Housing

Lord Horam Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Horam (Con)]

My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, for introducing his debate on housing, which we all know is a central issue of our times. He did so with all the fluency one would expect of a minister of the Church without it ever quite sounding like a sermon. He was right to pinpoint the issue of the obligation of our generation and perhaps the generation after us to young people, who are finding this problem extremely difficult to overcome.

From having taken part in many debates on housing in the past 12 months, particularly on the Housing and Planning Bill, which had a difficult passage through this House, I feel encouraged now that the Government really do get it. The noble Lord quoted St Theresa, and I am encouraged by feeling that the Government now understand that this is a central issue which they have to tackle and which has to be judged accordingly.

Secondly, I am very pleased at the way that the new Ministers in charge of this area after the change of Government are tackling the issue, particularly Sajid Javid, the Secretary of State, who is an economist and former Treasury Minister, which is important in this context as he has the right sort of background to understand this issue, and Gavin Barwell who, as the noble Lord will know, is a London Member of Parliament and understands the problems that are particularly acute in our capital city. I am confident that they are the right team to tackle this.

Thirdly, I praise ourselves because in the report by the Economic Affairs Committee of this House, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, we had the right sort of solutions to the problems we face. He made a number of points, of which two particularly struck home. The first is that, above all, this is an issue of supply. The Government are saying that we must build up to constructing 200,000 homes a year. Our committee’s report said that was not enough. We should be building up to 300,000 houses a year. I know that that is a steep climb from 150,000 to 170,000 homes, which is where we are at the moment. Incidentally, that figure does resonate: it was the number that Harold Macmillan achieved after three years as Housing Minister. It is not an unfair aim for a Conservative Government to reach in due course.

The second major point made in the Hollick report, if I can call it that, was that the private sector will not do this. We have to encourage social housing, whether through housing associations or council housing. They must build far more than they have done in recent years. That is fundamental because we will never get anywhere near what is necessary if we rely on the private sector, which has different objectives, above all around profit and so on, so clearly we have to get a grip on the social sector. In my view there are three areas that the Government should be looking at to tackle the issue.

First, as the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, has just said, the Government should abandon the cap on local authority spending on housing. He instanced a number of infrastructure projects that are going ahead in place of housing. It is ridiculous that local authorities can build swimming pools ad lib but cannot construct housing beyond a certain point. As he said, there are issues of prudence which councils can adhere to in order to prevent them being reckless in how they handle their finances.

Secondly, public land should be organised. A great deal of public land is available for housing, as it is for other things. I believe that the Government should organise it properly and relax the Treasury rules on getting good value for land. It should be more sympathetic to settling on a slightly lower price for relevant bodies. Indeed, I understand that the Secretary of State is looking at direct commissioning, whereby the Government will directly commission new housing on public land released at the right sort of value to make that possible.

Thirdly, the Government should encourage the formation of housing associations. I declare a former interest as the first chairman of the Circle 33 Housing Group, which is now the Circle Housing Group. It undertakes housing projects in the London area and around East Anglia, and it could do far more. Shortly I will be attending a meeting being held by the National Housing Federation—as, I am sure, will many other noble Lords—headlined “Ambition to Deliver”. We can and should be building more houses, and I believe that housing associations can do so.

The Government are heading in the right direction and they have the right team in place. I look forward to the White Paper that I believe will be published this month or in December, which will put more flesh on the bones of this critical issue of our time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

My Lords, I add my word of gratitude to the Minister and to all those who have taken part. It has been a very enlightened and, I think, non-partisan debate on an issue that we all recognise as very important. It needs a degree of urgency, which perhaps has not been commanded up till now. I thank all those who have spoken. I am glad that my speech, being not quite a sermon, triggered a response from the noble Lord, Lord Horam. I am very pleased to have received his words and I thank him for them.

[Lord Horam]

I think we are all glad that, at least in the House of Lords, the Labour Party still owes more to Methodism than to Marx.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

Perhaps the noble Lord will add to that and let me have it in writing. I repeat that I am most grateful. As I conclude, I just want to remind noble Lords that it is a great privilege of the life that I live that I have the ear of untold numbers of young people from a variety of ethnic and social backgrounds. In presenting my remarks, I have sought to articulate the point of view that they have helped me to formulate, and I hope that will add a degree of urgency to the way that we look at this issue.