King’s Speech

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Wednesday 20th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

I too thank the noble Baroness for the very sincere conviction and clarity with which she gave her introduction. From these Benches, I shall speak to the housing issues in the humble Address and will save a lot of the detail for the various Bills—so I hope the Minister does not think that she is going to get let off too lightly—knowing full well that my noble friends will address the issues of health and transport in greater detail.

Listening to the housing measures in the gracious Speech, I was struck by a rather familiar feeling, the sort you get when you get handed a glossy developer’s brochure. Noble Lords know the one—the sunlit streets, the happy families, everything finished and perfect, not a wheelie bin or an old banger in sight. It all looks excellent until you actually visit the site, where the picture is somewhat different. I am afraid that, with much of what we have before us, the gap between the brochure and the build still looms rather large.

Let me be fair: there is much to welcome. There is energy, there are Bills already in motion to support the ones that are coming forward and, for me, there is a real recognition that housing is not just another policy; it is actually the most important issue for millions of citizens and for the economy of the whole country. However, as someone who has spent years trying to get homes built—I was dubbed the pro-development mayor—I have learned that housing policy is judged not on what it says on the paper but on what gets built where. My test is simple: will this deliver more homes, and particularly more social homes, at the pace needed to turn the tide and at an affordable price?

It must be said that, on the whole, the sector has been very pleased. Long-term funding for social housing, at last, is very welcome: we cannot build homes with short-term thinking. A stronger Homes England and sensible powers to provide land for social homes and community facilities are vital. Unlocking land matters. The provisions in the Social Housing Bill supporting those fleeing domestic abuse are close to my heart and genuinely important—housing should always be part of the solution and not a barrier—and there has been progress on the remediation of homes with cladding. “At last”, the campaigners will say, but the date of 2029 will still feel a long way away. But let us close that brochure and look at the reality. There are over 1.3 million households on waiting lists and over 130,000 households in temporary accommodation, including thousands of children. As Shelter has put it,

“This is the devastating result of a severe shortage of social rent homes”.


That is the benchmark.

We welcome the Social Housing Bill and its broad policy direction but, sadly, at its heart it is mainly a right to buy reform Bill. Necessary? Absolutely: it reduces discounts, tightens the system and seeks better replacement. Our policy is to allow councils to make their own decisions in that regard as to what would suit them, but this is at least a step in the right direction. But let us be clear: slowing the loss of homes is not the same as building new ones. It plugs the holes in the bucket but, at the moment, the bucket has very little in it. It does not yet deliver the step change in supply that we need.

This brings me to one of the biggest gaps: affordability. There is very little said about affordability. This is not only a housing crisis but an affordability one. For those who need social housing, supply is too low. For renters, rents are too high, and for first-time buyers, ownership is too far away. We must and can build more homes, but if people cannot afford them, the problem simply moves rather than disappears.

In the private rented sector, people are being squeezed from both sides, with high rents but no realistic route into ownership. The local housing allowance no longer matches market rents in many areas. Are the Government considering changes in the welfare system to support housing, or will we continue to expect people to bridge a widening gap that should not exist at all?

Our concern is the lack of a real route to delivery, because this is where ambition—and there is no lack of ambition from this Government—meets reality. Planning departments are overstretched, with around 80% underresourced. Recruitment plans are welcome, but they do not yet match the scale of the gap. Perhaps the Minister has an update on the promised target of 1,400 new planners by the end of the Parliament. But you cannot accelerate delivery if the system that approves development is running short of people.

This takes us to construction. There are currently 140,000 vacancies in construction. There is an ageing workforce, with many due to retire in the next few years and far too few apprentices coming through. There is a cross-party consensus about the need for more homes as we seem to vie with each other to announce higher targets, but targets do not build houses. Builders, plumbers and carpenters build them, and we do not have enough of any of them.

We should not forget SME builders, which are often the backbone of delivering the homes we need. What are the Government doing to support these businesses, which are crucial to delivering their ambition? They are often the ones which deliver smaller sites faster and more flexibly, and very locally. Yet they face tight margins, rising costs, complex regulations—always their moan—and difficulties accessing land and finance. The system as we have it now increasingly works for the bigger players, not the smaller ones. That matters, and I hope it matters to government, because if we squeeze out SMEs, as has been happening year on year, we reduce capacity and slow delivery.

On leasehold reform, we feel the direction is generally right, but we are nowhere near the destination, and there seems no sign of that. Commonhold is not clearly the default. Conversion remains complex, and everyday issues, such as service charges and property management practices, remain only partially addressed. The legislation seems geared towards future development and comes at the expense of existing leaseholders, particularly those in flats, leaving them trapped in a harmful two-tier market, further devaluing their homes and leaving them dependent on predatory freeholders and unregulated management agents whose interests are diametrically opposed to their own. These are the two glaring omissions that we would seek to fill. We have the promise of reform for some, but we agree with the Prime Minister, who, after the election, said, “Incremental change won’t cut it”—but this is incremental.

Then there is the much-welcomed remediation Bill. This is a test of whether subsequent Governments meant what they said after Grenfell. Nearly a decade on, thousands of buildings still require work. Progress has been made, but nowhere near quickly enough. The Public Accounts Committee has called it “far too slow”, and campaigners speak of people trapped, unable to sell, facing rising costs, living with uncertainty, lives on hold. Until the work is completed—not promised or planned but completed—we have not honoured the promise of “Never again”. Promises of everything being done by 2029 still seem a long way off if you are one of those people.

Finally, there is the last missing disappointment. Let us be blunt and realistic: public protest is often the reason for held up delivery, which those of us in local politics will know only too well. People are wary of any changes and unconvinced of the positives about development. This is despite their children not being able to live in the town, village or city in which their parents live. So why is that? Could it be homes built without infrastructure, promises not delivered, fears of overcrowding of major services such as schools and GP surgeries, or even about somewhere to park? These are real fears and concerns, which have built a lack of trust. Unless we rebuild that trust through better design, real engagement and delivering what is actually needed and promised, we will not build at scale and take communities with us.

The Government’s policy direction to solve this problem—despite their rhetoric in the introduction—is to take decision-making away from communities and upwards towards combined authorities’ mayors. When I read my planning email this morning, I saw that there may be further plans to give more decisions to council officers and not to councillors. I can understand why that is, but that is not what we need. As with many of the issues facing society at the moment, we need real leadership at all levels—from not just Ministers, who do say what needs to be said, but local MPs and councillors of all parties, including mine.

We will support the Government where we believe they are going in the right direction. We will do the usual urging faster and further, and in some regards, we will certainly challenge omissions; otherwise, there remains a gap between what is promised and what is delivered. What is missing is not intent or activity, and possibly not even resources—though more are always sought and welcome—but certainty of delivery at the scale and pace required. It is all about whether people have somewhere safe, secure and affordable to live. Right now, it feels like we have got rather good at producing the brochure; we just have not delivered the houses—but I am sure the Minister is as impatient for this as we are.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)]

My Lords, before we move on, I remind noble Lords on all sides that there is an advisory limit of five minutes for speeches. If we could stay within that, that would be great, because obviously we want to finish at a reasonable time this evening, and we have to show other noble Lords who are speaking a bit of respect.

Electric Vehicles: Charging Points

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Tuesday 7th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

Yes, of course there will. In all seriousness, because we have the Road to Zero strategy and are very clear about what we are aiming for, that will give certainty to the energy sector and make sure that sufficient electricity is available. Obviously, investment in low-carbon generation is taking place, and we are consulting on secondary legislation to make sure that charging points have smart functionality, which means that they can be charged off peak.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, I say proudly as Mayor of Watford that we have the highest use of EVs in Hertfordshire. However, there is certainly a disconnect between the Government’s ambition for national charging infrastructure and the reliance on councils, in a piecemeal way, to come forward with more charging points. The noble Baroness is quite correct to say that, until we have standardisation, we will clearly not make the progress that we anticipate. Given that range anxiety and cost are the two main barriers, what plans do the Government have for a more integrated approach to the adoption of electric vehicles, which at the moment is piecemeal and fragmented?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

A top-down approach in this matter would probably not work. Technology is developing very rapidly at the moment, and noble Lords will know that we are seeing a vast change in the speed of charging cars and in the sorts of charge points required. Central government can provide the right policy support and, as I have said, local authorities can apply for funding, but we certainly expect the private networks to step up.