Lord Best (CB)

My Lords, I support Amendment 135, proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey. I piloted the Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Bill through your Lordships’ House in 2015, so I have an ongoing vested interest in the progress that this has made. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, not just for a full account of where this has come from and where it might be going to but for the technical detail that she explained very fully, which saves me struggling to do the same. I can add two things. One is this: why should the Government be interested in this? The self-build and custom housebuilding sector has so much merit and is so undeveloped. It does the following things. It adds additional homes toward the 1.5 million target. It introduces diversity and competition to the speculative housing model that has let us down on so many occasions. It brings back the small and medium housebuilder. It makes use of small sites that are of no interest to the large-scale developers. It supports the fledgling modern methods of construction—or MMC—sector. It enables people to create the homes they really want, not what is served up to them by the volume housebuilders. It does so many good things all at once and it is certainly worthy of support, especially as it does not cost the Government anything to provide that support, which is a rarity. The Government initiated an equity loan scheme, through Homes England, which enabled people to borrow on preferential terms. That finished in April of 2025, leaving the sector without any real extra support or governmental backing. This amendment would be one helpful step forward for a sector that is providing between 5% and 10% of all the homes we are creating, so it is not insignificant in its scale. If this particular amendment is not the way by which the Government could be more helpful in the future, is there any intention in government to do anything at this stage that would support the self-build and custom housebuilding sector? It is deserving of a bit more backing. I support the amendment.