Housing White Paper

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I agree very much with the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark. I welcome some of the proposals in the White Paper but it is not the ambitious, radical plan that is needed to solve the housing crisis. At the outset, I will ask the Minister a specific question. There is no mention in the Statement of the 1 million net new homes commitment by 2020 and there seems to be no new money for investing in the homes we need—yet the Government have an ambition in the Statement for between 225,000 and 275,000 homes a year to be built. Exactly how are the Government going to deliver those numbers?

I agree with the Government that our housing market is broken and I think we should be grateful for that admission. We should be grateful, too, for the admission that the country has not built enough houses and that millions of “ordinary working people”, in the words of the Secretary of State, are saving hard but will not have enough for a deposit for almost a quarter of a century and that, if they are in the private rented sector, they are handing half their combined income straight to the landlord, if they are a couple.

It is true, and the Government are right to say, that we need action on many fronts simultaneously—but I believe that they are not working on as many fronts as they should. There is an acceptance, which I welcome, that brownfield sites must be developed before green belt site. There is, rightly, an acknowledgement that the Government should not be in the business of land banking and that we must free up more public sector land more quickly. There is also an acknowledgement of the need to make it easier for small and medium-sized builders to compete, to encourage off-site factory builds, to support housing associations to build more and to “explore options” to encourage local authorities to build again, including through accelerated construction schemes on public sector land.

I am not clear why the Government are still “exploring options”, because they have had months to get on with permitting local government to start building again—I declare to the House my vice-presidency of the Local Government Association, which has campaigned for years on this matter. Local authorities can borrow prudentially under the prudential code against their housing assets or, quite separately, against their overall assets. I would like to hear from the Minister that there will be government support for local authorities to get building again.

The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, referred to the changes that the Government seem to be making to the Housing and Planning Act—which was, I hope it is now generally conceded, a very bad Act. We have seen U-turns. To cite just four: the Government introduced pay to stay for those in social homes and then abandoned it when they realised that it was impossible to manage, as they had been warned in your Lordships’ House; they extended the right to buy to housing associations and then made it voluntary; they refused to ban letting fees for renters because it was bad for the market and then changed their mind; and they cut funding for supported housing and then extended it for another year to think further about it. What other U-turns are on the way? What exactly is the position on the compulsory sale of high-value council homes?

Finally, the Government need to apply tests over the coming months to the White Paper. The tests I would apply are these: will it reduce homelessness? I remind the Minister of the Government’s own figures in December that almost 75,000 households are in temporary accommodation. Will it build more social homes for rent in the volume required? Will it make housing more affordable to those on low incomes, to enable those in work on the living wage to afford to live reasonably close to where they work? Will it definitely prioritise brownfield over greenfield development in practice, and will it get local authorities building in the volume they are capable of against their assets?

I have a final request. Not for the first time, I ask the Government to cease using the word “affordable” to describe housing that patently is not affordable for millions of people?

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy and Lord Shipley, for their contributions, but I am rather amazed that neither of them welcomed many of the things that they have been asking for over the past three days in Committee which are contained in the White Paper. There is action on planning fees: a 20% increase for planning departments from the summer, with a further possible 20%, to which we are minded to agree, tied to performance. That is something that I am sure they would wish to welcome.

There are provisions on land banking, on which we were pushed continually in previous sessions on the Bill, and before that, as well as action on brownfield sites. It is also very clear, to answer the noble Lord’s penultimate point, that brownfield land is something that we specifically go for before greenbelt land in the White Paper.

I appreciate that noble Lords have probably not had long enough to study the White Paper, and therefore that some of these points may have been overlooked. They asked what we were doing in relation to councils. We intend to work with them, with all the levers that we possess. The reason there is no immediate action is that this is a White Paper that is out for consultation from today until 2 May. That is why this does not represent legislation. Noble Lords need to be careful what they wish for. There seemed to be an implied criticism from the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, that there was too much legislation. Some of this we hope will result in legislation and some of it can be carried out without legislation—but this is not legislation but a White Paper.

Clearly, building 1 million new homes—to which the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, referred—is still very much our policy. It was in the manifesto and is still very much there. We are going for a mixture of tenure—again, the White Paper makes that very clear. We are putting fresh new emphasis on the private rented sector and, indeed, we are working with the social rented sector. We provided extra money in the autumn Budget last year for the social rented sector by allowing it to lift the cap. That is also a very positive point about this White Paper. So I am amazed that noble Lords do not wish to welcome some of the points in the White Paper.

The test that the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, applies is a fair one. Will the White Paper reduce homelessness? I believe that it will. Also, of course, other things are happening with relation to homelessness. As we know, with all-party support, the Homelessness Reduction Bill will be an important part of that panoply of measures, and that comes before us after our Recess, towards the end of February, when it will get its Second Reading in this House.

I was asked what we were doing in relation to rough sleeping. We doubled the grant for that recently, as noble Lords will be aware. Another measure that we have, quite rightly, been encouraged to provide for is woodlands. Again, woodlands are featured here. We want to protect woodlands with measures in the National Planning Policy Framework. Again, this is in the White Paper.

There is an awful lot of radical stuff which, quite rightly, Peers across the House have been calling for and which is in the White Paper. So I think that the welcome given to it—if welcome it were—was far too muted as regards the content of the White Paper.