12.36 pm

Ms Karen Buck (Regent's Park and Kensington, North): I am grateful to my hon. Friends the Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Mr. Fitzpatrick) and the Minister for allowing me some time in this debate. I am keen to speak on the principle that affordable housing is one of the central strands in a strategy to tackle social exclusion. Given that we are right to tackle the "ghettoising" of poor families on the worst estates, we must also deal with the distribution of low-cost housing in all parts of the city. There can be no no-go areas for low-income families.

We shall not have the opportunity today to deal in depth with several practicalities, although my hon. Friend has touched on some. To create an effective strategy for affordable housing would mean bringing together the issues of planning, housing finance, housing benefit and

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Mr. Andrew Dismore (Hendon): Does my hon. Friend agree that much could be done by way of section 106 agreements when private developers apply for planning permission? For example, my local authority--Barnet--has negotiated for 17 of the 60 homes being built by John Laing in the Page street development in my constituency to be rented through the Paddington Churches housing association. Is that the sort of thing that my hon. Friend has in mind when she mentions planning?

Ms Buck: I entirely agree, and my hon. Friend is right to commend his local authority. I shall a mention a couple of similar issues later.

Before I reach the core of what I want to say in the few minutes available, I want to pay two quick tributes. First, the London Pride partnership produced an excellent report earlier this year on affordable housing in London. It set out several of the issues with which government, the local authorities and the London assembly and mayor--for which we hope to win approval tomorrow--must deal. I also pay tribute to CHICL--Communities and Homes in Central London. I was fortunate enough to address its annual general meeting a couple of weeks ago. It has a proud record of campaigning with and for residents' organisations throughout central London in the face of the development pressures that my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Canning Town has talked about.

I, CHICL and many other organisations are proud of, and welcome, the Government's early support for affordable housing through both the release of capital receipts, which has made a welcome contribution to affordable housing development, and the recent issue of circular 6/98, which underpins the emphasis on brown-field sites for housing development by stressing local authorities' opportunities to negotiate affordable housing in developments. However, there are many formidable problems in achieving the outcomes that circular 6/98 rightly emphasises.

My hon. Friend mentioned the pressure on land prices. That is a problem throughout London. He rightly drew attention to east London, but in central London the problem is absolutely critical. It is being exacerbated daily by London's importance as a global city, with international and corporate money flooding into the centre of London, squeezing out private tenure in particular and putting great pressure on private housing development for purchase.

At the CHICL AGM, I was interested to hear from a leading property consultant that the average house price for purchase in central London is now £370,000, which makes a mockery of the ability of people on lower incomes to purchase, but the most important reason for welcoming today's debate is a local one. The constituency that I represent, which spans part of Westminster and of Kensington, is at the sharp end of the pressure on home prices and of much housing need.

Westminster, on which I shall concentrate, commissioned a housing needs study last year, which showed that 12,095 households, or 12.5 per cent. of the total population, were living in unsuitable housing. Of those, 3,320 people were in priority need. Over half of

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I know from my case load--I am sure that the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke), whom I am pleased to see here, will know this from his--just how intense is the pressure on housing need. Despite that pressure--some would say because of it--Westminster council has, over the past decade, been embroiled in political controversy over affordable housing. The homes-for-votes scandal, which ended in the High Court before Christmas, was about affordable homes: who gets what and who goes where.

Mr. Dismore: May I suggest that my hon. Friend contrasts Westminster council's record in failing to provide affordable housing with my local authority of Barnet, which is under Labour control and which, in Mill Hill, negotiated two years ago, with the Ministry of Defence and Notting Hill housing trust, the purchase of 96 homes for rent? The council has just completed a further deal with Annington Homes in the same estate, which is ex-MOD property, for a further 48 homes, which are now empty and available for rent. Is that not a much better contrast: Labour providing affordable homes and Conservatives failing to do so?

Ms Buck: Again, I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. I shall drive that contrast home in the couple of minutes remaining to me.

City hall has learnt little from either last year's change of Government or the homes-for-votes ruling in the High Court. Current thinking continues to undermine attempts to secure a proper mix of affordable housing throughout the city. I have two concerns that I wish quickly to flag up: who benefits from affordable housing, or the definition of affordability, and where the affordable housing goes.

On who benefits, the council continues to undermine the desperate need for affordable housing, which is confirmed by its own study, by debating whether affordable housing provision should be accessible to households on incomes of between £29,000 and £50,000 per year as opposed to low-income households--the 54 per cent. who have an income of less than £10,000 a year--and how much priority should be given to the needs of local residents over the needs of commuters.

The second issue relates to the provision of homes on site in developments versus the acceptance of commutable sums. I welcome the new circular's emphasis on on-site provision, but, in practice, I am deeply concerned about what is going on, especially given the council's record over the past decade. In the past couple of years, the council has built up a fund of more than £3 million in commutable sums, mostly from developments in the south and centre of the city: Westminster hospital, ITN house in the west end and Beynards house in Bayswater are just three examples.

Meanwhile, affordable housing is being concentrated increasingly in deprived and highly pressurised wards in the north of the city: for example, there are 1,000 bed spaces of housing association property in north Paddington and off the Harrow road. An excellent contrast is drawn by the case of Clarendon court, of which I know the Minister is aware. That contained homes in multiple

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I was pleased that that HMO was closed and that people were relocated from it, but the development under consideration is to convert that building into 100 executive homes with on-site parking. It is no surprise that it is in a marginal ward, or that the council is considering accepting a commutable sum for the Clarendon court development, which will be spent again, I expect, in deprived and pressured wards in the north, which are already highly over-concentrated with council and housing association property.

Worse still, in terms of scale, are the plans for the development of the Paddington basin and goods yard. The council is in danger of sacrificing the best opportunity this decade to secure a decent proportion of affordable housing in that part of central London. Last week, Westminster's town planning sub-committee gave outline, "in principle" approval to schemes that contain no on-site provision and a commutable sum that is £1 million less than is consistent even with the council's guidelines. Paddington Basins Development Ltd., with Rialto Homes Ltd. and Frogmore Estates, have been given the thumbs up to a scheme that enables them to avoid any on-site housing in the first phase of the development, in exchange for an unenforceable statement of intent about the provision of affordable housing in stage 2.

Even in the event of that going ahead, the scale of provision is wholly inadequate for what is needed. Incidentally, many other concerns about the development of the Paddington special policy area, which runs along the southern border of my constituency, are increasingly being voiced by individuals and community groups in my constituency, ranging from design, to density to car-parking provision, to which we will have to return.

Frankly, for Westminster city council to be making decisions on affordable housing provision in the week that circular 6/98 was published shows little more than contempt for the Government's position on affordable housing. I know that the Minister can say nothing about the specifics of the case this morning, but I wanted the opportunity to put on the record the grave concerns that I, some of my colleagues in Westminster, and resident and community organisations in the north of the borough have about the potential loss of opportunity for affordable housing, even though the developments that I have spoken about provide many opportunities.

I should welcome it if the Minister took this opportunity to drive home the Government's message on the need for local authorities to secure the full proportion of affordable housing and to stress the importance of on-site provision, wherever possible. If we do not manage to achieve that or a balance throughout the range of housing provision, the worst estates, the ghettos of the poor, will continue to face on the other side of the road the gated communities of the rich. We shall all pay the price for that.