Debate on the Address

My Lords, first, I declare an interest as chair of the Circle 33 Housing Association and a trustee of Shelter, the housing charity. Like others in this debate, I welcome the Housing and Regeneration Bill. The scale of the proposed investment offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to address the complex jigsaw of housing need being confronted by the housing providers and campaigners I meet on a daily basis. However, I am concerned that the scale and urgency of the proposed expansion could short-circuit a necessary debate about the kinds of homes and neighbourhoods we aspire to in the 21st century. That is what I should like to concentrate my comments on today. I am pleased that the Minister mentioned garden cities in her opening statement, because this summer I had the opportunity to visit Letchworth, which was the first garden city in this country. More than a century from its original conception, it remains an icon of inspirational design and intelligent planning. Its creator, Ebenezer Howard, was not a planner, a designer or an architect: he was employed as a Clerk in this House. But he articulated a vision of a new kind of living to rescue families living in poverty out of the Victorian slums. His passionate belief in the interaction of physical, social and economic objectives enticed some of the most respected planners and architects to create a new town built on revolutionary principles for its time. The garden city movement understood that good housing was more than a physical structure; it could also impact on people’s social and emotional well-being. The success of the Letchworth model inspired the architects Parker and Unwin to build landmark homes for working people in many other parts of Britain as well. I mention this not because I want a housing policy based on nostalgia or on building replicas of the past, but because I am concerned that the massive and welcome housing expansion now being planned lacks the leadership of a new generation of design visionaries capable of creating excitement and debate. Nothing I have yet read or heard about the Thames Gateway development has inspired me to think that a radical new approach is really being developed there. That leads me to question whether the very delivery bodies that we are setting up are by their nature somehow stifling creativity. While I accept that it is impossible for every building and every town to be iconic, we know from our history that examples of innovative design ripple out and shape future development on a much larger scale. There is one area where the Government quite rightly have taken a radical stance, and that is in their commitment to environmental standards and new eco-towns. I recently visited the BedZED development, a well-known landmark which has become a leading voice for sustainable living. The developers’ belief is that to be effective, sustainable lifestyles have to go hand in hand with sustainable buildings. In other words, while it is important to use the latest energy-efficient building materials and maximise the use of recycled and reclaimed materials, real success depends on people changing the way they live and use those properties. So, a development in my home town of Brighton will have a zero waste policy and composting facilities provided on site; there will be no car parking spaces and instead residents will be given automatic membership of the local car club. There will be mini allotments on the roof and a communal garden. These are small examples, but they are essential if we are to change people’s behaviour and curb carbon emissions. The experience so far for such eco-developments is that they cost more than conventional build. This will inevitably be a real dilemma for the Government. I hope that they feel able to take a longer-term perspective and recognise the ultimate imperative of using scarce resources wisely. As a housing campaigner for many years, I would hate this to be interpreted as the concerns purely of the middle classes. One of the lessons of the garden city movement was that working-class people longed for the opportunity for decent housing as well, and we now face new challenges to provide quality housing for a new generation in desperate housing need. For example, it is estimated that more than half a million households live in overcrowded accommodation, of which around two-thirds are families with young children. There is a pressing need for more family-sized homes to be built. Yet I know from the experience of my own housing association that the current planning constraints and the perverse grant system encourage even organisations like my own to build one and two-bedroom properties at the expense of larger family homes. It is also crucial that a proportion of the 3 million new homes provide routes out of the social housing ghettos which John Hills described so starkly in his recent report. He highlighted the spiralling deprivation on many large estates where unemployment is endemic and social cohesion has broken down. It seems that the very fact that people are in receipt of subsidised social housing has trapped many of them so that they are then unable either economically or physically to move on. There is one further sector which needs urgent attention, the area identified by the noble Lord, Lord Best, who persuasively argued the case for the reform of the private rented sector. I shall not repeat his comments. Finally, I welcome the fact that the Government’s proposals are on a scale which can radically impact housing need and change the face of housing provision in this country. These opportunities are rare and precious, but I hope that in the dash to build, we also find time to listen, to engage and to nurture ideas about a new vision for quality homes for working people in the 21st century so that we can build a lasting legacy that will make future generations proud.