Lord Touhig
Main Page: Lord Touhig (Labour - Life peer)
Lord Touhig
My Lords, little did I think when I rose to speak for the first time in the other place—it was the annual St David's Day debate—that I would have to go through a second parliamentary initiation and make another maiden speech, this time in your Lordships' House. I have much appreciated the warmth of the welcome and the help and advice that I have received from noble Lords on all sides of the House—not least from my supporters, my noble friends Lady Ramsay and Lord Jones. More than that, the advice, courtesy, assistance and above all patience shown to me by all the staff I have encountered since I took my seat here a week ago have been exemplary.
I have come here from the other place having spent 15 years representing the people of Islwyn, and I owe the people of my former constituency a great debt for placing their confidence in me to represent them in Parliament over that period. Like many noble Lords, I owe a great debt to my family for their support and encouragement over 35 years of public life—not least to my long-suffering wife. It is often said that behind every successful man is a good woman. I lay no claim to any success of any kind, but if the term were to be applied to me I am sure that it would be, “Behind this successful man was a very surprised mother-in-law”.
I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Ford for securing this debate; we are considering an important matter. The Conservative-Lib Dem Government will face many challenges in the coming months, especially over the level of public spending. Many people will, rightly, make special cases to protect their various budget heads from cuts. I hope that when the Government work out the fine detail, they will not lose sight of the fact that a very basic need of every citizen is a home—a roof over their head, and an affordable one at that.
When I was asked about the territorial title I wished to take, I of course chose Islwyn, my former parliamentary constituency, but I also chose Glansychan, which is a dozen houses in the village of Abersychan. Abersychan has produced five Members of Parliament and is where I was born. If your Lordships will indulge me in giving this potted history of the place of my birth, I will show that it has relevance to this debate. My parents rented No. 7 Glansychan in the 1930s for seven shillings and sixpence a week. That was an affordable rent even for a couple living on a collier’s wage in the south Wales mining valleys. But while my parents’ affordable home was quite common in the 1930s, affordable homes are far less common today.
A recent survey by Shelter Cymru showed that 50 per cent of adults in Wales struggle to pay their mortgage or rent at some time. In Wales, 91,000 people are looking for a home, yet we have 26,000 empty properties. Why? Almost one in four of the 1,100 people surveyed said that the cost of housing was a severe source of family anxiety. More than half those surveyed said that their adult children could not afford a decent home of their own. I note that the Halifax building society has said that the average age of a first-time buyer today is 34. When my wife and I bought our first house, we were both 20. I am not suggesting that this is the only factor causing people to make their decisions in that way. There are many reasons why people are not setting up their homes until they are perhaps in their mid-30s, but affordability is a major factor.
The Shelter Cymru survey shows that about one in four have had to reduce what they spend on food in order to keep a roof over the heads of themselves and their family. Shelter England commissioned a YouGov survey, which revealed that 2.8 million people aged between 18 and 44 admitted that they are delaying starting a family because of the lack of affordable housing. Some 2.9 million people aged between 18 and 34 live with their parents. Of this cohort, almost 60 per cent say that that situation makes it difficult to develop and maintain other relationships.
In these difficult times when people are looking for work and have perhaps been urged to move elsewhere to look for work, the Shelter survey tells us that 5.6 million people say that housing costs affect their ability to move to find alternative work. Of those renting a property, 50 per cent did not believe that they would ever be able to afford to buy a property in their local area. If we look closely at the private rented sector, we see some of the worst housing conditions of all, and that needs to change.
I am always wary of calling for more regulation, but I believe that a case has been made for greater regulation of the private rented sector. We also perhaps need regulation of the private lettings sector. At the weekend, I came across a case of a young student who had paid £240 to a lettings agency that had not introduced him to any landlords or told him about any rented property. He now does not know what he will get for his £240.
The incident causes me some reflection. Some years ago I was involved in a campaign that supported miners in getting compensation for illnesses that they had as a result of working underground, and I pay tribute to the former Labour Government for all that they did in that respect. However, the scheme was blighted by claims farmers who persuaded often elderly and vulnerable miners or their widows to sign up, hand over a non-refundable registration fee and agree to pay the claims farmers a part of any compensation that they received to offset medical and legal costs. The Government met all legal and medical costs in those cases. The claims farmers were operating a scam. Frankly, they were parasites feeding on the most vulnerable in our society. I am not suggesting that a similar situation exists in the letting agency sector, but will the Minister indicate in her response the Government’s view on regulation? If she cannot do that, perhaps she will write to me and put a copy in the Library.
I have said enough about the problem, so I turn to the solution. We have to build more homes, of course, especially more homes for rent. The Town and Country Planning Association says that we need perhaps 280,000 new homes a year, but such a building programme will need to be funded, and in these difficult financial times we need to think outside the box and look for new and innovative solutions. I therefore commend to the Government the new foundation model proposed by the Co-operative Party—and here I declare an interest as a member of that party. The new foundation model provides an ethical, low-risk investment for investors; it gives access to and control of housing to the citizen; and for our society it offers easy to build, environmentally friendly housing that remains affordable. This model separates the cost of land from the purchase price by placing the land in a community land trust. Unlike individual home owners, residents accumulate equity shares in a mutual home ownership scheme. If they move on, they can sell their shares, and that money may then help them to put down the deposit on a house in the open market. I commend the idea to the Minister. I am sure that she is not the sort of Minister who will dismiss it simply because the Government did not think of it first.
The great socialist James Maxton once said that poverty is manmade and therefore open to change. The lack of affordable housing is a manmade problem and is open to change if we have the will to do something about it.