Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-14
Topic: Housing
Jeremy Hugh Beecham (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I, too, support the amendments in this group. The noble Lord, Lord Best, made a very powerful case in relation to the problems that would arise from the right to buy of council housing. Rural areas have commanded and will continue to command a great deal of concern in your Lordships’ House as the Bill progresses I confess that I am old enough to recall listening to "The Archers" when Grace Archer was consumed by a fire in, I think, about 1954. I have not been a particularly regular listener since, but I understand that, by chance or otherwise, the question of rural housing has featured rather largely in recent editions. I believe I am right in saying that the Grundy family have encountered enormous difficulties in finding suitable local accommodation and may be driven to palming off their ancient father into some sort of care. Whether this was motivated by concerns over the Housing and Planning Bill is perhaps questionable but nevertheless it illustrates a real concern in those areas Of course, there has been right to buy council housing for some considerable time. I wonder whether the Minister can indicate to us the extent to which the right to buy has been exercised and what proportion of houses that have so far gone under the right to buy have ended up as second homes or private lettings, and what the impact generally has been on the provision of council housing in rural areas Needless to say, I searched in vain for any reference to this issue in what passes for the impact assessment on the Bill, which makes no reference at all in relation to the relevant clauses that we are debating today to the impact of government policy. Again, the Minister may or may not have the information. Those who drew up the impact assessment clearly were not interested in having it. If the information is not available today, and it may not be, will she take steps to ensure that by the time we get to Report we will have an assessment of what will happen to the existing stock of council housing that will be subject to the right to buy—and, for that matter, to housing association properties that will also be subject to the right to buy—given the unlikelihood of like-for-like replacement being achieved I find it very frustrating—and I am afraid it is becoming a constant refrain of Members around the House—not to be able to form a judgment about what the Government’s policies are actually going to lead to. They are leading us, and perhaps themselves, into a blind valley, as it were, without any apparent awareness of the impact of their policies upon communities, where unfortunately there is very little political gain to be made by my party as they are regarded as the natural territory of the Conservative Party. Perhaps they take it for granted. However, they cannot take for granted the needs of young and older people with very little choice of accommodation, a choice likely to be increasingly narrowed if this legislation goes through without the kind of safeguards that the amendments in the group would provide, limited though they are but nevertheless very desirable. I look forward to hearing some kind of explanation from the Minister as to how the aspirations of people in those communities are going to be met if the legislation passes in the form it is presented to us at the moment.