Lord Jamieson (Con)

My Lords, I first declare my interest as I am still a councillor in central Bedfordshire. I thank my noble friend Lady Eaton for bringing forward an essential debate on housing and home ownership. It has been quite an enlightening debate across the House. I think there has been quite a lot of agreement and I would not say disagreement but puzzlement because, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, rightly says, this is a very complex issue. It will require trade-offs and there is no simple solution. I do not think anyone knows what outcome we all desire. There are so many different outcomes, whether it is housing numbers, affordability, security of tenure and so forth. However, I think we can identify the biggest problems. Housing is the single biggest cost facing most families. It puts enormous pressure on household budgets. Too many people are living in overcrowded accommodation, paying too much rent or mortgage and increasingly unable to live anywhere near where they work. My noble friend Lady Eaton gave some statistics about how many people would like to own their own home. I will not repeat them, but there are some other good statistics from that survey. Some 65% of people believe it is harder to buy or rent today than it was for their parents, and 62% believe that housing is on the wrong track. Many noble Lords, including my noble friend Lady Seccombe, the noble Baroness, Lady Paul of Shepherd’s Bush, and the noble Lord, Lord John of Southwark, raised the benefits of being able to own their own home and how it helped them or people related to them in their lives. We are unashamedly the party of home ownership. We recognise that not everyone will want to buy—that is perfectly legitimate—but everybody should have the opportunity to do so. Those who rent should have access to affordable, secure alternatives. Sadly, this situation has deteriorated since Labour came into power. One-year mortgage costs have risen from around 5% to 5.7% and average rents are up 10% to £1,450 a month. This is not simply a housing crisis; it is a growth crisis. Building homes creates jobs, investment and economic activity, but the wider economic benefit is even greater. If people can afford to live close to where they work, businesses can recruit more easily, productivity improves and our towns and cities become more vibrant. Look at London, as raised by the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough. Rents for a two-bedroom flat in central London are above £2,000 a month. Someone needs to earn close to £100,000 a year to be able to afford to live in the centre of our capital city. That is not realistic. Alternatively, people face a punishing daily commute or overcrowding. Is it any wonder that London is losing its appeal as a destination for graduates and skilled workers? We have repeatedly debated housing in this House. Since Labour’s election, every time I speak on this subject the position appears to worsen. The Government talk about building 1.5 million homes, but this is an ambition; it is not delivery. Delivery fell again last year, by 3%, to around 200,000 homes. By contrast, the last Conservative Government delivered their target of 1 million homes in four and a half years. The pipeline is getting weaker, as others have mentioned. Only 1,220 sites for private housing received planning permission in England in the first quarter of this year, down from the 2,000 sites approved in 2022. When I first became a councillor in 2009, my priorities were about improving services, rebuilding the local leisure centre, reducing costs and fixing potholes. Those things all matter, but I quickly learned that in the long term nothing is more important than planning, than building great communities, good housing, infrastructure, local jobs, schools, leisure, public services and beautiful homes, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson of Abinger, and my noble friend Lord Gascoigne. We have all seen the transformative effects of successful regeneration, whether it be King’s Cross, Brindleyplace in Birmingham or Kidbrooke Village in Greenwich. The Minister has on occasion suggested that I am a little too focused on London and brownfield development. I make no apology. Yes, there will be need for development on greenfield land, but our greatest missed opportunity is the failure to build enough homes in our towns and cities where there is the greatest demand. MHCLG’s own figures show that two-thirds of local authorities failing to meet the housing delivery test of 75% are essentially urban areas, and 21 of London’s 33 boroughs are also failing this test. The housing crisis is particularly acute in London. Since 2016, the number of households in temporary accommodation has increased by 50% to 76,000. There are more statistics, but we do not have the time. The cost of building has also soared. It is not one regulation or levy: it is the cumulative effect of layer upon layer of additional costs, building levies, landfill tax, building safety requirements, Section 106, the future homes standard and others. That is not to say that any one of them is not valid in its own right, but the cumulative effect is clear: the Home Builders Federation estimates that the cost of building a low-rise home has increased by £76,000 since 2020. The Government argue that that will be reflected in lower land prices and so forth, but that ignores the reality. The problem is particularly acute on brownfield land, where remediation and build costs are often higher and the land value has higher alternative use. If we genuinely want to regenerate our cities, gentle densification of urban areas is essential. We must make brownfield land viable. We cannot load so many costs on to a development that the finished product costs more than people can afford. Manchester is an example: the council and the mayor recognised the need for compromise, including on affordable housing targets, and homes were built. The principle is simple. If you want more affordable homes, the cost of building them must be below the price that people can afford to pay, whether to buy or to rent. The Government need to change direction. You cannot tax your way to growth, as my noble friend Lord Fuller said. The Social Housing Bill will undermine the right to buy—one of the greatest engines of social mobility that we have seen. If the proceeds are reinvested, this will also drive more housing and more availability of social housing. The Renters’ Rights Act risks yet more landlords leaving the sector, reducing supply and putting upward pressure on rents while undermining the build-to-rent sector. By contrast, the Conservatives have proposed positive measures, such as removing stamp duty on housing—as mentioned by my noble friends Lady O’Neill of Bexley and Lord Evans of Rainow—which would free up the market and reduce the cost of buying your home. It is not just the deposit; when you have to find another £20,000 for stamp duty, buying a home gets even more difficult. Removing stamp duty would allow people to do what we used to do: buy a very cheap one-bedroom studio somewhere that is maybe not the most salubrious location and move up the housing ladder. That is no longer possible with stamp duty. Finally, the Government should stop distracting councils with top-down local government reorganisation. We warned that this would consume local authorities’ time and resources, and that the Government’s proposals would not work. I am sad to say that we have been proved right not once but twice—please do not prove us right a third time. Will the Government commit to reviewing the burdens placed on urban brownfield development? Will they look at what support they can give buyers, such as Help to Buy, and when will they publish the report they commissioned on Help to Buy? On the grey belt, will they ensure that those commitments in the NPPF are held to by developers, and that they do not walk back from them on the basis of viability? The Minister committed to a shared ownership review, which—as we discussed during the debates on the Social Housing Bill—if done properly, is another great way to get on the housing ladder. When will the Government move forward with that review and publish it? Is there a timetable? Britain does not need more targets—it needs delivery. It needs homes people can afford in places where they want to live and work. It needs a planning system that enables rather than obstructs development, and a Government prepared to remove the burdens that make new homes unaffordable. If we get housing right, we do more than solve the housing crisis; we unlock growth, improve productivity, strengthen communities and give the next generation something that too many are being denied today: the chance to call a home their own.