Localism Bill

I understand what the hon. Gentleman says. He was not in the previous Parliament. I was one of those who frequently demanded much more building of council housing. In the latter days of the Labour Government, more council housing was being built, and is still being built in my borough. To be fair, the Government inherited a massive bill for unrepaired estates and bad community areas, and put a great deal of money into the decent homes standard. The Labour Government should be commended for that. The Bill undermines the principle of public provision of housing for those in desperate housing need. Instead, as I said, it requires local authorities to put people into the private sector. Imagine the situation when a homeless family appears before the local housing authority, which fulfils its duty by encouraging the family to accept a two-year, or perhaps shorter, tenancy in a private sector flat. That is the end of its responsibility. If, at the end of that minimal period, the landlord increases the rent to an astronomical level, that family will become homeless as a result of being unable to afford it, and then, according to my reading of the clauses, they will not be eligible for any further assistance from the local housing authority. My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) talked about rising homelessness, which is a major concern and, I think, one of the consequences of the Bill, so I urge Government Members to think very carefully about that. We have a whole generation of children growing up in inner-city areas, often in overcrowded council accommodation and sometimes in overcrowded housing association accommodation. Increasingly, however, they are in very expensive private rented accommodation, paid for by housing benefit, where the landlords do not do the repairs and there is no security of tenure. Those families are the most vulnerable people. What is the effect on those children of sharing a bedroom with three or four siblings, of heating that does not work, of windows that are not repaired, of a gas cooker that is dangerous and of a fridge that does not work? They grow up with a sense of shame, cannot bring friends home and do not grow up the same as all the other children in their school. We have a national responsibility and duty to invest more money in housing with economical, responsible and affordable rents, and that is best achieved by investing in council housing, which has done so well for so very long in this country. My final point on housing is that we spend billions of pounds of housing benefit on subsidising the private rented sector. The Government's solution is to cap and limit housing benefit, thereby forcing people out of what they describe as the ““high-cost areas,”” such as those that my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) and I represent. The people being forced out will move somewhere else, and as a result communities will be damaged. Other countries regulate, control and operate the private sector far better, far more efficiently and far more humanely. It works in Germany and, to some extent, in the United States, so why can we not do it here? We cannot because of the Secretary of State and his Ministers' obsession with market solutions to all problems. There are no market solutions for homelessness; there is social intervention, community investment and public operation. That is what can deal with homelessness, and that is what can lift the life chances and opportunities of some of the poorest and most vulnerable children in our community.