My Lords, I empathise totally with the Minister because I too grew up in a council home. It was in Moulsecoomb, Brighton, and was part of the “Homes for Heroes” development in 1925. My parents moved into it probably 25 years later. The welcome feeling of stability, security and community—of having shops close by and a garden—and being able to plan for the future was amazing. I still remember it incredibly fondly, so I welcome the Bill because any measure that strengthens social housing, protects tenants and begins to repair decades of neglect is a step in the right direction. For example, the reforms to right to buy are long overdue, while stronger protections for survivors of domestic abuse are important and necessary. I also welcome the Government’s continued recognition that social housing must be part of the solution to the housing crisis we are in, but, while I welcome the Bill, it does not match the scale of the problem.
I am going to repeat figures that have already been mentioned, but they bear repeating because they are so shocking. We are facing a housing emergency—not in the future, but an emergency happening now that is already devastating lives across the country. More than 1.3 million households sit on social housing waiting lists. Councils are spending billions of pounds every year on temporary accommodation. Families are raising children in cramped rooms with no security or stability, and young people are of course finding themselves locked out of affordable housing altogether. One in 50 Londoners is homeless and living in temporary accommodation. Among children, it is one in 21. How have we got to those figures when we live in one of the wealthiest countries—and wealthiest cities—in the world?
The Government describe this Bill as the next step in the housing renewal programme but the steps are simply too small. The private sector has never built enough houses, and Thatcher’s right to buy has cost the taxpayer millions. The Government’s housing benefit bill has gone up and as social housebuilding has collapsed to historically low levels, instead of the taxpayer building and owning, the taxpayer now provides a subsidy for private landlords.
We need to build council housing that people can be proud to call a home and that is warm in winter, cool in summer, free of damp and at a reasonable rent. In an age of billionaires, it is big corporations and investors which have driven up the price of homes that they call assets. The housing market is broken and the corporate investors have broken it. We cannot solve the housing crisis by slowly reducing the rate at which we lose social housing stock. We have to start providing homes at scale again, both through new homes in the right places and by supporting councils to bring back what is already available. Obviously, history shows us that this can be done. After the Second World War, more than 150,000 social homes were built every year. Councils were supported to build them, finance was provided and housing was treated as the essential national infrastructure that it should be. We need that same ambition now.
The Government’s reforms to right to buy are welcome but should have happened years ago. I also welcome the Bill’s provisions relating to survivors of domestic abuse: the principle that victims should not be forced to lose their home because of someone else’s abuse is absolutely right. However, I am concerned that some of these measures might not work in practice. They rely heavily on outcomes in a criminal justice system that too often fails victims of domestic abuse. Many survivors never see a conviction; many never even see a prosecution. We need to hear from the Government what alternative forms of evidence and protection can be used so that survivors are not excluded.
Then there is the question of affordability. A survivor may obtain sole tenancy rights, but what happens if they cannot actually meet the rent on a single income? We must also remember that removing a perpetrator from a property does not automatically make a survivor safe. Post-separation abuse is a reality experienced by thousands of women, so they will probably need some support for these tenancy changes. Young people experiencing homelessness, leaving care or escaping unsafe homes also need access to social housing, yet the stock available to them continues to shrink. The reforms in this Bill alone will not change that reality.
The Bill contains worthwhile measures and I will support its progress, obviously while offering helpful advice and ideas at the same time, but we should not pretend that it meets the scale of the problem in the housing emergency that faces this country. What frustrates me most is that the Government have seen that there is a problem but are not doing enough to actually fix it. This should have been the Bill that launched a new generation of council housing by committing to new build and the refurbishment of older housing stock at a rate we need. Instead, it feels like an opportunity only half taken.
The housing emergency demands urgency and ambition. Millions of people cannot afford for us to settle for anything less. I hope that as the Bill proceeds through Parliament, the Government will listen carefully and find ways to strengthen it, because the country needs more than baby steps to reform a broken system. It needs a social housing revolution, and this Government must be braver.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb 