Rural Communities

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, this debate is a great pleasure, particularly as, I think, 30% of contributors are from Cornwall. First, I unreservedly welcome the Government’s moves in devolving power to the far south-west, which is very much welcomed across the political spectrum. I declare my interests in that I have a non-financial interest as chair of the Rural Coalition, following my noble friend Lord Taylor. I also am chairman of Wessex Investors and Anchorwood Developments Limited, which currently are in commercial negotiations with a social housing organisation in rural England. I also live in a hamlet of four houses, which will probably receive superfast broadband at about the same time that HS2 reaches Edinburgh. I still wait in anticipation.

Thinking back to the ancient history of April and May, and the election, there were a number of not-very-good days to wake up as a Liberal Democrat. But one particularly bad day, not as a Liberal Democrat but as a citizen, was when the proposal on the right to buy for social housing was announced. In my waking-up stupor and listening to the “Today” programme, I groaned with real fear that this had perhaps been thrown out to reflect the glories of Thatcherism without really thinking about its implications, particularly in rural areas. I would like to concentrate on that area in this debate.

This random allocation of taxpayers’ money to particular individuals—up to £100,000 in urban areas and more than £70,000 in rural areas—seems to be a lottery that has gone too far at the taxpayers’ expense. As the noble Lord, Lord Best, said, we cannot blame the individuals in any way if they take advantage of this. Given the great shortage of social housing, that is fundamentally wrong at the moment. Even more, why is this a rural issue? It is partly because we have a situation where the ratio of house prices to earnings in more rural areas is 8:1, which is much higher than in urban areas. Individual sales of social housing in villages or small towns potentially is disruptive to those communities and means that any replacements are not necessarily likely to be located in those areas. In fact, the chances of that are very small.

In terms of the undertaking to replace one-for-one, unfortunately, even if we look back to the coalition Government’s period, although there was such a requirement on right to buy and council housing during that time only 46% of houses were replaced. Therefore, the robustness of that offer is very low. I know the Government will say that that means that even if that happened, which is unlikely, one house would still be in the community and another would be there to replace it. At this stage I will not get into the mathematics of selling houses elsewhere of higher value. But even if that took place, that money could buy even more houses in those communities than if it was transferred in the way in which the Government say it will be. I believe that this is a corrosive and difficult policy for rural communities. Will the Government find any exclusions for rural communities as part of this policy, particularly in villages and small market towns?

I know that the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble, a former noble friend until May, is a great champion of rural issues and has a great track record on them. I welcome the fact that he is answering this debate. But it is ironic that in the year in which we celebrate 800 years since the Magna Carta, Her Majesty’s Government are proposing to sequester and take away from private legal persons and charities their own assets.