My Lords, I shall add a quick comment. Of course, I support my noble friend’s amendment and the absolutely spot-on comments of the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen. However, quite a number of elderly people suffer from disabilities which do not confine them to a wheelchair but still require aids and adaptations to be built into the property. For example, they cannot lean over to open a window if the windows are too high and stiff; their arthritic hands make them incapable of that. They cannot manage plugs at floor level because they cannot stoop and bend. These have to be sited at about waist height: suitable for anybody, whether in a wheelchair or not. They will need surfaces in kitchens which are, if you like, on Ladderax and can be adapted as they become more physically immobile but not necessarily confined to a wheelchair. Many of them will, alas, go on to suffer from mental health deterioration such as Alzheimer’s and so on. They will need smart gadgetry in their homes. In my city, the estimates for building that in when housing for older people is built are around £10,000. If you try to retrofit, you quadruple that cost.
I do not disagree in the slightest with the remarks that have already been made: I very much support them. However, I hope that we take a wider view of the increasing frailties that are being generated among elderly people. Many of them will be in wheelchairs; many will have disabilities and frailties which are not wheelchair-related. They may be hard of hearing; they may have difficulty getting into the house. In my housing association’s sheltered housing scheme, one of our most difficult problems now is retrofitting space for mobility scooters and their charging. The housing was built 20 years ago, when mobility scooters, as we know them, hardly existed. Now there may be 15 to 20 mobility scooters in a scheme of 40 households, but nowhere to park them or plug them in. There is a real problem of space standards here. I know that it is hard to think forward and we will always end up retrofitting, but I hope that the Government will take this away and consult with architects and companies like Habinteg which have very wide experience of disability needs in house-building, to see what that agenda should look like for the next 20 or 30 years.