Lord Cameron of Dillington
Main Page: Lord Cameron of Dillington (Crossbench - Life peer)Housing and Planning Bill
Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts“( ) it is not in a rural area.( ) A rural area is defined as—( ) any settlement with a population of fewer than 3,000 people at the most recent national census, or( ) any settlement with a population of between 3,000 and 10,000 people at the most recent national census, and designated as a rural area by the Secretary of State following representations from the relevant local authority.”
Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)
My Lords, I rise to speak to all of the amendments in the group, for two of which I am the lead name and two of which I am an also-ran.
I must apologise, first, because the ground we are covering in this group is very similar to the ground we covered on Thursday, except that in this context we are dealing with the rural perspective. I controlled myself and bit my tongue several times on Thursday waiting for this moment. In fact, there was a moment at about quarter past 2 when I was nearly chewing my tongue for lack of lunch. Anyway, I apologise for covering much of the same ground.
I realise that increased home ownership, including the right to buy, is a manifesto commitment, but the most important need for the average voter in the countryside, as has been said so often in our discussions over the last week or so, is to ensure that there remains adequate affordable housing for their children—or even themselves if they are young adults who could not possibly afford to buy a house or even a local starter home. This is why in previous debates I and others sought, if possible, to ensure a good mix of different sorts of affordable housing on rural Section 106 sites; to protect exception sites from the transience of starter homes; and even to use the right-to-buy clauses to provide more homes in the countryside, because we desperately need more homes—above all, more affordable homes—in the countryside.
So, it is absolutely no good at all if the discount being provided by the Government for the right to buy comes from a reduction of affordable housing in our countryside, owing to both rural and, more particularly, mixed urban and rural local authorities being forced to sell their most valuable houses, which, inevitably, will be those in desirable rural England. This, as was said many times on Thursday, is robbing Peter to pay Paul. It will seriously not help the provision of more affordable houses in the countryside, and do not forget that we are already hard done by when it comes to affordable rural homes, compared with our urban counterparts. Some 8% of our homes are affordable, compared with 19% in towns. The Treasury seems intent on making that situation worse. I say the Treasury because I detect its dead hand and lack of social awareness in all this: as long as more people own their own homes, which might be good for the nation’s overall economy, and the public debt is simultaneously unharmed or even reduced, that is all that matters; but the fact that it is adding greatly to rural housing problems and possibly to the number of rural homeless seems to be of no consequence to it.
I know that the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, said last Thursday that he believed that London was a special case because it has “intractable housing problems”, but we have intractable problems in rural England, too. For years and years we have needed thousands of homes per annum and for years and years we have had them only in hundreds. There is now a huge backlog. It therefore really would be best if these local authorities, as set out in Amendment 66D, did not have to include their rural housing stock in the sums involved in Clause 67(2), and that they were thus discouraged from selling these houses.
If it is not possible totally to exclude such sales as of right in the Bill, the alternative is that they certainly must be excluded where it is not possible to replace them in the same parish or adjoining parishes, as proposed in Amendment 67A. If the manifesto commitment is actually about building more homes, as interpreted by various Peers on the government Benches, then that amendment should be totally acceptable to the Government. It goes without saying—others have already said this more eloquently and in more detail—that these sales must include a one-for-one replacement requirement in rural areas if we are not to go backwards in the provision of affordable homes in the countryside, which, as I have already said, we really must not do. We cannot afford to.
The situation is already desperate in rural England, hence my Amendment 68D. I do not wish to give the Minister a hard time, but if the Government want to fund their right-to-buy manifesto promises they really must put some of their money where their mouth is, or look very carefully at the equity loan scheme of the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, or at some possible variation of it, as proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Horam. If two-for-one is right for London, the countryside deserves at least one-for-one. That means leaving the local authorities enough money to pay for the new houses by whatever means possible, including, possibly, raising their cap, although I recognise that that affects the PSBR; or better still—this seems the simplest of all solutions and therefore the best—just allowing them to retain more of the proceeds of sale. In other words, the right-to-buy promise in the manifesto should be paid for not only by the local authorities, but to some extent by central government.
I am tempted to wish that we had a Conservative rural mayor to be elected; if so, I am sure we would solve the problem in a jiffy. Actually, on second thoughts, one should be careful what one asks for. I speak, of course, as an ex rural tsar, or rural advocate—one of those funny titles—without wishing in any way to see the return of such a post.
On the subject of electoral priorities, the Government should not forget that in the currently clear blue waters of the south-west—where rural housing problems are probably at their most critical throughout the whole of England because of the seeming desirability of living there, and thus the high price of houses, combined with the lower average wages paid there—housing looms particularly large as an issue for voters. I would have thought it to the Government’s advantage to see serious action on housing in the south-west before 2020.
Lord Cameron of Dillington
I thank all noble Lords who supported the amendments. I was struck, when listening to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, and the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, that it is a bit like Morton’s fork. You are offered two unpalatable options—one is to lose the incredibly important affordable housing that we have in the countryside and the other is to lose our countryside, which is also very precious to us, particularly in national parks and AONBs. I do not believe that we can afford to lose what we treasure most, and not just to pay for what I consider to be a fairly rash manifesto promise. I believe that the rash manifesto promise should be paid for by the Government and not, ultimately, using the contorted trail described by the noble Lord, Lord Best, by those desperate for housing in our rural communities.
The Minister has very kindly agreed to meet us before Report to discuss some of our rural housing problems. I give notice to her that this matter will undoubtedly be on the agenda. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Cameron of Dillington
My Lords, I support my noble friend in his Amendment 70A and I echo his words about easing the transition, but I speak mostly to my Amendment 77A in the group. It concerns income variability in the context of pay to stay, which is something I raised at Second Reading. I realise that it has already been mentioned in both the previous groups by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, and others, and also that the Minister indicated when she replied to the first group that the Government are looking at “an equitable conclusion” to the issue. Nevertheless, I would, as usual, like to put a rural slant to add to and help the much-needed thinking on this issue, and perhaps put some rural flesh on the bones of the problem.
It is very much a feature of rural life that many, both young and old, are self-employed. Indeed, I have always been proud of the fact that of those who are below the poverty line in rural areas, statistics show that 22% are self-employed, while of those below the poverty line in urban areas only 8% are self-employed. In other words—and this is what makes me proud—we in rural England, when in economic difficulties, have a greater tendency to get off our backsides and turn our hand to whatever comes along in order to resolve our problems. In Cornwall I believe the self-employed figure is as high as 28%, but that probably just exemplifies the nature of the local economy there—a high summer tourist trade and only odd jobs available during the winter months.
The point I am making is that these sorts of people can, in some years, be very successful. The whole family can all find themselves with work. Although there is probably only one member of the household with a regular job on a living wage, the others could all get lucky and push the total household income up well over the £30,000 figure stipulated in this section of the Bill, for a brief period of time. Therefore, it is really important that the Government are aware of these quirks of fortune in rural families and, for that matter, in many urban families too, especially those on zero-hour contracts, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, pointed out. The point being that after a good year of combined family incomes of sometimes well over £30,000, the same family might find themselves back down to £20,000 or less the following year.
Therefore, my amendment is designed to encourage the Government to think very hard about that sort of variability and put in place some sort of long-term averaging system—I stress long-term—to iron out the highs and lows of rural and urban life. This whole scheme makes some limited sense in principle: those in assisted rental accommodation who greatly increase their income should perhaps move to pay a market rent. However, the scheme itself is so full of pitfalls, and what my children call heffalump traps, that it needs either withdrawing or serious wholesale amendment, perhaps after some of the preliminary pilots mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, and particularly across a whole range of areas, which should include a rural area.
Lord Kerslake
My Lords, I shall speak briefly to the amendment as the arguments have been well made by the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Cameron of Dillington. The key issue is the difficulty of implementation and potential sources of injustice to individuals who face sharp rent increases. To the extent that it is possible to phase in those rent increases, the impact on individuals is likely to be less. This is, indeed, consistent with the approach taken in the past when there have been movements of rent towards more comparable rents—the so-called convergence policy that worked across individual organisations. Therefore, it is applying the same principles to individuals in relation to their rent movements as are applied to organisations which have moved towards rent convergence. This is more consistent with the implied contract to the tenant, who took on the property at a given rent and had a reasonable expectation that their rent would not be subject to sharp movements as a consequence of government policy. That is why this is an amendment worthy of the Minister’s consideration.