Housing and Planning Bill

Lord Selsdon Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Selsdon (Con)]

My Lords, I feel I have gone back in time to Watford. When I first left the Navy I went to work in a factory there called Universal Asbestos, which was trying to get out of asbestos and into plastics. It was a great experience for me. I was then made a rep and my greatest triumph was managing to get “Workers’ Playtime” at the factory. I then became a shop steward. I loved the idea of building things. I was no good with my toy bricks when I was a child but the whole idea of construction appealed to me.

At a very young age, due to a death, I arrived in your Lordships’ House, where I have been for 52 years. I have been drip fed—I would have said originally by geriatrics—by wise men and something sticks to the skin. Construction and building are of great interest. I have looked at and been most interested in what you call regeneration. When I first met Michael Heseltine—whom I had some doubts about because he was a great showman, and I have always been nervous of showmen —we discussed the regeneration of docklands. My family had been in the shipping industry and used to ship people to Australia from docklands. With the ability to use tax allowances and to get clawbacks, the whole of docklands was regenerated. I spent maybe three or four years working there, backwards and forwards, being looked down on because obviously, being a Member of your Lordships’ House, I had no real knowledge or experience and I was there only in name alone. However, we managed to do quite a lot and build things.

The greatest fun of all was working with the left-wing and right-wing councils on houses and accommodation, and looking at the ethnic variations in the East End and docklands and realising that all these were historic, coming from trade and such things. When finally we managed to get things done I thought that, as I chaired the Government’s body for sport for Greater London and the south-east, we should have a sports arena. This caused tremendous problems but, in the end, with the aid of sports bodies, we built an arena and more houses. I finally left docklands and realised that, often with the use of tax allowances, it was the funding and the drive that got things going, and that is where I had a great respect for Michael Heseltine.

When you looked around the country at areas of decline, you thought, “How can these be regenerated and where will the wealth come from?”. One looks at the various centres that have declined, and their history. The wonderful thing about your Lordships’ House is that you can go into the Library and try to find a question that they cannot answer. I have failed every time: they always come back with a suitable answer.

We are considering regeneration and home ownership. The principle of home ownership has always been very important to me, but not necessarily to so many people. I hated the idea of renting something—as I had to do when I first came to London—so I went to see the owner and asked if he would sell to me. He said that I could not afford to buy it. So I then suggested that he lend me the money. He very kindly did, so I bought my first mews house.

When I later became a director of Gleeson, we were not as much into housebuilding as we would have liked, so we set out to find sites. I did not realise how difficult it was, in the construction industry, to find sites, because everyone was competing with everyone else and so the price rolled up. We then hit on the idea that we must do “affordable housing”. I remember discussing, at one of the board meetings, what “affordable” is—surely that relates to the people who can afford it. We therefore started to look at low-cost housing and set up a housebuilding operation, which did not make an enormous amount of money. The important thing, however, was the principle of deciding who you were building for.

Now, with the shift in the pattern of inhabitants in the United Kingdom, and the number of people of all classes and levels of wealth who wish to come to, work in and live in this great country, I feel that we are on the way up—but that hanging in the background is the realisation that we may have to take in more immigrants even than in the Victorian era. I wonder how we can cope with them. I would like to see some kind of master plan for housing and changes in estate duty that would enable people to pass on their properties to their children and grandchildren in shares, rather than have them start again.

I have enjoyed the debate today. I am not sure what the conclusions are. I am impressed by the vast number of people who have been here. I thank the Minister for her help and I hope that this will lead to something productive.