Adam Thompson

I thank the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) for introducing this important debate. The issue matters a great deal to my constituents, as well as to my father and step-mother, who are constituents of his, and their cats, Trevor and Midnight. I know he is a great campaigner for their interests, especially those of Trevor the feral cat. My constituency sits within Erewash borough—the boundaries of the constituency and the borough are not quite coterminous—which has a social housing waiting list some 5,000 people long. Of those 5,000 people, more than 2,000 are children. Too many families are growing up in temporary accommodation and there is a generation of young people for whom the dream of home ownership is distant, at best. The Prime Minister is right to talk about how our politics has treated housing purely as a commodity to be bought and sold, and we have heard lots of commentary on that point during the debate. The failure to recognise that housing is an essential part of life and important in our way of living has been a major contributor to the housing crisis that we face today, and we need to change tack to address that issue. That is why I am strongly in favour of this Government’s direction on housing and planning generally. I believe that direction already addresses many of the areas in the hon. Gentleman’s Bill. My principal concern is that much of what the Bill seeks to achieve, as we have heard from a number of my hon. Friends, is already being delivered through existing policies, can be achieved without primary legislation or would sit uncomfortably alongside frameworks already in place. Work is already underway through licensing arrangements and neighbourhood planning mechanisms to provide councils with the tools they need to influence the use of properties and shape development in our communities. Work is also underway to strengthen protections against second home owners abusing rates relief. Indeed, many powers already exist at the local level to crack down on empty second homes. I will highlight a couple of examples from my patch as to where we have done some good work in this area. Recently, Labour-run Erewash borough council took the decision to introduce a double rate of council tax, which some colleagues have already mentioned, on long-term empty properties. That policy has already proven successful. Homes that were being kept on the market for unreasonably high prices, waiting for the market to catch up to those expectations, are being sold at a more reasonable price in order to avoid the double council tax. Landlords who were previously happy to sit on empty properties that they could use as collateral are now being forced into action, which is fantastic. As a result, those homes are being sold to families who will actually live in them. At the end of the day, that is exactly what this Labour Government are about. Furthermore, the money raised from taxing empty homes is being used to do other great work locally in the council area. Labour-run Erewash borough council has frozen council tax this year because of the money it has successfully raised. It has also introduced free parking on Saturdays and great new measures to help tackle the cost of living generally that back our town centres as local economic hubs. These are simple powers and they are available to district councils across the country right now. They are both effective and capable of delivering many of the aims set out in this Bill.