Localism Bill

Baroness Wall of New Barnet Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Waddington]

My Lords, I was not intending to speak in this debate. In my few words I will try to be helpful. It is slightly extraordinary that we are prone to talking about the need for joined-up government, yet we debate for hours housing need and broad demographic trends and never mention the dreaded word “immigration”. There has been study after study of population trends. Every one comes to the same conclusion; if immigration continues at about the current level, there will be a massive explosion in our population. As long ago as 2007, the ONS pointed out that up to 70 per cent of housing need is driven by immigration. Therefore, it is completely frivolous to talk about housing need without putting it in the context of many factors, of which clearly immigration is one.

It has been argued forcefully that if we could have a neutral position with precisely the same number of people leaving the country as coming into it, all the housing projections would be shown to be entirely unhelpful, because they suggest that housing need would evaporate just like that. That is the conclusion of almost every study that has been made. I am not saying that nil immigration is a possibility, but we ought now and again in our debates about housing need to mention how immigration and housing policies are closely interrelated. One cannot talk about one without talking about the other, yet most people are terribly fearful of talking about immigration. It is almost a forbidden subject. It is time we related the two subjects to make sense of them.

[Baroness Wall of New Barnet]

My Lords, will the noble Lord read again what the amendment of my noble friend Lord Whitty calls for? I, too, had not intended to speak, but need to react to what he has just said. Subsection (2) states:

“All local housing authorities must draw up an analysis of housing supply and demand”—

that is to say, need—

“in their areas and the neighbouring areas as far as is relevant”.

Therefore, there is no need for us to specialise in any particular area in the way in which the noble Lord suggested, because the amendment demands that all of that should be looked at—what is needed and what the supply will be, taking into account further areas that the authorities need to look at before covering that.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, I had not intended to intervene, either. I do not want to go too far down the same line as my noble friend Lord Waddington. Obviously, immigration—the number of people coming in as against the number going out—has some effect on the housing market. It must do. However, a lot of other trends, including the growth in the number of single-parent families and the huge increase in the number of people living on into old age as single people, are generating an additional demand for housing. That should be set against the current background where, even with low interest rates, the low availability of mortgages and the drop in housebuilding are creating something that we need to take seriously—namely, a diminution in home ownership in this country. As a Conservative who strongly supported the right to buy, with all the effects that that had, I am alarmed that we now have a situation in which our housing policy appears to be leading to a steady diminution in home ownership. There are strategic issues here that need looking at.