---

House-building Programme

My Lords, I too should like to thank the noble Baroness for initiating this debate. It is a serious, complex and worrying issue for us all. I therefore suppose that it is good to talk. Perhaps I too can declare an interest at the beginning of the debate. The only one I can think of is that I was once the treasurer of the Darlington council tenants’ action committee. We used to battle against the council, both Labour and Conservative. I do not know why they made me the treasurer—I had no money at the time. I think it was because they wanted someone young to carry the banner. The only people we disliked more than the council in those days were private landlords, whom we used to depict as greedy, grabbing and thieving rogues, and that was when we were being polite to them. But time has moved on. Modern times meant that the council which was once our saviour fell out of favour and the workers with more money wanted to be like the bosses and own their own homes—and why not? Selling council houses was probably Maggie Thatcher’s most successful policy, making tenants owners at the right price. The trouble was that she did not replace the stock that she sold with new stock for those coming into housing need. In many ways I feel quite depressed at present. I do not blame the Government for that in any way—I think that the pressures on every front are so intense that we are going backwards. Council provision is not very good where it does exist, and it does not exist in many places. Housing associations make some provision for those who cannot afford to buy, but that provision is declining: 7 million dwellings in 1981 and 5 million dwellings in 2003. On a personal note, the big increase which quite annoys me is the development of small private landlords—““buy to let”” or ““how my generation exploits its own children”” are the terms I use—and rent levels that my children cannot afford and make it impossible for them to save for a deposit to buy. Now we have self-invested pensions, to which the noble Baroness referred, where once again the wealthy will receive tax relief at the expense of the not so wealthy and give the market another spin towards the private landlords and the rich. The Government are trying in any way they can to reverse some of those trends but it is difficult. However, by their own admission—an interesting statistic—only one-third of today’s 10 year-olds will be able buy their own home if nothing is done about the right-to-buy, the supply and the affordability situation. I know that the Government are doing their best. I was very interested in David Miliband’s contribution this week about trying to get communities to take responsibility for buying and making provision for housing. I am also very interested in the initiatives which I have read about that John Prescott has been trying to take, to build houses that people can buy for £60,000 or £80,000. It would be immensely exciting for young people in my life and in my family if that were possible. I must keep on at the Government to make home ownership—this might not be everyone’s priority, but it is certainly my top priority—a big campaign in the future. The matter I want to touch on in the next few minutes concerns whether to ask housing associations—we do not normally associate them with houses to buy—to become involved in such a campaign. I was the chairman of Notting Hill Housing Trust for five years. Our main focus was on the kind of things I have already talked about. Initially, we tried to overcome the legacy of notorious landlords such as Peter Rachman. Eventually, we got into our stride and provided 15,000 homes for rent in some of the most desirable parts of London. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, referred to Notting Hill. The association built rented homes there where the opportunity for less well-off people to buy is almost non-existent. However, much more needs to be done in that respect. Although Notting Hill Housing Trust and other housing associations should continue to build houses for homeless people to rent—that must be their core business—they ought to consider that when people come off benefits, get into work and become more socially and economically active, their aspirations, abilities and desires to buy start to grow. As their life chances improve, they want their housing situation to improve. Just before I left Notting Hill Housing Trust a survey was carried out which revealed that two-thirds of our tenants would prefer to buy their own homes. You cannot go on ignoring that. You must face up to the fact that those tenants want to be like us; they want to buy. They do not want to rent. The noble Lord, Lord Best, referred to the report of Professor Wilcox published this week, which reveals another group of people who are stuck in housing need as a result of the slow pace of building. These are people who do not qualify for social housing—they have jobs and a reasonable income—but in many parts of the country they cannot afford to buy. What will happen to them? That was a question posed by the noble Lord. They will become increasingly disaffected. They will slide down the social scale and open up divisions in our society. They will see themselves as not being part of the ““haves”” but as being part of the ““have-nots””. We cannot afford to let that happen. Over the years I have become increasingly convinced that if we are serious about reducing some of the big social issues such as child poverty, and increasing social mobility, we must help more working class people into appropriate forms of home ownership. In rented homes the poor get poorer and have precious few assets in their old age. Buying shares in their home—the one place they possibly could buy shares—or buying it outright will encourage them to save, build asset ownership and strengthen the commitment of families to their communities and homes. All the research shows that having an asset can make all the difference to poorer families, older people and people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Notting Hill Housing Trust was one of the first organisations to pioneer shared ownership. That was an early attempt to make home ownership more affordable. That has been successful. We provided about 7,500 such dwellings. Other associations have taken that on. It is a growing area. However, it needs to grow more. Perhaps we could encourage tenants to buy shares in homes owned by housing associations to enable them to have a stake. They could start to build up assets, increasing wealth, choice and self-esteem by having such a stake in their homes. They could then perhaps free up social housing for those people who need it more. I do not want to occupy all the time that I have been allocated. I knew what I wanted to say and I hope that I have said it fairly clearly. Home ownership is very popular in this country. Perhaps it should not be, but it is. That is how it is. In some European countries wealthy people are very happy to rent, but that is not the case here. Seventy per cent of people in this country own their own homes, but, interestingly, 80 per cent of households comprising a couple and two children own their own homes whereas 30 per cent of single parents own their own homes. That statistic tells a story. I do not want to go over the top but I sometimes get tired of armies of professional home owners lecturing tenants, or speaking on their behalf, about what they should want. We should listen to what tenants want. More often than not they will say that they want to be home owners too. We should take every measure that we can to try to help them become home owners.