Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Baroness Royall of Blaisdon and Lord Kennedy of Southwark
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
Does my noble friend agree that one reason for raising these points today is the wholly unsatisfactory way that the Bill has been put in front of us? We have no regulations and we will get none before the Bill is passed into law. It is a ridiculous situation and why we have raised these points.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)
My Lords, building on some of the things that my noble friend has said about Amendment 41B, what can be done to ensure that starter homes sold with a discount cannot immediately be sold on to second home owners or to people renting them out as holiday homes? As we know, in many areas of the country, especially rural and coastal areas, while properties are sold and people have homes, these homes are not lived in all the time. Therefore, notwithstanding that the homes have owners, the essence of these communities is hollowed out because people are not there all the time; they become real communities only at certain times of the year, and the schools, the pubs and the shops all close. Can anything be done, if we persist with this 20% discount, to ensure that communities still thrive and that people are not able to sell these properties on as second homes?
The Government, in seeking to enable people to buy these starter homes, intend that if a person is under the age of 40, as I understand it, they still qualify to buy one. I do not think that the government amendments go far enough. Is the Bill, even as amended, compliant with the Equality Act? There is discrimination, I would say, against people over the age of 40.