Contribution
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about the local housing allowance and the huge effect that it has on local families and housing markets. It needs to be uprated. I must return to my speech, or you will start giving me looks, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Among other things, we must free up councils to build. My Lib Dem colleagues on Somerset council would build 600 council houses; they are already building council housing in parts of the county for the first time in a generation. The council has sites for another 600 houses and wants to build them, but it does not have the headroom in its housing revenue account. The Government promised to confirm their approach to a discounted borrowing rate for housing revenue accounts in the autumn, so we and councils eagerly await that news. If Ministers will not raise the £3.9 billion per year to the £6 billion per year that we have put in our manifesto for social housing, will they use some additional funds to write off some or all of that housing revenue account debt so that councils such as Somerset can get building again, as Shelter and others have called for?
On the scale of the need, the Government have reannounced that 60% of their programme for 300,000 homes will be social housing, which is 18,000 a year. That is welcome, but when that was first announced in July 2025, we said that it was not enough, and reannouncing it this summer does not make it enough. Will the Government raise the target for social homes—if not to our target of 150,000, then to a number higher than 18,000 a year?
In addition, the Bill does very little to address the unique issues of affordable housing in rural areas. In Taunton and Wellington, all that people are seeing is unprecedented plans for private housing, which many cannot afford. The council has been instructed to consent homes for 180,000 people in the next 15 years. The population of Somerset has never grown by 25% in any 15-year period in its history, and it will not do so in the next 15 years, but acres of beautiful countryside will be gobbled up for private housing permissions that many people in my constituency cannot afford.
Proposals to eat up the green belt have a consequence for social housing. My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) has brought to my attention an inspector’s decision in Gweek in Cornwall, following the Minister’s own policies, in which all social housing was removed from a previous consent on appeal, because, under new, mandatory Government housing targets, the new five-year supply could not be met. All private housing must now be allowed, and all social housing must be removed from the scheme. That needs to be addressed.
However, this is not just an issue in Cornwall. Most of England—at least, most of southern England—is covered by councils that, thanks to the new standard method, can no longer achieve the new five-year land supply. With the majority of those councils, we have a planning free-for-all in which social homes are not being safeguarded. The standard method has to go. We should replace it with a return to properly researched household projections that take into account movements between regions and safeguard exception sites for social housing, which are being lost. Fortunately, my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives has thought about this issue, and he has a Bill that would do exactly that. Permission in principle capped at nine dwellings sits below the affordable housing threshold, so that, too, means that sites are being lost.
The Government’s Bill does protect rural social homes from being sold, which I and my Liberal Democrat colleagues welcome. However, as long as the planning system that runs alongside it closes down the supply of new ones, it will simply not be enough. Overall, this Bill does not go far enough. In contrast, our Liberal Democrat Housing Bill—I had the privilege of presenting it to Madam Deputy Speaker not so long ago—would establish a target of 150,000 new social homes a year, including a new wave of rent to own, allowing young people to get on the housing ladder. It would require the Secretary of State to report on progress on meeting that target and would give local authorities the proper powers over social housing they will need to achieve it, including the right to end the right to buy in their area if it is right for them and their community. That is the Liberal Democrat vision for a revolution in the delivery of social homes, and I commend it to the House.