Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Lansley and Lord Campbell-Savours

Wednesday 13th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

I follow that point with a very brief intervention. Does it mean that a local authority will be told by the Government what percentage of its stock should be sold off—in other words, that there will be a target cap beyond which there is no expectation, but below which the local authority will be allowed to sell up to that cap? In other words, Westminster might be told that 60% of its stock is the cap, Camden might be told 50%, or Cambridge 20%. Is that how this will work in practice?

[Lord Lansley]

My Lords, in making a brief contribution, I remind the House of my interest as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. In that context I will refer specifically to Cambridge. There was a concern in Cambridge that, if there was to be a definition of “high value” by means of comparison across the country as a whole, a very high proportion of the properties in Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire in particular would be likely to be treated as “high value”. I very much welcome the amendments that my noble friend the Minister has tabled in this group. They will enable the calculations to be undertaken and the agreement to be reached for a determination in each authority, taking account of all individual circumstances.

Of course, the measure is not mechanistic. Trying to argue that “higher” becomes mechanistic is simply trying to introduce rigidity where that is not necessary. The provision as amended would allow a determination to be made in relation to each authority, specific categories of housing or different comparators. It is deliberately flexible. I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Foster, on all the questions that he said need to be answered in order to proceed. But the point is that if one began to answer all those questions, one would take away from the Government and local authorities, working together, any flexibility to adapt to individual circumstances. In doing so, his proposed Amendment 61A—I cannot find it on the Marshalled List but I interpret from his remarks that it would leave out Clause 67—would take away the opportunity to realise value from the stock of higher-value housing and unlock new build for affordable housing in local authorities, support the right to buy and, by extension through the right to buy in housing associations, offer the additional opportunities for them to undertake new building.

A Select Committee in another place might well think that everything the Government want to do must be funded out of some taxpayer subsidy but the reality is, as we all know, that there is no such magic money tree that we can continue to shake to deliver all the objectives we want. I entirely agree with my noble friend Lord Deben that we want to build more houses. Frankly, realising value out of the higher-value housing stock that becomes vacant in local authorities is precisely the mechanism for this. That realised value can then be deployed with a multiplier effect to enable local authorities and housing associations, as a result, to build more houses. I thoroughly support that.

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Lansley and Lord Campbell-Savours

Thursday 10th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley]

I am learning the advantages of being in your Lordships’ House as opposed to another place. This is clearly one of them.

I am prompted not least by the introduction to the debate of the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. I can well understand his point of view about the absence of detail that we hope to see in regulations. I share the collective view across the House that we would like to see those regulations in order to understand how the architecture of the Bill will be shaped before we come to the decisions that we need to make on Report. But the absence of those regulations and that architecture affords an opportunity for the noble Lord to ask a lot of questions. Indeed, the amendments, in so far as they probe these issues, simply relate to a sub-set of the issues that potentially need to be covered in the regulations.

My personal view is that none of the amendments in this group would help us in any way because we need to see the whole shape of the regulations in order to understand this clause. From the Government’s point of view, there is considerable advantage in the flexibility provided by regulation in this area, rather than having too much rigidity in the system. I say that because I am prompted by what the noble Lord said: that this was about electoral opportunism rather than building houses. Actually, this is electorally popular. I have no doubt about that. The right to buy was popular in its time and is popular now, and the right to buy for housing association tenants will prove popular. However, the issue is about building houses.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

There are repeated references to right to buy. There is no right to buy because housing associations can refuse to sell. There is no right to buy at all.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton (Lab)]

The noble Lord said that the right to buy was popular in its time. He is right that it was popular at the moment it was introduced and probably for a short while thereafter. But now, if you go to the areas that I know in Luton, where all the estates have been pretty much sold off, mothers and fathers are worried about their children and grandchildren being able to access decent accommodation. That gives a different view as to how popular or right that policy was.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lansley]

I am grateful for that because I had not realised it until I listened to the Bill being discussed earlier today. The answer is that, insofar as the local authority seeks to achieve not just replacement new homes for the dwellings that are sold but to do more, the consequence in financial terms has to be borne by the Government, so the Government are a partner in this proposal. It does not automatically follow, as one of the amendments in this group implies, that the amount of money that is derived from local authorities through the payments that are required under Clause 67 has to correspond with the amount of money that is provided to housing associations under the right-to-buy discount. If there is a difference, and in particular if there is a shortfall, it is down to the Government to cover it. Frankly, I think that the Government, through agreements reached with local authorities, should have the flexibility to create such a shortfall and to fund it differently.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, referred to the need to build more homes. There is a way of building more homes that is much easier than all these provisions in the Bill, and that is simply to reduce the price of land. Certainly outside London, it is the cost of land that is driving up the cost of housing and causing the problems we are having to deal with today. Only a few weeks ago I read some statistics about land prices in the Home Counties. An acre of agricultural land can be bought for around £12,000, but with the stroke of a pen—if I may simplify the process—it can be worth between £2 million and £4 million. That is why people cannot afford to buy houses in the United Kingdom but they can afford them abroad. We are simply paying too much for the land that we use.

I wish to support the thrust of these amendments, in particular Amendment 65, tabled by my two noble friends on the Front Bench. As I understand it, they would restrict the amount of property treated as high value, which may have the effect of reducing the levy and thereby the pressure on a local authority to sell stock to fund housing association right-to-buy discount purchases. My case is simple: councils need to defend their public sector housing stock and I shall argue why that stock should be defended against speculative buying.

Just to clarify the position, the Bill states:

“The Secretary of State must by regulations define ‘high value’ for the purposes of this Chapter”,

to which Amendment 65 would add,

“and this definition may not apply to more than 10% of the total authority properties in the local housing authority area”.

These debates have been dominated by some very experienced people, and I do not profess to be one of them. Many leaders of local authorities have taken part, as well as leaders in the housing association movement, so the quality of the debate has been very high. Unfortunately, my experience of dealing with a local authority ended 40 years ago, so obviously I have a layman’s and observer’s knowledge of these matters. My comments are based on some anecdotes and conversations I have had with local authority councillors and leaders who are directly involved in this area. Many of the questions I will put are being asked by the public, particularly where they harbour great concerns about the Bill’s provisions.