Debate on the Address

My Lords, in contributing to this evening's debate on the gracious Speech, I would like to draw attention to one very strong theme running through this important new legislative programme. It is something that, as the retiring chairman of English Partnerships—I declare an interest—I am very glad to be able to pick out, since it has also been the theme of the six years that I have spent at the head of that body. The theme that I refer to is improving our quality of life, particularly creating high-quality places where people not only want to live but, critically, can afford to live. Strengthening community life, improving housing conditions and meeting the current severe shortage of new homes for sale and rent are central to solving many of the other issues that we face as a society. I firmly believe that it is the key to achieving better social cohesion, rising educational standards and reduced crime. Healthy communities also provide a solid basis for a thriving, growing economy. Many of the Bills in this new legislative programme aim to improve quality of life. It is the central logic behind the Local Transport Bill, the Energy Bill, the Climate Change Bill; in fact, we find its echo in most of the 30 Bills before us in the new programme. But I wonder whether it is not most clearly expressed in the forthcoming Housing and Regeneration Bill, to which I now turn. The housing Green Paper sets very clear targets for the creation of 2 million new homes by 2016 and 3 million by 2020. This means in practice increasing new homes built from the current level of about 170,000 a year to 240,000 a year by 2016. The target includes at least 70,000 more affordable homes constructed per year by 2010. These are challenging targets; but there is no ducking them. I do not underestimate the difficulty of reaching them, and reaching them will require some fundamental change. Because of that, we need first-class delivery arrangements and a clear separation of roles and responsibilities between local and central government. When CLG concluded its review of housing and regeneration this January, it reported what many practitioners already knew. The landscape was too crowded, the supply chain for new developments was needlessly complex, and important skills in land assembly, regeneration and development finance were in very short supply. It was also clear that the legislative base for addressing the pressing problems—so ably articulated by the Minister—was becoming out of date. The Housing Corporation is working with legislation that is over 40 years old. English Partnerships relies on legislation first introduced in 1948 to create the first New Towns. Although our two organisations have been creative and flexible with existing powers, eventually they creak beyond endurance and need to be updated. Nowadays the interplay of land, planning and investment needs the Government to be able to work flexibly to properly create and, critically, to extract value for the public purse—and certainly for local communities. When I visited a Pathfinder area in Sefton last week I was again struck by how cluttered funding regimes have become, with several different regimes and investment programmes coming not just into the same project or into the same street but into the same house. That situation does not come about because we are deliberately or accidentally inefficient; it comes about because different organisations have genuinely evolved over different timescales, with different remits and working on different statutory bases. The time is over-ripe to provide focus and coherence with the proposed new Homes and Communities Agency. We must hope that the agency will be established with the right set of powers, the ability to concentrate scarce skills and expertise, and a posture that enables it to be an expert partner, supporting able and ambitious local authorities which must rightly take the lead in developing new communities and regenerating existing ones. I had the privilege of meeting over 1,000 stakeholders across England this summer: local authorities, registered social landlords, regional bodies and private developers, which were all broadly supportive of the concept of establishing a new agency. The caveat was clear: they were supportive so long as the agency was supporting local government and not dictating to it. We will examine the Bill with interest to make sure that the relationships proposed are likely to be benign and functional. I hope also that the Bill will explicitly meet the needs of communities; that would be new and it would be very welcome. Up to this point, English Partnerships has been able to do a great deal to support communities in areas of deprivation and in areas suffering problems of affordability, but we have had to do so through legislation focused on land, on buildings and on bricks and mortar. Up to this point, the Housing Corporation has brought forward major increases in the cost-effective supply of social housing, but it has had to do this through a limited set of powers focused around the provision of grant to housing associations and to other developers. All of us involved in the creation of sustainable communities know that this is a complex task that is about people, not simply bricks and mortar. I hope that the new legislation will recognise that and directly address the real needs of communities. I hope that it will have new powers to work with local authorities to engage and empower local people in the improvement of their areas, as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said. I hope that it will have a strong presence in every region. As important will be the ability for the agency to pre-invest in infrastructure and services. We are all acutely aware—a number of noble Lords have made this point during today’s debate—of the need to match the growth in house building with the right level and quality of infrastructure, not after the event, but in a timely way, either through its own resources or by levering in additional finance from other sources. If the Bill does not provide for that, the job will be only half done, for it is the infrastructure investment that will make it possible to plan and deliver major new settlements such as the ““eco towns”” recently announced by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister. Finally, I hope that the Bill will pave the way for an independent regulator of social housing, breaking the link between investment and regulation and providing many new opportunities for RSLs to continue to develop and flourish. I am very proud of all that has been achieved by the Government over the past 10 years, but my first-hand experience absolutely convinces me that we need to bring investment in land, planning, housing and regeneration together. There are no shortcuts when it comes to quality and sustainable development. That is why we need a substantial piece of legislation to produce a single set of modernised powers in place of the ageing statutory frameworks of the existing regimes. I sincerely hope that the forthcoming legislation does all of those things; for, fundamentally, we cannot fail individuals and families who are in desperate need of homes in communities where they want to live and can afford to live.