Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville and Lord Porter of Spalding
Lord Porter of Spalding
My Lords, I will speak in favour of Amendment 80AZB in my name and against the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Watson. Under his amendment, councils “must” do something. From an LGA perspective, we “may” be able to do things. Local government likes that; “must” is a bad thing unless somebody else gives us a big cheque for it.
I thank the Minister for accepting the arguments made by local government and by noble Lords earlier in this debate, and the Secretary of State for listening to our comments about excluding families with children from having to go for a fixed term. Personally, I am not bothered about five to 10 years. When you are talking about children, any fixed period is a waste of time. I will give noble Lords a quick run through. The average family in this country has 2.2 children. When people first get a council house they would have to have a child—or certainly be expecting one—because that is how rationed the supply is nowadays. The vast majority of new tenancies are only given to people with children. When that child is five they will go to primary school: there is no council leader in the country who is going to end that tenancy then, at five years.
When that child becomes 10 or 11 and starts secondary school, again, no council leader is going to evict the family from that property, providing the parents are behaving themselves. That will carry on for another five years—maybe seven if they go into the sixth form. So that is 18 years, at which point the 2.2 children are starting to have their impact, so that is probably 25 to 30 years. If we are seriously thinking that that family could occupy that property for 30 years on a short-term tenancy, why would we want them looking over their shoulder for 30 years? They are not going to invest in the property, the garden or the community. Clearly, that is not in the interests of the family, the neighbours, the taxpayer or anybody else. So I am seriously pleased that the Government have decided to look at the family situation and that they have committed to looking at other types of exclusions, without naming them. I am happy and hopeful that “others” might mean some more sensible people.
We are trying to address a serious problem: we have not got enough homes. I understand why the Government are doing this. There is a limited supply and there needs to be the ability to determine, on a case-by-case basis, that the right people have the right properties. But the only way that we are really going to fix this is by building more affordable social homes. For the last 40 years, successive Governments have failed to do what we all know is the right thing to do: we need to build more homes. This will not, I am afraid, add to the build. It might add to the supply at the edges for a few people, but it will not tackle the 1.2 million people on the waiting list—and it will certainly not be done at the expense of families.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville
My Lords I rise to support this group of amendments and, in particular, Amendments 80A and 80AZB. While I accept that it is the Government’s policy now to bring an end to secure tenancies, there are, as other noble Lords have said, several groups of people for whom the cutting short of a tenancy would have an extremely detrimental effect. As the noble Lord, Lord Porter, said, children in full-time education are extremely disadvantaged if they have to move schools unnecessarily frequently. Such moves are particularly damaging at what is known as the critical stage of education— years 10 and 11, when they are preparing for their GCSEs. When I was the lead on education for Somerset County Council, we always tried to ensure that looked-after children, in particular, were able to attend the same school during years 10 and 11, regardless of what changes there may have been to their individual care arrangements.
Children and young people will normally get only one chance at GCSEs and it is up to the rest of us to ensure that they are able to make the most of that chance and to not inhibit their progress with rules and regulations outside their control. There seems little difference between the wording of the amendments in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, and the noble Lord, Lord Porter—just the replacing of “must” with “may”.
Those in receipt of disability living allowance or personal independence payments are in another section of the community that needs security and protection, especially if their accommodation has previously been adapted to suit their individual needs. It would seem that the noble Lord, Lord Porter, has information about what exceptions the Minister is prepared to grant, but if they are not forthcoming—
Lord Porter of Spalding
I have absolutely no knowledge about what the Minister is or is not going to do, but I live in hope. We have got this far and it has got better. We have a little way to go yet: let us keep our fingers crossed.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville
If, having lived in hope, the noble Lord, Lord Porter, is disappointed and wishes to test the opinion of the House, I will support him.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville and Lord Porter of Spalding
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, as this is the first time I have spoken on Report, I draw the attention of the House to my interests as set out in the register as a South Somerset District Council councillor and as a vice-president of the LGA.
I rise to support Amendment 10. As the noble Lord, Lord Best, ably demonstrated, age-restricted housing schemes for older people should, by their very nature, be exempt from the requirement to provide starter homes. The majority of these schemes will have been designed around the needs of older people and will be completely tailored to their needs. The ethos of the Government’s starter homes policy is targeted at younger people between the ages of 23 and 40. It would be inappropriate for starter homes to become part of an elderly people’s complex, and they should therefore be exempt. This should be clear in the Bill.
Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)
My Lords, as this is the first time I have spoken on Report, I remind the House of my declaration of interests. It is long and exhaustive, and I do not propose to read it out again. Noble Lords should refer to previous copies of Hansard or to the register, where it is all recorded.
I support my noble friend Lord True on the age restriction. I would not go through the wrong Lobby on this minor issue, which is going to go to the other end of the building and hopefully someone will look at it, but the age restriction based on the arguments that were exercised in this House excludes some people who may well be able to purchase a starter home if they are not university students. To exclude people who are not university students because we are worried about avaricious parents of university students seems perverse. I hope the Government will try to work out a way in which we can get a restriction on people getting into schemes that does not preclude those youngsters—probably in couples, with trades behind them—who could earn enough money, subject to being able to get access to a deposit, for 80% of the value of the scheme where they would not for 100%. That aspect requires a bit more work.
In response to my noble friend Lord Best’s comments about properties for the elderly being excluded from this measure, quite clearly there would be an expectation that we would not be putting starter homes on elderly-unit accommodation. However, that is not to say that a developer, if the financial circumstances warranted it, should not be expected to pay a commuted sum to offset the cost of starter homes on an alternative site. Some more work needs to be done on this to ensure that we are not allowing some developers to get off without it while we are imposing it on others.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville and Lord Porter of Spalding
Lord Porter of Spalding
I will ask two questions. To go back to the same principle, what difference does it make whether somebody exercises the right to buy and then occupies a property or whether they free up the equity they have in it, buy something else, and then put that property back into the private rented sector? If somebody is living in it, they are living in it, so I am not sure that the noble Lord has the right end of the stick as regards the properties.
Can the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, say whether anybody has asked the mortgage providers whether they would still be happy to provide a mortgage if the use of that property was restricted in the way that is being proposed?
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville
The issue is that the taxpayer has paid a 20% discount for that to happen.