Labour will only gain credibility with the swaths of Tory voters it desperately needs to win back if its housing policies are credible and above all affordable, the new shadow housing minister has said.



Jeremy Corbyn has already declared that housing is one of his top three priorities, and has appointed John Healey, a former housing minister in the government of Gordon Brown in 2010, to the shadow cabinet alongside a group of junior housing ministers.

Healey warned Labour on Tuesday that it should not “imagine the solution to the housing crisis lies solely in building more council homes”, saying most people still want to fulfil the dream of owning their home, even if extra council houses could play a part.

Probably not an ideological soulmate of Corbyn, Healey is nevertheless prepared to make the most of the new Labour leader’s longstanding interest in the subject.

Healey said: “We now need to talk to the country. He, and we, all have to try and win the support and confidence of people in the 80 or so Tory seats that we need to win again in 2020. My test in housing is we have to be able to spell out what we want to do, and explain how we will do it and above all how will pay for it.



“It’s clear that housing is Jeremy Corbyn’s number one policy priority. It’s also his political priority because of the London mayoral elections and those elections could become a referendum on the government’s five years of failure on housing and Boris Johnson’s eight years of failure on housing.

“My top priority is declining home ownership because we have to recognise that is the type of housing most people most want. It is the type of housing that has been dropping like a stone and for young people their hopes of being able to get on the housing ladder are all gone in most parts of the country.”

With the housing minister, Brandon Lewis, promising to build 1m homes between now and 2020, Healey questioned whether such targets were credible or meaningful for a public that is increasingly sceptical about the ability of government to deliver. He said: “They have made extravagant pledges they will find hard to meet. The big risk for the Tories is that it will add to a sense of failure on housing.”

At the election Labour itself promised to build 200,000 homes annually but only by the end of the five-year parliament. It set out a measured timetable to achieve this, prepared by the former BBC chairman Sir Michael Lyons. Healey said: “We are in a different world now and all this work will have to be revisited as part of a new national debate.”

Lyons also recommended making it mandatory for councils to produce a local plan, with the planning inspectorate having the power to step in. The review also talked about better use of the housing revenue account for councils “with active management of the overall borrowing headroom by the treasury”, although it stopped short of recommending a lifting of HRA borrowing caps.

Healey praised Corbyn but implied the jury was out on the popularity of his politics outside the party. He said: “Jeremy Corbyn demonstrated in the leadership election the desire to shake up the system, but we have to test for its reach into swaths of southern and central England and Wales.”

A shadow health minister in the last parliament who played a role in building the alliance to slow and change the unpopular Health and Social Care Act, Healey said the same kind of alliances would need to be built to stop government plans for a right to buy in housing associations properties funded by the sell-off of more valuable council properties.

A bill to introduce the reforms has been delayed, and Shelter has already suggested 100,000 council homes would have to be sold to fund the housing association right-to-buy policy. “That means a virtual wipe out of council housing in some parts of London and the big cities”, he said.

Healey pointed out: “Home ownership has declined each and every year since 2010 and the number of people getting mortgages and buying homes is 10% less than it was in 2010. There are still hundreds of thousands on council-house waiting lists and there are fewer truly affordable homes in housing associations. For people trapped in the private rented sector the landlords have been unleashed. There are low enough standards set in the private rented sector yet escalating rents.

“The change we offer has to be convincing. We cannot make impossibilist promises and we cannot raise false hopes. The change we offer has to be credible and radical.”