My Lords, I was going to make the shortest speech in this debate, but the right reverend Prelate has set such a high bar that I do not think that I can clear it.
I have added my name to Amendment 207 moved by the noble Lord, Lord Best, and Amendments 215 and 218 in the name of my noble friend Lord Lansley. The reason why I can be brief is not because the amendments are not important—I think that Amendments 215 and 218 are the most important amendments to the whole Bill—but because we touched on both subjects in earlier debates, in what the noble Lord, Lord Best, referred to as a dress rehearsal. In those earlier debates, I set out as best I could the cases for doing more for older people and building more homes.
In the debate on my Amendment 221 on older people, I was very critical of the delay from the Government in setting up the taskforce for older people, which was actually trailed two years ago, but nothing happened until last month. A week after I raised this with the noble Lord, Lord Best, a chairman was appointed, and I hope that there will be a similar positive response to all the other speeches that I am going to make on the Bill.
In a nutshell, the problem that the noble Lord, Lord Best, outlined is quite simple. The pace of demographic change in this country and the growth of more smaller older households has resulted in a huge imbalance in the housing stock that we have, which has been built up over many decades. To get a better balance, which is the thrust of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Best, we need to do more than we have done so far—and we have heard a wide
variety of suggestions. He suggested that a percentage of new homes should be focused on the needs of older people, or specific sites should be earmarked for older people, or there should be a separate use class for specialist housing for older people. My noble friend Lord Jackson suggested a stamp duty exemption; others have suggested an infrastructure levy exemption for older people’s housing. Without repeating the speech that I made last time, I hope that the Government will accept that we need to do a bit more than we are doing at the moment if we are to get a better balance between the needs of the population and the housing stock that we have. We need to promote mobility so people can move into the new homes built for older people.
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On Amendments 215 and 218, we are all agreed that we need more houses. As my noble friend Lord Lansley explained, we are way behind target. But the problem is that all the good things in the Bill to promote more housing are totally overshadowed by the announcement before Christmas when the Government climbed down in the face of a rebellion in the other place and watered down the commitment to build more homes. The sheer starkness of the Government’s climbdown was revealed in an article in the House magazine by Theresa Villiers, who led the rebellion. She said that her amendment was
“backed by 60 MPs, and in response, the secretary of state brought forward significant concessions to rebalance the planning system to give local communities greater control over what is built in their neighbourhood. That includes confirming that centrally determined housing targets are advisory not mandatory. They are a starting point, not an inevitable outcome. Changes have been promised to make it easier for councils to set a lower target”.
You cannot rely on the good will of local authorities to deliver the homes that the country needs. There is a central government mandate, mentioned by my noble friend Lord Jackson, referring to
“our progress towards our target of 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s”.
What a local MP may regard as an arbitrary target imposed from on top by Whitehall is actually a goal that a democratic Government are trying to deliver. My own view is that the votes that an individual MP may lose if an unpopular development goes ahead will be massively outweighed if the country as a whole does not believe that the Government are taking housing seriously. As my noble friend Lord Lansley said, the impact of that document is already being felt. Since it was published, 47 local plans have been delayed with the clear intent of delivering lower numbers; he said 33, but the figure I have is 47.
My noble friend also mentioned other concessions in the document, but the main concession was in the chapter headed “Introducing new flexibilities to meet housing needs”. I think we can all crack the code as to what that means. The document states that local authorities do not need to meet housing needs—then it sets out the circumstances.
I very much hope that between now and Report the Government will recognise that there is a strong feeling in this House and out there in the country that we need to do more. We need to revert to what the Government originally planned before the climbdown
before Christmas and give the other place time to think again and reflect on what happened in December, then revert to the Government’s original policy, which was a manifesto commitment, enabling the country to build the 300,000 homes each year that we need.