King’s Speech

Lord Thurlow Excerpts

Thursday 9th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thurlow (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and I applaud his comments on homelessness and the desperate need for social housing. I thank the Minister for his particularly interesting introduction to today’s debate, with his apparent investment in the themes of today’s subjects. That approach will be very helpful as the Bills come through, and we will achieve a finer, more fruitful result.

In response to the gracious Speech, I want briefly to address the leasehold and freehold Bill and the Renters (Reform) Bill. I shall try to do so without repetition; then, I shall follow with comments on health. I declare my interests as a former chartered surveyor and as the owner of a buy-to-let property, as detailed in the register.

The principal problem for the freehold, leasehold and renters Bills is the inefficiencies and bad practices of landlords and agents, some aspects of which have been cleaned up through Bills that have been through this House, but it is a sector that desperately needs reform. However, interfering with the status quo after generations of evolution is not without difficulties, and those challenges will be met in our forthcoming debate. As the noble Lords, Lord Shipley and Lord Young, have reminded us, commonhold is a very important option, and it should be trumpeted as an objective by the Government. It provides an alternative to the traditional tenure patterns, and we need to focus more carefully on that when the time comes.

Both Bills aim to simplify and introduce fairness into the residential property market, but these Bills alone, as we have heard from so many speakers this afternoon, will not provide more homes. My disappointment with the declared legislative programme is the lack of reference to the promised planning Bill, also referred to today. Current arrangements are not working and are an impediment to housebuilding. The huge Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill that occupied so much of the last Session included planning matters, but no attempt to speed up the process at service delivery level. Planning departments are frequently understaffed and underfunded and experience a high turnover of case officers. Those case officers may change during the progress of a single application, making life extremely difficult for an applicant. The background, detail and relationships that are important to efficient service delivery and outcomes are at stake—and that itself is a brake on new housing numbers.

Housing provision is a crisis that the Government repeatedly promise to resolve, but I see no reference to one of the really very straightforward solutions, in my opinion, which is to develop on brownfield land. This resource of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of acres of sterile land needs money invested in it to bring it forward. However, it is ignored, as the Government appear to continue to favour the quick-fix, green-belt or agricultural land solution for more housing. Why? What a missed opportunity. Brownfield land is substantial in towns and cities throughout the UK. There is infrastructure—public transport, schools, hospitals, roads, everything—already in place; unlike agricultural land, it does not need the extra billions of investment to develop on a wholesale scale.

I turn to health. Like several others, I am disappointed that there was no reference to a mental health Bill. Forty years is a very long time since the last substantial Act and, during that time, understanding, general knowledge and care in the mental health arena has grown hugely, to such an extent that the Mental Health Act is now terribly out of date. We need to improve services in this area, as the numbers suffering are also growing very rapidly, particularly since Covid.

I particularly want to raise the difficulties of care and treatment for those suffering from or living with Huntington’s disease and chorea. The difficulty is within the NHS. This is a neurological condition and often falls between mental health and organic brain disorder. Too often, these labels appear to be mutually exclusive in the context of services provided by the NHS, denying Huntington’s sufferers access to mental health support, when it is desperately needed by those with this condition. The condition has physical, cognitive and psychiatric symptoms, and, without support, mental health issues spiral. In turn, there is a ripple effect on family and carers—frequently, of course, the families are the carers.

Mental health services are supposed to be accessible to all, no matter the root cause of the mental health issue. I hope that the Government will resolve the NHS exclusion for those struggling with this and other neurological conditions—we know of motor neurone disease, Parkinson’s and MS, and there are many others—and thus end the dilemma facing those who suffer, and their families, from exclusion from NHS mental health services. We should be ashamed that the problem of definitions is allowed to become a barrier to treatment and care. The most likely psychiatric disorders that Huntington’s sufferers experience are depression, anxiety, changes in personality and mood, irritability, apathy or disinhibition. How can those within the NHS who analyse medical conditions possibly deny these as mental health criteria?

I thank the Huntington’s Disease Association for its help in preparing my comments. I ask the Minister to ensure that all mental health support services are available, UK wide, to those living with this condition. Through definitions, and perhaps misunderstandings within the NHS, these people are often excluded. That is unforgivable.