Lord Sawyer
Main Page: Lord Sawyer (Labour - Life peer)
Lord Sawyer
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, for securing this important debate. As she said, this is an issue to which we shall no doubt be required to return on more than one occasion during this Parliament. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, on his maiden speech. I am sure that we shall hear much more from him as he becomes accustomed to our ways and means.
The thing that has galvanised my attention in the debate was the opening bars of the contribution of my noble friend Lady Wilkins, in which she referred to the public and political will that is needed to do something about housing. We can have all the policies and remedies in the world for solving the problem but if we do not have the will to implement them we will not solve it. Despite all the problems surrounding housing—there are many, of which we shall hear more—the most important thing is for the Government to stand back and encourage all of us, irrespective of the nature of our involvement in housing, to think with a fresh mind about how we might provide different solutions to the problem of affordable housing. Any incoming Government have a golden moment to have a fresh look at how to resolve this problem. The goal of affordable homes for people has proved elusive to successive Governments over 100 years and probably more. It has never been achieved. We all travel around the same paradigms, with the same people making the same arguments, offering similar or related solutions to the problem, yet the need for more decent, affordable homes continues to grow as we try to find solutions.
The main four things that people want are jobs, health, education and homes. Governments, particularly in general elections, put forward manifesto plans for jobs, education and health, but homes always fall off the agenda and become the political Cinderella. This is partly because we act together on the other things: we come together to work, we provide education collectively in our schools and colleges, and in our National Health Service we act together to provide health; but when it comes to homes we tend to build our own nests and pass by on the other side. That mindset has to change. We have to think about homes like we think about education. It involves all of us. I may have a nice flat in a nice place, but I cannot continue to walk by on the other side from those who are less fortunate.
William Morris, who was a great favourite of mine—not the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Handsworth, who is also a great favourite of mine, but the older and if I may say so more famous William Morris, who would never have been a noble Lord—wrote a pamphlet called How We Live and How We Might Live. That made me think that I would like a debate in this country about how we build homes and how we might build homes. I would like the Government to initiate the debate. I do not want the Government to do it, but I would like them to stand up and say, “Let's have a big think about this and engage people in a way that we only have a once-in-a-Parliament opportunity to do”.
My Government made a brave attempt to tackle this problem. The noble Baroness, Lady Ford, made a small defence of that policy in the time allowed her. However, even people who were involved would probably agree that it was not enough. Part of the problem was that we kept changing our Housing Ministers, with different persons coming along all the time. We did not get continuity, and because of that we did not get continuity of policy. One thing that the Government might think about, as they are in favour of fixed-term things, is a fixed-term Housing Minister—the noble Baroness would be fine—who would follow ideas through, get the initiatives going and see them through to conclusion, rather than being overtaken by a new Minister with a new set of ideas. That would be really helpful and a great service.
I will move on from my passion for the opportunity to think afresh. No matter what people think or who is involved in the thinking, we will always come back to the issue of land availability: it is impossible not to. The Home Builders Federation says that the main constraint on the building of homes is the undersupply of building land. I know others will contest that, but 0.3 per cent of the population own 60 per cent of the land, so we know where to make a start. We should have a chat with the 0.3 per cent of the population, many of whom are probably in your Lordships' House. We can start the dialogue here. However, it is more complicated than that. We need to keep our green belt and increase our open spaces. Thinking about how we might be housed in this small island will require consideration of the kind of urban development, including high-rise living, that my noble friend Lord Rogers of Riverside has often argued for in this House. That should be emphasised and recognised.
There is also the issue of public land. The Government should have a good look at this. At a time of shortage of public funds, we should look a lot more carefully at the management of the assets that we have. If we carry out mergers or downsize departments, let us use the land from those estates to meet not commercial needs but housing needs, and particularly public housing needs. There is land in public ownership from all the departments of state, including the Ministry of Defence, as well as transport bodies and even local authorities. I am sure that people know more about that than I do, but we could certainly require those public bodies to bring forward public land for the development of affordable homes. If the land were used for that purpose, it could be a kind of shared-equity product to help first-time buyers, which would take account of other points that have been made in the debate. The public purse could then benefit from the value of the sites once the first-time buyers had sold up and moved on.
One initiative that fits well with the question of how we might be housed is the eco-town approach. I do not know what the Government are going to do about eco-towns, but I know that some Conservative-controlled councils like the idea of continuing with them. I hope that that initiative will not be sidelined but will continue to be properly considered.
In the minute left to me, I should like to talk about people creating their own housing. In this country we have never talked much about self-build homes. It is a very popular concept in other European countries, particularly in Scandinavia, and I think that the Government would get some credit for helping us to think about that idea. It would sit nicely in a society where localism is thought to be important, and it would fit naturally with people’s engagement with the television housing programme “Grand Designs”. Why do we not have grand designs not just for the few people who take part in the television programme but for all people? Why do we not initiate a big movement to help people to build their own homes?
Those are just a few thoughts that I have had. This is a massively important issue, which ranks alongside jobs, health and education. Although we can be partisan and divisive at times, if there is one single issue on which I wish we could find a consensus and pull together, it is the provision of homes, because they are fundamental to our lives. Sitting on these Benches, I would be expected to argue with the Government and take them on, but I wish them success with housing for the people who really need it.