King’s Speech

Lord Mawson Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mawson (CB)]

My Lords, I too begin by adding my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. I wish them well in their new roles.

There is something very reassuring and sensible about the British constitution. At the end of a Parliament, it sweeps away everything before it; all the old baggage is gone and we are all given a fresh start, and can all begin again. I wish this new Government well as they take on some very serious challenges; they have made a good start. However, the dysfunctional machinery of the state, which prevents growth and which was there before the election, has not been magically swept away. It remains stubbornly in place, and its track record of mediocrity and poor delivery remains. Instead of supporting challenged communities, it hampers them, so often stifling creativity and innovation rather than encouraging it. Treacle-like processes and impenetrable bureaucratic systems that wrap themselves around every move that the practitioner makes remain defiantly in place. They test the patience of all of us who are involved in the practical delivery of housing and the building of new communities on the ground across this country.

Many of us have spent our lives unravelling the housing disasters of the 1960s and 1970s, which continue to adversely impact so many poorer people’s lives today. We must now join the dots at a local level between housing, the environment, education and health. Yes, we need to build more houses, but, even more importantly, we need to create more joined-up, aspirational cultures at place, which take seriously the residents who live there. We need to see residents as agents of change—practitioners, not consultees to be consulted to death. We need to create mixed entrepreneurial communities and move on from outdated last-century debates about public versus private. It is not about building just houses; it is about building integrated communities.

Those of us who are building businesses and organisations that operate nationally know that the way into these often apparently impenetrable issues is to focus on the micro and not the macro. Understand what is happening in one place or one street in granular detail, and the disconnects that are going on there, and you will start to understand every challenged community across this country and the machinery that is often failing them, missing real talent and preventing growth.

The problem with the siloed headings for the next few days of debate on the humble Address is that, in the real world, housing, the environment, healthcare, education et cetera do not sit neatly in these tidy, separate silos; they are profoundly connected. Those of us who have been responsible for building modern integrated primary healthcare facilities—and, in our case, a very successful housing association—know from practical experience how connected these worlds are.

All the data is telling us that the future of the health service has to be about getting upstream into the social determinants of health. The biggest influences on people’s health outcomes are social, not doctors. My colleagues and I have seen this in granular detail, over the last 40 years, through our work in east London housing estates. The real health issues are to do with: “Do I have a decent home to live in with my family?”, “Do I have a job?”, “Is the school any good?”, “Are the people I mix with aspirational?”, “Is the environment quality encouraging a thriving culture or are we investing in more poor-quality housing estates, defined by dependency cultures, where the grass is not cut and rubbish and graffiti are everywhere?” Over the last 40 years, my colleagues and I have focused on building practical working models, with local residents, of what this more joined-up world can look like in practice, with the data nowadays to prove it. I declare my interests.

The results and data are clear to see, but the Government’s Regulator of Social Housing and other agencies, with all their treacle-like processes, are still undermining this work. Their unwillingness to innovate and join up our systems and processes on the ground, at place, must now be firmly grasped. Wes Streeting will not be able to help us get upstream into the prevention agenda if we do not do this. I welcome the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, who is clearly having a similar problem with another regulator.

This Government are right to focus on growth, but growth begins in local communities, at place. I would be very happy to show the Minister a practical example of what success looks like in this regard, in what was a formerly failing street in Tower Hamlets. I was asked by then CEO of Tower Hamlets Council, Christine Gilbert, to intervene following a murder and considerable violence. We now have some incredible data. We did this by bringing all the players together and creating a 360-degrees culture. We joined the dots, at the top, middle and front line, between the local authority, the NHS and the housing association. We breathed life and energy into a failing culture. We brought it together and focused on people and relationships. I am happy to show the Minister what this looks like on the ground, but please could they bring with them their health, education, business and environment colleagues? Health, housing and the environment are connected. They are everybody’s business.

Let us be realistic about what we think the state can and cannot achieve. Let us strengthen the hand of practitioners with a track record of delivery on the ground. Let us have a simple policy: back success wherever you see it. Then we will grow the economy. The clues as to how you do this, I suggest, are in the micro—at place—not in the macro. We need to embrace a learning-by-doing culture, and we need to back people who are practical and who get things done.