My Lords, I added my name to this amendment and am very pleased to support the noble Lord, Lord Best. He has described the need for these measures and the reason for them very fully, and I do not intend to repeat all or, indeed, much of what he said, most of which I agree with.
I am a very strong localist. I am not sure I go wholly with him on his concerns about localism and housing need, but my party has a target in its policy to build 300,000 houses a year by the year 2030. We at least have the realism to describe that as an ambitious target. That is probably a modest description.
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I recently had occasion to chair and speak at our Liberal Democrat local government conference; we had a very interesting session on localism and housing, where we tried to address exactly the sort of problems to which the noble Lord, Lord Best, referred. We all recognise the urgent need—never mind by 2030—for more housing. All of us, especially those of us who are or have been councillors, recognise that that urgent housing is usually desired somewhere other than where we live. That is too often the local reaction, but if we are to get anywhere near achieving whatever target is set, and ambitious targets have been given, something has to change. There is no possibility of achieving whatever figure one chooses, whether it is 300,000, 250,000 or even 200,000, under the current regime. As the noble Lord, Lord Best, rightly pointed out, every year that we fail to reach that target, the deficit grows. It is quite probable at the current rate that by the year 2030 our target of 300,000 will not be seen as ambitious. It will be seen as falling even further short of where we need to be.
I supported this amendment to give us the debate today because we need to recognise with measures such as this—and there is no single measure that achieves it—that a community of 1,500 homes is a significant and substantial community. Personally, I prefer the expression “garden communities” to “garden cities”; it possibly has a better connotation. It is a significant community that needs infrastructure and is far beyond the reach, probably, of many smaller local planning authorities as well. Therefore, we need seriously to consider measures such as this.
I get very frustrated when political parties—all of them; we plead guilty, too—trade statistics to prove which Government were worst over the years. The reality is that no Government, including mine, have yet been anywhere near good enough, and we need to recognise that. We need to have a long-term housing plan to get nearer to and, I hope, achieve the ambitious targets that are set. We should not keep bandying statistics or building for value rather than volume which the noble Lord, Lord Best, said many of the bigger builders seem to be doing. I would be a little cautious about just building for volume. We need the right sort of housing in the right places. It is not simply a matter of volume; it is a matter of a whole range of things, such as design and quality, and houses being in places where people want to live because there are jobs for them to go to, there is transport infrastructure to get them where they want to go and home again, and it is a community in which they want to live. That is infrastructure, and that is why I support the amendment, and the debate on this amendment. I hope that whoever is in government in 12 months’ time will at an early stage produce not necessarily the Bill called for in this amendment but rather a long-term housing needs programme that everyone can sign up to.