I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) on both an excellent bit of luck and an excellent choice: excellent luck in coming fourth in the private Member’s Bill ballot—not many of us can say we have come fourth in it—and an excellent choice in terms of the specific Bill he has brought forward. I went to his all-party group on self-build, custom-build and independent house building meetings earlier in the year and I know he has become a champion for self-build and custom build in Parliament, and I commend him for his work in this area.
I commend Ted Stevens, who has already been mentioned by a number of hon. Members, the former chair of the National Custom and Self Build Association. I thank him and the association for contributing to the Lyons housing review, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned.
I also want to thank Igloo Regeneration, which has also been mentioned, not least by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), for its submission to the Lyons review. I will say something later about the work that has been done in this area.
On a personal note, I want to put on record the fact that I have lived in a self-build house. In fact, the first house I lived in was a self-build house, because my father is an architectural consultant, and he built his first self-build house in the 1970s and then built another one in the 1980s in which he still lives, so I do have some personal experience. However, I would suggest that most of us mere mortals who do not have the experience my father has in architecture or the trades tend to be more attracted to custom build because it is somewhat easier. It gives people the choice and control over the design, but it takes away a lot of the risk, uncertainty and challenge for those who do not have significant experience in the house building sector or market.
First, I want to say something more general about the opening remarks of the hon. Member for South Norfolk. Labour Members support his Bill and agree with his overall and—let us face it—simple objective that everybody should have somewhere to live. I think that would be difficult to argue with, and I agree with him wholeheartedly. I also agree with his analysis that for quite some time the market in this country has not been delivering anywhere near the number of homes we need.
Usually the Minister and I would trade insults and figures and so forth across the Dispatch Box, but I will attempt not to do that today. This is a long-standing problem. The problem of under-supply of new homes goes back some three decades or more, and I agree with both my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North and the hon. Member for South Norfolk that there are some pretty deep structural and, as the hon. Gentleman said, systemic problems with the housing market.
One of the big problems, which both Members highlighted, is the problem with the land market. That structural problem affects the potential of self-build
and custom build. I will focus on that later in my remarks, but I want to put that right up front as one of the key, fundamental issues we need to deal with.
We support the creation of the register by local authorities and a requirement for them to identify demand for self-build and custom build. I called for that in my first major speech as shadow housing Minister in January. The Government have been talking about it for some time and I welcome the support I believe they will give the Bill. As the hon. Gentleman suggested, evidence presented by the National Custom and Self Build Association and others shows significant unmet demand, so we also agree when the Bill sets out that local authorities should have regard to the register that they will have to put in place when carrying out their planning functions and producing their housing plans.
Let me deal briefly with the specific reasons why the Opposition support the Bill and why I support it. The first is that, as the hon. Gentleman discussed, it will give a voice to those shut out of home ownership. This is not exclusively about them, as there will be owner-occupier families who want a bigger home or even a smaller, more bespoke home. However, some first-time buyers are priced out at the moment. He talked about the ratio between the average salary and the average house price, which is scarily high in some areas of the country, not least London. The generation who are between the ages of 20 and 34 are the most deeply affected by our failure to deliver a market that delivers enough homes. We know that one in four of that age cohort are living at home with their parents. In the last 12 months that I have been doing this job, I have met so many parents who crave an empty nest. I am sure they do not mean it—[Interruption.] Oh, there are some in the Chamber. Extraordinarily, 3.3 million people in that cohort are still living with their parents. As a country—I say this of successive Governments—we must be doing something wrong, and the system is not working. This register would be one approach to and recognition of that failure and unmet demand. I am also keen on the register because planning applications, which are between the council, as they should be, and groups of people, some of whom are in favour and some of whom are against, often do not include that younger generation, so the register could be one way of seeking to give them a voice in this process that they do not currently have.
Secondly, as the hon. Gentleman set out in his excellent speech, by promoting self-build and custom build we can, in turn, promote more customer choice and a drive for better quality. We often focus on the numbers in our debates, talking about a Government not producing a certain number, describing what our party would do and saying that we would like to double house building from the current level. However, any such increase cannot be at the expense of quality. The interesting thing about this part of the market is that it is so focused on quality. As he set out, if the customer is put at the heart of the process, we inevitably drive up quality. On energy-efficient homes, someone who is in the driving seat and who will be subject to the energy bills has much more motivation to try to commission—if it is a custom build—or build a house that will give them the lowest possible energy bills in the future. The volume house builders perhaps do not have that same
motivation, because they will simply sell on and move on. Where the customer is driving that process, they will be the one living in the home for some time, so I am totally with him on this point, and how we drive up quality is important to the wider industry, too.
Thirdly, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned, it is important that we promote self-build and custom build to a much wider range of people. Recent research carried out by the university of York found that a variety of households could benefit from self-build and custom build but the current market is dominated by an older, asset-rich demographic, although not exclusively so. The hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer), who is no longer in his place, intervened on my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North to suggest that although Kevin McCloud’s programme is a fantastic contribution to this debate, its projects often run over budget and over time. We need to de-risk the process, and so although I welcome the initiatives in the Bill we can do more on that. I know that the Government have done some interesting things on trying to make sure that mortgage provision is available in this area, as that remains a major barrier.