Housing and Regeneration Bill

The Minister will be well aware that it ain’t easy and any solution to a problem—it is a problem—will not be produced in this Committee or in this Bill. As I see it, the Minister and her colleagues have a great responsibility to ensure that the aspirations of the rural communities are taken account of every bit as much as those in other spheres. We can look at the situation in the rural areas. It might be felt that they can easily be defined, but there is a blurring of the edges, and it is not just about town and country. There are lots of areas in between. The pressure under which housing has been put—we are solely concerned with housing here—over the past 30 or 40 years matches with the aspirations of ordinary people. At one time, they would never have dreamt of owning their own home or being able to rent a good home, but that has grown out of all proportion. I well imagine that most people in this Room are owner-occupiers and they have aspired from wherever they were to owning their own home, and they got it. Thirty years ago, the need of people in the rural areas that we are concentrating on was to be able to buy their own house, and they bought it; they were given legislation, despite protests. The people in the rural areas were not really concerned about what would happen 30 years later; they were concerned about getting on the housing ladder. They bought the house and quickly sold it to buy another house, and away they went. We must not underestimate what I would call the selfishness of people. It is all very well saying that someone has the responsibility to do things on a grand scale, strategically but, at the end of the day, the people who live in rural areas are every bit as entitled to be as selfish as those who live anywhere else. It has been said that housing is not the only product in rural communities that has been under attack; post offices have been mentioned. I have previously pointed out in Grand Committee that the attack on rural communities comes from many directions, not least that of the car-borne shopper. There was once an idyllic concept of a rural area, with a baker, butcher and candlestick maker. They were happy until it was discovered that not only could someone have a car, which they had never had, but could travel to the supermarket five miles away, which they had never been able to do. I am not making party political points, but with the affluence that gradually came they decided to exercise their rights, which we would all support. Given the opportunity of the right to buy, they bought their own house. Consequently, the council house they had happily occupied under a good landlord—the local authority—disappeared. It is the same with shopping and post offices. If we want to stand still in a segment of life, we shall get nowhere. The Minister and her colleagues must ensure that the HCA is peopled by men and women with experience and nous: sense. They would not need to be told by this Committee or anybody else to ensure that people in rural areas get a fair crack of the whip; of course they are entitled to that. If the proposition was that rural people should get a fair crack of the whip, my hand would immediately go up. All the arguments put forward about the cost of housing and poor level of wages are part of the rural scene. However, I do not think that the Minister will take kindly to the effective segmentalisation of the needs of those in housing: those who live in rural areas and are, by virtue of living there, entitled to more than just a fair crack of the whip. I note what the noble Lord, Lord Best, said: they were not entitled to special treatment, or something above and beyond. However, I hope that when their needs are looked at by the commission and the officers, they will have half a mind, looking back over a period, to ask whether they did right, by those in not only rural but urban areas. Those of us who had the great privilege of representing constituents in urban areas do not need to be told of the misery of constituents in appalling housing. The answer to their problems comes from not a beneficent landlord but hard-headed decisions taken by the Government. Ultimately, the Government will not be short of advice and special pleading. I do not object to that, but somebody will have to make decisions. The greatest decision, of course, will be over the allocation of resources. It will be some time before one gets the proper balance. If this were a matter of sentiment I would of course put my hand up straight away. I live in a rural area within an urban setting: Loughton is in the middle of Epping Forest. If you are looking for rural ambience, I have it in Loughton. It is a successful town but, within a minute of leaving my house I am literally driving through beautiful forest whichever way I go; the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, knows this far better than I, having been responsible for its stewardship over the years. He and I are both proud and lucky to live there. It will be difficult for the Minister and her colleagues to do something which marks out those living in rural areas as needing some kind of special treatment. I started out by saying that it is not easy, and the Government will get no credit for it, but I wish the Minister well.