Lord Beecham
Main Page: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)
My Lords, I was not going to intervene. I certainly do not know what the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, will do with his amendment. I want to follow up on the wise words of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, by saying that this is not a wise Bill. Some of us have been in this House for many years and have handled many Bills. The problem is that, in process terms—leaving aside the content—this is the worst Bill I have seen in 25 years. It is a skeleton Bill in which we do not know the detail; this will be carried out by regulations. I do not blame the Minister at all but we do not know—and the Minister does not know—what will be in the regulations because they will depend on consultation exercises. We do not know what these consultation exercises will say because they were started only two-thirds of the way through the parliamentary process.
Noble Lords all around this House have been trying to scrutinise properly and fairly, as we should, a Bill in which there are huge gaps. We do not know the costs, the statistics, the land requirements or the burdens on local authorities. We know none of this. Yet, we, who scrutinised the Bill, are being told that the Commons has overturned our amendments. In a very truncated debate last night, it barely touched half the issues that we had discussed, having read every word of it. The Commons really did not.
This leaves some of us, who respect the conventions of this House, in a very difficult position. This is a half-baked, half-scrutinised, quarter-digested Bill. We are being asked, in the name of constitutional propriety, to allow the Commons to have the final say on something that is, frankly, not fit for purpose. It should not have been introduced this year; it should have been deferred until next year, until all the detail was in place so that we could scrutinise and amend the Bill, as this House should do. Then, and in that context, we would respect the will of the Commons. The Commons is sending through on a conveyor belt a half-baked Bill that it has not scrutinised. It puts many of us who really value the scrutinising role of this House in a very difficult position. I am sure I speak for many noble Lords, including, perhaps, some on the Benches of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, who share my concerns. We are being asked to scrutinise a Bill that is not fit for purpose.
Lord Beecham (Lab)
My Lords, I endorse my noble friend’s remarks about the issues perfectly properly raised by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. From the Minister’s remarks, one might have thought that the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, was going to utterly sabotage the Government’s proposals for starter homes. There is no evidence to support that as a potential outcome if his amendment were to be approved. It does not replace the principle that the Government seek to advance; it complements it. We seem to be invited to adopt the Government’s position on starter homes, failing which we are going to get some starter Peers. We have probably had a few of those in the last few years but that is not a matter that ought to weigh too heavily on us.
I think noble Lords on all sides of the House endorse the Government’s ideas for promoting home ownership, particularly—but not necessarily exclusively—among younger people. After all, this is the week in which we are talking about mortgages for people up to 85 years of age. There are people above the age of 40, who have been on the housing ladder for decades, for whom this Bill will do very little. Whereas, a slightly more relaxed approach of the kind that the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, is advocating, would assist them, without damaging the prospects of those aged 40 and under, for whom this part of the Bill seeks to provide some hope and action. I agree with that.
I sympathise with the noble Lord’s amendment. I regret that the Government do not appear willing to move towards something that would make a modest difference to the provision of housing for more people in a rather different way but not one which, in my judgment, would damage the Government’s intentions. It certainly would not contravene their manifesto commitment.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I thank all those who have spoken so clearly on this group.
As I said in my opening speech, and have made completely clear throughout the passage of the Bill in this House, a nationally set starter homes requirement is essential to delivering our 200,000 starter homes commitment. The amendment would mean that the requirement for starter homes would become something entirely different. This is not what we promised to deliver in our manifesto.
The Minister for Housing and Planning last night set out on the Floor of the House in the other place that we need to get on with helping those people to fulfil their dreams and get on to the home ownership ladder. Some 86% of our population want to be given that chance to do so. I am in complete agreement with him, and with my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham for reiterating the point that he made last night. It is,
“beyond astonishing that the upper House should try to amend a measure that has received such a clear message of support from this elected Chamber, and in respect of which we have an election mandate to help young people”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/5/16; col. 459.]
Elected honourable Members have been clear in their overwhelming support for delivering our starter homes commitment, and, as my noble friends Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Cormack, said, Amendment 10B was rejected with a majority of 83.
This House has done its duty. It has scrutinised, and the Government have revised as far as they possibly can. It is time to stop and to recognise and respect the will of the electorate and the primacy of a manifesto mandate. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, said that the legislation had been rushed through and that the Commons had not scrutinised it properly. However, I understand from the Commons that timings were agreed, including by the Labour Whips. I have already made clear to the House that Amendment 10B would fundamentally change the Government’s manifesto intention as proposed in the Bill, and that we therefore consider the Salisbury convention to be engaged.
I once again reassure the House that the Government are completely committed to ensuring that a range of housing tenures come forward. These include shared ownership and other affordable home ownership products. However, we are legislating for starter homes alone as a new product, designed to address a specific gap in the market, and we have a clear manifesto mandate to do that.
I also reassure the House that the Government are consulting on setting the percentage requirement. These proposals include exemptions where a starter home requirement will not be expected. I would be happy to meet noble Lords to discuss this further before the resulting regulations are brought back to this House.
The noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, said that the percentage requirement was set at 20%. Twenty per cent is currently a consultation proposal and is not yet fixed. However, we are consulting the sector on this and other aspects of the starter home regulations. The noble Lord also talked about current proposals being rigid and inflexible. We are consulting on how the starter homes requirement will apply. This includes setting out exceptions on the basis of viability and the types of housing being built, such as housing for older people.
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, suggested that this was not a wrecking amendment. We promised the electorate that we would deliver 200,000 starter homes by 2020. This was our election mandate and this amendment would undermine delivering that.
I have listened carefully to the debate, and I hope our clear manifesto commitment for starter homes means that there is no need to divide your Lordships’ House. With these reassurances in mind, I invite the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment to my Motion.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My noble friend is absolutely right. As he knows, I always pull my punches, but he is right to invite me to make the case even more strongly. Of course, when I intervened earlier and asked the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, if he would deal with the issue of financial privilege, he said that in his opinion his amendment did not breach that; but that is what he said the last time, and the House of Commons took a different view. He has made his argument, and my noble friend the Minister has shown enormous patience throughout the passage of this Bill, along with the rest of us who have been here to support her in the Division Lobbies. I hope that the noble Lord will accept, as my noble friend Lord Cormack said, that he has taken this matter as far as he can and that it is a matter for the elected Government and for the House of Commons to take things forward.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, last night the Commons spent all of 52 minutes debating the amendments passed by your Lordships’ House. In the course of the debate, the Minister, Brandon Lewis, asserted that this House had,
“chosen again to oppose one of”,
the Government’s,
“most important manifesto commitments, namely the commitment to ensure that more homes are built: homes that we need, and homes that young people are crying out for”.
To borrow a phrase from a somewhat more famous Conservative, Winston Churchill, that is a “terminological inexactitude”. It is perhaps less personal than the assertion by a Conservative Back-Bencher that the manifesto commitment was,
“struck down and circumscribed by the unelected, unaccountable panjandrums in the House of Lords”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/5/16; cols. 458-59.]
I declare my interest, and perhaps others of your Lordships do so as well.
The Conservative manifesto commitment was to build 275,000 affordable homes by 2020 and all of—my words, not theirs—10,000 homes to rent at below market rents. Nothing in the Motion moved by the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, conflicts with the manifesto commitment to build more homes. Part of the problem lies in the repeated use of the adjective “affordable”, and the failure of the Bill—and Ministers—to define the term other than in relation to starter homes, where the examples of affordability, reaching up to £450,000, are widely recognised as unrealistic. But the particular difficulty is the evident and extreme reluctance of the Government to acknowledge the need for affordable housing, which essentially means social housing, for rent, beyond identifying the massive programme of 2,000 houses a year at below market rents for the next five years.
The Government purport to address this issue by the provisions of the Bill which allow, but do not require, the Secretary of State to enter into agreements with councils to reduce the amounts they would have to pay to the Secretary of State, principally to fund the right to buy of housing association tenants. There is no requirement to do so, beyond the need in London, under an agreement for two-for-one replacement, and one-for-one elsewhere; but there is no requirement for the replacement to be by way of like-for-like tenure—only that replacements should be “affordable”. Moreover, as we have heard at some length during the passage of this Bill, the Government are unable to produce figures defining the meaning of “high value”, or the number of properties affected locally or nationally, or the likely rate of vacancies, or the cost of administering the scheme, or how they will judge how much to require councils to pay up-front annually, since the Bill envisages such payment will be required whether or not sales are effected. To misquote Marx—Groucho, not Karl—“A child of five could understand the impact of this policy. Bring me a child of five”, or perhaps, in these days, a special adviser.
Ministers constantly state that there are 16 million pieces of paper relevant to this issue and they are therefore unable to make any assessments. In that case, surely the answer is not to legislate before any real assessment of the impact is made, and not to rely on unamendable secondary legislation to ram through controversial and untested policies. That brings me to the claim that financial privilege prevents us from amending the Bill. The Government have already accepted some amendments with possible financial consequences, but the point is that financial privilege is not some God-given formula by which this House is prevented from amending legislation. We are not in the Moses Room with tablets of legislative stone; Governments can choose not to invoke or apply financial privilege, and we are entitled to invite them to do so. In any case, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, suggested, the amendment does not breach financial privilege.
The Motion moved by the noble Lord is a modest one. All that it seeks is that in calculating the financial adjustments to be made on the forced sale of high-value properties, councils should be able to retain sufficient money to provide two-for-one replacements in London, and one for one elsewhere, with the rider that the Secretary of State should consider allowing sufficient to be retained to permit that replacement by social housing for rent, when they can demonstrate need. It is not carte blanche—it is still a matter for the Minister to agree. It is the least that could reasonably be asked for. It is consistent with the manifesto pledge to build more homes, and it deserves the support of the House, and indeed of the Commons. In no way does it override a manifesto commitment, and if the noble Lord invites the House to ask the Commons to think again, the Opposition will support him.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken so eloquently on the amendment, particularly my noble friends who are such constitutional experts, far more so than me—my noble friends Lord Forsyth, Lord True and Lord Cormack. My noble friend Lord Cormack asked initially about the regulations and working with noble Lords. I hope that, whatever noble Lords think about the Bill, they will agree that I have taken the time whenever needed to engage with noble Lords from across the House to discuss any aspect of legislation or regulations that they might wish—and I fully intend to continue in that role.
Amendment 47E, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, in lieu of Amendment 47, is not acceptable to the Government. It would require that, when the Secretary of State enters into an agreement, sufficient funding must be provided to fully fund the cost of the new home. I hope that noble Lords will not misinterpret me when I say that the Government want more housing to be built, and I hope that the noble Lord will recognise that the arguments that this House recognised in relation to the last group apply just as strongly now. We have listened, and I have reassured this House strongly on how flexible agreements will be. It is now time to stop undermining our ability to proceed and to let us deliver our manifesto commitments.
We support the involvement of local authorities in delivering new homes. We value the creative partnerships across the sector to increase housing supply. But additional homes should not be funded simply through retained payments from the sale of high-value vacant housing. We have discussed that at length throughout the course of the Bill. There should be opportunities for local authorities to contribute their land, assets or funding, and to work in partnership with other providers in their area to build homes. We also want to ensure that value for money is secured, and ensure that the homes are delivered as cost effectively as possible.
In placing expectations on receipts, the amendment would prevent the Government from fulfilling their manifesto commitment, because it would significantly reduce the funding available for the voluntary right to buy. Since November last year, more than 29,000 housing association tenants have asked to be kept up to date with the right-to-buy scheme via our website. It is not right that we should deny these tenants their dream of home ownership.
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, talked about numbers. Let us reflect a bit back to the Conservative-led coalition being the first Government to end a Parliament with more affordable homes than we started with. Labour oversaw the loss of 420,000, by contrast. This is about our manifesto commitment to extend the right to buy.
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, talked about the financial privilege that the Government look to invoke. That is not true—it is a matter for the Commons Speaker on the advice of Commons clerks. It is not a political decision. I do not know a lot about the constitution, but I do know that.
The noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, talked about increased homelessness. A key part of this policy is to release the value locked up in vacant higher-value housing assets in order to build more homes. We are committed to supporting the most vulnerable in our society to have a decent place to live. Since 2010, we have invested more than £500 million to help local authorities prevent nearly 1 million households becoming homeless. Time spent in temporary accommodation ensures that no family is without a roof over their heads. We have made common-sense changes to the law to allow local authorities to offer accommodation in good-quality private sector accommodation, and households, on leaving temporary accommodation, now spend on average less time in temporary accommodation than they did in 2010.
The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, asked why we would not agree to the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, to enable homes to be built on a like-for-like basis. Our manifesto made it clear that we wanted to increase home ownership and drive up the supply of new homes. The receipts from the sale of high-value assets will enable us to deliver both of these commitments. The receipts will be used to give up to 1.3 million housing association tenants the right to the same level of right-to-buy discount as has been enjoyed by local authority tenants for decades.
But—and this is equally important—it will provide receipts that local authorities that enter into agreement with us will use to provide affordable homes. When they choose not to—and some will choose not to—the money will be returned to government to provide additional homes. As I have previously explained, the proceeds from right to buy will contribute to the funding that the housing association will use to provide an additional home for the one that is being sold, and an additional two homes in London.