Key Worker Housing in the South East - House of Commons - 19 December 2000

Speech delivered on Tue 19th Dec 2000

Mr. David Rendel (Newbury): Key worker housing is a vital issue in west Berkshire, so I am delighted that the subject has been introduced. There are some 10,000 more jobs in west Berkshire than there are people to do those jobs, and that figure will rise to 14,000 when the Vodafone headquarters are completed.

Consequently, many local firms have vacancies, salaries are being forced up as the local economy overheats, and house prices are going through the roof. That puts further pressure on the small stock of available and affordable rented accommodation, some of which is being sold off under the previous

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Government's right-to-buy policies. The price of land is being pushed up so quickly that it is almost impossible for housing associations to buy more land on which to build. Those are the problems of success, which are preferable to the problems of failure that are experienced by those in inner cities. I am happy to represent an area that is so successful. Nevertheless, they are problems, and we must find solutions.

As the hon. Member for Reading, East (Jane Griffiths) said, it is difficult to arrive at an exact definition of key workers. However, there is no question that they form ever more and ever larger groups--not only teachers, nurses and policemen, but bus drivers, for example. I have to tell the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Reading, West (Mr. Salter) that bus drivers are paid even less by Newbury Buses than by Reading Buses. It is difficult to recruit bus drivers and yet ours is a predominantly rural area in which the only form of public transport is the bus. That is causing great problems.

We are very short of postmen, and the Royal Mail is constantly trying to recruit more. When I was in my local post office yesterday, I was told that they could not remember a time when they did not have vacancies.

We are short of local authority staff, including planners. In an area such as mine, where the number of planning applications has soared, planners are difficult to find--many are leaving for less stressful jobs in other parts of the country.

Broadly speaking, I welcome the Government's starter homes initiative. However, they are only scratching the surface of a major problem. My calculations suggest that, on average, 10 to 20 households per constituency may be helped by the policy. Given that there are 14,000 more jobs than people in my area, that is a low figure--even if, as I suspect, we would be well above the average.

I should like to focus on the police, who face a crucial problem in the Thames valley, especially in west Berkshire. The extra salaries for the Metropolitan police are attracting people to commute from as far out as west Berkshire--and I know to my cost how difficult that can be. The position may get even worse if parts of the Thames Valley police are given a small salary increase, but it does not stretch as far as west Berkshire. Our policemen could be sucked away into places such as Slough, Reading and Wokingham because they pay a little extra, so the problem in west Berkshire will, if anything, worsen.

I am delighted that the Government have set up a crime fighting fund to try to increase the number of policemen throughout the country. For 2000-01, sufficient money for Thames Valley has been allocated to increase the number of policemen by 111. However, the current predicted increase is 42 and falling, and the chief constable said only a couple of weeks ago that the actual increase could prove to be zero. That is not because there is no money to recruit or pay policemen, but because no one is prepared to take on those jobs. As quickly as policemen are recruited, they are lost to other parts of the country, or through retirement or premature sickness.

The local police force has applied to defer to next year the money that cannot be used, but that application has not yet been successful. Would it not be better to spend

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some of the money set aside for recruiting policemen on providing extra housing? I put that suggestion to the chief constable, who seemed keen and rapidly accepted it, but unfortunately the Minister said that that is not possible. The money must be spent simply on the salaries of extra policemen, and not, for example, on a shared-ownership housing scheme that might encourage policemen into our area.

That is a great pity. I hope that the Minister can assure me that he will try to persuade his Home Office colleagues to reverse their current dogmatic policy of spending that money only on salaries. Spending it on other means of encouraging police recruitment in our area would be in line with the starter homes initiative, and would marginally increase the money available for that initiative. Given that it would lead to the recruitment of more policemen, such a policy would also be fully in line with the crime fighting fund. As it stands, the money will probably go back into the pot, never to be used for recruitment. In the light of those points, it would be madness and grossly illogical for the Government not to follow up that idea.