Lord Cameron of Dillington
Main Page: Lord Cameron of Dillington (Crossbench - Life peer)Housing and Planning Bill
Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts
The Lord Bishop of Coventry
My Lords, I apologise for not engaging with the Bill at an earlier stage. Other colleagues from this Bench who have engaged with it are unable to be here today. I declare an interest: I have five children, and I worry very much about how they will own their own properties. Two have already managed to; the other three will need to work on it. It will be a little bit difficult for them. They will not have a great deal from me to help them, as they come from a clergy family. That is my second declaration of interest. Living on a clergy stipend for most of my adult life and living in clergy accommodation means that I have got to know the letting world reasonably well as a way of trying to make provision for my future and my family’s future when I am evicted from my house at some point.
I very much commend the Government for the whole initiative of trying to help people on to the housing market. As a parent, I appreciate that enormously. A good deal of me is attracted to this proposal. I can see it being very helpful for my third son, who is just getting to that point. It could be extremely beneficial to him, but I worry about how it would leave my fourth and fifth children when they are in that position.
I simply wanted to say that there seems to be a moral principle to secure the permanent benefit of public funding in this way for as long as possible and to minimise the potential for this scheme to be used unduly for investment purposes.
Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)
My Lords, I support Amendment 1. For the purposes of Report, I declare my interests as a farmer and landowner, as a rural landlord of domestic property, and as the ultimate landowner of an exception site leased to Hastoe Housing Association.
I wish to make only one point—to re-emphasise what others have hinted at. We are all aware of the shortage of affordable housing in our country. We are also aware that this is not a short-term problem. I expect that most of us will have received the rather bleak report from the National Federation of Property Professionals, predicting that property prices and rents will continue to rise until at least 2025 because of the shortage of housing, particularly affordable housing. Meanwhile, the Government have promised to build 200,000 new starter homes by 2020. This will be the main plank in their policy to deal with the severe shortage of affordable housing. Let us say that it is 50,000 starter homes a year, although I expect that it is even more than that by now. The transience—that is the key word—of these starter homes, which causes them to fall out of the affordable sector currently after only five years, maybe eight, means that we will have to go on building 50,000 starter homes a year for ever.
We are trying to fill the bath with the plug taken out. Amendment 1 is an effort to put the plug back in. Therefore, I strongly support it.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, before I begin, I note that those of us discussing the housing Bill on the last day before recess were the last ones out of this place, and we are the first ones back in to discuss it today. I am very glad to see the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, back, as well as the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell—who is much chirpier than she was. I apologise for anything that the housing Bill took out of noble Lords.
Before I turn—or, in some cases, return—to the amendments we are discussing today, noble Lords will have seen that over the recess I wrote giving further detail on how the Government have reflected on the debate so far, and saying that we will amend the Bill as a result. It is worth considering where we have come from. For example, to reflect noble Lords’ concerns about starter homes we introduced a requirement to consult when changing price caps, and have now introduced flexibility on the upper age limit so that more couples and injured service personnel can benefit. Many noble Lords—for example, the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Shipley—were also concerned about parents exploiting starter homes for their children. Today, I will move an amendment to address that.
The consultation document we published in March—referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham—has been directly influenced by your Lordships’ House, as have amendments I will move later when we discuss banning orders. Those amendments were inspired by contributions from the noble Lords, Lord Beecham and Lord Campbell-Savours. We are due to debate electrical safety, and I look forward to discussing with the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter—who is not yet in her place—and the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, the steps we can take to make homes as safe as they can be. The amendment I will move later is a direct response to the points raised through your Lordships’ House.
I will continue to reflect as we turn to later parts of the Bill. I know, for example, that there is a lot of concern that noble Lords would not have the opportunity to see how we plan to implement the Bill’s clauses on social rents. I will write this week giving that further detail, so that noble Lords can approach next week’s debate as informed as they can possibly be.
I said before the recess that I trust that, as we discuss this Bill on Report, we can move closer on a number of matters about which we will all agree. I do not think there has ever been any dispute over the need to increase the number of homes built to meet this housing crisis. There is the need to ensure that housing markets and the planning system that enables their growth work as well as they can. I hope that a number of our debates will not divide us, and that we will take to Third Reading a Bill that is practical and improved as a result of the expertise that noble Lords have shown throughout.
Turning to Amendments 1 and 5, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Beecham and Lord Best, for Amendment 1, which would require the repayment of the 20% discount reduced by 1% for each year of occupation for a period of 20 years. I also thank the noble Lords, Lord Shipley, Lord Beecham and Lord Kennedy, for their Amendment 5, which would require the minimum 20% discount on a starter home to be retained permanently with the property. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, asked for clarification on when the discount might be larger. That would be in the situation where local authorities, for example, negotiated a larger discount. I think it was my noble friend Lord Porter who pointed out how he had done that in Lincolnshire. It is difficult to speculate at this point where this might be done with starter homes. The point is that local authorities can and do negotiate larger discounts.
I made clear in Committee that we want to ensure that starter homes are sold to those genuinely committed to living in an area and not to those who would simply wish to quickly sell to secure financial gain. However, we also want to support mobility. Many noble Lords expressed concerns about the proposed five-year restriction that would enable the owner to sell at full market value after five years of occupation. I listened carefully to the quite extensive debate in Committee and to the views of the sector. As a result, we are seeking views in our consultation on whether a tapered approach should be introduced. This would enable owners of starter homes to sell at an increasing proportion of market value over time, stepping up to 100% after a maximum of eight years. We consider that restrictions beyond eight years would unreasonably limit young people’s ability to move on. That is a similar point to the one made by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, on the growing family, although I think that we made them for slightly different reasons. We do not want these houses to be restricted in perpetuity as we think that that would make it more difficult for the first-time buyer to move to a new home as their family needs grow and their circumstances change. Starter homes are for young first-time buyers whose needs will change. If you only ever own a proportion of the property, the step to full ownership is a much, much greater challenge. We want to support mobility, not hinder it.
“( ) The regulations shall confer discretion on an English planning authority to exclude starter homes on rural exception sites.( ) Rural exception sites are—(a) small sites in, or adjoining, rural settlements of fewer than 3,000 people;(b) sites which would not normally be used for housing;(c) sites which seek to accommodate households who are either current residents or who have an existing family or employment connection with the community where the development is occurring.”
Lord Cameron of Dillington
My Lords, I regret that during the Recess I failed to meet the DCLG ministerial team to discuss this and other rural amendments. The fault lies mostly with me because I was away in Rwanda for a lot of the time with a parliamentary group looking at agriculture. There was a certain amount of confusion over ministerial diaries early on as well. This morning I had meetings in Cornwall and was not here till late but my noble friend Lord Best has met the ministerial team, including the Secretary of State and others, and I gather there is some good news to report on this amendment, which makes the most persuasive speech that I had prepared rather redundant. I was going to talk about the importance of exception sites to rural areas and the unanimity we had in Committee, and about communities, public space and so on, but, as I say, all that is redundant.
I think one of my points is still worth making on the basis that I have not yet seen the detail of the Government’s acceptance of this amendment. In the debate we had in Committee, the two most frequent words we heard were “in perpetuity”. Landowners and farmers want to give the land to their community in perpetuity. Villagers want these houses to be for village families in perpetuity. In my experience, even the young families who occupy the houses want to see their houses serve the village in perpetuity, as though they were passing on the baton in a relay race to keep their village alive. The undeniable fact is that most people—everybody, actually—in the Committee debate said that the problem with these transient starter homes was that they were not in perpetuity, although to some extent the vote on Amendment 1 may have changed that slightly. The lack of perpetuity is a serious problem for the trust that is needed to help the exception site movement keep going as strongly into the future as it has in the past.
I say “movement” because in a way that is what it is. Everyone involved needs to sign up to its objectives and aspirations for it to continue to serve rural communities so well into the future. Everyone has to know exactly where they stand. The very fact that we were talking about starter homes on exception sites is enough to undermine that trust. However the Government decide to backpedal from their currently damaging position, it is most important that the amendment is in the Bill. Statements made on the Floor of the House do not persuade parish councils or landowners because they have to trust what is going on. Pleas to wait until consultations are completed hold no water. Even government promises of regulation do not really promote the necessary trust. We have to have a firm, no-nonsense commitment in the Bill because that is the only way we will be able to restore the trust needed to ensure that proper exception sites continue to provide the vast majority of the incredibly important affordable housing in our small but important rural villages.
Having said that, I will leave it to the Minister to give us what I understand is the good news. I echo the remarks made by my noble friend Lord Best and thank the Minister for her constant courtesy and unflagging attention to the arguments and discussions we have had on the Bill. In her place, I would never have had the energy to keep going endlessly for the very long days we had, and I certainly would not have had the patience. I thank her very much for her conscientious dedication and tolerance, and particularly her attention to this amendment and her acceptance of it. I beg to move.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I thank noble Lords, particularly the noble Lords, Lord Cameron and Lord Best, for the persuasive arguments they put forward in Committee. We would not want to create some of the effects they talked about, such as benevolent landowners putting forward sites that are then slapped with a starter home policy. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, to allow me to take this issue away and return to it at Third Reading. I hope that that will help him and other noble Lords who plan to speak on this amendment.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville
I, too, thank the noble Lords, Lord Cameron and Lord Best, for having negotiated what looks like an agreement we can all sign up to, but I will be looking forward to the detail at Third Reading. I gave a long and detailed speech in Committee on this subject. Your Lordships will be pleased to know that I am not going to do the same today, but I still feel very passionately about rural exception sites and protecting rural communities, so I will be looking closely at what comes forward at Third Reading.
Lord Cameron of Dillington
I thank noble Lords for their support and congratulations, if that is the right word. I, too, look forward to the detail and possibly to having future discussions with the Minister but in the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.