Lord Horam
Main Page: Lord Horam (Conservative - Life peer)Housing and Planning Bill
Lord Horam Excerpts
Lord Horam (Con)
My Lords, it is very good to hear from the victor of 1983, if I may call the noble Lord that. It is also good to hear from my noble friend Lady Redfern, who speaks with the authority of a local authority leader.
I was rather disappointed by the rather gloomy tone taken by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, earlier in the debate. Indeed, the noble Lord was uncharacteristically doom-laden. I know that the spirits of everyone who comes from Newcastle are entirely determined by the results of Newcastle United over the weekend, so from that point of view I can well understand his excessive gloom. As a supporter of Manchester United, I feel for him. What also worried me was a tone in his remarks which indicated so little trust in housing associations. I was there at the beginning of housing associations back in the 1970s, when I was chairman of a housing association called Circle 33, which is now part of the Circle Housing Group—I have nothing to declare, because I was directly involved in it a long time ago. However, I remember vividly the social concern which drove housing associations. Indeed, their critique was very much to deal with tenants and people who needed affordable housing at reasonable rates in a different and better way than local authorities dealt with them. Very often in Islington, where Circle 33 had its main operations, the local authority just turfed people out of areas and shoved them into quite different parts of London or the borough without any nem con.
Lord Beecham
Perhaps the noble Lord would take it from me that it is not housing associations that I do not trust but the Government.
Lord Horam
I am sorry, but from the noble Lord’s remarks I felt that he showed a lack of trust in the motivation of housing associations. All the things he had down in his long list, which was almost Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all—or perhaps the proverbial kitchen sink, which is rather more appropriate in the circumstances—would almost inevitably be taken into account by housing associations given the social concern they have at their call. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Best, pointed out that Hastoe, for example, has already ruled out having the right to buy in rural areas because it operates in rural areas. I understand these concerns—clearly, they are very real. For example, we understand the problems associated with supported housing units, co-operative housing, rural settlements and regeneration schemes in large urban areas. These are all real issues, which the House is absolutely right to draw to the Government’s attention. However, they are also absolutely the things that housing associations themselves are concerned with. Indeed, I cannot imagine a housing association which would not take them into account when deciding whether the right to buy was appropriate in particular circumstances. Therefore although I understand the concerns expressed by the Labour Party and its spokesman today, and the Liberal Democrats, they have been excessively gloomy on this.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Is the noble Lord then suggesting that a housing association would have the right to say, “You can’t buy that but you can buy that”? In other words, would it be able to be selective within the policy?
Lord Horam
Indeed, the right to buy is at the behest of the housing association. It can decide whether a house is up for sale or not. If that particular house is not appropriate for sale it can of course offer the tenant another house, and there is the question of a portable right to buy somewhere inside or outside the public sector. Therefore all of that is possible, and I am sure that a sensitive housing association, after having a proper consultation with its tenants and so forth, will do the right thing in the end. It may make mistakes along the line but it has the full power and flexibility to do that, and long may it be so.
I will explode another issue which has come up, which the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, mentioned—that housing associations and others are not replacing houses on a one-for-one basis. Historically, she is correct—that is undoubtedly the case. The numbers have been very low; I think the figure is that one out of every 10 has been replaced by a new home. However, since the new right-to-buy provisions came in, it is more or less one for one. That is the fact of the matter over the last two or three years. As the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, pointed out, we hope to do better. We hope that this will galvanise housing associations. The truth of the matter is that in the housing association world, while there are many dynamic and quite large housing associations—
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
I am sure that the situation has got a lot better but the figures I have are from 2013 and 2014, when the figure was eight to one, so there is still a long way to go. My problem with the financing is that it is not absolutely clear yet. We are at sea. We do not know what will happen vis-à-vis the financing, and to feel secure I want to know exactly what the formulae are—where the money is coming from, how it is coming, and so on—and we do not have that information at the moment.
Lord Horam
With respect, financing is a different issue, which we are not discussing on these amendments.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, I challenge the noble Lord on that. Clause 62 stand part is grouped with this, and that clause establishes the discount scheme.
Lord Horam
Yes, but that is a stand part debate; we are talking about amendments here. None the less, fundamentally, we are talking about the exceptions, the rural issues and all the rest of it, not about the financing of the right to buy—which comes up in later clauses which deal with how the whole issue is to be financed, not here.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Given that the debate on whether Clause 62 should stand part is, by consent, grouped with this group of amendments, and Clause 62 establishes the discount scheme for housing association tenants, it is perfectly appropriate in this debate to raise the issue of who pays as well as who gains.
Lord Horam
I am sure that the noble Baroness will raise the issue if she wishes to. I will certainly not stop her from giving one of her very eloquent speeches.
The point I wanted to make was that, historically—the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, is right—there has been a disproportion between the number of houses replaced and the number lost. However, that has changed in recent times and we are now getting one for one. As I was saying, the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, is right that this whole exercise is designed to galvanise housing associations into doing very much better. We know from the experience that we have had with housing associations that some are very good, some are very large and some are quite small and sleepy. Frankly, to some extent, there should be some merging in the housing association world, and there should certainly be a greater degree of activity than has sometimes been the case in the past. I look forward to that.
Finally, I agree with the point that the noble Lord, Lord Best, made, that there is a danger of overregulating in this area simply because of the “Office for National Statistics problem”, if I may put it like that, of it being part or not part of the public sector. I doubt very much whether any amendments of the kind that have been tabled here would be welcomed by the federation and housing associations, and I doubt that they would be appropriate. It would certainly not help them to get out of the Government’s clutches. The Government want them to leave their clutches and they want to get out of them, otherwise it will lead to all sorts of problems.
What I hope will happen is that, as a result of this debate, noble Lords’ concerns will be heard not only by the Government but by housing associations, and we will in effect be nudged—if I may put it like that, using the psychological term of the nudge factor—into recognising that these issues are of concern to people in both rural and urban areas, and I hope that housing associations will take them fully into account, as I expect they will. None the less, I believe that the Government are right to proceed down the path that they are following.
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor
My Lords, I draw noble Lords’ attention to my list of interests but I declare a couple in particular. One is that I am president of the National Association of Local Councils, which has a particular interest in rural communities. The second is a past but recent interest in that I was chair of the National Housing Federation for six years until September, therefore covering the period during which the voluntary agreement was negotiated with the Government.
I particularly associate myself with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, and especially with those of the noble Lord, Lord Best, about some of the background to this issue. I was disappointed when the Conservative Party put forward the right-to-buy policy in the run-up to the general election and was even more disappointed to see it feature in its manifesto. However, I have to accept that it featured in the manifesto and, inevitably, the policy will be delivered. My disappointment stems from the fact that, if the Government feel that they have those kinds of sums to spend—or, more accurately, are going to require local authorities to sell houses in order to have those funds to spend—there are better ways of investing the large sums involved than giving a one-off benefit to a particular tenant who, at a particular time, happens to be in a certain property. There are many others who cannot afford a home and who are not in that privileged position.
None the less, that was not the context in which the voluntary agreement was negotiated. It was negotiated in the context of a Government with that manifesto commitment and a clear intention to deliver it, and they would always be able to see it through the Commons with their majority. I do not think that this issue would divide Conservative Members of Parliament in principle but they might have concerns about elements of it, and it is a particular element that we need to address today.
I take the view of the noble Lord, Lord Best, that it is extremely important that this House always defends the principle that the charities that are housing associations —the great majority are charities—are independent organisations. There are many reasons for defending that principle of independence. It is extremely important to the organisations themselves. It bears on their history and on their ability to do what is right for their tenants and their communities. It has produced enormous diversity and, through that diversity, has allowed them to face many different challenges. The negotiations around the voluntary agreement were above all intended to preserve that principle of independence but they also achieved an important series of exceptions in principle. Those were acknowledged and therefore there was no question that housing associations would be able to make decisions about whether, in particular circumstances, a right to buy was appropriate.
The portable discount is an important element of that. If tenants in general have a right to buy and the discretion to refuse is with the housing association, it seems to me that that discretion cannot lead to a particular tenant being disadvantaged compared with other tenants. Therefore, I accept the principle of the portable discount in the circumstances in which we are now.
However, I believe that the circumstances of rural communities and villages are exceptional. In 2008, I conducted a review of rural planning for the then Government. One thing that I particularly focused on was the delivery of affordable housing in small rural communities, and the importance of that was clear. Many of these communities had seen affordable housing stock lost—not just council houses which had been sold but old farmers’ cottages. In the past these cottages had often been rented out by landowners but they were gradually sold off at very high values to people who might be retiring to the community or might have a holiday home there. Unlike what had traditionally been the case with those more affordable properties, the people who bought them did not work on the farms or in the school, the shop, the pub or the local businesses. They did not have children who would go to the local school and they did not spend money in the shops and the pubs. Therefore, the risk was that these rural communities would become more and more unsustainable. They were becoming enclaves of wealth and retirement and enclaves of holiday homes, and they no longer supported a living, working countryside.
I observed that that had become of huge importance to many villages and parishes. We saw a transformation in the willingness to address the problem through the delivery of affordable housing. Increasingly, we saw communities support small numbers of affordable homes on exception sites, often with the support of the landowner, who would get little, or in some cases nothing, for the land. Places that traditionally had always opposed development were willing to support it for the delivery of affordable homes. In the Living Working Countryside report, I argued that we should extend that principle further and empower these communities to take those decisions through the parishes—in effect, neighbourhood planning. We have encouraged that and I very much welcome the fact that the last Government empowered communities in terms of neighbourhood planning.
I talked about empowering communities because it was evident that when people looked at their own issues, such as keeping the school open, how the children would be able to live and work within the community, and how the pub and the shop would be sustained, they recognised the central importance of people on lower incomes—working people within rural communities —being able to live within those communities. On sustainability grounds, frankly it makes no sense that these communities have become places for retirees—places where the land that gets farmed at all is farmed by people who live in the town because they cannot afford to live in the village. If care is provided at all, it is provided by people who live in the town because they cannot afford to live in the community. Therefore, that principle seemed to me on every ground absolutely fundamental, and local communities supported it.
However, above all local communities supported one principle, which was that the homes should be affordable for the community in perpetuity. They supported that because the landowner would not make land available if someone was going to make a profit from the sale of a house a few years later and it was going to become just another retirement home or just another done-up cottage to be used as a holiday residence. The community would not extend its support for that sort of planning through neighbourhood plans and, in the past, parish plans. I saw communities go through the process of finding the right site and welcoming the homes that were built, but it was always understood that these would be affordable in perpetuity.
Some of those homes were guaranteed to be affordable in perpetuity because the landowner was wise enough to put a clause in the contract on the sale of the land. In other cases, the landowner was far-sighted enough to include it as a planning condition. However, in many communities that was not the case. The houses were understood to be affordable in perpetuity, and it was understood that there was no right to buy. There was some discretion but a process with the regulator had to be gone through if the sale of a home was to take place. However, without the discount there was no great incentive for it, and these homes were not sold off.
We now have a different circumstance in two respects. First, the discount offer makes it infinitely more likely that tenants will come forward, if not with an eye to making money for themselves, very often with an eye to wanting to secure the home for their children—an understandable human response. Secondly, with the rent cuts and the falling away of grants, housing associations will inevitably be aware that if a sale takes place, it is unlikely that it will fund one-to-one replacements; it will actually fund a multiple of that. Therefore, if they sell one house, the truth is that it will, as a result of the rental streams and so on, allow multiple investments in new housing, potentially somewhere else.