Housing and Planning Bill

Baroness Blackstone Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blackstone (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the group board of the Orbit housing association. We are facing a housing crisis and legislation is certainly needed to help resolve it. Sadly, this Bill falls short in so many ways, forcing the conclusion that when it is enacted and its provisions have been implemented or, in some cases, fail to be implemented, we will still have a housing crisis.

At the centre of our problem is a staggering failure to respond properly to our increasing population with anything like a sufficient increase in the supply of housing and, in particular, of housing which can be afforded by people on medium and low incomes. There is not enough accommodation, especially in London and the south-east, and the prices charged, either for home ownership or for rented houses, are unaffordable for families as well as many single people. The housing market simply is not working and families are forced to pay far too high a proportion of their earnings for accommodation, leaving them with too little to spend on other basic needs, especially in the case of families on low incomes who have children.

A growing proportion of the population has been forced to rely on privately rented accommodation with little security of tenure and often of poor quality. In one of the world’s richest nations, it is shameful that the basic need to be properly housed is not being met for a significant proportion of our population. In order to mitigate this problem, the Government are now shelling out £24 billion per annum on housing benefit, which has increased by £4.4 billion just since 2010. How much better it would have been if most of this enormous expenditure had been on tackling housing supply by building new homes. Having done so little in the previous Government to improve housing supply, this Government have now realised that a huge increase in new homes is required. They have set targets that few believe they will achieve and brought forward this Bill in support of these objectives. I congratulate the Government on addressing the supply of housing, but can only express great disappointment that their ideological commitment to home ownership has led them to abandon developing the provision of social housing for rent. Indeed, this form of tenure will be seriously harmed by the Government’s proposals. It is this issue on which I will now focus.

Before doing so, I want to welcome two or three aspects of the Bill. Like other speakers, I am pleased that there are clauses in Part 2 to deal with rogue landlords and property agents. These unscrupulous people cause untold misery for their tenants and reining them in is long overdue. I also welcome the decision to require the registration of brownfield sites, the decision to speed up compulsory purchase and the proposals on self-build and custom housebuilding.

There is, of course, a good case to be made for helping first-time buyers to purchase a home. Far too many young people are now forced to continue living with their parents into their 30s and we should make it easier for them to fulfil their aspirations to have their own home. However, the Government are profoundly wrong to put so many eggs in the starter home basket as set out in the Bill. I say this for two main reasons. The first is that the starter home clauses will provide subsidies for relatively well-off buyers, many of whom would purchase their homes without government help. The second is that the proposals will lead to a decline in social housing for rent so desperately needed by so many people who will never be able to afford to buy their own homes. As such, it is an indirect attack on the poor in favour of much better-off people, which can only further increase inequality in our society. The Bill does little if anything for those on council house waiting lists, where they have often been languishing for many years.

Why does this Bill create a situation where Section 106 requirements are lifted in new developments for starter homes? Why is so much more being done for one group with housing need and so little for others? Surely there should be a mixed economy in housing where more homes for social rent are provided as well as more homes for owner-occupation. I hope that the Minister will not reply that the Government are redefining affordable housing to include starter homes as an explanation for what will happen to Section 106. To do so is to make the concept of affordable homes utterly meaningless.

There is an even greater risk for maintaining the availability of social housing in the proposals for extending right to buy to housing association properties. To pay for this by forcing the selling of high-value local authority housing hardly plays to the Government’s pledge to devolve decision making. It is, in fact, an unscrupulous assets grab. These homes are not luxurious penthouse properties. They are often quite modest family homes which are valuable because they happen to be in high-demand areas. Forcing their sale will mean that council tenants will often have to move out of their community, and any social mix in the areas where these houses are located will disappear. The Government’s claim that there will be a two-for-one replacement of the expensive council houses and the sold housing association property in London is simply not credible. Will the Minister tell the House how the Government will monitor progress in replacements for these sales? Will she assure us that the Government will come up with an alternative system for paying for the right to buy in housing associations if they fail to meet their replacement targets in London and elsewhere? Nothing in the history of right to buy for council properties can give any confidence that social housing will not be greatly depleted as a result of the clauses on right to buy. For example, between 2012 and 2015, the 32,500 council properties sold were replaced with merely 3,500 new homes.

I also want to challenge the Government on the pay-to-stay provisions in the Bill. This is a further attack on the freedom of local authorities: 34 new powers are given to the Secretary of State. Councils already have the power to charge higher rents to those tenants whose incomes have gone up. The Bill forces them to increase rents on a pre-tax income of £30,000 outside London and £40,000 inside it, and then allows the Treasury to pick up the takings. Income thresholds of this kind do not take account of household needs, such as the number of children in the family. It is also highly likely to be extremely bureaucratic and cumbersome to administer. It hits middle-income tenants, while asset-rich owner-occupiers continue to benefit from unreformed council tax bandings.

Finally, the denial of long-term security of tenure to council tenants will cause unacceptable hardship and insecurity and further threaten the stability of communities. In key respects, the Bill is both punitive and inept.