Housebuilders

Lord Horam Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Horam (Con)]

My Lords, it is indeed shocking that three directors of Persimmon should trouser £250 million in bonuses and salaries in one year. I wonder what they will do with all that money—buy a bigger house? It should also not go without mention that Persimmon—according to the information that I have from people who know a great deal more about the housing it provides than I do—is among the worst in scrimping and scraping and not delivering on the promises it makes, and that it provides quite a lot of poor-quality housing. As has been rightly said, that is simply a symptom—a pimple, if you like, on the bad face of a broken housing market. As my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral said in his earlier remarks, the real issue is affordability. The fact is that the ratio between what a person has to pay for a house and their earnings has doubled in the last two decades. That is the real heart of the problem.

The comprehensive speech of the noble Lord, Lord Best, which we all admired, is also brilliantly timed, because this week we have a newly titled department. I realise that a new title is merely a small gesture but it indicates that the Prime Minister, who has already said that housing is the number one priority, takes it seriously. We have a new Housing Minister, who I profoundly hope will last rather longer than the previous two Housing Ministers, who lasted about six months in each case. I hope he will last the full length of this Parliament, however long that may be. We also have a Secretary of State who says all the right things. But again, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, said in his remarks, it is not enough to do only that. All of us have been saying the right things in these debates but we and the Government have actually to deliver well over the next four years that we hope this Parliament will last.

Perhaps I may single out just a couple of things that should be done. I agree that housing associations are now the main provider of social housing and that a huge effort therefore has to go into helping them provide more. I agree with my noble friend Lord True’s remarks about that, and they have not done as well as I had hoped they would. I was once chairman of a housing association and I place great faith in them. They have done reasonably well but, none the less, they could do a lot better. I would make an analogy with Joe Root, the test cricket captain who makes very attractive 50s, 60s and 70s when what we need is centuries—and good centuries, and double centuries from time to time. They need to step up their game in the way that he needs to do if he is to make a major contribution to retaining some future Ashes.

Secondly, as Shelter has repeatedly pointed out in some excellent pamphlets, land is at the heart of this. If land is sold at the highest price, it will inevitably be followed by low quality and compression further down the chain. I therefore think we should stop selling public land for the highest price. That is something that the Government should look into.

As we all know, none of this is rocket science—it is common sense. It has been done in other countries such as Germany and France, and it was done in this country when Harold Macmillan was Minister of Housing. I pray, for young people in particular, that we do more of it in the next four years.