Welfare Reform and Work Bill — House of Lords, 2016-01-12
Topic: Housing
David Maxim Triesman (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I also declare an interest, which is on the register, as a director of a housing association. I share the point that the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, made very eloquently: if you had to categorise the most gripping social problems that we face, among them would be the problems of people either not having any kind of decent housing or being shifted routinely from one low-cost house to another, and all the things that we know are correlated with that, such as worse health, worse educational prospects for the children and less likelihood of families staying together and of intergenerational relationships being sustained. It is a critical problem The noble Lord, Lord Horam, tried to say how we can balance the competing issues around this. I make the point to him that it is critical—it has become ever more critical—to understand what the sources of finance are likely to be for building new, affordable and social homes. Not all housing associations are the same. There are some very big ones which have been capable of launching own-name bonds and have done reasonably well in attracting new capital into their building programmes. There is a very much bigger group in the middle—perhaps the overwhelming majority of which would, I am quite sure, be categorised as efficient and among which there has certainly never been a default—which cannot launch an own-name bond as it is not financially within the scope of what they are capable of doing. Then there are very many smaller ones which come under the sorts of pressures that the noble Lord, Lord Best, and others have described The middle group is by far and away the biggest of the groups and the one which is most challenged in finding sources of relatively inexpensive capital to build new buildings. We all know that the shortage of such buildings is enormous and the task for those housing associations is therefore profound. The empirical evidence is very clear that most of them have run out of any real capability to raise additional funds from the banking sector, not least because the banks have gone through a period of considerable turmoil in their lending and the amount of risk that they are prepared to take, because they are subject to Basel III and other ratio-controlling mechanisms when it comes to what they will or will not lend. I know that housing associations in that middle group which go back to their bank often find that the bank, rather than wanting to talk about new investment, wants to renegotiate the terms of the debt relating to past investment. It is a fundamental disincentive One thing that has interested me most of all in the last couple of years of close involvement with a housing association is where the money for new building will come from. It frequently comes from what, rather like my noble friend Lady Blackstone, I had always thought was within the domain of Conservative policy up to the hilt. They look for areas of potential private investment, but the private investment in this sphere and segment is very particular. It has to be long term, because none of these are short-term projects, and it will inevitably be at very low rates of return. In short, it is a classic annuity investment. Classic annuity investments appeal to particular kinds of investors. We have found, for example, that the people who understand the need in this country most readily and are prepared to make investments of this kind are the Scandinavian pension schemes. It has been those people who think in the very long term and about low rates of return, because their aim is to provide a sustainable, long-term but pretty marginal annuity income. That is one of the most limited spheres for raising money for new buildings that you can think of, but it is now becoming increasingly vital. Unless they can plan over a period of time what the return will be, what I have described as a very small return becomes no return and they cease to invest. Of course the CEOs and others in housing associations then say they are not going to build, because the last door has been closed I hope noble Lords opposite will forgive me for taking such a directly capitalist approach, but I do. I am an entrepreneur. I look at these things and try to work out how it is you can potentially fund things that are socially vital. I ask the Government to think again—perhaps by saying the four years is four years and there is no excuse for going beyond it—about whether they really want to build these homes and whether they will produce the conditions in private market circumstances which will overcome the barriers. There is a very straightforward yes or no answer to that. If the Government want to overcome them, they should not impose something which makes it impossible for investors to fill the gaps that the banks have now left.