Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)

My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lady Eaton for introducing this debate so ably. I declare my interest as a director of a company that has carried out a very small development—and as a home owner. As we have heard, home is more than an investment or a place; it is one’s sanctuary. A home is more than bricks and mortar. It encompasses general surroundings, community and neighbourhood. Where we live has an effect on our mental well-being and health. As the old adage goes, an Englishman’s home is his castle. As we have heard, home ownership has been a long-held aspiration in this country, more so than for our colleagues on the continent, who have a tendency towards a rental culture. Much of the recent home ownership debate has centred on numbers of houses, but it is much more than this. Most of us value a home by what it looks like, where it is and other factors. You so often hear how housebuilding has fallen behind in recent years, so I was really interested to read in the briefing notes that we were given by the House that housebuilding kept up with the population until 2021. While current ownership data suggests that home ownership here is at a fairly constant level, it has never been easy for first-time buyers to get on the ladder, and it has got progressively more difficult. House prices are rising, and the average ratio of prices to earnings of 7.63 is higher than the five times average affordability benchmark used by the ONS. I think we all agree that we need to do more to help younger people get on to the housing ladder, and that means we need to build more houses. However, just applying a sticking plaster of mass building is not the answer. We should also address the causes. Some is due to the huge influx of people into this country. Also, for many years we have allowed people from all over the world to buy properties in central London, pushing prices beyond affordability for most British people—thus doughnutting our capital city of its settled population. Do the Government have figures on this? How will they enable more British people to buy in their own capital city? The effect of this is rippling out around the surrounding counties. We are the custodians of this country, with its beautiful old towns and villages and an outstandingly lovely countryside. Yes, we need more housing, but it is important that we do not spoil what we have and that new housing is sensitively done in the small rural towns and villages where small numbers of extra houses are needed. We need beautiful housing built in a way that harmonises with the existing community. We need to encourage and facilitate local builders who will build a few houses and are invested in their neighbourhoods. We should make it easier for people to build just one house or two houses. The report Building Homes Better by the Housing Forum recently highlighted: “Government policy has prioritised growth in housing delivery” over quality, and documented “poor-quality workmanship” and falling customer satisfaction levels. Housing should be a long-term asset. We should be building beautiful, not adding to what Roger Scruton called the uglification of the UK, driven by utilitarian modern architecture, corporate greed and a cultural rejection of traditional beauty. We are seeing this too often in the developments going up around the country—often big, unsightly developments inappropriately tacked on to and spoiling small villages. Have we yet implemented the statutory requirements in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 for LPAs to prepare design codes? If not, why not? In discussions about the Planning and Infrastructure Bill last year, it was identified that there were 1.2 million brownfield sites, around half a million planning permissions given and over 300,000 empty neglected houses that could be refurbished. We need to end the practice of development companies land banking planning permissions until prices rise. It is perfectly possible to meet the Government’s target of 1.5 million houses without encroaching on greenfield sites. The planning Bill also introduced grey belt, citing examples of disused petrol stations and abandoned car parks as sites in the green belt that could be released for development. However, new research from the Campaign to Protect Rural England reveals that the Government’s grey-belt policy is paving the way for large-scale development on England’s unspoilt rural landscape. What are the Government going to do to stop the misuse of this policy and erosion of genuine green belt? Before I close, I would like to raise an issue that I have spoken about before. Under human rights law, we are entitled to live without our property being interfered with. The party wall Act cuts across this. This can result in damage to adjoining houses and, in some rare cases, houses have collapsed. I declare that I have been a recipient of three party wall notices in the last four years. The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, tried to put forward a Private Member’s Bill in 2016 to address aspects of this. I have tabled some Written Questions about this, and the Government said they would engage with stakeholders and the public to gather insights and explore ways to improve its implementation. During the passage of the planning Bill last year, I tabled some amendments. I understood that the Minister said she would meet further to discuss this, so I hope she will not mind me asking whether we can meet, and not before too long. To conclude, of course we need to help young people to be able to buy their own homes, but in doing so we must ensure that this is not at the detriment of present home owners and existing communities, and that we continue to preserve our countryside.