Rebecca Long Bailey

I thank the co-sponsors of this debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker) and the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman). We start from a position where we have lost more than 260,000 social rented homes in the last decade. Even now, most so-called affordable homes are out of reach for the people who need them most. Ultimately, if we are serious about ending homelessness, we must give local authorities the power, funding and freedom to build social homes at scale. That starts with looking at the affordable homes programme, which is sadly not enough. It too often delivers homes at supposedly affordable rents that, in many places, are anything but. Councils need grant rates high enough to deliver homes at true social rent so that ordinary families can actually afford them. While we are at it, we must lift the shackles from council borrowing and address the issues that councils face in meeting borrowing rules. From cuts to budgets, maintenance backlogs, right-to-buy losses and falling rent yields as local housing allowance fails to meet housing spend, housing revenue accounts are in a state of crisis and that must be addressed to remove barriers to borrowing. We must also fix the planning system and rebuild council capacity. Decades of cuts have gutted planning departments and valuable experience has been lost. We must also rebuild those local housing teams and council-owned development companies that can plan for the long term and with social purpose at their core. Salford city council has led the way on that with its own model, Dérive, and that could be replicated across the country. I know that the Minister agrees with much of that, which is why I am hopeful about her response. When we truly invest in council housing, we do not just end homelessness; we create jobs, strengthen communities, cut carbon emissions and give people a stake in their own future.