Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Lord Deben and Lord Kerslake
Lord Kerslake
My Lords, I shall speak briefly to the amendment as the arguments have been well made by the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Cameron of Dillington. The key issue is the difficulty of implementation and potential sources of injustice to individuals who face sharp rent increases. To the extent that it is possible to phase in those rent increases, the impact on individuals is likely to be less. This is, indeed, consistent with the approach taken in the past when there have been movements of rent towards more comparable rents—the so-called convergence policy that worked across individual organisations. Therefore, it is applying the same principles to individuals in relation to their rent movements as are applied to organisations which have moved towards rent convergence. This is more consistent with the implied contract to the tenant, who took on the property at a given rent and had a reasonable expectation that their rent would not be subject to sharp movements as a consequence of government policy. That is why this is an amendment worthy of the Minister’s consideration.
Lord Deben
My Lords, I support the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington. The rural situation is different from the urban situation and it demands a degree of care to put this proposal into operation. I am not sure the noble Lord’s proposal is the right answer but the question is one that has properly to be asked. Again, it emphasises the problem we have when we do not know the regulations or the details, because the Government may well have thought about all these things and we are going to have regulations and details that will cover it. However, until we have those it is very difficult not to talk about all the possible computations that may arise. There is no other way we can do it.
One of the difficulties of employment in rural areas is simply that it is extremely volatile and families can have very different incomes at different times. It is difficult for families to think other than that. Of course, the reason they are living together in one of these houses is that there is no alternative. In rural areas the moment that a house becomes available, it is sold at a price that cannot be reached by these people. I make the point to my noble friend that the number of second homes in the village of Walberswick in my former constituency has now risen to four in ten. Any house for sale is sold to somebody from outside. That is why homes provided by the local authority or others are so important in the rural economy. That is why so many families have a number of wage earners within the family living in the same house. However, their wages are not easily computed one year to another. If we have a system that does not take that into account, then it will bear more unfairly on rural areas than elsewhere.
Any of us who have represented or live in rural areas recognise it is very often true that as a nation we do not take rural areas as seriously as we ought because they do not have the megaphone of the city, or the metropolitan voice—most journalists come from towns. I beg again that the Government take this situation seriously and arrange for an answer—it may not be this one—that recognises the volatility in rural wages.