Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Lords, 2016-01-12
Topic: Housing
Tessa Blackstone (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, in speaking briefly to these amendments I declare an interest as the chair of the board of the Orbit housing association group. I want to pick up on something that the noble Lord, Lord Horam, said. Everybody involved in the world of housing associations is acutely aware of the need to be efficient and get good value for money. I certainly am and I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, and others in the House who are involved in them are. A four or five-year reduction in rent is just not the best way of securing such efficiencies. It really is taking a sledgehammer at something and, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, said, the right way to do this is through good internal management and effective and good external regulation The intervention in the housing market to legislate for rent reductions in housing associations and local authority properties is not the kind of intervention that you would normally associate with a Conservative Government. I was brought up to believe that Conservatives and the Governments who represented them believed passionately in the working of the market. Moreover, the kind of direction from the centre that this would entail sits very awkwardly with the Government’s claim that they are in favour of greater devolution to the regions and to local government. It is the reverse of that. It is also entirely inconsistent with their avowed aim to increase housebuilding. As the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, has already indicated, we are not going to alleviate the crisis in the supply of housing, especially for first-time buyers and those in desperate need of social housing for rent, with this sort of approach On the one hand, the Government want to reduce rents to cut the amount being shelled out on housing benefit; on the other, they want more houses to be built by housing associations and, I believe, by local authorities. If they want the second of those objectives to be achieved, they really should not introduce policies which greatly undermine that goal. We have already heard that it is estimated that the 1% rent reduction over the next four years will lead to a loss of £3.85 billion in rental income for housing associations. The noble Lord, Lord Scriven, has already cited examples of chief executives in the sector saying that in these circumstances they cannot go on with their housebuilding programmes, which ought to be focused on social housing. Put another way, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, said, it will result in a 12% reduction in average rents by 2021, compared to today’s forecasts. Perhaps the Minister could be really honest with us and tell us what effect she thinks this will have on housing association housebuilding. Please do tell us that clearly The cost to local authorities is estimated to be £2.6 billion by 2019. This amounts to what it would cost to build 19,000 new homes over the four-year period. Unless local authorities and housing associations are able to make a substantial contribution to the Government’s extremely ambitious targets for new houses between now and the next election, which I and many other Members of this House of course welcome, those targets are highly unlikely to be reached. Again, I would like to hear the Government’s view on the effect of this legislation on their housing targets. They are trying to do one thing with one hand, as the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, said, and something quite different with another—and the two do not come together very well I do not want to repeat what other speakers have said on these amendments. But I strongly support what all speakers, particularly the noble Lords, Lord Kerslake and Lord Best, and my noble friend Lord Beecham, have said about particular kinds of housing associations having great problems with what is proposed here. For those reasons, I strongly support the amendments in this group, all of which seem to me to propose wholly reasonable adjustments, which the Government ought to be able to make without too much difficulty. I hope to hear a positive response from the Minister when she replies.