Construction Industry

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Haskel (Lab)]

My Lords, I recently had a significant birthday. At the party, I was asked why I joined the Labour Party 60 years ago. I replied that I joined because I saw it as a crusade for equality. Today, nowhere is inequality more visible than in housing. It was perhaps easier to overlook this inequality in more prosperous times, when credit was easier and prices were lower, but rising inequality tells us that it is time for a change. Without change, inequality in housing will cause yet more hardship, and more people’s lives to become precarious and more threadbare.

Some may dismiss this as sour grapes. Like my noble friend Lady Dean, I see it as saving our social fabric. We have to act before this rankles enough to cause yet more social problems. Danny Dorling, in his recent book, tells us that there were four times as many big demonstrations in 2013 as in 2006, mostly inspired by rising inequality.

My noble friend Lord Prescott told us that we all know the issues. We all know the remedy. We all agree on the need for more housing. I put it to the Minister that the same Labour crusade that attracted me 60 years ago must be applied to housing. Proper housing is one of our freedoms and freedom warrants a crusade, instead of the token gestures mentioned by my noble friend who opened the debate, for which I thank him.

How do we do it? We do not need to go back 60 years. We have to go back only to the report published last week by Sir Michael Lyons and his team, to which many noble Lords have referred. That tells us how to do it; we in politics have to provide the crusade. We must see that houses are for living in, not just for buying and selling. We must see that housing land is for building on, not for hoarding or trading. We must see that local families take priority over speculators. We have to balance the economic interests of existing householders and landowners with those of prospective householders and landowners. The crusade to build 200,000 new houses a year must be clearly championed and given clear priority by the Government, as many noble Lords have said.

All this can be signalled, for a start, by raising the status, for instance, of the Secretary of State for Local Government and the Minister for Housing. They must be given a task force to carry out the mission of seeking the necessary powers to designate areas for housing growth and new homes, if necessary; to get over some of the planning problems mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Borwick; to update legislation for compulsory purchase orders; and to give local authorities the power to levy council tax from developers on unbuilt plots.

The Chancellor must support this with the consolidation of housing funding streams as part of economic development devolved to local areas. The Chancellor can use government guarantee schemes, including a help-to-build scheme to support not only the large builders but small local builders, and co-ordinate this with the revolving infrastructure funds.

Local councils and planning authorities have to play their part. They must produce five-year targets based on demand. They should empower the Planning Inspectorate to intervene if a plan is not produced. All this is designed to ensure that, once planning has been agreed, housebuilding will proceed, and there could be penalties if developers do not go ahead. In this way, a community can provide for its future and for that of its residents. More houses will be built, making them more affordable. Planning can include garden cities, which will raise our quality of life. Alongside this, we will have to increase our capacity to build homes, as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, emphasised. I agree with him. Not only do we need more small companies building homes, we need to raise the number of skilled people in the industry. Achieving this must also be the responsibility of the task force. Right to buy will have to be revisited so that there will have to be a genuine one-for-one replacement by social landlords. The existing scheme has barely replaced half the homes sold.

My noble friend Lord Rooker spoke about the green belt. Reviewing the green belt legislation has to be part of this. Much green belt land is used for intensive agriculture with little environmental value. Most of the best bits are protected anyway. A crusading Government will grasp the nettle and review the designations.

Hand in hand with more powers will come more openness. Who owns what land? Which developers have taken out options? Developers will make sure that homes are built within a reasonable timescale, because the council tax will become payable anyway. This may mean more regulation. For instance, regulation of crowdfunding of the buy-to-let industry certainly needs a closer look. Indispensable to all this is an informed understanding of what makes homes environmentally suitable while improving the quality of people’s lives. The recent recommendations by Terry Farrell make powerful proposals.

If we are to build 200,000 homes a year and have the benefits of adequate housing in the right places, at affordable prices, to the benefit of our economy, to society and to our quality of life, it can best be achieved in the form of a crusade—a crusade similar to the one that attracted me to the Labour Party 60 years ago.