Government: Draft Legislative Programme

My Lords, I welcome the process that the Government have given us today and I hope that this conversational and consultative method will continue and is not just the result of a new Prime Minister arriving in the middle of the summer. Yesterday, I had the privilege of cutting the turf on a site being developed in Stock, a village in Essex, by the Rural Housing Trust. Ten new homes will be provided, seven for rent and three for shared ownership, and it has taken six years to get the project off the ground. It has involved partnerships between the landowner, the local authority, the Rural Housing Trust and the local community. It has been set up in such a way that the seven houses for rent and three for shared ownership cannot revert in any other way; they will remain for rent and shared ownership. I was therefore particularly pleased to see Bills on housing in the draft legislative programme, and especially pleased to see that the intention is to do something about the reform of social housing provision both in terms of its regulatory structure and the need to meet the flexible and diverse needs of our times. Accessible, secure and affordable homes are fundamental to the support of family life and the building of safe and healthy communities, but there is a danger that if we focus on the necessary structural issues, which is all about numbers of houses, land and infrastructure, we may lose touch with the human agenda, which is all about homes, families, people, communities, leisure, values, volunteering, faith and so on. Housing is not an end but a means. We need to get that into our system if this is to be a priority for the Government. In my turf-cutting moment yesterday in such a lively rural village, I could not help but think of another part of my diocese, the borough of Newham and the Thames Gateway issues. I am told, although I do not know if it is true, that there are proposals to build 100,000 new dwellings in Newham. I wondered what could be taken from that small village experience that might transfer to the Olympic borough and the challenge of providing homes there. Newham is a borough which, in terms of other aspects of the Government’s legislative programme, has a high level of child poverty and considerable social need. Building houses in a lively village or lively multicultural borough is one thing; in places such as Newham, does the Government’s legislative programme plan to stop good homes beginning their life in the affordable category and ending up out of the reach of the people most in need? What are we doing about the right-to-buy difficulties that surround social housing? Building in areas such as Stock is one thing, but I could take noble Lords elsewhere in my diocese where we are building houses in places that have but a tenuous link to established communities. It really is no good building houses where there happens to be land available if the outcome is that the new estates have no community to which they can relate and little capacity to build their own. I go around some places and hear people say, ““These are lovely houses, but they could be the slums of the future””. There has been much talk in recent years of sustainable communities but not a lot of evidence of any substance to that phrase in some places. The Section 106 system often does not work. Are the Government, in partnership with local communities, having new thoughts about not just how we build houses but how we develop communities in which people’s full humanity can find expression? I have been enjoying Richard Wilkinson’s new book on unequal societies, in which he talks about the importance of healthy communities. Such communities are good for the health of the people. He asserts that: "““Where there is a strong community life, instead of social life stopping outside the front door, public space remains a social space. The individualism and values of the market are restrained by a social morality. People are more likely to be involved in social and voluntary activities outside the home. These societies have more of what has been called ‘social capital’ which lubricates the workings of the whole society and the economy””." Are we going to consider those sorts of social value processes as we build houses? Two other related agendas go with this: hidden poverty, which I have already mentioned, and the green agenda, to which the Government refer in the White Paper. The Government have committed themselves to the green agenda and are talking about eco-towns, but will all new housing be required to make provision for renewable sources of energy and have fundamental standards set to preserve energy and water and to reduce the carbon footprint? When are we going to discuss a framework for these demands on all new developments and a programme to help with existing housing stock? Surely this is what we might call joined-up government. The policies in the draft legislative programme on housing, on children, on poverty and its eradication, and on climate change are all linked together. I welcome the opportunity for conversation on these issues and I hope the Government will think in a joined-up way about the programme.