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House-building Programme

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lady Scott of Needham Market on instigating a debate that has been fascinating so far and which I am sure will continue to be so. I want to address two particular issues: rural housing provision and how the Government are implementing policies that take account of climate change. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, for enabling me to shorten the contribution I shall make on rural housing provision because he has made so many points very admirably. I do not think it is necessary to repeat them. However, he was incredibly kind to the Government because he spent several years as a rural advocate as chairman of the Countryside Agency. At that time, it published annual reports on the state of the countryside which drew attention more vociferously every year to the top priority need for more rural housing. Every year the Government made some pleasantry in response to that report and did, as far as I can see or have heard from noble Lords this afternoon, precisely nothing. As other noble Lords have said, the house-building need in the countryside is for a very few houses in very many settlements. If one considers that there are some 8,000 parishes or 17,000 settlements throughout England, two or three houses in each one every so often will meet that provision. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, was absolutely right when he said that this will work only if the Government let go and follow a decentralised model that allows local control and local needs to drive the process. It is impossible to address developments of two or three houses in small settlements, or six or 10 houses in slightly larger villages, in a centralised model. It is completely inappropriate. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us that when the Affordable Rural Housing Commission—on which I am sure we are all pinning a number of hopes—comes to report, Elinor Goodman will have a lot more fortune in seeing her pleas and recommendations acted upon than the Countryside Agency has had in the past. Finally on rural housing provision, I could not let this moment pass without commenting again on the point my noble friend Lady Scott made about the self-invested pensions scheme. Is it too late for the Government to think again on the effect that it will have on rural areas where people want to buy a second home? They will undoubtedly use this scheme to facilitate them doing so. I turn now to the issue of climate change. The Government have made urgent and informed statements on the importance of climate change and the very pressing need to adapt our lifestyles to minimise the impact we have on the climate. However, I do not see the Government translating such statements into policy changes in regard to housing. As evidence of this, you have to look only at the pages of the newspapers and the estates being built. Do you see houses being built with grey water recycling; with solar capture, be it passive or solar water heating? Do estate agents’ advertisements make much of the energy rating of houses; do, indeed, consumers demand that they do; and are they willing to pay more for houses with an extremely good energy rating? The answer to all of these questions is no, no and no. Given that we all accept that climate change is the greatest threat to the planet, it is incredible that our building programme continues much as it did throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The Government have had the opportunity to draw up new planning guidance and new building regulations—indeed, they have done so recently—but they have failed to grasp the opportunity that those building regulations offered. Indeed, they have downgraded the opportunity by watering down the regulations. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, who is unable to speak today, joins with me in making the point that the latest building regulations have failed to take account of best energy-saving practice. Perhaps the Minister will be kind enough to comment, first, on that issue and, secondly, on the fact that, according to the Building Research Establishment’s 2004 report, less than 0.5 per cent of new build exceeded those regulations and some 32 per cent did not even comply with existing regulations. If the Government are serious about climate change they need to grasp the issue of building regulations and do something far more robust with it. Ofgem is another wasted opportunity. When we passed the Energy Bill, now the Energy Act, in your Lordships’ House last year, we gave Ofgem a sustainability duty. I should like to know what it has done in the mean time to put that new power into effect. The Energy Savings Trust issued a very interesting publication recently in regard to changing behaviour through fiscal incentives. It recommends that council tax and stamp duty land tax rebates would encourage consumer action. Some of its figures are very interesting and I recommend the publication to the Minister, the title of which is Changing climate, changing behaviour—Delivering household energy saving through fiscal incentives. If there was a 25 per cent uptake of the initiatives suggested it would cost the Treasury some £347 million; over the same period, savings to households would be in the order of £9,000 million a year, which is a pretty good return on investment—and that is before you take into account the 30,000 million tonnes of carbon emissions that could be saved. I realise that figures in a speech never make exciting reading, but I recommend that publication both to the Minister, if she has not seen it, and to other noble Lords. Climate change affects water scarcity, flooding and carbon emissions. These are critical issues, none of which has been helped by the government changing their policies on house building and measures for existing houses.