Denis MacShane: The right-to-buy is at the heart of Britain's housing crisis

THERE are 70,000 reasons why a new council house building programme is unlikely to get off the ground in Yorkshire. That's the number of council houses in the region sold to their tenants since Labour came to power.

To be precise, 69,740 council houses have disappeared from the roll

call of affordable rented property to help boost the house-price inflation of the private housing market.

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In contrast, just 24, yes 24, council houses were built in the region between 1997 and 2009.

Con-Dem ministers may wish to encourage council housing, but as long as council houses can be snapped up by their tenants at below market clearing rates, the chance of a serious assault on Britain's housing shortage crisis is zero. John Healey MP – my South Yorkshire colleague and the only Labour housing minister who put real energy into shaping new policy to grapple with the problem – has with forensic skill taken apart the latest Tory wheeze.

This offers a bribe to local councils of the equivalent of the council tax they would gain from a newly built home. But, as Mr Healey points out, this is traditional Whitehall legerdemain of robbing municipal Peter to pay local government Paul. The money would be deducted from other cash used to renovate or refurbish council properties.

Housing policy in Britain is like the Catholic Church at the beginning of the 16th century – unreformed and full of old ideas that need a great burst of reforming enthusiasm to set Britain on a new course of homes, all built by British firms employing local people. It should not be a party political issue. Harold Macmillan was named Housing Minister by Winston Churchill in 1951 and went out and built 300,000 houses a year – private and council. Macmillan worked with Labour councils in Yorkshire and gave them the green light to "build, build, build".

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Today, housing policy is stymied by the right-to-buy. Of course, it was a vote-winner for the Tories in the 1980s and Labour was so transfixed by right-to-buy that no Labour politician of the Blair-Brown-Mandelson era ever dared challenge this holy cow.

As Chancellor, Gordon Brown prevented councils from using their receipts from right-to-buy to build new homes and Labour's failure to challenge this Thatcherite legacy has landed us in the housing crisis we have now.

Private landlords who buy to rent do not allow their tenants to purchase the property at knock-down prices. But there is no council in the nation that can start a serious Macmillan-style council house building programme with the right-to-buy legislation in place.

No one can be blamed for taking advantage of the offer, though limits should be in place to stop homes removed from social housing stock then being rented out by their new private owners.

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If David Cameron really was a reformer, then he should abolish the right-to-buy and start council house building going again. Right-to-buy may have been popular in the 1980s, but it has helped to fuel a housing price boom.

Mr Cameron should also look at planning policy as there is a now a culture of out-and-out opposition to any proposals to build new homes on land where people want to live – close to their communities and in houses not high-rise apartment blocks.

In the last three parliaments, Conservative MPs spent hours opposing any new housing estates in their constituencies. The first act of the new government has been to block the use of private land surrounding existing houses to build new homes.

This is sometimes denounced as "garden grabbing", but the plain fact is that large areas of land around existing homes may be quite appropriate for small-scale developments. This has now been stopped by the new government which will make it harder to build new homes.

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The other reality to accept is that all the council estates since social housing began as serious policy 90 years ago have been built on farm, green, or local land whose soil is not contaminated by industrial effluent.

Yet, in the last few years, any proposal to build on such land has met with ferocious local opposition. As a result, the present generation of home-owners are destroying any chances for our children and grandchildren to join the housing ladder.

This is the most selfish generation of home-owners in British history. Until we confront our own selfishness, there will continue to be huge housing shortages, especially for young and less-affluent citizens.

Taking on selfishness, a Thatcherite Shibboleth, and the green lobby is a mammoth task for any party. It will be too much for David Cameron.

Denis MacShane is the Labour MP for Rotherham.