Housing and Regeneration Bill

My Lords, it is obvious that the House is united in the view that this is an issue of serious importance. It is certainly close to my heart. I argued in Committee that we have an ageing population. By definition, that means that we will have more people living longer with greater disabilities and we have to accommodate and plan for that in the most positive and proactive way. Two of the ways in which we conceive the HCA working will address this issue. First, the HCA already has the object to improve the supply and quality of housing in England with a view to meeting the needs of people living in England. It could not be much clearer than that. It certainly goes wide enough to account for issues of accessibility. How can we interpret the notion of need unless we think about people whose needs are different and have to be met? Secondly, design includes matters such as accessibility. One of my particular preoccupations has been that we tend to think of accessible housing and housing for disabled people as having no design function, whereas we should be piloting the highest standards of design for people who have difficulty in accessing their homes, furniture and so on. So, yes, design includes accessibility. The HCA will be focused on ensuring that the various needs of a diverse community are catered for by providing housing of different tenors and types, now and in the future. That means more accessible housing and more family housing; it means sustainable housing. Another thing about the way the HCA will work is that, like the Housing Corporation, it will respond to what local authorities tell it are their local needs. We have a cross-government public service agreement, which identifies four vulnerable groups in the community who have particular needs, not least for accommodation. One of those groups is people with learning difficulties; another is care leavers. We are looking to ensure that the Housing Corporation and the HCA, when it makes its allocations in discussion with local authorities, are well aware of the needs of these groups of vulnerable people. We have ways and means of meeting needs, but I understand what the noble Lord has said. I am reluctant to single out a strand of housing that would entail a specific object being placed on the agency, no matter how much we all think it is important; it is not entirely wise to emphasise one particular type of housing in primary legislation. The Bill is trying to enable the HCA to meet all its challenges with sufficient flexibility. The noble Lord, Lord Best, has raised the issue of lifetime homes. He knows how committed he and I are to making that a reality in the timescales that we have given. We have made a commitment that by 2011 all public sector-funded homes will be developed as lifetime homes, and we will work with the industry to ensure that all homes are built to that standard by 2013. I know that the housing market is in difficult times. Frankly, though, one of the arguments I would put to the house-builders is that there is a market for homes for elderly people, who have proportionally far more wealth than they have had before, with the equity in their existing homes, but who do not move home because choices are not available to them. I say to those house-builders: think about that market, and about the social homes you could build that would appeal to people who at the moment are stuck in larger, inappropriate houses. I do not buy the argument that this is not an economic benefit to house-builders themselves. Having said that, I will take the argument away and think some more about it. I cannot promise to come back with a solution at Third Reading, but I have heard what the House has said. I will think about whether there is some way that we can accommodate the principle. I cannot say the same for inclusive housing, I am afraid, because it raises other major issues—not least that the HCA will simply not be doing its job if it is not conscious of the need to build inclusive communities, and that means communities that work. Communities work only if they offer a home and an environment to people who have a diverse variety of needs, such as we all know our society contains. It will be a requirement upon the HCA to succeed in doing that, and it will work closely with local authorities to achieve it. We all want to see confident and cohesive communities. The HCA will be subject to appropriate equality duties as well, and it will have to comply with the DDA. The other problem I have with the term ““inclusive”” is that it can mean a lot of very different things. It would be a challenge, to say the least, to arrive at a definition that satisfied everyone. I hope that noble Lords will accept that I am doing my best and listening closely to what they are saying about accessible homes, but I cannot promise to take the ““inclusive”” amendment away.