Healthy Homes Bill [HL]

Baroness Hayman of Ullock Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 15th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, for bringing his Bill before us today and for his extremely thorough and excellent instruction, which was helpful to all noble Lords. As others have done, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, for his work in this area. It has been a pleasure to shadow him and I wish him well on the Back Benches.

We support the Bill because we believe it is important for the Government to build a new wave of affordable, healthy homes where families can settle with a real sense of security. As we have heard, healthy homes are beneficial not just for those who live in them but for the country as a whole. The noble Lord, Lord Crisp, talked in his introduction about the intimate relationship between housing and health. According to the Good Homes Alliance, old and inefficient housing causes an estimated £1.4 billion to £2 billion in additional annual NHS costs.

It is thus disappointing that there seems to be a reluctance by the Government to improve the quality of homes. They have also failed to give councils the powers to deliver landlord licensing and ensure that all homes are up to a sufficient quality. The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, expressed surprise that there is not already a statutory duty for this. It is not just surprising but quite shocking that developers can continue to get away with building substandard housing.

The English Housing Survey estimates that 23% of private rented homes in 2019 did not meet the decent homes standard—that is over 1 million homes. This compares with only 18% of owner-occupied homes and 12% of social rented homes, so there is a particular problem in the private rented sector. I wonder whether the Minister has had the opportunity to familiarise herself with the report published yesterday by the Centre for Cities think tank, which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. The report concluded that the cost of living crisis has widened the north/south divide in England and Wales by 30%, which is a shocking figure.

One area of particular concern was the fact that older, less well-insulated housing stock contributes to much higher energy costs for people who live in those homes. One example in the report was that the annual energy bills in Burnley, where 70% of homes have an energy-efficiency rating below band C, averaged £1,272. This can be compared with Milton Keynes, where 50% of homes have high energy-efficiency ratings and annual bills were £889 on average. Therefore, the worse a home is insulated, the more it costs to heat it. Clearly, energy efficiency needs to be an urgent government priority.

The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, mentioned the importance of insulation, and she is absolutely right. The noble Lord, Lord Best, brought us his huge experience from the Select Committee and the Affordable Housing Commission, and shared many of his findings, one of which was fuel poverty and its impact. I ask the Minister: how do the Government plan to tackle this increasing equality divide and level up, as they keep promising us? More broadly, the Government’s housing and planning policy still seems pretty disorganised, to say the least. A report in January from the House of Lords Built Environment Committee on meeting housing demand found that the Government’s delays over planning reforms and uncertainty over the future of the planning system had created

“a chilling effect on house-building”.

The noble Lords, Lord Shipley and Lord Young of Cookham, both talked about planning and brought their experience of this to the debate. My noble friend Lord Blunkett spoke about the importance of getting this right. There are nearly 1 million more people now in private rented homes than when the Conservatives came to power in 2010. Too many are stuck in a system with no power to challenge rogue landlords, with no savings to get on the housing ladder and in housing that falls well below acceptable standards.

The proposals in the levelling-up Bill do not do anything to ensure that affordable and healthy housing is built to the high standards that we have heard in this debate and which need to be the norm. We also need people to live in mixed developments. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ely talked about the importance of quality and not just quantity; this is one area where we have got it wrong over the last few decades. We need to build more homes, but, as we have heard in the debate, standards really matter. This debate has brought a huge amount of experience and expertise that your Lordships’ House can offer the Government in order to develop this Bill. I urge the Minister to put her full support behind the Bill and to work with the noble Lord, Lord Crisp. We strongly support this Bill and urge the Government to do the same.