that Tory councils are making of planning in London. The hon. Gentleman was treading on thinner ice when he mentioned the decent homes programme. I am sure that Westminster council is giving the Government full credit for supplying all the funds for the programme and that it is explaining why in the previous 20 years it could do nothing to renew and improve its housing stock. I remind him that the Tory housing spokesman in his borough said of the decent homes programme:"““It saddled us with £192 million worth of debt.””" In other words, there is a Tory council that does not want its council housing stock improved. The reason we need greater emphasis on affordable housing and the planning powers that will deliver it in London is twofold, the first of which is simple humanitarian grounds. I do not intend to detain the House today, but in the hot air and statistics that are sometimes generated, we often lose sight of real human misery. We can argue about the politics of it one way or another, but the housing crisis in London is a consequence of the overheating of the London housing market, making both rented and for-sale, market housing simply unaffordable—and not just to people on low incomes, but to people on several times as much. Many people are living in temporary and often overcrowded accommodation. Surely all London Members, and particularly inner-London Members, encounter that problem every week in their surgeries. In the 20 or more years during which I have had to deal with these matters, I cannot remember so many people coming to my surgeries, telling me that they have five children and are living in a one-bedroom flat. They are now being told by the local authority that it is statutory overcrowding because the fifth child has reached one year of age, so they can move up one band in the choice-based letting scheme. That makes a bit of a mockery of the idea of choice-based lettings. Equally, people are living in temporary accommodation for several years—a better quality of accommodation on the whole and certainly in comparison with the bed-and-breakfast accommodation that the Tory Government subjected people to, but it is not really suitable as a home. It can be former bed-sit accommodation, which people cannot settle into and which has, scandalously, been rented in my constituency for £300 or £400 a week for a one or two-bedroom flat. That makes a mockery of the housing market, producing not only human misery, but profiteering. That must be dealt with.