Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Best and Lord Kerslake

Wednesday 4th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Motion A. First, I thank the Minister for the series of concessions that relate to rural areas, some of which are subject to further negotiations, always knowing that there is an affirmative resolution required, giving this House a chance to do some more work if we do not reach agreement in the discussions that will follow. I am very grateful for a number of concessions that relate to starter homes and rural areas.

I moved the amendment about repayment of discounts for starter homes, which was agreed by a very large majority on Report and has subsequently been rejected by the other place. My concern was that, to cover the cost of discounts for those purchasing starter homes, funding was to be taken from the housing programmes for those on lower incomes for whom affordable renting was the only option. The Government estimate that starter homes 20% discounts will cost on average around £43,000 each. They want to see 200,000 of these homes sold by the end of this Parliament, so the total cost of the discounts will be some £8.6 billion. Since starter homes represent a manifesto commitment, the Lords amendment did not attempt to undermine the Government’s policy but instead to require a proportion of the 20% discount, on a diminishing taper, to be repaid when the lucky buyer sells their starter home. The amendment passed by your Lordships would require a simple repayment of the discount, reduced by one-20th for each year of occupation. So if a first-time buyer stayed there for 20 years, the discount—£43,000 on average—would be retained in full, but if they left after 10 years they would repay half the discount, or £21,500 on average. If they moved after five years, as might be quite typical, they would repay a sum equivalent to three-quarters of the discount—£32,000. My point was that, after giving the first-time buyer a leg up when they sold, a worth-while proportion of the cash would be repaid and available for recycling into genuinely affordable housing.

The Government’s original proposal was an all-or-nothing arrangement whereby the buyer had to repay 100% of the discount if they left within five years but could keep 100% of it if they sold after five years. This could represent a significant windfall for the buyer. In London, for example, discounts could be worth as much as £110,000, contributed by the taxpayer in respect of the buyer’s means. Ministers have been persuaded that this cliff-edge would not work. It would probably mean that the vast majority of buyers would stay for five years and then sell to maximise their gains, creating big distortions in the market. So the principle was accepted during the Lords stages of the Bill that a taper should be introduced to spread the benefits of the discount more gradually over a number of years.

Under the Government’s original scheme, the next buyer would then acquire the home with a tapered discount, which the Government’s consultation paper suggested would be over eight years. So the first-time buyer who left after eight years would keep all the discount, but if they sold after four years the next buyer would get half the discount—that is, they would purchase with a 10% discount. If they left after six years, the discount for the next buyer would be 5%, and so on. A bureaucratic process would have to be put in place to value the property at each subsequent sale and ensure that it was at the correct reduced discount, to ensure that the new purchaser was another first-time buyer under the age of 40, and so on. All this seemed very cumbersome and meant that money from the original discount would never be repaid or returned.

I am grateful to the Minister in the other place, Brandon Lewis, for listening patiently to the arguments against these arrangements and accepting the merits of the alternative concepts embodied in our earlier amendment. He has proved willing to place the taper approach in the Bill and to commit to a system for repayment of the discount so that the funds—hard cash—can be recycled for new affordable housing. Whether the tapering runs in equal instalments over eight years or over a longer period—perhaps even over 20 years, as in the earlier amendment agreed by your Lordships—remains for further negotiation, but the principles here seem to be agreed.

With a taper, and with funds going back into the affordable housing pot, either via the local authority or through the Homes and Communities Agency and the Greater London Authority, there should be a recycling of a serious proportion of the £8.6 billion to be spent on starter homes discounts. If first-time buyers tend to move after an average of five years, and if Ministers are agreeable to the taper being for 10 years, then half the money should come back into affordable housing provision under the new deal. That means restoring £4.3 billion to the affordable housing project. So with appreciation to the Ministers concerned, I for one am very willing to accept the amendments in lieu of the Lords amendment. I look forward to working with Ministers on the details in the negotiations, and I believe that we have much improved the process.

[Lord Kerslake (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Motion B1. In doing so, I declare my interests as chair of Peabody and president of the Local Government Association.

I welcome the Government’s movement on the taper, which I believe to be an entirely sensible way to reframe the starter homes product. However, there remains an outstanding issue that needs to be addressed, and I hope the Government will listen again and make changes. The amendment before us does not seek to insist on Amendments 9 and 10, which have previously been considered, but instead adds an additional clause to the Government’s own Amendment 10A. This gives the local authority the opportunity, if it can demonstrate a need, to meet part or all of the so-called starter homes requirement through alternative forms of affordable home ownership. It will do so within the general duty set out in the Bill to promote starter homes as part of its planning functions. This does not go as far as my previous amendment, which gave complete flexibility to local authorities across both affordable home ownership and affordable rents in making their planning decisions. In a genuinely localist world, this remains the right approach. However, in keeping with the spirit that this House does not simply seek to reverse the decisions of the other place at this stage of the Bill, I have proposed an alternative, more restricted amendment, and I shall briefly outline my reasons for doing so.

First, the Bill gives the Secretary of State quite unprecedented power: namely, to prevent a local authority granting permission on an individual planning permission unless that planning application contains a specified proportion of a particular type of housing—starter homes. This is a degree of centralist imposition that has never before been contemplated and its consequences are completely unknown. Moreover, we are imposing a product that is entirely new and indeed, as we have just heard, is still being designed. Not one starter home has yet been sold. It has gone from being an interesting and positive prototype to the main type of provision of sub-market housing without going through any of the essential stages of product development in between. Allowing alternative types of affordable home ownership products, such as shared ownership and rent to buy, within the starter homes requirement would provide vital local flexibility while we learn how the starter homes product works.

My second reason is that, as a result of the starter homes requirement, other forms of affordable housing will be squeezed out of Section 106 planning agreements. There will be far less opportunity to include social or affordable rented housing as part of the planning approval. This will, in turn, reduce the supply of such properties at a time when they are desperately needed, especially as affordable housing grant will largely cease from 2018. To be clear, the issue with starter homes has never been about providing a new offer to young first-time buyers; it has been that we should not do so at the expense of those on lower incomes who are in even greater need. We do not know precisely what the impact of the Government’s proposals will be. However, the draft regulations, which have just been referred to, propose a figure of 20% starter homes in each application.

On the Government’s own assessment, the average cash value of affordable housing in planning agreements is 22%. It does not take a great mathematician to see that, even if the average cost of starter homes is less than that for other types of affordable housing, there will be little or no remaining flexibility left for local authorities. The starter homes requirement will consume almost all the available value. I have no doubt that starter homes will work well in some parts of the country; I am equally clear that in other areas they may not. In London, we know that Shelter has calculated that it will be possible to buy a starter home only with an income of £77,000 and a deposit of £97,000. At best, this applies to no more than 20% of those in London who currently rent. In other higher-value areas, such as the south-east, Shelter has calculated that more than half of those currently renting will be unable to take advantage without parental help. This disparity is why many local authorities are saying to me—and, I suspect, to the Government—that they must have the flexibility to do local deals and develop the low-cost home ownership products that meet their local needs. One size does not fit all, yet this is what the Government are seeking to impose. The amendment would provide local authorities with a greater ability to get the mix right in their area.

My third and final reason is that giving greater local flexibility will work better to deliver what should be our overriding ambition—to build more housing of all types and tenures. It will give a much greater incentive to local authorities to approve planning applications quickly if they can secure the type of affordable housing that they believe will generally meet the needs of their local area. There would be less dependency on straight market sale and more scope to adjust the mix if market conditions should change.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Best]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Motion F1. I was grateful indeed to noble Lords throughout the House who secured a majority of over 100 votes for the pay-to-stay amendment now rejected by the other place. Our amendment would have reduced by half the penalty incurred by council tenants with household incomes of more than £31,000 per annum, or more than £40,000 in London, as a surcharge on their council rent. This levy—this rental hike—for two adults each earning £20,000 in, say, Brighton, would have been set at 20p in the pound for every pound over the £31,000 threshold. It would have meant an extra £2,000 per annum or £40 extra per week for a couple who are not terribly well paid.

The amendment that we passed would have halved this rental surcharge so that the family in Brighton, who barely get the national living wage, would pay an extra £20 per week not £40 per week. This is still a mighty increase, but it is half as much as the Government seemed determined to extract from people who, by definition, are hard working. We might all agree that those like Bob Crow, who earn way over £100,000 per year, could contribute significantly more for a council home. But I really wonder what we would be achieving by seriously penalising those on a third of his income.

The Chancellor has explained that the extra rent raised by councils will go not to the local authority, not towards meeting housing needs, but to the Exchequer, exclusively to reduce the deficit. By my rough calculations, it would take over 100 years for the receipts from the rental surcharge to reduce the nation’s deficit by 0.1%. It does not seem worth upsetting the lives of some 350,000 council tenants to make an infinitesimally modest reduction in the deficit. Of course, extensive administrative costs will be involved in assessing tens of thousands of tenants’ incomes and then collecting the rental surcharge. These costs will absorb a major part of the funds raised from the tenants.

We are where we are: the Government did not accept your Lordships amendment to reduce by half the extra burden on these hard-working council tenants, who, frankly, deserve our respect, not a financial penalty. As a compromise I have tabled in lieu the amendment before us, which proposes retaining the halving of the penalty—10p in the pound, not 20p—but just for those in the band of £10,000 above the threshold: that is, those earning from £31,000 up to £40,000, or in London from £40,000 up to £50,000. However, as of this afternoon the Secretary of State has proved willing to change the arrangements, as the Minister has explained. This is a helpful intervention. At this stage of the Bill, in the middle of ping-pong and with a substantial government majority in the other place voting against our amendments last night, I am realistic enough to know that if the Government offer any concessions, they should be accepted. They have offered a double-headed compromise of a rental surcharge of 15p in the pound for everyone with household earnings over the threshold, with no limit, and an annual uprating of the £31,000 threshold—£41,000 in London—that is in line with the appropriate index, CPI. Therefore, we have a levy of 15p in the pound, which is not as helpful as 10p but better than 20p, plus helpful indexation of the threshold. Of course, this pay-to-stay rental surcharge remains an entirely unwelcome imposition on hard-working council tenants, and I do not like it one bit. However, we have come a long way from the original proposal whereby any household over the threshold would immediately have had to pay a full market rent, meaning a ridiculously penal increase of £100 a week, sometimes £200. We are in a better place today.

On the basis of the progress that has been made, for which I am indeed grateful to Ministers, I shall not move this amendment.

[Lord Kerslake]

My Lords, I will speak briefly. I welcome the movement by the Minister on this issue, and there has been significant movement during the Bill’s passage through this House, which is entirely to be accepted gratefully. However, I remain fundamentally concerned about the pay-to-stay policy, which is effectively a form of tax collection but done by people who are not tax collectors. The income comes back to the Chancellor and is not reinvested in housing.

It is important to be clear that that the people in question are not on high incomes. Given where the thresholds are, we are talking, in London, about people such as teaching assistants and caretakers, and household incomes, not individual incomes. We will catch a lot of ordinary people on fairly ordinary incomes through this change. That is why I moved the amendment—to get the threshold up—and why I would have supported the amendment to keep the taper at 10p in the pound for those at the lower rate. It is important to be aware that the bulk of the people who will be caught by pay to stay are in the £10,000 bracket. Those who earn over £60,000 number fewer than 40,000.

Therefore, through this measure we are effectively taxing households on slightly higher incomes. I believe strongly that it will be very difficult to implement and that it will cost more than it raises in income in many places. That said, I want to finish on a positive note: there has been movement, so I entirely support my noble friend Lord Best’s decision not to move his amendment.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Debate between Lord Best and Lord Kerslake

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerslake]

The proposal with regard to the exemption and flexibility for the regulator in those difficult circumstances is entirely welcome. Although it does not go as far as I sought, it is a very helpful move indeed, so I thank the Minister.

[Lord Best]

My Lords, this has been an excellent debate. Many thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, my noble friends Lord Listowel and Lord Kerslake—I was pleased to hear him say that he welcomed the announcement by the Minister—and the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, who may have been satisfied to some extent on the process. We should have a chance to debate these things in the future. I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, who told us about the work of Framework, a typical housing association, which is feeling very nervous and which, I hope we are pretty well fully reassured, will not go out of business as a result of these measures—that will just not happen. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham, for championing the cause of the almshouses, the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, for joining in very helpfully; and the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick. She continues to feel fearful but I hope that she gained the distinct impression that it would be a bad idea to hold back on the basis of thinking, “The Government will probably let us down; the rents won’t meet what is required”.

For some years I chaired one of the housing associations—Hanover, which runs the most extra care housing schemes in the country. I thought to myself, “Knowing what I know, would I say to my board that it is too risky to go ahead with an extra care scheme in these circumstances, because by 2018 we may find that there is no money on the table and we will go out of business?”. I would say from the chair, “Let’s go for it. I don’t believe we’re going to be put out of business”, but I fully accept that some of my fellow board members might take a more cautious view. That is the anxiety that remains until the Minister is able to come up with something that has a watertight guarantee. However, his words tonight were as reassuring as we could expect them to be.

I echo the Minister’s tribute to the many organisations that have beaten a path to his door. I am sure that they were much more influential than myself or anyone else in this House because they bring the real experience of the front line through to the ministerial office. I am delighted that he is deeply committed to engaging those same organisations in the process that now follows to find a permanent solution.

However, best of all, I am very pleased that the Minister has been able to announce that, while the review takes place and Ipsos MORI comes up with its research, with the providers being part of the process of finding a permanent solution, rents can be increased by CPI plus 1% in these schemes. That will keep the wolf from the door. I have pleasure in begging leave to withdraw the amendment.