Debate on the Address

My Lords, in addressing your Lordships’ House for the first time, perhaps I too may begin by saying how much I have appreciated the generous welcome extended to me by noble Lords on all sides of the House, matched by the courtesy and infinite patience of the Doorkeepers and Attendants and the delightful banqueting staff. I particularly thank my noble friend Lady Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde for her continuing guidance and wise counsel. In the weeks since my introduction in July, I have tried hard to understand and absorb the particular culture that characterises your Lordships' House and have come to appreciate the high standard of debate that prevails. I hope that I can live up to it—if not today, certainly in the years to come. But of course I feel immediately diminished because, unlike my noble friend Lord Rooker, I am only in possession of an Oyster Card and not yet a Freedom Pass. I am pleased to be able to participate today for the first time in a debate that reflects my particular policy interests. Although I come to your Lordships’ House with a primarily business background, I have also worked for many years in housing, urban regeneration and energy—a set of interests that I have had the privilege to pursue as a director of Ofgem and, for the last five years, as chair of English Partnerships, the national regeneration agency. All those interests—fortuitously, for my sake—come together in today's debate. Mitigating the effect of the built environment on our changing climate is a core challenge for local and central government. I am aware and respect the fact that there are different shades of opinion in this House on the precise impact of climate change—of course, the Stern report most helpfully articulates the potential scale of that impact—but there can be little doubt that it is one of the most serious issues facing us. Many of the headlines on the causes of global warming focus on emissions from transport and industry. Yet, in the UK, the built environment accounts for almost 30 per cent of carbon emissions and it has a major impact on issues such as biodiversity, water use, flooding, waste disposal and the extraction and use of natural resources and materials. That is why serious attention to mitigating its effect should be a clear priority for us all in the forthcoming Bill. But I feel that the time could be right for that, because right across the professions in the built environment there is a growing realisation that, in order to tackle such issues, new and regenerated developments will have to be designed to meet much higher environmental standards. There are grounds for optimism that things are beginning to change already. There are three areas where progress can be said to be being made: on land use; on costs and methods of construction; and in energy. Our sensitivity to land use has been greatly heightened in the past 10 to 15 years. Although only 11 per cent of the UK is developed, settlements are concentrated and densely populated, so naturally people are concerned about encroaching on greenfield and, especially, green-belt land close to where they live. It is tremendously good news that so much progress has been made since 1997 in reusing brownfield and previously developed land. Now, 72 per cent of new homes are now built on such land, making the very best use of existing infrastructure and services and often using land that was previously a blight on the environment. Not far from this place, the Greenwich peninsula, once the largest polluted site in western Europe, is being transformed into one of the highest-quality new mixed communities in England. It is only one of many such examples. The Government's new policy on disposing of surplus public sector land has also been extremely helpful in making sure that publicly owned assets are used to best effect in delivering housing policy with the minimum impact on greenfield land. It is also worth noting that where new growth is essential—of course that is the case for economic development—we are often now delivering it in sustainable urban extensions. Upton in Northampton is a splendid example where the development has been designed, with the help of the excellent Prince's Foundation, with the community, to higher densities but with great public open space and groundbreaking design quality. There are numerous examples right across England. Our sensitivity to the costs of construction is now becoming much more acute—not just the financial costs, although those have risen by an intolerable 70 per cent since 1996, but the real costs in terms of resources, efficiency of supply chain and environmental impact. The move to more modern methods of construction is beginning to deliver better-built, better-value homes that are genuinely more durable and, critically, more affordable for first-time buyers and young families. Noble Lords may be aware of the publicity that surrounded the Government's competition last year to build a two-bedroom house for less than £60,000. The so-called ““£60k house”” acted as a catalyst for housebuilders to try very different designs, levels of energy efficiency and construction methods. We are now seeing that work flow through into mainstream developments from volume housebuilders. Our sensitivity to energy and use of resources is also in the process of being transformed. The question of self-sufficiency in energy is not simply about using resources differently. As the UK moves to being a net importer of gas, we need to be very clear about the steps that we need to take to assure security of supply nationally. That debate dominated our thinking during my time as a director of Ofgem, and the choices are now becoming more urgent as we have to decide on the right energy mix for the future. We need to make those decisions now within the clear context of the Stern report. However, as my noble friend Lord Soley reminded us, great progress is being made more locally by some of the more progressive energy companies and volume housebuilders. Moves to microgeneration, to estate-based combined heat and power and to community-owned energy and multi-utility companies are now being regarded as mainstream components of good-quality new developments. We must have a regulatory regime that recognises that. All those aspects come together in the vision for new settlements, such as that proposed at Barking Riverside and determined only last evening by the local authority. Such developments are facilitated by the right transport infrastructure—in this case, the DLR extension. Barking Riverside is entirely to be developed on previously used industrial land; it is to be built to a very high quality urban design; it will be a genuine mixed community catering for a wide range of housing need and demand; and, with the active encouragement of the mayor, it is the most ambitious renewable energy plan yet devised in London. We should remind ourselves that these new settlements are not abstract concepts. They are the homes and communities of the future. We owe it to the current generation to get it right in creating pleasant, safe, cohesive communities where people want to live and can afford to live. We owe it to future generations to get it right at a price that the planet can tolerate. I am very grateful for the opportunity to make my first contribution in this debate and, in closing, I pay tribute to my noble friend the Minister for her role in tirelessly promoting the forthcoming sustainable buildings code, containing, as I hope it will, many of the ideas that noble Lords have touched on today and enshrining in legislation the good practice that is apparent in some, but by no means all, parts of the construction sector. It is a timely and welcome development, combining as it does our preoccupations with sustainability and quality. It will, I believe, herald a major step forward in delivering the changes that we all want.