My Lords, I support this amendment and congratulate the four noble Lords who put their names to it on their contribution. I declare an interest as vice-president of the LGA.
It is difficult to find much more to say, but I want to remind noble Lords of what has been said. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, made the point that this is important for its economic impact. As it concerns housebuilding, 92p in every £1 is spent within the UK, making it a very effective way of recycling money within the British economy. It has a strong multiplier effect. This goes to the heart of what the Bill is about. The provision would have a great social impact, because, as noble Lords have commented, we have not produced enough social housing in this country for many years now, with great shortages across the country. We need to do more on that. This provision would achieve it.
The financial arguments, too, are strong, because the provision would be almost cost free for the Government. They would not be committing any tax revenue, but it would impact on deficit reduction. Not only would it produce the tax revenue that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, mentioned but it would reduce housing benefit payments, because, as people moved into social housing rather than the private sector, housing benefit payments would go down and fewer people would be stuck in temporary accommodation and so on.
The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, mentioned the bedroom tax. He is absolutely right that, in many parts of the country, the mix of housing is not right to meet the problems addressed by the tax. There will be pressure to build one and two-bedroom properties to do that. However, the bedroom tax will have a greater impact than that. It will have a financial impact on the HRAs of many authorities as people choose not to pay. In my own authority, of the 4,500 households which will have problems with the bedroom tax, more than 550 are in properties on which we have spent a considerable amount of money adapting to the needs of some disabilities. If those people have to move, we reckon that it will cost us more than £1.5 million simply to place them in a smaller property that meets the needs of their disability. Within the pressures on housing revenue accounts, the most flexible side will be new capital builds. Rather than building new houses, we might have to spend the money on adapting properties.
If we do not accept the amendment, or something similar, what will happen to social housing during the next few years? The noble Lord, Lord Tope, read out a list of organisations supporting the amendment, but the key thing is not the presence on it of the usual suspects from the local authority world or the housebuilding world, of whom you might say, “Well, they would support this kind of amendment, wouldn’t they?” but the fact that the CBI has recognised that it would be one of the most effective ways of stimulating growth in an economy which really needs it. That should give it a lot more weight.
I hope that the Government will consider this very carefully as a way forward. If they do not, I hope that my noble friends on the Front Bench will adopt it as a really good way of producing growth.
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