My Lords, I have a good deal of sympathy with what the noble Lord has just said. In particular, I very much commend his implicit view that we should not really be talking about individual developments or about just catering for a particular group of people but should be concerned with communities with a range of interests, ages and people of different backgrounds—not simply a group, important though it is, seeking to purchase homes for the first time.
It also seems to me that this part of the Bill cannot be read just on its own terms, as if it is unrelated to some of the material that follows. In the planning
section of the Bill, there is of course the issue of PIP—permission in principle—and the Government’s ability to effectively prescribe what is to happen on brownfield and other sites. The two things seem linked to me, and the suggestion in these amendments is one that the Government should consider very carefully. We have heard a good deal about local aspects—the Minister herself was saying just a few minutes ago that the Bill would make provision for local people—but what is meant by local in this context? For example, you could have sites in London, in hard-pressed boroughs with their own housing needs, which would no doubt become available for starter homes, potentially at the expense of people from that particular borough, unless the Government are able to say that they could be limited to the residents of that borough—which I think is a bit unlikely, although it would be interesting to see whether the Government would contemplate that.
We have of course seen considerable changes in the make-up of communities in inner London and in other cities, and the danger seems to me to be that without Section 106 agreements, and without looking rather carefully at who might benefit from the desirable provision of starter homes, and from where they might be coming, we could simply be importing people into the area at the expense of those already living there. Perhaps the Minister could indicate whether such a consideration has been taken on board and the extent to which it might be reflected in the implementation of this part of the Bill. Otherwise, the concerns expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Foster, will resonate even more profoundly. There has to be a way of securing a balance in all these aspects, and at the moment there does not seem to be, within the Bill, an adequate provision to achieve that purpose.
I hope that the Minister will respond constructively rather than—if I may say so, with all due respect—complacently. I do not mean she would be complacent in her own right, as it were, but that it would reflect complacency in the Government about the impact of what they are providing here, unintended though it may be.