Labour leader uses questions to focus on housing, hours before Labour and Tory rebels hope to inflict key defeat on EU bill

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Jeremy Corbyn has used prime minister’s questions to challenge Theresa May on what he called the “disgrace” of homelessness and insecure tenancies, eschewing an expected focus on Brexit at a key moment in the departure process.

Later on Wednesday it is expected that Labour and some rebel Conservatives could inflict a defeat on the government over an amendment to the EU withdrawal bill demanding a meaningful final vote on any Brexit deal.



But Corbyn used all his allotted questions to focus on housing, accusing the government of presiding over a massive rise in homelessness and doing little to address the wider issues of insecure housing.

May stoutly defended her record and repeatedly pointed to what she said was the poor performance of the last Labour government.

Corbyn ended with a reiteration of his main lines of attack on housing, bringing cheers from Labour backbenchers.

“When it comes to housing, this government has been an absolute disgrace,” he said. “After seven years, more people are living on the streets, more families in temporary accommodation, more families in homes not fit for human habitation and fewer people owning their own home.

“When is this government going to get out of pockets of property speculators and rogue landlords and get on the side of tenants and people without a home of their own this Christmas?”

May replied by saying that under the Conservatives, 346,000 new affordable homes had been built since 2010, and overall housebuilding was up. She contrasted this with the pre-2010 Labour record.

May said: “Under Labour – housebuilding down, homes bought and sold down, social housing down.

“I’ll tell him, one thing did go up under the last Labour government: the number of people on the social housing waiting list – 1.74 million people waiting for a home under a Labour government.”

Corbyn had begun his questions by pointing to statistics showing overall homelessness had risen 50% since 2010, with rough sleeping doubling. He asked: “Will the prime minister pledge today that 2018 will be the year when homelessness starts to go down?”

After May responded with a defence of her record, Corbyn turned his focus to the number of children living in temporary accommodation, saying 128,000 would do so this Christmas.

One in 100 children were homeless at any one time, Corbyn said, adding: “It is a national disgrace and it is getting worse.”

Corbyn called for the government to introduce secure three-year tenancies for privately rented homes, citing a voter called Rachel who said she was anxious each year about being evicted from the flat she had rented for the past 10 years.

May said the government was “looking at ways in which we can encourage longer-term tenancies” and criticised a parallel Labour policy on restricting rent increases for private lets.

“He talks about people renting their homes, and his response on renting is to bring in rent controls,” May said. “Rent control has never worked.”

The pair then clashed over the right-to-buy system for council tenants, with Corbyn noting that a promised one-for-one replacement system often did not happen, and that 40% of right-to-buy properties were now in the private rented sector.

May responded by accusing Labour of seeking to reduce choice: “What a contrast – we actually want to give people the opportunity to buy their own home; the Labour party would take that opportunity away from them.”