My Lords, it has been my privilege to have been involved in public sector housing for 50 years. I welcome the broad thrust of the thought of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, that every home should be a healthy home.
We must be a little practical. I congratulate my noble friends on the Front Bench on the degree to which they have adjusted, even in the time of this Government. However, looking at some of the specifics, I live in Bedfordshire, and there are whole hosts of small developments there. They are historical and are basically just hamlets. There is no way that I would want to stop any new developments of hamlets of that nature. The residents cannot possibly walk to the shops in 10 or 20 minutes. It would probably take them half an hour. That is the practicality of life.
The second point—and I know that the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, feels strongly about this, and I share some of his concerns—relates to retail conversions in a fast-changing retail environment. In our county towns and other leading towns, we are now seeing a huge number of empty properties, a fair number of which are potentially being developed for living in. In no way
can some of these shops meet all the requirements that are listed here. However, it is equally true that for some of the recent ones, which I have looked at locally, the PDR requirements have not been met properly. The noble Lord would be doing a major help to places such as Bedford, where we see an empty high street and we know that people want to convert some of those properties into flats and that there is a need for flats.
Finally, I would like to tell my noble friend and the House that there are 4.2 million people looking for affordable housing. I had the privilege of representing a new town; it worked because there was a major thrust of development. The principle of why it worked was that it was low-level, high-density building. I still think that that is the way forward. It does not mean that it cannot be healthy; it can and it must be healthy, and a great many of our new towns are low level and high density. I sympathise with my noble friend on the Front Bench. We have to move forward, but in a practical manner.