Housing

Lord Graham of Edmonton Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Graham of Edmonton]

My Lords, I rise like every other speaker to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, on the opportunity that she has given those of us with a common interest and experience in housing. I am sure that the Minister noted carefully that the noble Baroness’s speech was not a political one where political points were sought to be made. It was a pleading speech to the Minister and her colleague, Mr Grant Shapps. That is the attitude that I wish to take. The past is the past. There is a problem. There is a deficit that has to be tackled.

My claim to speak in this debate is that I was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in a place called Scotswood Road. My memory of housing from the 1920s and 1930s when I was a boy is that in the main it was slum clearance and the building of council housing estates around the edge of Newcastle upon Tyne. That is how it was. Then I remember when Harold Macmillan electrified the Tory party conference in the early 1950s by accepting or making a pledge to build 300,000 houses, which he did. That was a great inspiration.

I also rest my case on the fact that when I was leader of Enfield Council in the early 1960s we had a visit from Bob Mellish. He was the Housing Minister for London at the time and he came to Enfield with Evelyn Dennington from the GLC—a lady well known in this place. They galvanised Enfield Council, which had a good record. It had a direct labour organisation. We accepted a challenge that we would build 1,000 homes in a year. We achieved that in 1970. The only problem was that we lost control in 1968. That should teach us a lesson, but that is local politics for you.

What I want to say about those three instances is that they all gave me inspiration. They showed dedication and passion. What is missing now is something that I accepted when I became a councillor in 1960. Because of what was going on around me with social deprivation, housing was the single most important element of my interest. Yes, I was interested in education, the environment and other things, but housing was the most important.

I recall twice in my time as a Member of Parliament leaving my surgery having listened to some depressing tales and sitting in my car crying, because I could not do anything to help the people. That is just my experience, but it is shared by every other person with a heart who has been a councillor. You are moved by the fact that the enormity of the problem is so great and the resources that you can command as an individual are so small that you need a breakthrough. I hope that the Minister in her reply can recognise that. We all accept the fact that economically and financially, the Government have inherited a very difficult situation. I am not making a plea for priorities, but I believe we need inspiration.

I hesitate when I hear that the drive of the Government is to make sure that the people at the bottom can do things that I believe ought to be done at the top. What is required is Leadership with a capital L. I want to see this Minister make a name for herself in this field as she has in many others, not just as a champion, but as someone who has the guts to speak out, not against her party or the common situation, but to take the opportunity of the role that she has to be ultra sharp in putting forward the need for social housing.

I want to spend much of my speech on an aspect of housing of which I have some experience—that is, mobile homes. I am the secretary of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Welfare of Park Home Owners. Mobile homes are attractive; they are an alternative to bricks and mortar, but they have a number of problems. I thought that the House would be interested if I read from a letter sent to the assistant head of housing, strategy and policy in Cornwall Council by Tony Turner, Allan Hampshire, Justine Wadge and Mark Luxton. I have confirmed that they are happy that I should quote from the letter, which says:

“The park home sector is a growing one. It has been deliberately driven by the industry to attract the bricks and mortar property owning retirement market and for this reason has the potential to provide much needed housing for an aging but often financially independent population who have released equity and can usefully contribute to local economies. It can also offer relief to Statutory housing pressures for the elderly. In this context the sector is worth encouragement but only under effective supervision which will drive out those whose only objectives are financial exploitation and who deliberately operate without any consideration of social responsibility. This particular operator simply regards the payment of fines and damages as an operational overhead. He does not appear in Court and often will not even seek to defend his position. Evidence across other Counties within which he operates establishes that he simply pays fines and costs and carries on as before in the knowledge that these will be easily covered by the next dubious transaction. He has persistently proven that he simply regards laws as a minor inconvenience and if these circumstances are not addressed in this County, any proliferation of his activities here will not only carry heavy social costs, but also represent increasing financial costs to yourselves as a Unitary Authority”.

If people are driven out of their home by harassment and other means and need housing, where are they going to get it from? It will be the local authority. So there is not much sense in the Government or anybody else providing more affordable housing if it has been siphoned off in that way. The letter goes on to say:

“Ideally, of course, the operating licence of this owner should, subject to available delegated powers, be removed. There already exists more than significant evidence that he is unfit to control a business that incurs social responsibilities and since setting up this Association I am now frequently contacted by residents on other of his parks in this and other counties to learn, in the light of such evidence, there to be rising anger born from frustration that this appears not to have previously been given serious consideration”.

The case that I am making is that there is more than one affordable housing market. I know that this Minister is well experienced. I am not competent to go into the technical details of finance and planning; I have listened with great interest to what has been said. But I plead with the Minister and her colleague, Mr Grant Shapps, who I know takes a deep interest in these matters, and whom the all-party group has invited to come along and speak to us about the problems, to look on the mobile homes industry as something that can contribute to the overall solution. There are some villains in control, but there are very many good landlords and owners as well. We are all waiting with a clean sheet to hear from the Minister what he is prepared to do. As for us, we are prepared to go out of our way to be helpful.