King’s Speech

Baroness Scott of Bybrook Excerpts

Wednesday 20th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as the vice-president of the Local Government Association and vice-president of the National Association of Local Councils.

Housing appears to have taken a back seat in the Government’s agenda. For all the talk of 1.5 million new homes, we heard no mention of that target in the King’s Speech. When we asked for a progress update last month, we were instead referred to a Written Answer from February. Can we have those updated figures now, please? How many dwellings will be completed this coming year? According to the department’s official statistics, an estimated 342,100 net additional homes were delivered in England between the start of this Parliament and March this year. At this rate, it will take over five and a half more years to meet the target of 1.5 million homes. The Government must not shy away from these facts. When will we see an improvement in the figures?

We Conservatives delivered 1 million new homes over the last Parliament and had a plan to build 1.6 million homes in the next. Despite 14 years in opposition, Labour did not and do not have a plan to meet their less ambitious target. We knew this, and my right honourable friend the Leader of the Opposition in the other place, when she was the shadow Housing Secretary, told the then Secretary of State that she had been stitched up by her colleagues. We support the delivery of more housing and my right honourable friend in the other place offered our help, which throughout these recent Bills has not been taken up. Instead, this Government’s choices, on top of global pressures, have left us with high energy, labour and regulatory costs, pushing up the overall cost of housebuilding and leaving many consented sites unviable.

Time and time again on the doorstep, we heard of young people’s desire to own their own home. Too many are trapped in the rental sector, and even there the Government are not helping the supply of rental properties. Smaller landlords in particular are exiting the market. What is the Government’s assessment of this trend and the impact on the supply of rental properties? The Renters’ Rights Act is now in force, and we are already seeing the consequences of this. Build-to-rent developers are affected, too, with the Act expected to increase the number of rent appeals even further. Is the data on the average time for property chambers to process rent appeal cases now being collected, and what does it show so far? The Government are also committed to capping ground rents through the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill, and we look forward to this Bill and to looking at these ideas in detail. In the meantime, what action is planned in relation to service charges, which are getting higher and higher every single year?

We are also seeing long waiting lists in social housing. Thanks to this Government’s choices to increase employer national insurance and taxes on business, unemployment has now risen to 5%. Even worse, youth unemployment especially is increasing, with one in six young people unable to find a job. Young people have no hope of getting on the housing ladder under this Government. Where do they go? This Government risk creating a vicious circle, where more and more people are forced to look to social housing. Yet, shockingly, around 33,000 new social tenancies each year are going to households where the lead tenant is not a UK national. The Government are spending around £4 billion a year to deliver about 30,000 new social homes annually, meaning that spending on the affordable homes programme is going entirely on housing non-nationals. How is this sustainable?

Housing is a major policy area which is fundamental to solving the cost of living crisis. However, we are not seeing it prioritised in this debate. We need a constructive policy environment to tackle these issues, not just policy tweaks or arbitrary state interventions that do not fix problems at source. This House deserves to see proposals for genuine solutions, as well as clear figures, to ensure we see actual delivery. I look forward to the Minister’s response.