Homes: Affordability

Lord Desai Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Desai (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for proposing this subject. We are having a discussion on the economy before we have a real discussion on the Budget next week, and that is always a good thing.

In a strange way, the economy is both the economy of the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, and that of the noble Lord, Lord Bird. On the one hand, the Chancellor told us yesterday that we have fantastic growth of 6.4%—we have not seen 6.4% growth for a long time—because of the V-shaped recovery from the pandemic, and we are in the up phase of the V. But a lot of things have not been fixed. That 6.4% figure is a blip and very soon it will go back to 1.3%, our normal rate of growth.

Of course we have borrowed—we have borrowed like there is no tomorrow—but we always borrow for the better-off, never for the poor. In 2008, when the markets collapsed, banks were queuing up for money, and we generously gave it to them. We bought banks, including bankrupt banks; they got into a lot of trouble and we spent money on them like there was no tomorrow. It is when it comes to spending for the poor that suddenly the Budget constraints bind.

I shall give your Lordships an interesting example. Yesterday, the Chancellor did something that was hailed as a progressive measure: he cut the universal credit taper from 63% to 55%. What is the taper? The taper means that if you are on universal credit and you get a part-time job, for every pound you earn, 63p is taken back. Suppose that income tax were 63% at the margin—you would hear howls of protest. The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, said that high taxes are back, but the highest taxes in this country are paid by the poor. They are not called taxes though; they are called nice things like tapers. So the taper has gone from 63% to 55% and we have to be grateful.

Now, there is all this money. Yesterday, everybody said that the Chancellor was spending money like there was no tomorrow, but he did not find money to restore the £20 which was taken away from universal credit holders. It would not cost very much—it would cost a fraction of the £37 billion that test and trace wasted, for which, so far, nobody has been fined and no money has been taken away from anybody. So we have £37 billion to be wasted on test and trace but we do not have any money for people on universal credit, who were given the £20 that had been suspended in George Osborne’s day. Even now, after many years, they gave it back for one year and the next year they took it away. Of course there is money—the Chancellor told us yesterday how much money there was. These are choices. It is not that we do not have money; we make choices about who gets the money. Decisions have been made. In every crisis that we have been through, regardless of whether it was a global or a local crisis—in 2008 or the pandemic—you can predict, without any analysis, who will suffer: women, the elderly, the homeless and children. It is not rocket science. That is the way we are.

It is very good of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, to focus on many of the crises, especially the housing crisis. I arrived here in 1965, having come from America, and I was renting. Everybody told me that renting was complete nonsense and that I should buy. Why? Because buying was subsidised; there was a tax concession for buying. So I bought, of course, and I benefited from that—I am not complaining. Mrs Thatcher sold the council estates, which is not a bad thing, because lots of poor people got property for the first time. But we stopped building new council houses and we have never restored that public building activity, which was a solid basis of post-war recovery. To the extent that the post-war welfare state was a success, it was because of not just the National Health Service and full employment but this solid base of building houses.

The Labour Party has not built houses throughout all the years of its existence—nobody has. People say that they want to build affordable houses, but why would anybody build unaffordable houses? Every house is affordable, depending on who is buying it. “Affordable housing” is a misnomer, because you know that nobody will be able to buy it.

The same thing applies to housing benefit, and the noble Baroness gave us a nice example of what is happening in her area. But housing benefit fixes the level about which all rents will be determined; not a single house will be rented at or below the level of housing benefit. There is an old law of economics: put in rent control and rented property disappears.

We have to say that, every year, we will build so many houses. The Government have said that they want to invest 3% of GDP every year, or whatever it is, which is a very nice thing. Yes, we want to have innovation, and research and development, but let us also have something in the social sector. Let us invest new money in housing, health or education, so that we make up for the rising demand, year after year. We do it now and then, but we do not do it with the sincerity with which we need to do it and given the demand.

I can tell your Lordships one thing: on tax levels, it is always economical to cut corporation tax. Why? Because we know who it benefits. But it is never beneficial to raise universal credit; it is a small amount of money. These are choices that we make. Whatever gloss we put on it, some of the problems are permanent.

The strange thing that happened during the pandemic —and I credit what the noble Baroness said—was that the whole economy suffered and got impoverished, which very rarely happens, through nobody’s fault. So the Government threw money at the whole economy through the furlough scheme, for example. The furlough scheme was for people who had good jobs; they were surprised to have no job and not used to being on universal credit, so they were told, “Don’t worry, we will cover you”. There was neither supply nor demand, so the Government had to spend money for both of them. It was very nicely done—but as soon as the pandemic has slowed down we are now back to the original stuff. We will again have homelessness and the distress of universal credit.

Think of the extra burden on national insurance, at 1.25%; it is not very much, but it is 25% above what it was. It is a 25% increase in the tax burden, but people do not put it like that. People do not say that a 63% taper rate is outrageous. We have tolerated a 67% or whatever taper rate all these years, despite people saying that universal credit aims to encourage people to work. How do you encourage people to work? With giving a 63% tax on every pound they make by getting employed. It is a strange world. It is a world for the top 10%, not for the bottom 10%. It has always been like that, and there is nothing we can do about it. I could go on like this for ever, but I think I have said enough.