Iqbal Mohamed

Our country is in the midst of a full-blown housing crisis, and hon. Members from across the House have agreed that we face a critical situation. The waiting lists for social housing are the longest they have been in generations. Families are paying up to half their monthly income in rent, which has skyrocketed. Wages have not kept up with food, energy or housing inflation. It is increasingly impossible for first-time buyers to buy their own homes. In Dewsbury and Batley, house prices have increased by 58% on average over the past decade. It is the Government’s duty to take all necessary meaningful policy actions to address the crisis. Over the weekend, the protests over the housing crisis in Spain showed where not addressing social and national crises can lead. Many Spaniards find themselves priced out of the market by rising costs and rents, and increased demand linked to tourism and immigration has led to rents shooting upwards. One banner at the protest read, “We want neighbours, not tourists.” This Government are acting. I welcome the £40 billion and the extra £1.5 billion announced in the recent Budget for social housing. However, delivering that housing will obviously take time, and the crisis that faces us is happening today—here and now. Even before the announcement of the extra funding, one of the bottlenecks to house building over the past 15 to 20 years has been local planning departments, which have lacked the funding and resources to recruit the right number of planning officers and specialists to allow councils to process applications, inspect builds and allow houses to be built in the shortest possible time. In Dewsbury and Batley, the average salary including part-time workers is £14,000 a year; for full-time workers, it is £34,000 a year. The average house price in Dewsbury is around £200,000, which is six to 14 times the average salary of residents. In Batley, the average house price is £274,000, which equates to between eight and 19 times the average salary of people in Batley. Nationally, rents have climbed from an average of £975 to more than £1,400 a month. Regional averages outside London have set new records, with average rents doubling in areas in the north. I thank the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) for introducing this important Bill. As is the case across the United Kingdom, the housing crisis in my constituency is not an abstract policy debate. It is a defining issue. Although the housing pressures in West Yorkshire differ from those in coastal communities such as St Ives, where second homes are a growing problem, the fundamental issue is the same: working families are being priced out of their communities, young people are struggling to get on the housing ladder and local authorities cannot provide affordable homes. We in this place must recognise that we are extremely privileged. We are in the top 5%. Our current salary is three times the average full-time salary of people working in Dewsbury. A house in Devon costing £300,000 is about three times our annual salary, and we can afford the deposit and the mortgage. Millions of people across our country are not in the privileged position that we are in, and we cannot forget that those are the people we represent. It is our absolute duty to make the lives of normal British people across our country easy, affordable and bearable. Wanting a roof over one’s head and over the heads of one’s family should not be a luxury or an unattainable ambition in the sixth richest country in the world. I thank the Government for the steps that they are taking, but I also support this Bill, which would introduce some additional steps that would contribute to addressing the absolute crisis that faces us. I welcome specific measures in the Bill. Clauses 1 and 2 would put power back into the hands of local communities by allowing land suitable for affordable housing to be designated as an asset of community value. Other Members have mentioned that some of those properties might be pubs or other businesses. My understanding is that the Bill refers to derelict, empty or abandoned properties, or properties that have just been purchased for their appreciation—as an investment—not properties in active use in communities and providing services. Empowering local planning authorities in that this would bring unused and empty sites back to life, with new, affordable housing meeting the needs of people across this country, including in Dewsbury and Batley. I strongly welcome the powers in clause 3, which would enable local authorities to acquire land using compulsory purchase orders at the request of a community representative, such as a parish council or charity. Sites often sit vacant for years at a time while waiting lists for housing grow longer and longer. Dewsbury and Batley sits in the authority of Kirklees, which has a waiting list for social housing that now exceeds 20,000. In the last meeting that I had with its executive and leader, I learned that Kirklees council has managed to move people who need social housing from emergency bed and breakfast accommodation into more sustainable and affordable accommodation, and I pay tribute to them. However, hundreds of families are still being housed in hotels and non-permanent social settings. The Bill would give local authorities the power they need to step in, take action and improve opportunities for housing for their constituents. That is long overdue. Although the issue of second homes and holiday lets does not affect Dewsbury and Batley, I understand the concerns laid out by the hon. Member for St Ives and other Members across the House. That issue is impacting many towns and communities across the country. I stand in solidarity with the people in those communities who are not able to afford rent or get on to the housing ladder, because people are buying up properties at inflated prices as investments to earn money through second and third incomes. Priority should be given to people who just need a home to live in, not to earn a profit from. The Oxford academic John Muellbauer has spent four decades researching the UK’s housing system, and he calls it “one of the most dysfunctional in the world”. Indeed, the housing problems that we face are deeply entrenched and complex. I agree with the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Andrew Lewin) about the decisions made by the coalition Government after the previous Labour Government ended. The responsibility and accountability for the drastic and terrible state we are in today should not just lay on the shoulders of the Liberal Democrats. It was the Tory Government who introduced an ill-thought-out and mismanaged right to buy scheme, where discounts were huge but the proceeds of the sale of council-owned properties to people on low incomes, which I support and applaud, were not given back to the councils to reinvest in replacement stock—one of the most idiotic policy decisions that I can remember in my time on this planet. They should be held accountable, and they should apologise to our nation for that idiotic policy. Although the housing problems we face are deeply entrenched and complex, the Bill offers practical, targeted tools that will work in concert and add to the measures that this Government are already taking to address some of those problems. By empowering local communities to increase genuinely affordable housing stock and targeting the disruptive effect of second homes, the Bill offers an opportunity to deliver real change for communities such as Dewsbury and Batley, and across this country.