Housing: Affordability and the Underoccupancy Charge

Lord Howard of Rising Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, for introducing this debate. I declare an interest as a member of a district council.

No one can possibly argue the principle that housing should be provided for those who cannot afford it. In this day and age it would be inconceivable that we should not have people housed properly and adequately. But where a house or flat is provided by taxpayers, it is clearly unfair that those who receive this benefit should be given more than they need or require. I find it inconceivable that anyone should argue against this. Why should taxpayers—many of whom are not well off, many of whom have seen a horrible drop in their standard of living, many of whom are obliged to share bedrooms—contribute to the benefit of spare rooms for those in housing that they, the taxpayers, are paying for in addition to paying for their own housing?

Where housing allowance, introduced by Labour, is given to enable those on benefits to rent accommodation in the private sector, no allowance is made for rooms over and above what is strictly necessary. You get sufficient funds to pay for what you need and no more. Yet this very fair principle—as I said, introduced by Labour—is demonised when it comes to housing provided by the state. My noble friend Lady Seccombe has already commented on the exemption for the elderly and the disabled. If the beneficiary of the spare room wishes to stay where they are presently living, they can pay for that—that is a choice. If they feel they cannot pay for it, they can take in a lodger to help. That might not be ideal but where others are subsidising, it cannot be right that they should be subsidising a surplus. I find it curious that some Members of this House have been speaking in favour of that.

Of course, the real culprit where housing is concerned is interference by government. There are planning difficulties. I know of one housebuilder that reckons on 10 years between identifying and purchasing a site and building houses. I know of another housebuilder where the planning application was half a million pages long. There are building regulations and so on and so forth. If the same government interference in housing had continued in the motor industry, we would all now be driving Allegros and Marinas. Add to that the explosion in immigration promoted by Labour, it is hardly surprising that there are housing problems.