Long-Term National Housing Strategy

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Excerpts

Thursday 29th February 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford for securing this important debate today and for all her work in this area.

We debate aspects of housing on many occasions in your Lordships’ House, and rightly so, as we are in the middle of an extreme housing crisis. It is utterly shameful that we have 88 families a day being accepted as homeless by local councils, six times as many families as there are social homes being built. The housing benefit bill has doubled and some councils are spending 40% of their budget on emergency housing.

The reason for the many debates goes to the heart of the topic today: there simply is no national vision or strategy for housing driving the change that we want to see. Contrast that with the vision of the post-war Labour Government, who not only built my new town, Stevenage, but drove national consensus between 1945 and 1980 and saw local authorities and housing associations build 4.4 million social homes—more than 126,000 a year. By 1983, that supply had halved to just over 44,000 a year and last year it was less than 10,000.

We see a piecemeal approach to housing, whereby Bills are introduced to provide sticking plasters for some of the issues facing us, but even those get watered down as the Government cave in to vested interests. I agree with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, about housing targets. We now have a Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill, which we were told would confine the archaic tenure of leasehold to history but does nothing of the sort. We have a Renters (Reform) Bill, which should have scrapped the dreadful Section 21 evictions that leave renters so insecure but is currently stalled.

Planning departments, which should be at the heart of creating local visions for their areas, assessing the need for housing and making the short-term and long-term plans to deliver, have been starved of funding through successive years of savage local government funding cuts. Just this week, we have seen two important reports which set out some of the key issues. The CMA report illustrates a point made so well by the noble Lord, Lord Best, in relation to the findings of the Letwin review—and I hope that the noble Lord will not mind me quoting him. He said that

“we have handed over the decision-making process for all major housing developments to the oligopoly of volume housebuilders. These companies initiate each new scheme: they secure the land, they produce their plans and they build their development, in their own time and at a speed that suits them”.—[Official Report, 17/11/22; col. 1062.]

We have also had the outstanding report by the National Housing Federation and Shelter, setting out the clear economic and social reasons for a surge in the delivery of social housing.

We all know that a safe, warm, secure and affordable home is the foundation for every individual, family and community to thrive. That is where our vision and our strategy for housing should start. My party will get Britain building again and recover the dream of home ownership with a housing recovery plan and a blitz of planning reform to quickly boost housebuilding to buy and rent and deliver the biggest boost to affordable housing in a generation. We will have the next generation of new towns, with a package of devolution and stronger local powers over planning, a planning passport for urban brownfield development and first dibs for first-time buyers, supporting younger people with a government-backed mortgage guarantee scheme.

I hope that we can build a consensus and the mechanism to maintain it. After 27 years as a councillor, my passion for the power of good housing to unlock the potential of individuals, families and communities is undimmed. It is time to renew our vision, our focus and our inspiration so that everyone in our country, and indeed future generations, will have the opportunity of a home that enhances their dignity.

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[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

I can assure my noble friend that I am not a Zen planner. However, I am a realist, and I am faced with a multiplicity of policy responses to the rise in demand, no matter where it comes from. The Government do consider the demand and supply side, which form part of our long-term strategy.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

We challenged the term “affordable housing” during the passage of the levelling-up Bill. It is still being used constantly, as though using it means that the housing is affordable to anyone, which it absolutely is not. Can we please have a bit of caution over the use of that term?

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

I note the noble Baroness’s comments on the definition of that terminology. It is not mine—it is a term the department uses—but I will query its definition.

On overall delivery, £11.5 billion was made available in the affordable homes programme and it will deliver thousands of affordable homes to rent and buy across the country. Local authorities also have a crucial role to play in increasing the supply of social housing. That is why, in 2023-24, we introduced a package of flexibilities for how local authorities can spend their right-to-buy receipts. We implemented a preferential rate for borrowing from the Public Works Loan Board for building council houses, which has been extended until June 2025.

The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, raised the issue of rural housing, as did the noble Lord, Lord Young. We delivered more than 268,000 affordable homes in rural communities in England between 2010 and March 2023. Of the £11.5 billion we are investing, £7.5 billion will be outside London. That will help boost the supply of affordable housing in rural communities. We recognise that development of affordable housing in rural areas can be costlier and riskier; therefore, the Government are trying to help partners with their funding.

I am now out of time, but there are several pages of points I have not got to. I reassure noble Lords that the Government are delivering a long-term housing strategy that provides safe, decent, warm and beautiful homes for communities across the country. We are determined to work with the housing sector, local authorities and all of your Lordships to make our ambition a reality.