My Lords, I am pleased to support my noble friend Lord Tope on these amendments, particularly the provisions that the
noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Kerslake, spoke to. I also have some sympathy for what the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said about the need to widen the definition of these starter homes so that we look at alternative models of affordable homes that can be approved by the Secretary of State. We will debate later in Committee whether the starter homes initiative will lead to balanced and mixed communities, and the implications of that, about which I have severe doubts. We are also going to discuss the wider issue of the impact on social housing provision, and I declare an interest as chair of Housing & Care 21.
This model of starter homes will not apply to huge areas of the country; people there will not be able to benefit, as the noble Lord, Lord Tope, explained. Although the main aim should be to build more homes, if we genuinely want to increase ownership we must look at more than one size fits all. The Government may find, if they concentrate overly on starter homes—I understand that they are doing that because it is a convenient target to get people moving—that the type of houses we are building in the long term become unsuitable.
There are two aspects of this that are quite an issue. Frankly, too many starter homes in one local market could cause market distortions, both initially, when they are trying to sell these homes, and at the end of the five years, when the purchaser can effectively take advantage of the discount. This concentration of building of starter homes will both put off lenders from lending on those houses in those areas and may well deter developers from developing sufficiently fast, as they would where they were developing more mixed tenures and different forms of owner-occupation. The communities themselves will be very unbalanced.
The amendment is an attempt to achieve greater diversity of products, which may make homes more affordable and achievable, and, by varying the nature of the home ownership, deter what could otherwise lead to quite severe distortions of the market. If we distort the market, we will put off developers and lenders, and end up not building as many homes as we need.