Siobhain challenges government on housing record

Earlier this week, Siobhain spoke about the obstacles renters and first-time buyers are experiencing in the London housing market.

Non-UK domicile investment, and buy-to-let mortgage tax reliefs, are making the situation even bleaker for ordinary people and families. And the government’s ‘New Starter Homes’ policy will make a bad
situation even worse.

You can watch Siobhain’s speech online (18:44), or read it below. 

‘It is interesting that I follow my borough colleague, the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond). I am lucky enough to represent the best half of the London borough of Mitcham and Morden.

We know that the first-time buyer, whom we all suggest we support, is being crowded out by many things—not just by the number of properties being built, but by buy-to-let landlords and non-UK international investment in our property market. To give any chance to first-time buyers, the Government need to reassert the crucial moral and civic distinction between owning one’s family home and using the housing market as an investment to further one’s financial assets.

Last year international money bought 28% of central London properties. Much of that money was illegally gained. Property is bought with international money not just in central London, but even out in Mitcham and Morden. Two years ago a constituent emailed me to report that his daughter, who was looking for a property, found 32 people trying to purchase the same property on the same morning. His daughter and her boyfriend were standing next to a representative of a Chinese bank. That couple were in no position to compete with that money.

We must tackle two things if we want first-time buyers to have any opportunity in London and the south-east. If we want more money to build more homes, and everyone is agreed that we do, why not abolish tax breaks on buy-to-let mortgages? Why is it right for somebody who wants to be a landlord to get a tax break, but not for somebody who wants to live in their home? I appreciate that the Chancellor recently announced a reduction in tax breaks for landlords, and I saw in The Telegraph at the weekend that some landlords are starting a backlash. I hope the Minister will hold firm and consider that getting rid of tax breaks on buy-to-let mortgages would release £6 billion—enough to build 100,000 new homes.

Why do the Government not look at international investment in the London property market? Why not introduce a levy on people who do not intend to live in their property or even to let the property out, but to keep it empty while its value increases? That is abhorrent in the current situation. I ask the Government to look at exciting developments such as the YMCA’s Y:Cube in my constituency, whose opening the Minister attended. This offers prefabricated properties at 65% of the area’s market rent, with great standards of heating, providing a good place to live at a reasonable cost and a great investment for social investors, with a guaranteed return.

I have worked at the coalface of housing for most of my life, when I had a proper job. I worked in Wandsworth as a receptionist on the homeless persons unit, I worked as a housing adviser, I argued with landlords to get temporary accommodation for homeless families, but I have seen nothing like I am seeing now. The families who were homeless when I worked at Wandsworth were families with young children. The families I see in my advice surgery have three or four children, who are at the top of their primary school or at the start of their secondary school. I say every week to half of the people who turn up, “Don’t worry. Section 21 will expire, then you’ll go to court, then you’ll get evicted, then you’ll go to band B on the register. It will be fine and the council might provide you with temporary accommodation.” That is in my constituency in south-west London.

The families in Merton who become homeless get housed in Luton, Harrow or Wembley. The parents plead for the right to be able to continue their work. They plead for the right for their children to get to school. All this means that we are storing up social problems, the like of which we have never seen. On behalf of all those families and for the future of those kids, I plead with the Government to look at the situation with a fresh eye.’