Queen’s Speech

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, a lot of the contributions to these debates we hold on the Queen’s Speech involve noble Lords getting important issues off their chests. I am afraid that my contribution today is no exception. But, unusually, I want to talk about something that was actually in the gracious Speech rather than something that I feel should have been in it. I might add that when occasionally I am asked by outsiders why we independent Peers are called Cross-Benchers, I sometimes flippantly remark that it is because sometimes we get very cross. I warn your Lordships that this is one of those occasions.

The issue that I am cross about is the right to buy for housing association tenants. I do not intend to condemn the panic that induced this absurd attack from a Conservative Government on the property rights of some of the most needed and respected charities in this country; nor do I intend to go into detail about why it is so wrong to remove from the sector in perpetuity the main plank of affordable housing in this country, or why it is so wrong to undermine the activities of the people who founded these housing associations—quite often local people who saw a need not being properly addressed by government and set about trying to do something about it, only to find that now the Government, in a panicked electioneering gambit, have chosen to pull the rug from under their feet. Others have spoken about that in these debates, such as the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, in his excellent maiden speech, the noble Lord, Lord Best, immediately following him, and many others. Therefore, today I wish only to say—to put down a marker, as it were—that while this policy could perhaps be only mildly harmful, although that may be putting it mildly, to urban housing provision, it will have a cataclysmic effect if it is allowed to run rampant in rural areas.

The provision of affordable housing is most critical in rural communities. The affordability gap—the difference between wages and house prices—is worse in the countryside than the towns. Any rural property on the open market is almost always snapped up by outsiders with money and there are almost no homes available for those people we value and on whom rural communities often depend: those whose families have lived there for generations; those who have served on parish councils, hall committees or PCCs; or those who work in local hospitals, social services, shops or the many manufacturing businesses on which the rural economy depends. There will be little likelihood of these families surviving in their villages without some form of housing association housing, and you have to ask how far they will have to go to find alternative affordable housing. It will be very hard for housing associations now to justify building more homes that they know will be unlikely to remain in their ownership for long.

What of the farmers and landowners who gave away their land to housing associations for a peppercorn to make their own contribution to solving one of the greatest problems faced by rural communities today—namely, the lack of affordable housing? Will their generosity be trampled on? Will they ever trust a Tory Government again? What about the communities themselves? Will they continue to support exception sites when their designated purpose of providing affordable homes for locals in perpetuity is overridden by government?

This policy needs rural-proofing. Rural England lost 91,000 affordable homes in the last right-to-buy campaign in the 1980s and rural affordable housing has never managed to replace anything like those numbers since. It was—and remains—a disaster for rural communities so, for the sake of our rural villages, this right to buy must never ever apply to any house, under any circumstances, in communities of under 3,000 people. I may be maligning the Government. Maybe there are already plans afoot to ensure that rural communities do not suffer. Maybe there are other plans afoot to ensure that the rural affordable housing sector grows to meet the desperate need. But until I am reassured, I beg to remain, yours sincerely, a very cross Bencher.