Lord Coaker (Lab)

I thank the noble Baroness—and I congratulate her on finding a different way of having a therapy session. She made some very interesting and important points, and I will deal with them as I go through the remarks that I make. I will come to the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, about single living accommodation a little bit further down. I begin with Clause 3 and Schedule 1, which create the defence housing service, a new public body dedicated to improving the supply and quality of defence housing and spearheading the regeneration of defence communities. Our defence housing strategy sets out a vision for the future transformation of military homes: 90% of military homes will be upgraded—that work has already started—or renewed or rebuilt, through a record £9.2 billion investment over a decade. The defence housing service is the vehicle to drive this transformation. The noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, asked me to confirm again the Government’s commitment to a figure and the time for that. Let me say it again, in direct answer to her question: it will be a record £9.2 billion investment over a decade. The defence housing strategy recommended establishing the DHS as a professional arm’s-length body focused on the specific needs of service personnel and their families. The direct partnership with the military to support this can be achieved only within a public body. That was the recommendation of the housing strategy. I say to noble Lords that many of the people who drew the strategy up have had years and years of experience in housing. Without reading them all out, noble Lords can see for themselves if they look at the review work and the team that put this together. The Government supported the recommendations that they made. Given the control required by the Ministry of Defence to meet operational needs, the purpose of the housing, the close relationship with welfare outcomes, and the exercise of housing discretion, transfer outside the public sector to a housing association or other private sector structure is not appropriate in the Government’s view or, indeed, the view of the strategy. It would, in our view, set back the renewal of the estate, increase costs of delivery, hamper the operational effectiveness of the Armed Forces and undermine Crown tenancy arrangements. The purpose of defence housing is to meet the operational needs of the Armed Forces. Central to that is the ability to move service personnel wherever needed and without delay. To support that mobility, accommodation is provided as part of their terms and conditions, at a rate heavily subsidised by the Ministry of Defence through a Crown licence arrangement which manages occupation in accordance with military operational requirements. This requires the Ministry of Defence as a whole to have operational control over its housing stock and who is in occupation of particular homes. That would be hampered by a transfer of the estate to a third-party organisation that is not part of the Ministry of Defence family.