King’s Speech

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, some of whose points I will echo.

I welcome this King’s Speech as a vital first step towards delivering the new Government’s mandate for change. It was a joy to see that tackling the housing crisis was at the core of the Prime Minister’s speech. It was a joy yesterday to welcome my noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon to her richly deserved role as Leader of the House, and it is a joy today to welcome my noble friends Lady Hayman of Ullock, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, Lord Khan of Burnley and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath.

The Labour manifesto was clear about the scale of the challenge we face and the need to solve the housing crisis for good. In her first speech, the Chancellor outlined her vision for growth and national renewal, to which housing is absolutely central. I will focus my remarks on housing in the social and private rented sectors, on why social housing must play a decisive role in delivering our new Government’s mandate for change and national renewal, and on the need for all tenants in the private rented sector to have the right to redress when they are given a raw deal by their landlords. I declare an interest as chair of the Property Ombudsman board.

We know that a decent, affordable home is the foundation of our health, happiness and prosperity. But for the last 14 years, despite some real efforts to build more homes, this simple fact has been lost on successive Governments, who have failed to match their promises with delivery. We cannot afford to continue this failed approach. There are now 8.5 million people in England with some form of unmet housing need and, without action, by the end of the next Parliament every school in England will have on average seven children who are homeless and living in temporary accommodation. For many decades, we have had no clear long-term strategy for housing.

We just cannot go on like this. Not only is this morally unjustifiable, it is economically ruinous. The total cost to our society caused by poor housing is estimated at £18.5 billion per year. The private market has never delivered more than 200,000 homes a year. Planning reform can open up more sites over time, but the speculative housebuilder model and market demand mean that market homes will not be built out quickly enough to deliver 1.5 million homes this Parliament. Social housing is essential to hitting that target, and to economic growth. Research from the National Housing Federation, the CEBR and Shelter found that building 90,000 social rented homes would add £51.2 billion to the economy.

I urge our new Government to build on their very promising start by committing to a long-term 10-year plan for housing. By 2035, a long-term plan could fix child homelessness, halve overcrowding, provide the security of a social home for one million more people and ensure that every region has the homes it needs to grow.

The National Housing Federation has produced a social housing renewal plan that calls for a new long-term affordable homes programme to deliver the 90,000 new social homes we need every year. It will need minimum funding of £4.6 billion per year, on average, for the first Parliament—a real investment for the future. It calls for a new long-term social housing investment fund of £2 billion per year to help upgrade and decarbonise existing social homes, while unlocking capacity for new supply. It also calls for widening access to the building safety fund so that all social homes can be made safe for the residents living in them. The new Government have set out a welcome statement of intent on improving the current building safety settlement and ending this scandal for good.

I hope the Minister will commit today to providing long-awaited certainty and stability for social landlords. It would drive investment and build confidence. A 10-year rent settlement would give social landlords the certainty they need to plan investment over the long term and mean that rents are affordable for tenants and still lower, in real terms, than they were in 2015.

I turn to the private rented sector. Everyone agrees that, for both social and private tenants, the complaints, redress and ombudsman landscape is difficult to fathom. It has been a long-standing ambition of Governments and others to simplify this landscape and ensure that all tenants in England, regardless of tenure, have equal access to an ombudsman to resolve a dispute with their landlord or managing agent. I wholeheartedly support that ambition.

Social housing tenants in England already have access to the Government-appointed Housing Ombudsman service. There is a regulator in this sector, and most of the 17,000 housing providers are larger corporate entities, most owning many properties. While some entities are commercial, they are delivering housing with a social purpose on behalf of the Government. There is structure in this sector.

The private rented sector is very different. The sector is entirely commercial, with no overarching regulator, no overarching social purpose and a hugely diverse provider base. Data from HMRC shows that there are almost 2.4 million incorporated private landlords in England, with 43% owning just one property. This diversity of providers in the private sector is mirrored by the diversity of private sector tenants, all of whom have different needs. We know that there are vulnerable tenants in both sectors who will need help to understand where to go when things go wrong.

Tenants who rent via letting agents can already seek redress through one of two authorised redress schemes, of which the Property Ombudsman is one, but if the complaint is about the landlord, the redress schemes may not be able to resolve their problem. This is because these schemes are currently empowered to order agents, but not landlords, to provide redress to a tenant. Currently, although the Property Ombudsman helped more than 57,000 landlords and tenants last year who were often simply seeking answers to questions from an authoritative and experienced source, it could not provide any redress. The Government’s plan to create a new PRS ombudsman will fill this gap.

I am delighted to see this commitment and am hopeful that, in time, the other gaps in this complex sector will be closed and that everyone in the private property sector will be able to access an ombudsman regardless of their tenure. I hope the Government will ensure that the new ombudsman understands the sector and meets the needs of the diverse cohort of stakeholders so that tenants and landlords have confidence and trust in the new service.

In the meantime, I urge the Minister to ensure that, in planning for the new PRS ombudsman, there will be a transparent and open process in deciding who should operate such an ombudsman scheme, with Ministers avoiding making public declarations about who that should be beforehand.

The commitments made by our new Government on housing and redress are enormously welcome and show signs that we are beginning, finally, to change direction to tackle the housing crisis once and for all. For the first time in many years, there is a real sense of optimism and opportunity in the housing sector. In delivering on their proposals, the Government will go a long way in restoring public trust and confidence and in fulfilling the Prime Minister’s promise of delivering security, opportunity, prosperity and justice for every person in this country.