Lord Tope
Main Page: Lord Tope (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Lord Tope (LD)
My Lords, in moving this amendment I will also speak to the 11 other amendments standing in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Bakewell of somewhere in Somerset.
We are moving now to Part 1, Chapter 1 and Clauses 1 to 7, and, possibly for the first time, to a part of the Bill that is causing widespread concern. My amendments and the other four in this group, with which I have considerable sympathy, seek to address at least one of those concerns about starter homes. I certainly have no objection to starter homes. As far as I know, neither do many other people, so the issue is not about starter homes as such. In the right circumstances and the right places they can make a useful addition to housing provision for some people.
The concern here is that Chapter 1 of Part 1 refers only to starter homes. The present wording imposes a clear duty on local authorities, as planning authorities, to promote starter homes, with no mention of any other tenures. Councils’ ability to choose a mix of home ownership tenures for planning obligations is completely fettered by the Bill as drafted. The concern is that in Section 106 discussions, for example, local authorities are likely to say—or at least to feel—that they have to deliver a certain number of starter homes and therefore that they cannot specify other forms of affordable ownership provision. I am sure we will hear from the Minister that that is not the Government’s intention but I fear it is very likely to be the effect.
The purpose of my amendments is to widen the duty on local authorities to promote home ownership schemes, including starter homes. It is about home ownership in that we recognise the priority that this Government give to home ownership. I have considerable sympathy with Amendment 37, which refers to,
“new homes across all tenures”,
but these amendments bring in the wider range of home ownership schemes.
As I have said, starter homes provide a useful means but the role of the local authority, as the planning authority, as well as sometimes the housing authority, is to meet all types of housing need, to be in the best position to judge what the local needs are—local needs are the key to this—and what type of tenure, in what volume, places and circumstances, is appropriate to that area. It may well include starter homes but it most certainly will include other types of home ownership and other forms of tenure. Therefore, we are concerned. I think there is widespread concern from the LGA, among others, about the fettering of local authority discretion in this way. I declare my interest as one of the vice-presidents of the LGA. The aim is to allow local authorities to determine for themselves—if I might say so, in the spirit of localism—what is best and most suitable for their areas without having necessarily to feel that they must give priority to any particular form.
I mentioned the LGA. It has indeed said that starter homes will be outside the reach of all people in need of affordable housing in 220 council areas. That is two-thirds of the whole country. Starter homes will not be effective for them. I am sure that other contributors to this debate will want to speak about that.
I have been approached on this subject by a range of organisations but particularly by Future Housing Review, which is supported by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust and has a particular interest in shared ownership, which can make a significant contribution to housing need and is indeed one of—not the only one, by a long way—the housing provisions that we are talking about. I was pleased to note that in the Minister’s replies to a Question this afternoon she made several references to shared ownership schemes. I hope now that she has been briefed she will be able to expand a little more on that when she replies to this debate.
Lord Greaves
Well, yes, it would not be difficult. Perhaps that is why he was never in the same party as me.
Lord Greaves
He came very close. We had our times together.
Then I heard the noble Lord talk about unintended consequences, and it seems to me that this proposal is full of the threat of unintended consequences. I go back to the point I made previously, which was picked up by the noble Lord, Lord Best, that this Bill is trying to fit everybody into the same pot. It is one size fits all, when what we need is a series of different answers to the problems of the housing market in different parts of the country.
When I spoke previously, I said that there are lots of different housing markets—perhaps 100—around the country. The person who first gave me that idea is now in his place and is my noble friend Lord Stunell, who gave us a talk when he was a Minister in the Department for Communities and Local Government in which he kept hammering home the point that you cannot have one rule for everybody. That means that there have to be local mechanisms for finding solutions. The only people who can legitimately do that and set out to find those mechanisms and policies are the elected local authority.
Having said that, I will ask the Minister the following three questions. One relates to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Horam. In 2001, owner-occupation in this country reached a peak of 69%. By 2011, it had gone down to 64%, and it is now somewhere in the low 60s. I suggest that that is an unintended consequence of a number of different policies. I believe that owner-occupation is the best form of tenure, although there are people for whom it is not appropriate and people who would not want it. I first got involved in politics at the end of the 1950s, joining the Liberal Party when “Ownership for all” was a Liberal slogan. It is still a good slogan, if a little on the extreme side. My question for the Minister is: do the Government have a target of what they think is a reasonable level of owner-occupation in this country? Are they content for the level to continue to slip until it gets down to perhaps 50%, or do they want to boost it again, and if so, how far do they think we can reasonably get the level to?
The second question is totally unrelated to that and is just a question I realised I did not know the answer to. Is a person or a young couple who buy a house which is a starter home, and therefore get the 20% discount on the market price, also entitled to the 20% Help to Buy discount if they qualify for that? That is just a straight question, because if that were the case it would have an interesting impact.
My final question goes back to the kind of area which I know best, which covers a lot of the north of England outside the most rural areas and the big cities—and perhaps some of the big cities, too—as well as a lot of the rest of the country as well. What is a local authority supposed to do if it cannot find anybody who wants to build starter homes? That may seem a ludicrous question in some parts of the country, but it is not a ludicrous question in the part of the country where I live. It is quite possible that local or big housebuilding companies will not want to build any starter homes, for a whole series of reasons.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, before I begin my reply on this group of amendments, perhaps I may point out that Amendment 50G has not been spoken to. I am sorry if the noble Lord might have been slightly distracted, but Amendment 48 is in the next group. I am very happy to accommodate and address Amendment 48 now. Do the noble Lord, Lord Tope, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, wish to speak to Amendment 50G, or shall I just refer to it?
Lord Tope
My Lords, I do not know exactly what is going on, but I recall starting very clearly by saying that I was speaking to all my amendments. In fact, I counted them off. If the Minister would include whatever it was that I must have forgotten to make specific reference to I would be very grateful—otherwise, we could start the debate all over again.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I just tried to do that for completion’s sake and to be helpful.
Lord Tope
My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken, and to the Minister who has done her very best to respond to what she rightly described as a very long debate. One feature of the debate was a pretty wide measure of agreement. We may all have our own particular favourites on the nature of housing tenure, but I do not think that any of us believes that any one form of housing tenure is a solution to the problem—manifestly it is not. The concern is that the Bill, with the references to starter homes coming right at the front of it, gives the impression that it is rather more important in the delivery that actually most of us believe there will be.
We would probably have had just as long a debate, but perhaps a slightly different one, if Clause 1 of Chapter 1 of Part 1 of a housing Bill had simply said, “The purpose of this Chapter is to promote the supply of decent homes in England”. We may well have had a debate on how to do that, but there would have been even more measure of agreement.
I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for his free legal advice, and I note the value of that advice. I am grateful to the Minister, as I said, for listening very carefully to the debate. All I hope—I think on behalf of all of us who have spoken and listened to this—is that it is not just that the Minister has listened but that the Government will hear. Undoubtedly, we will return to this subject at the next stage of this Bill when we will be seeking to find an acceptable—acceptable to your Lordships’ House—change to the current wording of the Bill. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.