Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-04-11
Topic: Housing
Ewen Cameron (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I regret that during the Recess I failed to meet the DCLG ministerial team to discuss this and other rural amendments. The fault lies mostly with me because I was away in Rwanda for a lot of the time with a parliamentary group looking at agriculture. There was a certain amount of confusion over ministerial diaries early on as well. This morning I had meetings in Cornwall and was not here till late but my noble friend Lord Best has met the ministerial team, including the Secretary of State and others, and I gather there is some good news to report on this amendment, which makes the most persuasive speech that I had prepared rather redundant. I was going to talk about the importance of exception sites to rural areas and the unanimity we had in Committee, and about communities, public space and so on, but, as I say, all that is redundant I think one of my points is still worth making on the basis that I have not yet seen the detail of the Government’s acceptance of this amendment. In the debate we had in Committee, the two most frequent words we heard were "in perpetuity". Landowners and farmers want to give the land to their community in perpetuity. Villagers want these houses to be for village families in perpetuity. In my experience, even the young families who occupy the houses want to see their houses serve the village in perpetuity, as though they were passing on the baton in a relay race to keep their village alive. The undeniable fact is that most people—everybody, actually—in the Committee debate said that the problem with these transient starter homes was that they were not in perpetuity, although to some extent the vote on Amendment 1 may have changed that slightly. The lack of perpetuity is a serious problem for the trust that is needed to help the exception site movement keep going as strongly into the future as it has in the past I say "movement" because in a way that is what it is. Everyone involved needs to sign up to its objectives and aspirations for it to continue to serve rural communities so well into the future. Everyone has to know exactly where they stand. The very fact that we were talking about starter homes on exception sites is enough to undermine that trust. However the Government decide to backpedal from their currently damaging position, it is most important that the amendment is in the Bill. Statements made on the Floor of the House do not persuade parish councils or landowners because they have to trust what is going on. Pleas to wait until consultations are completed hold no water. Even government promises of regulation do not really promote the necessary trust. We have to have a firm, no-nonsense commitment in the Bill because that is the only way we will be able to restore the trust needed to ensure that proper exception sites continue to provide the vast majority of the incredibly important affordable housing in our small but important rural villages Having said that, I will leave it to the Minister to give us what I understand is the good news. I echo the remarks made by my noble friend Lord Best and thank the Minister for her constant courtesy and unflagging attention to the arguments and discussions we have had on the Bill. In her place, I would never have had the energy to keep going endlessly for the very long days we had, and I certainly would not have had the patience. I thank her very much for her conscientious dedication and tolerance, and particularly her attention to this amendment and her acceptance of it. I beg to move.