Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, for securing this important debate. I also thank her for her enormous contribution to local government over many years. I very much remember her tenure in the Local Government Association, and I thank her for that. I also extend my gratitude to all speakers for their very valuable contributions to this important discussion. As ever, the House has brought a wealth of experience and perspective to an issue that matters deeply to people across this country. The Motion before us is broad, and that is appropriate. Home ownership cannot be separated from wider questions around housing supply, affordability, economic opportunity or community; it is bound up with all of them. For generations, owning a home has represented something important: stability and independence. It has given families a stake in their community and confidence in their future. For many people, it remains one of the clearest expressions of aspiration and security. The noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, spoke powerfully about roots, belonging, aspiration and security. That aspiration is still very much alive; the challenge is that, for too many people, the pathway to achieving it has become increasingly difficult. It would be wrong to pretend otherwise. I am sorry but I am not prepared to absolve the party opposite from the legacy of the worst housing crisis for generations, which was our legacy when we came into office. As the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, said, many of the themes raised during this debate reflect pressures that have been building over decades: house prices have outpaced earnings, saving for a deposit has become more difficult, and housing supply has failed to keep pace with need. For many across the country, people who work hard and do the right thing nevertheless find themselves unable to take the next step towards home ownership. The consequence is that too many people feel that opportunities available to previous generations are becoming harder to reach. That matters not only to individual households but society as a whole. A strong housing market should allow people to move through different stages of life. It should allow young people to leave home and establish themselves, renters to buy if they wish to do so, growing families to find homes that meet their needs, and older people to move when that is the right choice for them. That is why the Government see housing as both a social and economic priority. Housing is about more than bricks and mortar. It affects productivity, labour mobility, health, community cohesion and opportunity. It shapes people’s confidence in the future, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the debate about home ownership. My noble friend Lady Paul clearly articulated some of those issues. This Government want a country in which more people have a genuine choice about where and how they live. We want a housing market that works better than it has in recent years and a fairer system in which opportunities are not determined solely by geography, wealth or family circumstance. That requires a long-term approach, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, rightly diagnosed. There are no quick fixes to challenges that have developed over many years, nor is there a single policy lever capable of solving them. Instead, progress depends on addressing the fundamentals. It means increasing the supply of homes, because we cannot tackle a housing shortage without building more homes. That is why we have taken urgent action through bold planning reforms—which was recognised by my noble friend Lady Gill and the noble Lord, Lord Jackson—and a record £39 billion investment to kick-start social and affordable housebuilding at scale across the country. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, I say that it is not the case that all social and affordable housing is occupied by those on benefits. Many occupiers of social and affordable housing are working people who continue to contribute to communities, in the same way that, in my town, when I was growing up, the majority of homes were council housing and they developed an entire community from that housing. We need to increase the supply of homes, so we have also launched the £16 billion National Housing Bank to unlock private capital, support delivery on large and complex sites and accelerate the construction of new homes across the country. Together, these measures are designed to address the root cause of many of the challenges discussed today: the simple fact that, for too long, we have not built enough homes. It also means ensuring that aspiring home owners have realistic routes into ownership. That is why we are supporting first-time buyers through a range of measures, including shared ownership and reforms to mortgage lending that will help more people access suitable mortgage products. We have also consulted on a new first-time buyer savings product to replace the lifetime ISA, and that means making the experience of buying and owning a home simpler and fairer. That is why, on 19 June, we published a road map setting out actions the Government will take over the course of this Parliament to reform the home buying and selling process. I am very grateful to the cross-sector partners who have worked with me to deliver this. At a time when families are feeling the squeeze, these changes will cut home-buying times by around four weeks, save first-time buyers an average of £650 and stop the nasty surprises in the house-buying process that cost time, money and heartbreak. Overall, first-time buyers are set to save a total of more than £200 million a year from these reforms. Finally, it means recognising that housing policy must work for existing home owners as well as future ones. That is why we are taking action to improve the experience of home ownership itself. The King’s Speech confirmed that the commonhold and leasehold reform Bill will be introduced this Session, delivering long-overdue reforms for millions of leaseholders and helping to make commonhold the default tenure for new flats. At the same time, we remain committed to ensuring that people are safe in their homes, accelerating the remediation of unsafe buildings and removing barriers that prevent vital works being completed. Our aim is to create a system that offers more choice, more opportunity and greater security for people at every stage of life. Whether you are taking your first step towards ownership, moving to meet the needs of a growing family or considering a move later in life, everyone should have confidence that the housing system is working for them. Throughout today’s debate, there has been a common thread running through many contributions, regardless of political perspective, and that is a recognition that home ownership remains important. There may be different views on precisely how to expand access to it; there may be disagreements about individual policies or interventions; but I suspect there is broad agreement across this House that we should be striving for a society in which people have a realistic opportunity of buying a home if that is what they choose to do. In fact, I agreed with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Frost, said in this respect; we cannot just keep doing what we did when it has not worked. That is certainly this Government’s ambition. We want aspiring home owners to feel that this ladder is once again within reach. We want existing home owners to have confidence that the system works fairly. We want future generations to look ahead with optimism, rather than resignation. Achieving that ambition will take time. The barriers facing many households today were not created overnight. We have to take sustained action with our partners across the sector. I will address some of the issues that were raised individually by noble Lords, but I am sure I will not get to them all. I will respond in writing where I do not reach any particular issue. I appreciate that there were different approaches on these issues, so I will set out our government view. First, I want to talk about first-time buyers. This was an issue mentioned by many noble Lords, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Eaton, Lady Gill, Lady Seccombe and Lady Hodgson. In addition to increasing the supply of homes for all tenures, the Government are supporting people into home ownership, including through the shared ownership scheme and the lifetime ISA. On first-time buyers, I want to tackle the stamp duty myth. The noble Lord, Lord Evans, and the noble Baronesses, Lady O’Neill, Lady Eaton and Lady Thornhill, all spoke about stamp duty from slightly different perspectives. First-time buyers benefit from paying no stamp duty land tax up to £300,000 and are able to claim relief on purchases up to £500,000. From noble Lords on the Conservative Benches, I keep hearing about all this money they are going to spend from what they are taking out of the welfare bill, stamp duty being yet another one of those—following on from defence, tax cuts and so forth. I wait to hear which part of the welfare bill that is coming from, and I look forward to those discussions later. The Government have also introduced a new permanent mortgage guarantee scheme to support and sustain the availability of low-deposit mortgage products for prospective buyers. The Bank of England has eased the loan-to-income limit. My noble friend Lord John mentioned the need for flexibility on finance, and he is quite right. The Financial Conduct Authority has an ongoing review of the mortgage market, which means many borrowers can now borrow 10% more towards a property purchase, and I commend Lloyds and Santander, both of which have reintroduced their 5% mortgage deposits. In June, the FCA published proposed new mortgage rules to support first-time buyers and underserved customers, including wider access to interest-only mortgages and greater flexibility for borrowers on variable and non-traditional incomes. The noble Baroness, Lady Paul, mentioned some of the great examples that building societies are taking up. I really commend the Building Societies Association on its “Think again” campaign. The noble Baroness, Lady Seccombe, mentioned an example of someone who did not think they would be able to buy and could—that is what the “Think again” campaign is looking at. There is a much more flexible consideration now around, for example, fluctuating income levels and taking payment of rent into consideration as a guarantee of mortgage payments. A number of noble Peers, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Eaton, Lady Hodgson, Lady Paul and Lady Thornhill, and the noble Lords, Lord Jackson, Lord Fuller and Lord Jamieson, mentioned supply and the 1.5 million homes. We inherited this acute housing crisis after decades of not building enough homes. That is why the Government are committed to delivering 1.5 million safe and decent homes this Parliament. I do not apologise for the ambition of that target. We are pulling every lever at our disposal. We have taken urgent action through bold planning reforms and a record £39 billion investment to kick-start social and affordable housing at scale across the country. We have launched the National Housing Bank, unlocking over £53 billion of private investment, as well as our programme of new towns—I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, for all the work he has done on that programme. Our interventions are showing positive signs of change, with new-build starts in March 2026 up 15% on the previous year and residents in outline applications up 54%. That mission signals our commitment to the country and to the market that we are serious about solving the housing crisis and ending this ingrained break on aspiration. It was always the case that we were going to have to take some time to put these steps in place before we started to see the outcome that we are looking for. A number of noble Lords raised the issue of planning reforms: the noble Baronesses, Lady Gill, Lady Hodgson and Lady Paul, and the noble Lords, Lord Gascoigne, Lord Frost and Lord Jamieson. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Frost and Lord Jackson, for their support for the planning reforms—it is good to hear that. This has been a very important step: a set of pro-supply, pro-growth planning reforms to support our commitment to build those 1.5 million homes. The changes we have introduced to the National Planning Policy Framework involve a wider set of growth-focused interventions that will help us build the homes in places people want to live, but also supported by the right infrastructure that needs to go alongside it. The new NPPF confirms those reforms to make planning policy easier to use. To specifically answer the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, about well-connected stations, there is a definition of that in the National Planning Policy Framework, and I think I am meeting the noble Lord, Lord Banner, next week to discuss that further. We are building on our landmark Planning and Infrastructure Act, a major step in the reform programme to unlock a new scale of housing delivery, especially focusing on the right type of housing, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill. Noble Lords raised the issues around right-to-buy reforms. We are reforming right to buy to deliver a fairer, better value and more sustainable scheme. We want a scheme that helps long-standing tenants to buy their own homes, while protecting much-needed social housing stock and ensuring that more homes are built to last. As my noble friend Lady Paul said in her thoughtful and analytical speech, echoed by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, for too long, social homes have been sold off without being replaced. That is why we have already acted to reduce maximum right-to-buy cash discounts to their pre-2012 levels. The Bill will implement more comprehensive reforms to right to buy, including minimum tenancy requirements and allowing councils to keep 100% of the receipts generated by right-to-buy sales. This is an important move which will enable the building of much-needed council homes, and it is something that councils have called for for a long time. A number of noble Lords raised issues about London. The noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, spoke about the complexity of building in London, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, and the noble Lords, Lord Frost, Lord Jackson, Lord Fuller and Lord Jamieson. In March, the Government and the Greater London Authority confirmed a package of temporary emergency measures providing targeted, time-limited support for housebuilders, to improve the viability of schemes and get quicker approvals on new housing schemes across every borough. That includes the GLA’s fast-track planning process for sites with at least 20% affordable housing, removal of guidance that constrains density, expansion of the mayor’s planning powers, temporary partial relief from development levies and £324 million for the GLA to establish the City Hall developer investment fund to unlock stalled sites and increase supply. We are backing London with a major long-term investment, with up to £11.7 billion from the social and affordable housing programme confirmed for London over the lifetime of the programme, and an allocation of £1.5 billion of the new low-interest loan scheme for social and affordable housing. I am very aware that we need to give some assistance to London to deliver the housing it needs. The Renters’ Rights Act was mentioned by the noble Baronesses, Lady Eaton and Lady Thornhill, the noble Lords, Lord John and Lord Jamieson, and by the noble Lord, Lord Frost, who mysteriously called it a war on renters. I think it was actually a big support for renters. It is transforming the experience of private renting for the 11 million private renters and 2.3 million landlords in England, delivering our manifesto commitment to end Section 21 no-fault evictions, which were an enormous cause of homelessness in this country. Tenants also have stronger protections against unfair practices. The Act also prevents landlords from demanding excessive amounts of rent in advance and helps remove barriers that can prevent renters from accessing accommodation. I am very proud of the Renters’ Rights Act. It is going to deliver much greater security of tenure for renters, and we do not expect those reforms to have a destabilising effect on the supply of rented homes and the rental market. So far, that has proved to be the case. I will comment briefly on the support we are giving to SME builders, which the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, mentioned. She also mentioned rural homes; we have specific policies around making sure we have rural exception sites, to make sure that local people can think about what homes they need in their local areas. The noble Lord, Lord Fuller, also mentioned that issue, on SMEs. There is a package of financial support for SMEs. We will unlock £53 billion of private investment through the National Housing Bank and support the building of over 500,000 new homes, including supporting SME housebuilders. We have also doubled the ENABLE Build guarantee scheme to £2 billion to increase SMEs’ access to finance. We recognise the challenge SMEs have in accessing suitable land and, to support them, Homes England has committed to sell more of its sites through SME-only sales, with a less bureaucratic sales process to help level the playing field. I will respond in writing to other issues that I have not got to. Lastly, a number of noble Peers raised shared ownership, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Gill, Lady O’Neill and Lady Paul, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson. Shared ownership continues to have an important role to play in supporting households. However, the Government are aware that some people who entered the shared ownership process have faced challenges. As many noble Lords will know, this was recently discussed on Report of the Social Housing Bill. As I set out in that debate, we have a programme of improvements in place to make shared ownership work better for customers, but there is more to come in the improvement programme. We are continuing to consider what more can be done to improve our customer experience for shared owners. My right honourable friend the Housing Minister is in discussion with the noble Lord, Lord Young, on many of those issues. There are no quick fixes to these housing issues. The barriers to home ownership were not built in a single Parliament, and they will not fall in a single Parliament. But the direction is settled: building the homes the country needs, opening the route to a deposit and a mortgage, rebalancing the market towards people who want somewhere to live and making ownership secure for those who already have it. I am proud that Labour has picked up the challenge of tackling the housing crisis we inherited from the previous Government. To pick up the analogy from the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, we grabbed that knife that was falling and turned it into steel for building. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, for giving this House the opportunity to debate this issue.