Housing and Planning Bill

Lord True Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2016 Lords Chamber

At the moment, the housing market finances many things. It is, as I have said, a main driver of our economy, and we will not get affordability unless we have good and consistent market-level sales at significant profit. So I think that there are real issues that the Minister needs to consider carefully, with her colleagues, how we square this particular circle, because we have gone into a lot of detail here and I think we are losing sight of the bigger picture.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise: council duties earlier this week led me to miss the extremely interesting discussions about the relationship between starter homes and affordability. I hope that I will be able to make a contribution to that at Report, because clearly there are issues there. I also missed the early stages this morning, but I have listened with tremendous interest all day, as always, to your Lordships on these questions. Clearly, there are issues that need further discussion. What I heard from the earlier extremely extensive intervention from my noble friend on the Front Bench was that she was open to reflect on all the things that noble Lords have been saying.

The noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, with all his authority on the Cross Benches, made the fundamental point, which we have to bear in mind, that this is a manifesto commitment. That was almost the first thing that the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, came in with. So this House has a duty, in my submission, starting from that point, to look at practicalities and ways forward here, some of which have been put before us in these interesting amendments.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, I accept the point about the manifesto commitment—we came in in 1997 in the same way. But what we then did was, where possible, to go for a White Paper to flesh out the details of how it would be done and used the responses to that White Paper to shape the regulations behind the drafting of the Bills. Would the noble Lord agree that that is the most appropriate way forward in this case?

[Lord True]

My Lords, I respect the noble Baroness. We have heard from her many times today and if she would allow me to pursue my remarks I will try to pick up on that point among others. I have been patient. As a general principle—I have said this many times in your Lordships’ House—policy-making should be progressive. We should have Green Papers, White Papers and so on. But that practice was eliminated in the years when Mr Tony Blair was Prime Minister of this country; it disappeared. So I will not take strictures on that point. Perhaps we could form an alliance and move back, but we are dealing with the situation that we have now.

We do have an artificial market at the moment. I would not choose this particular instrument if I was selecting the first XI to bat for England in solving the housing problem. But we have an artificial market at the moment, parts of which are caused by matters we do not address—for example, the growth in population. The biggest distorter is the London market, because there has been an exceptional rise in London’s population. Currently there is no planned instrument to address or control the problem, and that will lead to continuing high pressures on housing.

Another distortion in the market, generally supported across the parties, is the artificial depression of interest rates. If you depress the cost of acquiring or holding a good, the capital value of that good will increase. At the moment we have an artificial situation in which low interest rates relate to capital costs. The problem then for young people who are trying to save for a deposit or acquire a house at a time when capital values are high is that they have had to live during a period in which, for a time, there have been, effectively, negative interest rates for savers. Now there are minimal interest rates for savers. It is extremely difficult in the exceptional and artificial market that we have now for young people to save. I do not want to follow the interesting and reasonable points that have been made about people with high capital assets, but it is not easy to save for a deposit when prices are moving away.

So it is perfectly logical and understandable that the Government wish to look at an instrument of this kind that would help people seeking to be first-time buyers. It may not be perfect. In exceptional local authority areas where capital values are high I would like to see further discussions about exceptions and so on, but it is not unreasonable that an instrument of this kind should be considered. The fact that it may be a skin graft when perhaps the market needs heart surgery is not necessarily material because skin grafts are important and useful and do help certain people.

Your Lordships have reservations of different kinds and I am interested in the arguments that have been put forward. I do not agree with those who say that we do not need this instrument. There is nothing in it which threatens the existence of other instruments that have been commended, some of which also cause distortions in the market. So we should go on in a constructive way, look at this proposal—which was put before the British people and voted for—and, for all its imperfections, see if we can make it better. Maybe some of the suggestions made today will contribute to that, maybe they will not—but that is what your Lordships’ House is here to do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord True]

My Lords, I also agree with the underlying force of the amendments. They do not apply only to large developments. In some developments there is pocket regeneration and smaller examples of where a decant and a return is needed. It is a question of where in my first 11 for solving the problem, as it were, starter homes come. Some of these schemes are extremely delicate at the edges, not only as my noble friend said in terms of selling and carrying the support of existing tenants and leaseholders but also on finance.

I was interested to hear my great friend, Councillor Ravi Govindia, the leader of Wandsworth, yesterday. I could testify from my local authority’s concern that we need to think about this very carefully. Whether it is rightly addressed by this sort of prescriptive amendment, or by a more concessionary approach to exceptions, which we might discuss between now and Report, I do not know, but I hope that my noble friend will think carefully, because it would be a great pity to lose delicate developments of social housing and estate improvement on the margins. I speak from personal experience when I say that some developments are balancing on the margins at the moment.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my interest of chairing a company which tries to help people to develop sustainably. I come back to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, about the areas on which such housing could be built. I do not want to restrict it to this kind of housing, starter homes, but I would not like the Committee to miss the fact that this is a housing Bill which does not make some of the fundamental statements which we ought to be making.

Every time anyone tries to deal with a housing problem, those clever people who dislike planning of any kind suggest that we should build on greenfield sites or move into the green belt. We have had another such statement recently. I have been Minister for Housing, and many of us recognise that if you allow people to build on easy sites, they will never build on difficult ones. That is part of the nature of things.

I am disappointed that we bring forward yet another housing Bill in which we do not reiterate the fact that there is plenty of land which has been used on which such housing can be built. Yet again, we give opportunities for largely right-wing think tanks to suggest that we should build on the land which we have no more of, the land which we were given and which needs to be protected. I say that because another interest of mine is sustainability for climate change. We will need this land, and we will need it to be productive, because we will not have enough, unless we are very tough.

Sometimes, a Bill is characterised by what it leaves out rather than what it puts in. This is my only opportunity to raise this matter, so I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, will not mind that I do not want to restrict my remarks to what is in the amendment.

I say to my noble friend that we have to start getting real about the limits of a very small island, or series of islands. The only way that we can do that is to say that when land has been used, it must be reused. We are wrong at this time to allow government institutions, quasi-government institutions and former government-owned institutions to retain the land until they can get a better price for it. I have often thought that we should release the whole lot at once to lower the price and say that the public will carry that cost in order to lower the basic price of land—you must have all sorts of protections to do that.

I am deeply disappointed that there should be a Bill about housing which does not at any point approach the crucial issue, which is that we are wrong to despoil any more of our land, whether it be, as one organisation suggested, our parks, our green spots in towns or our green belt and greenfield sites. We have to make sure that once-used land must be developed, and if you allow people easier options, they will not do that. It is time that we faced that fact. Anyone who has been a Minister for Housing knows perfectly well that that is what happens: if you say that 50% of a site will be greenfield, then the bit that gets built is on that while the 50% that is not built is the more difficult area which has to be redeveloped.

I say this to my noble friend: please can we take more seriously this fundamental part of the kind of mix that we are trying to put together?