Affordable Housing: Young People

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend. We continually look at issues around the viability of building and are working very closely, with both the development sector and our local authorities, to make sure that land pricing and other issues around viability are taken into account. The £39 billion we have put into social and affordable housing will make sure that we can give some support to those who are trying desperately to get some social housing built in the country; we continue to work with them on that. The bold planning reforms we have introduced will also assist with that process.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, young people are paying more in rent than they are on a mortgage, and so they would not need to join the queue for affordable housing if they had some help with a deposit. I put again to the Minister the question I posed to her in April, when she conceded that there was more work to be done. What progress has she been able to make in discussions with the developers, the financial institutions and the Treasury to bring forward a successor to the Help to Buy scheme, on which the then Government made a profit of £1.4 billion last time?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

A detailed analysis has been done of the Help to Buy scheme, and we will learn lessons from it. We will not reintroduce it as it was, but I agree with the noble Lord that, for many young people renting property, their rent is higher than a mortgage payment would be. Since I gave him my previous answer, I have been working with the sector. A wide variety of mortgage products are available in the UK, including a range of products available at a high loan-to-value ratio, such as 95% and even 100%. I met the Building Societies Association last week, and it is very keen to offer more innovative products that can help first-time buyers, including some that take account of a track record of paying rent, as they deal with a mortgage application. These are innovative systems. We know that many first-time buyers are not aware of the mortgage products that may help them, so we are working on a communications campaign. The Building Societies Association is doing its own, and the Government will also do something to make people aware of the steps they can take to get on to the housing ladder.

Social Housing Bill [HL]

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 1st June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick. I will develop part of the argument she adduced—that there is sometimes a case for disposing of social housing.

I want to address the ongoing controversy whereby the right-to-buy policy led directly to the shortage of social housing. I voted for the 1980 Housing Act; more relevant is that I was a junior Minister under Michael Heseltine and was responsible for implementing it and then defending it. That brought me into conflict with the late Baroness Hollis—then Councillor Hollis and chairman of the housing committee in Norwich—who refused to implement the policy. I had to put in the commissioners and suspend her. We met again 30 years later, when I joined your Lordships’ House. She was emollient, if unrepentant, and we became good friends.

I understand the argument that all the receipts should have been reinvested in social housing. But suppose I had gone to Geoffrey Howe, the Chancellor at that time, and put that argument to him. He would have said, “George, that is not how it works. When we privatise Heathrow and Gatwick, we don’t build more airports. When we privatise the docks, we don’t build more docks. What happens is that the money goes into a pot, along with North Sea oil, income tax and everything else, and there is then a collective decision about how to spend it. You, George, have inherited from the outgoing Labour Government very generous provision for social housing and you’re telling me you want to keep the billions from right-to-buy receipts all to yourself, not just for this year but for every subsequent year. That would be wholly unfair to the Secretary of State for Health, who cannot sell the hospitals and add to his baseline, and to the Secretary of State for Defence, who cannot sell the nuclear deterrent”. I would have come up against the policy that dare not speak its name in the Treasury—namely, hypothecation.

Under hypothecation, all the fuel duty and vehicle excise duty would go to transport and be spent on potholes, and health would have to survive on parking charges and prescription charges. So there are very good reasons why all the capital receipts did not automatically go back to the department that generated them. I see a former Permanent Secretary at the Treasury, the noble Lord, Lord Macpherson, smiling—if not nodding.

Even if I had won that argument and all the receipts had been kept by my department, it would have made no sense in housing policy terms to allow each local authority to spend 100% of the receipts on housing. In the 1980s, all the receipts stacked up in the shire districts, where there were houses with gardens and the housing pressure was much less, and there were relatively few receipts in the inner cities, where the predominant stock was flats. The policy of requiring the local authority to reduce its debt by 80% of the receipts enabled the department to recycle the receipts. We would say to South Bucks, for example, “You’ve got to use all the receipts to reduce your debt”, and to Islington or Tower Hamlets or Southwark, “You can increase your debt by the corresponding amount in order to invest in housing”. It was a progressive policy, which annoyed a lot of Conservative councillors, but which should be supported by the other side.

Right to buy brought additional benefits in addition to being popular—so popular that no one has ever repealed it. All the evidence that I saw at the time showed that those households that exercised their right to buy looked after their property better than the cash-strapped local authority they had bought it from—they had a real incentive to do that as home owners—so the nation’s housing stock benefited. Also, the newly enfranchised residents on the estates joined forces with existing tenants’ associations, or in some cases set up new ones, to campaign for improved conditions on the estates, and everyone benefited from that.

I would also argue that there were wider social benefits in that the predominantly single-tenure estates became pepper-potted with owner-occupiers, leading to more diverse and less polarised communities. On some estates there are now third-generation owner-occupiers—a continuity that the Minister herself commended in her opening speech.

However, I have to concede that there was one consequence of the policy that we did not foresee and which has done much to discredit it. Once the properties had changed from tenancy to owner-occupation, we assumed that the owners would stay there. The whole thrust of Conservative policy was to promote owner-occupation. We did not envisage, nor did I personally want, properties then to be bought by landlords charging market rents, often underpinned by housing benefit. For the first decade or so, that was not actually an issue; it became an issue after 1996, when buy-to-let mortgages were introduced.

This is not the right time to argue whether it makes sense for the nation’s savings to be spent buying existing assets—pushing up the price—or to be invested in government stock and then in infrastructure, or in stocks and shares and then in industry, providing wealth and jobs. That imbalance is now being slowly put right by making ISAs more attractive than buy to let and encouraging institutional investment in new build.

In conclusion, what basically happened is that the right-to-buy receipts went into the pot. No homes were lost; the tenure simply changed. The pot was then spent on schools, hospitals, aircraft carriers and the rest, from which everyone benefited. The decision not to spend enough on social housing after 1980 was a collective decision by successive Governments after considering all the other demands on the public purse, as the Minister said in opening. I end where I started. The right-to-buy policy was not inevitably going to lead to the loss of social housing. The consequence of enfranchising millions of tenants has been a bonus. The lack of social housing, as I said, is a reflection on successive priorities by successive Governments.

Donations to Political Parties

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

We are introducing tougher rules on political donations to protect UK elections. The limits have changed because circumstances change. That is an important part of the system. We have to strike the right balance between safeguarding against foreign interference and making sure that legitimate donors can continue to fund election campaigns.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

Further to the suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, that those who make political donations should be criminalised, hundreds of thousands of people in this country subscribe to their political parties because they share their values. Surely that should be encouraged and not criminalised.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I absolutely agree with the noble Lord—and not for the first time. It is important that people are not only able to donate to a political party if it meets their values, principles and objectives for our country but that they can be absolutely reassured that that money is used in a legitimate way by political parties for their aims and can have confidence in the system that that is the case.

Home Ownership: First-Time Buyers

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 23rd April 2026 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Young of Cookham]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to promote home ownership for first-time buyers.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

My Lords, we are increasing housing supply across all tenures to improve affordability for young people. Our ultimate objective is to help more people get the keys to their first home, increasing the overall home ownership rate. We support first-time buyers through government-backed schemes, including shared ownership, and the Treasury will shortly consult on a replacement for the lifetime ISA. Following FCA clarification, most buyers can borrow around 10% more, and this year we will publish a home-buying and selling reform road map, which is expected to save buyers £180 million a year and shave a month off transactions.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. Recently, the Prime Minister said:

“For my family growing up, the roof over our heads was everything. But for so many families today, homeownership is a distant dream. My government will make it a reality once again”.


For millions of people renting or living with their parents, it remains a dream. Many of them could actually afford the mortgage repayments, but without access to generous relatives, they cannot afford the deposit. Back in January, when I asked the Minister about hope for first-time buyers, she said:

“A great deal of work is going on in my department and with financial institutions to make sure that we make this process work for first-time buyers and others in the housing market”.—[Official Report, 8/1/26; col. 1314.]


Should there not now be a fresh initiative to deliver the Prime Minister’s promise?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

The noble Lord will not be surprised to know that I always agree with my right honourable friend the Prime Minister. Of course I also welcome the HCLG Select Committee’s work, which has particularly looked at the types of inequalities that the noble Lord highlights. Three in 10 people get help from family or parents and, increasingly, access is being determined by family wealth, not earnings. We are working hard on this. From speaking to lenders, we know that many first-time buyers are not aware of all the innovative mortgage products and recent mortgage reforms that may help them get on the housing ladder. We speak regularly to lenders on how to raise awareness of different options among first-time buyers, including hosting two major industry round tables last year, both of which were covered in the mainstream media. Of course, there is more work to do, and the Government are keen for all stakeholders who work with potential first-time buyers, including estate agents and brokers, to play their part in helping them understand their options.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 13th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Borwick’s amendment. He has done as much to empower disabled people when it comes to transport as anybody in this country, not just in Parliament.

To continue my noble friend Lord Shinkwin’s theme, this is about the unacceptability of waiting—not waiting for legislation to pass but waiting on the kerb-side for an accessible taxi which may never come and waiting on the phone to be told there are no accessible cabs in your local area. Imagine that being told to any other group in society and it being accepted and acceptable for 31 years. It is not even a matter of passing legislation; it is on the face of a Bill—though after 31 years, I imagine the text is already rising off that vellum as we speak. How many more years do disabled people have to wait on that kerb-side or in their homes, or on the end of a telephone, to not get an accessible taxi?

The Government talk about growth as their overriding principle for government, and quite right, but if that is their overriding objective then policy across all departments has to be focused on that. If the Government want more disabled people in work, we need accessible taxis; if the Government want greater health equality and health outcomes for disabled people, we need accessible taxis; and if they want bright, diverse, talented, disabled people to be fully empowered to bring those talents to bear in their local communities, we need accessible taxis.

There is nothing overreaching about these amendments from my noble friend. They are modest and merely seek to bring about something which should have happened not years but decades ago. The noble Lord, Lord Hendy, has the great good fortune to have the power of a Minister of the Crown. I suggest that he uses that power to empower disabled people and accept these amendments. If he will not do that, who will? If not now, for all those disabled people who have waited for 31 years, when?

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I want to make a very brief contribution to this short debate. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Borwick for his tireless advocacy for improved mobility for those with a disability. It is sad that we will no longer have that advocacy available at the end of this Session.

I want to pick up three points arising from the Minister’s response when we debated this in Committee. First, he said that there would not be enough time. He said:

“We will need to consult on them”—


that is, the new standards—

“and there is a risk that setting a deadline could negatively impact our ability to undertake a meaningful consultation”.

The deadline in the amendment is three years. The Cabinet’s guidance for a consultation period is actually 12 weeks. Honestly, to plead the lack of time is not a good excuse for resisting the amendment.

Secondly, the amendment was criticised because it applied only to taxis, and therefore it potentially excluded disabled people in those parts of the country where there was reliance on private vehicles. It seems to me that that is an argument for actually extending the provisions to private hire vehicles, rather than using it as an excuse to resist the amendment.

Then we had an argument which I simply did not understand. It says in Hansard that

“the noble Lord’s amendment would require every taxi in England to comply with a single set of standards, taking no account of the variety of access needs that disabled people have”.

The position in London is that we have a standard for the whole of London—we have had that for 30 years. I believe it is the case that, within London, we have the same range of disability as exists elsewhere in the country, so I did not follow that argument. The Minister then said:

“This approach would not only be exclusionary but would risk infringing the Government’s legal public sector equality duty to consider the impact on people with all protected characteristics”.


I do not believe that any case has been raised in London that the existing single standard for taxis is in breach of the Disability Act. I did not follow that at all.

Finally, I appreciate that the Minister wants to do the right thing, but his response was simply to rely on that fact that:

“Existing government ‘best practice’ … recommends that each licensing authority develops an inclusive … plan”.


He went on to say:

“I encourage them to act to ensure that there are sufficient wheelchair-accessible vehicles”,—[Official Report, 5/3/26; cols. GC 547-49.]


and that they will look again at “other accessibility standards”. But there was nothing in his speech that gave any certainty or guarantee at all that the position would change by a specific date.

Unless the Minister can move a little from what he said in Committee, I again will be with my noble friend in the Division Lobby if a Division is called.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Report stage
Thursday 26th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I was delighted to add my name to Amendment 93 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale. As we have heard, this Bill aims to put English devolution on to a stronger footing so that local leaders can drive economic growth and close the persistent and deep gaps between regions. But at the same time as we legislate to empower those places, the Government have decided to withdraw core support from the pan-regional partnerships that operate at the real economic scale of labour markets, transport corridors and investment decisions.

In my own region of the south-west, we saw partnerships such as the Western Gateway and Great South West show what can be done when local leaders come together across traditional boundaries. For example, Great South West set out a vision which would lift the region’s GVA by as much as £45 billion and create 190,000 additional jobs, if fully realised. The Government have chosen to end core funding for those pan-regional partnerships, and are offering only a short, time-limited extension in the case of the south-west, despite the scale of the prize. That risks hollowing out the strategic capacity that has been built up with relatively modest sums of public money but considerable voluntary effort from councils, businesses and universities across the peninsula.

As we have heard, this amendment does not seek to create a new tier of government or impose any kind of uniform model from the centre. It seeks simply to ensure that, where there is a clear economic geography, there is an enabling framework in statute so that collaboration can be sustained over the long term and is not vulnerable to short-term funding decisions or changes of ministerial fashion and that we at least have a fighting chance of delivering those tens of billions in extra output and hundreds and thousands of better jobs. I know that Ministers have said that they remain committed to pan-regional collaboration, they want it to be flexible and locally led, and that scarce resources must be concentrated on mayoral institutions. I agree absolutely with the Government that collaboration should be bottom up, and I recognise the fiscal pressures, but the sums involved in supporting these pan-regional partnerships are tiny compared with the potential returns of unlocking major investment in areas with so much underemployment.

As Jim O’Neill, the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, and others have argued in their work on regional growth, those returns depend critically on raising education and skills and giving every young person and adult access to training that matches the needs of the local economy. Pan-regional frameworks are precisely the scale at which universities, colleges, employers and mayors can align skills, from apprenticeships to advanced manufacturing to reskilling programmes in digital and creative industries and others, so the projected jobs in these fields become real opportunities for local people. If we are serious, as all of us in this House want, about spreading high-quality jobs beyond London and the south-east, our regions need both the strong leadership and the ability to act together at scale.

Our amendment is modest and permissive and is entirely consistent with the Government’s stated aims, but it would help to turn those headline ambitions into tangible outcomes for jobs and growth and for people across our country to benefit from.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 119 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale. As he said, this has its genesis in the Select Committee which we both sat on—the Social Mobility Policy Committee. The noble Lord referred to the fact that we reported on 18 November. I just say in passing that the Government are meant to reply to Select Committee reports within two months; in other words, by 18 January, we should have had a response. It is not the responsibility of the Minister—it is another department—but when I tabled a Question about this, I discovered that on 29 occasions the Government have failed to reply to Select Committee reports on time. I just put on record what I think is a discourtesy to the House.

Renters’ Rights Act: Definition of Court Readiness

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I do not think we should exaggerate the situation as it currently stands. The Ministry of Justice quarterly possession statistics show that median timeliness for claim to order is 7.3 weeks and that the median average time from landlord claim to repossession is 27 weeks. However, not all landlords will experience the whole court process. Of the landlord possession claims issued in 2024, only 28% progressed to the stage where bailiff enforcement was necessary. Bailiffs are responsible for a range of sensitive work. HM Courts & Tribunals Service is working to make sure that the timeliness of bailiff enforcement is improved.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, further to my noble friend Lord Jamieson’s Question, the Master of the Rolls has warned that ending Section 21

“will undoubtedly create more contested possession cases than we have had hitherto”.

As we have heard, the average delay last year, according to the MoJ’s figures, was eight months. Ministers have repeatedly said that court readiness is a prerequisite for the success of the system. The courts are not ready. They will not be ready in six weeks’ time, when Section 21 will no longer be operative. What is the Minister going to do?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I do not know how many times I am going to repeat this, but I will carry on doing so. We are working very closely with the Ministry of Justice and HM Courts & Tribunals Service to prepare county courts for implementation of the tenancy reforms. These are very important reforms for landlords and tenants; landlords do not want to see the actions of bad landlords helped and tenants want to make sure that they are secure in their tenancies. Existing possession processes will be updated to reflect the reforms in the Act and we will ensure that sufficient capacity is in place for the courts to handle new cases. There is an increase in capacity, including an additional 115 court staff, in anticipation of the increased demand for hearings under the Section 8 claim process. Staff managing possession claims are receiving detailed training, supported by refreshed training materials and process guidance. Working practices have been reviewed and best practice shared in readiness for 1 May, and the Judicial Office is taking forward judicial training on the new legislation.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 5th March 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Bradley (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly to this group of amendments, which I fully support. I can be even briefer than I thought I might be because of the eloquence of the speeches already made, and any repetition I make will be to reinforce the message and the value of those amendments, having been pleased that the Government have increased the scope of the Bill to include taxis during its passage—that is not meant to be a pun.

I want to reinforce the point on Greater Manchester, where I live and where I was the chair of the licensing committee many years ago. The noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, mentioned its “Local. Licensed. Trusted” campaign, which the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, and the 10 district leaders fully supported. As we have heard, in Greater Manchester, over 50% of private hire vehicles are licensed outside it, particularly in Wolverhampton but also in St Helens on Merseyside. That is totally unacceptable in terms of proper enforcement of their activities across the country.

We have also heard of the audit of grooming gangs and child sexual exploitation by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey. Again, that has a great resonance in Greater Manchester because of the issues that were faced there. It continues to be a great, urgent public safety concern. It is believed that this Bill is the quickest and most appropriate way to tackle that issue that so desperately needs tackling.

I will not go through the details of the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, to which I have added my name. I fully support it. She eloquently presented it to the Committee. My noble friend Lord Blunkett made a point on transition. There clearly needs to be a transition period, certainly in Greater Manchester and in other strategic authorities, so that it could align with licence renewal, which would reduce the costs and disruption of an immediate transition and provide sufficient time for local authorities to rebuild capacity in their licensing departments, while supporting the Government’s aim for all regions to move towards strategic authorities.

I welcome the constructive meetings that I have had with both Ministers responsible for this Bill, my noble friends Lady Taylor and Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill, and their desire to make progress to address licensing and enforcement across the country. I also recognise that there are many more difficult issues that need to be addressed about taxi and private hire vehicles, and this is just one particular aspect that this Bill enables us to address. I strongly believe that this group of amendments would take a significant step forward for the benefit and safety of the public across the country, and I am sure that we will receive a positive response from the Minister.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I will make a very brief speech in support of the excellent speech made by my noble friend Lord Borwick in moving Amendment 235A, an amendment beloved in Committee: delete the word “may” and insert the word “must”.

I commend in passing the moving speech made by my noble friend Lord Holmes. I have a paternal interest in this in that when the Disability Discrimination Act was put on the statute book in 1995 by my noble friend Lord Hague, I was Secretary of State for Transport and therefore had responsibility for taxis. My department was responsible for Section 32 of the DDA which, as my noble friend said, made provision for regulations that taxis should be accessible to wheelchair users and that they should be carried safely. It is interesting to see what happened in London. In 1989, the then Transport Minister Michael Portillo said that all new London taxis had to be wheelchair accessible. We were actually the first capital city in the world to take that step. By 1 January 2000, all licensed London taxi cabs—some 20,000 of them—were wheelchair accessible. That gives an indication of the timescale in which it is reasonable to expect the taxi trade to make the transition from where it was to where it is now.

As we know, Section 32 was repealed and replaced by a similar provision in the Equality Act. I wanted to see what Members of your Lordships’ House thought would happen when that section of the Bill was debated. The Minister at the time was Lord MacKay of Ardbrecknish. Reading his speech, it was quite clear that he did not think that 30 years later we would be where we are today. He said,

“more accessible taxis will be a boon for more than just wheelchair users”.—[Official Report, 22/5/1995; col. 890.]

At the time, the Opposition spokesman was the late Lady Hollis. She said this:

“My Lords, we on this side of the House broadly support the Government’s position on taxis. We believe that they are public service vehicles. Taxis are an important ingredient of public service transport and, therefore, they must be accessible to disabled people on a flexible and realistic basis. We believe, as the Bill lays down, that new vehicles introduced must be fully wheelchair accessible”.—[Official Report, 20/7/1995; col. 442.]


They would both be surprised at the position that we are now in. One cannot possibly blame the Minister for any inaction on his part, but what we are entitled to on Report is some timescale by which the rest of the country will be brought into line with what has already happened in London. I hope that when he replies, the Minister will give us some reassurance that that will be the direction of travel and that there might even be a date at which we reach the destination.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their thoughtful contributions to this important debate, which goes to the heart of both public safety and the need for flexibility within our transport system. The proposed introduction of national minimum standards has an important role to play in delivering consistency across the country, but it is to be run alongside a system where local licensing authorities can add to those standards, as local flexibility and responsiveness is of course important. The Government’s responsibility in this context must be to ensure that such variations do not place unnecessary burdens on operators.

There is also the issue of cross-border services, which are essential for many passengers. While these services continue, they raise legitimate concerns about how they are to be regulated. In her report, the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, recommended more rigorous standardised statutory requirements across all licensing authorities in order to close the loophole whereby a driver can be licensed in one area but work exclusively in another. Ultimately, it is important that the Government recognise the need for a licensing framework that comprehensively deals with abuses, supports operators and keeps public safety at its core.

Regarding the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Borwick, he is right to point out that all London taxis are accessible. He has long been a consistent and principled advocate on this issue. Over many years, he has drawn attention to the importance of ensuring that those with disabilities are not left behind by our transport system. His work has helped keep accessibility firmly on the policy agenda. The case he advances appears to be both practical and fair. He makes a compelling argument: accessibility should be viewed not as an aspiration but as a standard that passengers across the country can reasonably expect. Although achieving this may present challenges in some areas, the progress made in London demonstrates what is possible in the right circumstances. As I say, my noble friend has made persuasive arguments as to why this requirement should apply more widely, strengthening independence for disabled passengers and promoting a more inclusive transport network. I therefore look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say in response to this important point.

New Homes: Target

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2026 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Young of Cookham]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in meeting their target of building 1.5 million new homes in England within this Parliament.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

We have always been clear that building 1.5 million homes, which is vital given that we inherited the worst housing crisis in living memory, is an ambitious target. It will require a rate of housebuilding and infrastructure construction not seen for more than 50 years. We recognise the scale of the challenge, and we are driving progress through bold planning reforms, including the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 and a record £39 billion investment in social and affordable housing. Our bold planning reforms will drive UK housebuilding to the highest rate in 40 years.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome many of the Government’s planning reforms, but the OBR made it clear in November that they would not be enough to hit the target. Recent completions were at a nine-year low. Many sites with planning permission are no longer viable because of escalating costs, and where sites are viable, builders are reluctant to build out because of weak consumer demand—the Treasury, rather than the Minister’s department, is partly to blame for both those things. If the Government want to get close to the target, will they not have to have a discussion with developers and in conjunction with them bring forward a successor to previous schemes to help first-time buyers?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am pleased to tell the noble Lord that I have been given the buying and selling process in my portfolio very recently. I have been looking at it in great detail, and I had a meeting with developers yesterday as part of the New Towns Network on how we improve the buying and selling process. A great deal of work is going on in my department and with financial institutions to make sure that we make this process work for first-time buyers and others in the housing market.

Building Safety Regulator (Establishment of New Body and Transfer of Functions etc.) Regulations 2026

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Monday 15th December 2025 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to take this opportunity to congratulate Andy Roe, who has been leading the work to improve the performance of the building safety regulator and whose peerage was announced on 11 December.

The establishment of the building safety regulator was the most significant reform of the building safety regime in decades. The building safety regulator has removed significant risk from the system and placed residents at the heart of housebuilding. The regulator is an important and non-negotiable part of our built environment, particularly as we deliver 1.5 million homes and accelerate the remediation of unsafe buildings.

The BSR was first established within the Health and Safety Executive. The HSE provided invaluable leadership and experience during the establishment and early operations of the BSR. It is now time for a new phase for the BSR. In June, my department announced reforms to the regulator, including investing in strengthened and dedicated leadership for the BSR; operational improvements, including the creation of a new innovation unit to improve the processing of gateway applications; and bolstered, long-term investment in the capability of the BSR and its capacity to work with industry. Alongside this, we announced the intention to move the BSR out of the Health and Safety Executive, establishing it as an arm’s-length body of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. That is the specific purpose of these draft regulations.

These regulations set up a new arm’s-length body sponsored by MHCLG that will exercise the functions of the building safety regulator, as established under the Building Safety Act. The regulations transfer the functions of the building safety regulator from the Health and Safety Executive to this new body. The provisions of these regulations will come into force on 27 January 2026.

The regulations enable the smooth transfer of powers so that the BSR has the legal basis to continue to perform its functions without interruption. They include transitional provisions to cover the period where staff and services will move over in stages from the HSE to the BSR. The regulations provide that the BSR will maintain its operational independence, with its own powers, strategic plan and programme of work, as outlined in the Building Safety Act. This move does not change the functions of the regulator or the ministerial powers and responsibilities set out in the Building Safety Act.

This change will support the building safety regulator for the coming years, strengthening accountability and providing a singular focus and dedicated leadership for building safety regulation. Importantly, this is also the first step towards establishing a single construction regulator, a key recommendation of phase 2 of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry. The new body for the building safety regulator will form the basis of the single construction regulator. The regulations will make sure that the building safety regulator continues to deliver its statutory functions under the Building Safety Act, while leading it into a new era. This will provide the foundation for a stronger, more accountable system that prioritises safety while supporting innovation across the built environment.

I hope that noble Lords will join me in supporting the draft regulations, which I commend to the Committee.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I join the Minister in congratulating Andrew Roe on his peerage. The experience that he will bring to your Lordships’ House from London Fire Brigade and the building safety regulator will be enormously welcome.

This instrument was debated in another place last week, on 10 December, and it completed its consideration in 12 minutes. On 11 December, the Industry and Regulators Committee produced its report, headed Building a Better Regulator. Within that report is a chapter on exactly the subject that we are debating this afternoon—namely, the single construction regulator—and it gives the background to the decision to which the Minister referred: the need to have a single construction regulator. It goes on to say that witnesses were broadly supportive of the proposal for the single regulator, with several suggesting that the current system was “fragmented”.

However—and this is the point that I want to make in this very short intervention—there were notes of caution. The Chartered Institute of Architectural Technologists argued that

“it is more important that these functions be delivered effectively, than that they be delivered by a single body”.

The institute suggested that the priority should be addressing current regulatory challenges rather than merging functions. Philip White questioned whether this was the right time to establish it and, as with the BSR’s move from HSE to a body within MHCLG, he argued that the organisational change would lead to “disruption”, while suggesting that the regulator would do its best to

“keep business going as usual”.

The Select Committee listened to that argument and to the argument for going straight ahead, and concluded, in paragraph 106:

“We support the Government’s broad proposal to establish a single construction regulator. However, we heard concerns that organisational changes could distract from the immediate imperative of improving operational performance. The implementation of this further organisational change should wait until the BSR is delivering its building control decisions within statutory timeframes”.


As we know, that is not what it is doing, so the question that I want the Minister to answer is: why is she going ahead, it seems, in defiance of a very clear recommendation from a Select Committee? I appreciate that it reported last week, after the instrument had been laid, but none the less it is a clear recommendation that we should not go ahead in January. I wonder how the Minister would respond to that clear recommendation from a unanimous report by one of your Lordships’ Select Committees.

[Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard (UUP)]

My Lords, I will make a very short intervention. I was quite interested to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Young, about what the Select Committee said about this. Some noble Lords will be aware that I have taken an interest in this matter because of some communications I have received over the last few months in relation to delays in getting the building safety regulator’s approval, which have caused huge difficulties for the construction industry, the housing industry and individuals who want to move into a new property or premises.

In principle, I have no issue with a single construction regulator—on the basis that it will be an improvement. I am not yet convinced that it will be an improvement, because we have not seen that with our current system. I would like to see much better progress with the system we have before we move it to an arm’s-length body, because you sometimes lose a level of control with an arm’s-length body. I listened to the Minister indicate that there will still be a control mechanism. I am keen to hear what that control process will be because, if it is to be a more accountable system, it must be more accountable to both this House and the other place. Otherwise, we will not get the improvements that we are looking for and desire.

I am broadly supportive of having a single construction regulator, but we are not getting the process properly implemented as it is, so I am keen to know how it will be improved under the new process.