King’s Speech

Lord Wilson of Sedgefield Excerpts

Wednesday 20th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

I too thank the noble Baroness for the very sincere conviction and clarity with which she gave her introduction. From these Benches, I shall speak to the housing issues in the humble Address and will save a lot of the detail for the various Bills—so I hope the Minister does not think that she is going to get let off too lightly—knowing full well that my noble friends will address the issues of health and transport in greater detail.

Listening to the housing measures in the gracious Speech, I was struck by a rather familiar feeling, the sort you get when you get handed a glossy developer’s brochure. Noble Lords know the one—the sunlit streets, the happy families, everything finished and perfect, not a wheelie bin or an old banger in sight. It all looks excellent until you actually visit the site, where the picture is somewhat different. I am afraid that, with much of what we have before us, the gap between the brochure and the build still looms rather large.

Let me be fair: there is much to welcome. There is energy, there are Bills already in motion to support the ones that are coming forward and, for me, there is a real recognition that housing is not just another policy; it is actually the most important issue for millions of citizens and for the economy of the whole country. However, as someone who has spent years trying to get homes built—I was dubbed the pro-development mayor—I have learned that housing policy is judged not on what it says on the paper but on what gets built where. My test is simple: will this deliver more homes, and particularly more social homes, at the pace needed to turn the tide and at an affordable price?

It must be said that, on the whole, the sector has been very pleased. Long-term funding for social housing, at last, is very welcome: we cannot build homes with short-term thinking. A stronger Homes England and sensible powers to provide land for social homes and community facilities are vital. Unlocking land matters. The provisions in the Social Housing Bill supporting those fleeing domestic abuse are close to my heart and genuinely important—housing should always be part of the solution and not a barrier—and there has been progress on the remediation of homes with cladding. “At last”, the campaigners will say, but the date of 2029 will still feel a long way away. But let us close that brochure and look at the reality. There are over 1.3 million households on waiting lists and over 130,000 households in temporary accommodation, including thousands of children. As Shelter has put it,

“This is the devastating result of a severe shortage of social rent homes”.


That is the benchmark.

We welcome the Social Housing Bill and its broad policy direction but, sadly, at its heart it is mainly a right to buy reform Bill. Necessary? Absolutely: it reduces discounts, tightens the system and seeks better replacement. Our policy is to allow councils to make their own decisions in that regard as to what would suit them, but this is at least a step in the right direction. But let us be clear: slowing the loss of homes is not the same as building new ones. It plugs the holes in the bucket but, at the moment, the bucket has very little in it. It does not yet deliver the step change in supply that we need.

This brings me to one of the biggest gaps: affordability. There is very little said about affordability. This is not only a housing crisis but an affordability one. For those who need social housing, supply is too low. For renters, rents are too high, and for first-time buyers, ownership is too far away. We must and can build more homes, but if people cannot afford them, the problem simply moves rather than disappears.

In the private rented sector, people are being squeezed from both sides, with high rents but no realistic route into ownership. The local housing allowance no longer matches market rents in many areas. Are the Government considering changes in the welfare system to support housing, or will we continue to expect people to bridge a widening gap that should not exist at all?

Our concern is the lack of a real route to delivery, because this is where ambition—and there is no lack of ambition from this Government—meets reality. Planning departments are overstretched, with around 80% underresourced. Recruitment plans are welcome, but they do not yet match the scale of the gap. Perhaps the Minister has an update on the promised target of 1,400 new planners by the end of the Parliament. But you cannot accelerate delivery if the system that approves development is running short of people.

This takes us to construction. There are currently 140,000 vacancies in construction. There is an ageing workforce, with many due to retire in the next few years and far too few apprentices coming through. There is a cross-party consensus about the need for more homes as we seem to vie with each other to announce higher targets, but targets do not build houses. Builders, plumbers and carpenters build them, and we do not have enough of any of them.

We should not forget SME builders, which are often the backbone of delivering the homes we need. What are the Government doing to support these businesses, which are crucial to delivering their ambition? They are often the ones which deliver smaller sites faster and more flexibly, and very locally. Yet they face tight margins, rising costs, complex regulations—always their moan—and difficulties accessing land and finance. The system as we have it now increasingly works for the bigger players, not the smaller ones. That matters, and I hope it matters to government, because if we squeeze out SMEs, as has been happening year on year, we reduce capacity and slow delivery.

On leasehold reform, we feel the direction is generally right, but we are nowhere near the destination, and there seems no sign of that. Commonhold is not clearly the default. Conversion remains complex, and everyday issues, such as service charges and property management practices, remain only partially addressed. The legislation seems geared towards future development and comes at the expense of existing leaseholders, particularly those in flats, leaving them trapped in a harmful two-tier market, further devaluing their homes and leaving them dependent on predatory freeholders and unregulated management agents whose interests are diametrically opposed to their own. These are the two glaring omissions that we would seek to fill. We have the promise of reform for some, but we agree with the Prime Minister, who, after the election, said, “Incremental change won’t cut it”—but this is incremental.

Then there is the much-welcomed remediation Bill. This is a test of whether subsequent Governments meant what they said after Grenfell. Nearly a decade on, thousands of buildings still require work. Progress has been made, but nowhere near quickly enough. The Public Accounts Committee has called it “far too slow”, and campaigners speak of people trapped, unable to sell, facing rising costs, living with uncertainty, lives on hold. Until the work is completed—not promised or planned but completed—we have not honoured the promise of “Never again”. Promises of everything being done by 2029 still seem a long way off if you are one of those people.

Finally, there is the last missing disappointment. Let us be blunt and realistic: public protest is often the reason for held up delivery, which those of us in local politics will know only too well. People are wary of any changes and unconvinced of the positives about development. This is despite their children not being able to live in the town, village or city in which their parents live. So why is that? Could it be homes built without infrastructure, promises not delivered, fears of overcrowding of major services such as schools and GP surgeries, or even about somewhere to park? These are real fears and concerns, which have built a lack of trust. Unless we rebuild that trust through better design, real engagement and delivering what is actually needed and promised, we will not build at scale and take communities with us.

The Government’s policy direction to solve this problem—despite their rhetoric in the introduction—is to take decision-making away from communities and upwards towards combined authorities’ mayors. When I read my planning email this morning, I saw that there may be further plans to give more decisions to council officers and not to councillors. I can understand why that is, but that is not what we need. As with many of the issues facing society at the moment, we need real leadership at all levels—from not just Ministers, who do say what needs to be said, but local MPs and councillors of all parties, including mine.

We will support the Government where we believe they are going in the right direction. We will do the usual urging faster and further, and in some regards, we will certainly challenge omissions; otherwise, there remains a gap between what is promised and what is delivered. What is missing is not intent or activity, and possibly not even resources—though more are always sought and welcome—but certainty of delivery at the scale and pace required. It is all about whether people have somewhere safe, secure and affordable to live. Right now, it feels like we have got rather good at producing the brochure; we just have not delivered the houses—but I am sure the Minister is as impatient for this as we are.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)]

My Lords, before we move on, I remind noble Lords on all sides that there is an advisory limit of five minutes for speeches. If we could stay within that, that would be great, because obviously we want to finish at a reasonable time this evening, and we have to show other noble Lords who are speaking a bit of respect.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Wilson of Sedgefield Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd February 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I congratulate the noble Baroness on succeeding me as chairman of the London Councils transport and environment committee. Does she agree that the answer to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, in relation to refusing the Mayor of London additional rail routes in London, is that that is the policy of the current Government, who as I understand it intend to maintain the devolved routes as they are at the moment but have a policy of creating no more? One does not need to look to a political explanation of these decisions at all. I assume that, because they are in the same party, there is only sweetness and light between the Minister and the Mayor of London.

Does the noble Baroness also agree that it surely cannot all be sweetness and light in London at the moment, because London Councils has a policy that the boroughs should replace the assembly and have a relationship with the mayor much on the national level being proposed in this Bill, whereby the mayor is chairman of a combined authority? It seems to me that they feel that they are not sufficiently in the room, if they would like to be a great deal more so through a mechanism such as that.

These points are very good. While I am on my feet, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, that my experience of London Councils and of holding the position that the noble Baroness now does is that politics in the sense of pure party politics does not get very much in the way when boroughs are collaborating with each other, the mayor, Transport for London and so on. However, there are structural differences. The truth is that the interests of the boroughs and those of Transport for London, for example, are not always the same. That form of institutional politics is very apparent. Finally, I would say—

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)]

I think the noble Lord was making an intervention. Interventions have to be short, and his is not.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

By the time I have finished, it will be short. I was asking the noble Baroness whether she agreed that none of these considerations is particularly relevant because the problem that I drew attention to in my amendment, with which she does not agree, is not because of a disagreement between the boroughs and the mayor, which could be sorted out by sitting in a room; it is about an inherently internal conflict of interest between the mayor as the person responsible for housing policy and the mayor as chairman of Transport for London now being given the power to dispose of property in place of the Secretary of State.

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

Can I just say to the noble Lord that interventions are supposed to be short and I think he is taking advantage of the Committee?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

Before we move on, I point out to the Committee that the finishing time is not 8.45 pm but 7.45 pm. There was an error on the daily note.

Schedule 9: Key route network roads

Amendment 115

Moved by

--- Later in debate ---

Amendment 122 withdrawn.

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

Before the noble Baroness moves her amendment, I remind noble Lords, because some were not here earlier, that we are finishing at around 7.45 pm, not 8.45 pm as outlined in today’s list. There was an administrative error. We should be finishing in around 40 minutes.

Amendment 122A

Tabled by