Affordable, high quality housing should always be a priority of good Governments. During the Second World War, when many houses were just piles of rubble or near uninhabitable slums, William Beveridge listed ‘squalor’ as one of his “Five Giants”. A giant to be slain along with Want, Ignorance, Disease and Idleness. Later, in 1944, he said, “The greatest opportunity open in this country for raising the general standard of living lies in housing.”

People often forget that when Nye Bevan was Secretary of State for Health, his title was actually Health and Housing. The two were, and remain, inextricably linked.

And still today, good quality, affordable housing is a social need as well as an economic one. I believe that people have a right to good housing. Who ever they are, how ever much they earn.

Despite the falls in the housing market over the last year, house prices remain unobtainably high for many people. On average in England, even the cheapest properties are almost seven times what those at the bottom of the income scale earn in a year.

In the South West it’s even worse, as your excellent little recent document Home Truths made clear. We are the only region with above average house prices and below average incomes. Here property prices can be almost nine times what people earn. If we do nothing, for more and more people, the dream of putting their first foot on the property ladder will remain just that, a dream.

But we have not been doing nothing. Far from it:

• Last year, a record 27,500 extra homes were built in the South West, including 5,000 affordable homes. Our region has exceeded its Regional Spatial Strategy targets at a time when other regions were failing to meet theirs.
• In response to the global downturn, as part of the government’s economic stimulus package, we have brought forward £1.2 billion of investment to this year.
• We’re increasing the Affordable Housing Programme by 60% from just under £160 million in 2006-7 to over a quarter of a billion pounds in 2010-11.
• Here in the South West, we’ve got a higher level of government funding for housing than any other region, over £800 million for the three years to 2011.
• The latest figures say that one in five of houses in our region are not up to standard. We want to cut this to just 5% by next year. In the last year alone in the South West we installed central heating in over 6,000 local authority properties and almost 5,000 had new insulation installed.

But all of this is set against the backdrop of the recession. Budgets are tight and tax receipts are falling. We are facing a global downturn unprecedented since the 1930s, credit markets have closed their doors and housing developers are dramatically reducing their output. So the government has reacted to extraordinary times with extraordinary measures.

• To help people stay in their homes, the £200 million Mortgage Rescue Scheme will help the most vulnerable families who face the prospect of repossession,
• In a government-funded deal, seven housing associations have bought almost 400 new homes from the developer Bovis in the biggest deal of its kind. Around 100 of these homes are in the South West.
• And in January, Margaret Beckett made a little reported, but potentially historic and exciting announcement. Councils will now be able to keep the rental income from the homes they buy, build or bring back into use, to invest that money in new council housing. They will also be able to keep the proceeds if these homes are sold to their tenants through Right-To-Buy. Last year, receipts from these sales totalled over £900 million.
One of the main issues I have been dealing with in my capacity as regional Minister – particularly since the credit crunch hit – has been housing.

As regional minister I chair the South West Economic Taskforce which brings together employers, trade union and regional bodies such as the Homes and Communities Agency and the Regional Development Agency. The job of the task force is to identify the pressing economic challenges in our region and to come up with solutions. One of the pieces of work we have been doing is to identify major infrastructure projects that are blocked as a result of the economic downturn and to unblock them. I am pleased to announce that as a result of this work the Homes and Communities agency has been able to provide the funds to unblock the Dolcoath Regeneration housing project in Cornwall. The project which will cost £7m aims to create 390 houses ( 25% of which will be affordable homes) 14,000m² of employment space and has the potential to create 660 new jobs.

I have also had a number of discussions with South West representatives of Housing Associations and other stakeholders through the South West Housing Initiative, as to how we can best ensure that your good work continues during the current downturn. This includes looking at what barriers - real and imagined there may be in the shared ownership sector. Nationally a lot of work is underway – led by my colleague Margaret Beckett – but regionally we can do more. I’ve asked the SW Housing Initiative to look at whether there are South West specific problems that we can address immediately. And those of you who work in this field will know that one of the persistent complaints made is mortgage companies are reluctant to agree shared ownership mortgages. Banks perceive low cost home ownership mortgages as higher risk – despite anecdotal evidence to the contrary. I brought together the Council of Mortgage lenders and the Housing Initiative and they have agreed to work together to try to resolve this.

But getting people onto the housing ladder isn’t just about making it easier to get a mortgage to buy a low cost home. In our region, local authorities and regional planners need to do much more to increase the provision of affordable housing. To date affordable housing build has been unacceptably low. Although last year’s XXX figure was a record and a vast improvement on the year before, it is still only half the Regional Spatial Strategy target of 10,000 per annum.

One of the reasons that we face such a challenge now on the provision of housing, and in particular on the provision of affordable housing, is that too often in the past planners – and by that I mean local authorities, regional planners and government - have taken the easy decision. You’re not going to build new housing without someone objecting and it isn’t going to happen if you’re unwilling to put the investment in.

There are today still people arguing that in response to an economic downturn we should be cutting spending, cutting investment now. That would be the very worst response to the downturn. Maintaining public investment in housing now is a vital part of our economic stimulus – a pattern Governments across the world are following. It will keep people in jobs and skills in our hard-pressed construction sector. It will also ensure we have a better supply of homes when the upturn comes, as it inevitably will. To cut investment now would be to repeat the mistakes made in previous recessions in Britain – it will lead to too many people chasing too few properties – risking repeating creating a property price bubble – one of the things that caused our current problems in the first place.

For years now, one of the main complaints from business in the South West was that their employees couldn’t afford to live here. Just because housing isn’t business’s top priority just now, doesn’t mean that it won’t be again very soon.

Throughout Britain’s post war history estimates for future housing need have turned out to be under-estimates. Our population is expected to keep growing and people will live longer, more and more people will live alone, their expectations of quality and space will continue to grow and the South West will always be beautiful, attracting ever more people to live here. Unless we erect a wall across the Somerset Levels, demand for homes will continue to grow in the South West and a faster rate than in most other regions.
Last year, we asked the Liberal Democrat MP for Truro and St Austell, Matthew Taylor, to look at the issue of rural housing. In his report, Living Working Countryside, he said, “The English countryside is a wonderful place to live and work - if you can afford a home, and if you can find a reasonably paid job.” He’s right. And that is why what you are doing is so important.

To those people who say the countryside is being covered in concrete I say have a look at the satellite image of Devon and Cornwall. Have a look at the figures that show we have a higher proportion of our landmass in agricultural production than virtually any other western European country and accept we can accommodate the homes our people desperately need and we will still have an overwhelmingly green and pleasant land.

One of Matthew’s main recommendations was to make the system of rural planning easier. Too often, desperately needed housing developments are scuppered by local authorities too weak to stand up to local Not in My Back Yard brigade.

Everyone involved in planning and housing and who cares about sustainable communities must realise that providing the right type of housing, in the right amount and in the right places is essential to sustainable development.

Being accountable to the people doesn’t mean caving at the first sign of resistance. It means standing up for those who can no longer afford to live where they grew up. It means standing up for the business struggling to find local workers. It means making the difficult decisions that are in the best long-term interest of your communities not the pressure group that shouts the loudest.

At the moment, as you know, central government sets the target for new homes in each region and local authorities decide where and how they should be built. We are currently agreeing with local government those targets to 2025 under the Regional Spatial Strategy. As I have a quasi legal role in this process I am not allowed to comment at this stage on the figures, except to repeat what I said a little earlier - previous targets have always been underestimates of actual need. Last month, Her Majesty’s Opposition said they would give local authorities a veto over the number of homes they provide. I am not sure they fully understood the implications of what they were saying, and this got surprisingly little attention in the national or regional media, but this would be an unmitigated disaster for the South West – ensuring fewer and fewer new homes would be built and putting property prices even further out of the reach of local people.

We do need local authorities to take responsibility and take the lead on housing, but that requires them to show leadership. I and the Government are immensely grateful for what you in the Housing Federation and the wider housing movement do. The people of the South West need your commitment, your innovation and your voice to be heard in this debate so that you can continue to help us deliver that great vision of Beverage and Bevan that everyone in our country is entitled to a decent home.

Thank you.