Queen’s Speech

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stroud (Con) [V]]

I start by adding my congratulations to the noble Lords, Lord Coaker and Lord Morse, on their excellent maiden speeches. I add my support to Her Majesty’s gracious Speech and congratulate the Government on their visionary leadership.

I have been heartened by the commitment to publishing a levelling-up White Paper that will set out bold new interventions to improve livelihoods and opportunities throughout the UK. This is a crucial agenda to pursue, but how do we know what policies will deliver the levelling up that we seek? How are the Government defining levelling up? How are they measuring success or identifying what levers need to be pulled, and in which communities? How do we understand the relative strengths and weaknesses of our communities so that we know where to put the energy and focus to level up? As far as I can find, the Government have not yet set out an established baseline against which to assess the effectiveness of this ambitious focus. But because this agenda is so important to the British people, last week the Legatum Institute—I refer to my entry in the register of interests—launched a tool to measure the success of the levelling-up agenda: a UK prosperity index to provide the baseline against which to measure progress and success.

With calls for regional renewal across the political spectrum, the moment is right for a new and holistic assessment of the UK’s strengths and weaknesses, which will help point the way towards true prosperity. Building prosperity—levelling up—is much more than bridges and trains, bricks and mortar, and material wealth. It reaches beyond the financial into the political, the judicial, the well-being and character of a nation; it is about creating an environment where people are able to reach their full potential. A community is prosperous when it has an open economy, an inclusive society with strong formal and informal institutions, and empowered people who are healthy, educated and safe.

If the country is to make the most of this reset moment, we will need to unlock prosperity and level up across all our regions and communities. In many ways, the UK is well positioned to do just this—it is one of the most prosperous countries in the world, ranking 13th out of 167 nations. Our national institutions are robust and we have one of the world’s strongest economies, powered by innovators and a world-class education system. This is an amazing country and we have been making great strides in many of the areas that already dominate the debate about levelling up, including infrastructure and the natural environment.

But there are also clear challenges. While levels of prosperity in the UK remain much higher than in other nations and increased during the first half of the 2010s, in more recent years this prosperity has been stagnating. This underlines the need for a more detailed assessment of what is going well and what is not. Interestingly, this stagnation is not driven by factors that currently feature much in the political debate—for example, infrastructure. Rather, we are being held back by declining enterprise conditions and weak health systems that were simply not pandemic ready, and we have insufficiently created the environment in which our family life and relationships have been able to thrive and feel valued.

All our concern has been for the economy, but we should have been even more focused on who we are becoming as a people at a local community level. For example, the index reveals that the West Midlands non-metropolitan region is the sixth most prosperous in the UK, with strong governance, low crime rates and good conditions for business. However, the region performs poorly on the strength of social capital and quality of health and education. This is where the opportunity for levelling up lies. The index reveals that London is the fourth most prosperous region of the UK, with a strong economy, good infrastructure, a supportive environment for business and good education. However, the city’s prosperity is undermined by declining safety and security, failure to build inclusive and connected communities, and the highest rates of poverty in the UK. This is an example of where the levelling-up opportunity lies.

To really become a prosperous nation, we need to understand these issues by local area and by community. This is why the UK prosperity index is such an important tool for the levelling-up agenda. Britain needs to become a place where we strengthen our local communities and truly value the family; where we care for one another, investing in our mental and physical well-being; and where we can innovate and build businesses that are not stifled by unnecessary regulation.

If this hugely important levelling-up agenda is to be effective it needs a baseline, an accountability tool. Will my noble friend the Minister agree to meet me to understand the UK prosperity index, a tool for levelling up, and how it can be used to measure the great strides forward this Government will make as they commit to levelling up the nation?

Housing Strategy

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Stroud (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I add my welcome to the Coming Home report and offer my congratulations to the most reverend Primates the Archbishops of Canterbury and York on their obvious and real commitment to this issue.

Before getting into the debate about housing per se, I will highlight the three aspects of the report that I want most to commend. First, the report is written in the most practical way that will ensure that much-needed housing is actually built. The report highlights the needs of 8 million people that are currently going unmet, so the issue of housing supply and quality is real and tangible. Secondly, the report is written in a way that understands the longing of the human heart for home and homes that are sustainable, safe, stable, sociable and satisfying. This understanding that a home is more than just bricks and mortar is crucial to the Britain we want to build and to building back better. Thirdly, it is a written in a way that takes responsibility and leaves us all asking ourselves: what can I do?

The Church of England is saying quite clearly that it wants to bring its land and lay it at the disposal of those in need, to find a way through on the issue of affordable housing. In the report it commits to using its land assets to promote more truly affordable homes. The response of every government department, business and owner of land needs to be: “What can we do?” I say to any Church Commissioners who are listening: I am aware that you hold the power to make this happen. I urge you to think about unlocking the potential of this recommendation as the Church seeks to lead the way.

The report finds that around 8 million people in England live in unaffordable, overcrowded or unsuitable homes. Whole sections of our society, including people of all ages, are affected by the UK’s housing challenge and history but those in poverty and who are vulnerable bear the brunt. The housing crisis has been driven by a number of factors and, as the report says, it has been a developing issue through the tenure of successive Governments but I am going to pick up on just three of the themes in the report and one of the recommendations. I am going to look at affordability, overcrowding and the stability of our homes, and then the call for a long-term housing strategy.

Turning to affordability, the report rightly identifies unaffordability and lack of supply as major issues. Any noble Lord with children in their 20s would be inclined to agree. The Government made strong commitments in their manifesto saying

“we will continue our progress towards our target of 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s. This will see us build at least a million more homes, of all tenures, over the next Parliament–in the areas that really need them.”

The report says,

“good housing policy creates stable communities, where, if they wish”

to stay, people are can buy or rent at truly affordable prices,

“put down roots and build lives, families”

and communities, but even most small homes are too expensive for most buyers in the UK. The average house sells for eight times the average annual income, and small overpriced homes are the result of a system that is simply not creating enough homes to meet demand.

Whether homes are owned or rented, we need an honest assessment of what “affordable” means. A 2018 CSJ report found that hospitality staff, hairdressers and supermarket employees on average salaries for their respective sectors would need to put away 10% of their wages for more than 100 years to afford a deposit on the average UK home and that most starter homes and shared ownership products are affordable to no more than 3% of new social tenants. This is unsustainable and has knock-on impacts.

As the gap between average incomes and house prices has widened, the proportion of all households renting privately has doubled since 2001. The sector now houses some 4.7 million households and around 12.9 million people. This, in turn, has put enormous strain on those in need of social housing, and there are some 1.2 million families on social housing waiting lists across the country. This, in turn, puts pressure on those in temporary housing, many staying in such homes for far beyond the legal guidelines—for months, if not years.

We are a nation that rightly values home, being able to put down roots and staying close to our family networks. We like our families. People’s impulse to home ownership is right and natural. People who own homes have a stake in their community; they feel secure and able to invest emotionally and financially in the place where they live. This is something that we want to encourage, and asset ownership of any kind makes people responsible and orientated to the long term.

The Coming Home report importantly recommends that

“The Government’s long-term housing strategy should include a specific goal to reduce the number of households living in temporary housing, which is by definition unstable.”


Furthermore, it recommends that there should be

“a new quality standard for temporary accommodation, and an effective”

and transparent

“resolution process when this standard is not being met.”

We all know that the principal cost of a house is the land that it sits on. I have previously written and spoken about the need to develop new models of land ownership, including via community land trusts, which acquire land on behalf of local people and sell only the bricks and mortar, at a greatly reduced cost compared to the price of the house plus land. We must also be wary that, as we grow the supply of homes required to reduce demand, the additional capacity is not consumed just by high-end buyers and investors, without benefit for the majority of people.

The second issue is overcrowding. This crisis, although referred to as a housing crisis, should not be underestimated for what it really is: a home crisis. As the Coming Home report eloquently puts it,

“good houses are places we delight to come home to, that give pleasure and satisfaction, both to live in and to look at.”

The average new home in Britain occupies a tiny 76 square metres, 40% less than the average new home in Germany and 30% less than in France. We should not seek to solve the housing crisis by creating more and more tiny flats that cement the fragmentation and atomisation of society. Instead, as we support our families with increasing relationship stability, we need to build homes that support community.

Thirdly, on the stability of housing, with unaffordability as a key challenge, many have resorted to the private rented sector, but here they have found that life can be precarious and certainly not stable. Landlords have a particular duty of care to their tenants but, with the threat of a no-fault eviction, vulnerable people are often hesitant to approach landlords when safety issues arise with their property, especially when children are involved. There are often no consequences for landlords who would rather evict their tenants for being difficult than address their concerns. For many across the UK the availability of homes is not the issue but the stability of tenancy. A stable home provides a period of predictability and security so that households have a reliable base around which to organise working and family life. One study found that, controlling for other factors, two or more moves in the first year of life could be linked definitively with behavioural problems at the age of nine, and for older children, home moves can mean school moves. Only 27% of pupils who move schools three times or more during their secondary school career achieve five A to C grades, compared to the national average of 60%.

However, of the many recommendations of the Coming Home report, the first—the recognition of the need for a long-term housing strategy—is perhaps of greatest importance. We have set a long-term vision for pensions, as well as for defence, development and foreign policy. It is time for a long-term strategy to be developed to address the issue of housing in the UK. It is interesting how across the social policy space, more and more of our challenges need a long-term approach. I have frequently highlighted the need for a poverty strategy, and those involved in social care are calling for a long-term social care strategy. There are serious reasons behind this.

First, we want to ensure that we are tackling the root causes of the problem and not just the symptoms and that our actions do not have unintended consequences. Here it is important that our actions do not, for example, lead to an artificially inflated housing market—it would be so easy to do so. Secondly, it is those who are most vulnerable who often interact with government policy at a greater number of points in their lives, so it is the most vulnerable who deal with government more than anyone else. What many of these people cannot take or cope with is swings in government policy—they are deeply destabilising. They also need to be able to rely on a strong social contract. For this reason, I echo the Archbishops’ call for a long-term strategy. However, this is also important from a planning perspective too. We are a nation starting out on a new journey. How great it would be if future generations were able to look back and say that we were characterised by such ambition that served them well and that we made the right calls to build this nation well at a moment of transition, that our legacy was one where homes became affordable, peaceful and stable.

Housing: New Homes

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, in the last year, 57,000 of the 240,000 homes were affordable homes, and the Government have committed the largest single funding commitment to affordable housing in over a decade, with £11.5 billion out of the total £12.2 billion set to enable the building of affordable housing. This new programme aims to deliver more homes for social rent.

[Baroness Stroud (Con) [V]]

In the light of the over- whelming evidence gathered by the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission of the importance of popular and beautiful design for our mental and physical health, for support for new homes and for our connectedness as local communities, what assessment has my noble friend the Minister made of the 45 recommendations of that commission for promoting health, well-being and sustainable growth in achieving the Government’s target of 300,000 new homes per year?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, the Government welcome the report of the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, and are at this point carefully considering its recommendations. A government response will be published in due course.