Housing

Lord Sawyer Excerpts

Thursday 6th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sawyer]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Dubs for initiating this important debate. I was prompted to speak by reading Alan Johnson’s book about his childhood in Notting Hill, and the poor housing conditions that he and his family had to suffer. I remembered my own childhood, too. We might think that things are a lot better now, but, sadly, for many people that is not the case. Today there are still families living in one room, or sharing a kitchen and bathroom, or perhaps living in bed and breakfast accommodation, or a hostel, or in the unregulated private sector. On reading Alan’s book, I thought: I hope that we as a Parliament do not forget, from our privileged position on the red or green Benches, that there are still many thousands of people not adequately housed and living in very poor circumstances. We must never forget that in our deliberations.

There are still unscrupulous landlords who know that people on poor incomes will put up with squalor, damp and disrepair, and so it goes on. My noble friend Lord Morris said that the days of “Cathy Come Home” are still here and he is absolutely right. Although it is 50 years since that programme was made, in some parts of our country we are still no closer to making sure that everyone has a decent place to live, let alone a place to live in a garden city. We need to remember that.

As many noble Lords have said, things are generally getting more difficult for people as regards housing. As if things were not bad enough, the Government have decided to insist that poor people who are adequately housed should give up their rights and privileges and that those with a spare bedroom, possibly measuring eight feet by 10 feet—which is probably smaller than the people who frame their legislation would keep their dogs in—should give it up to a lodger or another family or pay extra for it. Stephanie Bottrill was so upset that she would be charged £80 a month for her two spare rooms that she walked into the path of a lorry and was killed.

Notting Hill Housing, of which I was the chairman for a number of years, has drawn my attention to the impact of universal credit on some of its larger families who are particularly hard hit. In one case, a single mother with eight children will lose over £350 a week. She is desperately worried about what will happen to her and her family. Housing associations, such as Notting Hill, and councils want to do more but the cuts in capital funding for new build restrict what can be built. There are 1.8 million households on the waiting list. Many private landlords are exploiting the situation by raising their rents or neglecting to do repairs. Often tenants have to compete with sealed bids over the asking rent just to get into a home, or have to offer to take a much longer contract to get occupancy of a flat or house. Can noble Lords believe that? I did not know about it myself until this week.

Noble Lords have asked what can be done. It is right that we talk about what can be done, with the caveat I mentioned earlier that we never forget what it is like for people today planning for their future. We need to be aware of this big problem and be motivated to tackle it. We have all talked about the housing shortage. That must be a given, particularly in London and the south-east. In Brighton—where I have cause to live on occasion—the council is using shipping containers to house the homeless. That may be considered a solution by some people but it is not really a solution at all. What is really needed is a unifying national campaign. We do not need a strategy but a campaign which will unite all parties and all sectors of society to build enough homes to meet the need.

I have taken part in many housing debates in the House where we have talked about Parker Morris standards, garden cities, quality versus quantity, high rise versus low rise and green belt versus brown belt. These are debates that have to be had but sometimes in the past we have become bogged down in the arguments and missed the big picture. The picture people care about out there is getting homes. If there was a drive to house people adequately, there would be diversity of provision. People who love quality might be disappointed and people who want quantity might be disappointed and the various interest groups might not always agree but we need to cut through some of this stuff and get on to build the homes that people need. If we do not do so, we will be standing here in 15 years’ time talking, as I have done, about the same issues and making slight amendments and improvements here and there but not actually tackling the big picture. We need a big picture approach and to pull people in who have new ideas. We need to get outside the box and think about converting shops and offices into housing and encourage development through the planning and tax systems. We need to think about new towns, garden cities and new cities. However, none of this will happen unless we have strong political will.

The deep conservatism of many communities against new homes should be challenged by those of us who want to build more housing for the people who need it. The homeless, the badly housed, the priced-out people, the overcrowded families, the oppressed immigrants at the mercy of disreputable landlords, the frightened council tenant with a spare room, all these people—who are mostly in London and the south-east, but wherever they may be—need us in Parliament to raise our voices and heads and say that we must build more homes, and we must have the political will to do it.

There is also another group of people who may not be in that category, who had it very easy 50 years ago, as I did. These are people with a steady job earning a good wage, such as teachers and nurses; although today the problem affects even accountants and highly paid professional people, unlike in my time. Without parental help it is just about impossible for these people to buy in London or in some of our more expensive cities. Those from ordinary backgrounds with university debt and other commitments struggle to afford a big deposit and huge monthly mortgages. This group needs government help. Schemes like shared ownership help quite a few families, and some other initiatives might help, but I am afraid that for many their only option for the foreseeable future is long-term renting in the private sector. These people will not get mortgages or on the house-buying ladder, as did their parents and grandparents. They will be in the private rented sector for a long time. Sometimes the private sector is good but sometimes housing in it is badly maintained with insecure homes, managed by buy-to-let landlords, which are not good enough.

All parties when in power must drive up standards in the private rented sector as more and more people will come to depend on it. We need houses in that sector with economic rents. We could achieve this through planning and tax incentives rather than rent control, which would probably reduce supply. I would like civil society and the wider community to get involved in this sector. I would like trade unions, building societies, local authorities, churches and all kinds of people to get involved and ask themselves, “Can we make a contribution to the private housing sector? Can we build something? Can we club together with others to build something? What can we do to make this a better place to live in for the people who have to live in it?”.

Finally, I should like to say something about my generation. We are the generation who had it all. We have heard about the increases in house prices and the cheap university education that I did not personally have but many colleagues and friends did. Many of those who had the financial capital decided to become private landlords. I hope that there will be new thinking in a world where we can create a more viable private rented sector whereby individuals who want to invest in the sector join others in doing so. Some of those in my generation who invest in buy-to-let properties are not investing in properties for people but in investment vehicles and are looking to realise their capital gains and rental benefits from private houses. They do not care about the young people, even their own children, who have to pay these rents. We have to talk about that question. Why is our generation charging our children such enormous rents to live in houses because we have been so lucky? I am not saying that such people are bad or immoral but there ought to be other ways to make sure that people who want to invest in the private rented sector join others in doing so.

We must get across to all our friends, colleagues and close associates in this society that houses are not for capital gain or vehicles for profit; they are homes, and we do not have enough of them for people to live in. We cannot afford to turn them into vehicles for capital accumulation, and we should talk about this much more.