Healthy Homes Bill [HL]

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 15th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, on his choice of subject for this Bill, furthering a campaign that he has promoted in this House for some time. It is a pleasure to support its Second Reading. The Bill was launched at a well-attended reception here on 7 June, sponsored by the Town and Country Planning Association, where we heard compelling arguments from a wide range of speakers.

Although I am delighted that my noble friend Lady Bloomfield is replying to this debate, let me say how sorry I am that my noble friend Lord Greenhalgh has stepped down. He won the respect and affection of the House, and I know that he personally moved policy forward on subjects such as leasehold reform and compensation for cladding. He also understood the intricacies of local government finance, which is a mystery to most noble Lords.

The title of this Bill—the Healthy Homes Bill—summarises both its ambition and its challenge. The ambition was explained by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp. The challenge is because health and homes are in different departments, and successive attempts to bring the two together have so far stalled. The Bill crystallises our silo approach to issues that cross departmental boundaries, as seen in such other areas as policy on the under-fives and social care.

Paradoxically, as the noble Lord mentioned, 100 years ago the Ministry of Health was responsible for both health and housing; between the two World Wars, that led to a more integrated approach. Indeed, my great-uncle, Sir Hilton Young—he started off as a Liberal but then saw the light and became a Conservative MP—was Minister for Health in the 1930s. He introduced the Housing Act 1935, which set down standards of accommodation—something that this Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, seeks to build on, of which I am sure the old boy would have approved.

Winding forward 40 years, the importance of bringing health and housing together was central to the Black report, published in 1980, about inequalities in health outcomes. This is what it said:

“The consequences, and importance, of housing policies for other areas of social policy, including health policies, have received increasing recognition in recent years—as have the problems of co-ordination deriving in part from the location of responsibilities for housing and personal social services … and Health services.”


It went on to say:

“The adequate housing of families with children must be a priority if class inequalities in health are to be eliminated”—


as in the Bill before us today. Just after that report was published, I moved from being a Health Minister to being a Housing Minister. I vividly recall being visited in my new office by the then Chief Medical Officer, who asked whether he could switch some of his health budget to housing as he believed this would be the best use of resources.

The Black report was followed up nearly 20 years later by the Independent Inquiry into Inequalities in Health—the Acheson report—which came up with recommendations that could be seen as predecessors of the Bill before us. It said:

“We recommend policies which improve the availability of social housing for the less well off within a framework of environmental improvement, planning and design which takes into account social networks, and access to goods and services”—


the very principles captured in Clause 3 of this Bill. I hope that the Bill makes progress to the statute book but my experience of Private Members’ Bills is that this does not always happen. So, my question to the Minister is whether some of the objectives in Clause 3 —for example, that

“all … living areas and bedrooms … should have access to natural light”

and that new homes should provide “year-round thermal comfort”—can be implemented using existing powers.

If it is the case that some of the Bill’s objectives can be achieved by secondary legislation or by amending existing guidance, the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, may feel that this is progress he can build on for a fresh assault later.