Supported Housing

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak in this debate, introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe. Her excellent opening speech, as well as the short but on-the-button contributions from other noble Lords, have really laid bare the fact that this is indeed a very complex, multifaceted area, and we have a long way to go.

I hope the Committee will forgive me if I spend my four minutes taking a slightly different angle. My very first experience of supported housing came when I was standing for election for the first time back in the early 1990s. Some noble Lords will remember that this was the era that saw the start of care in the community.

A housing association had bought a pair of semis in my road and was turning them into supported housing for adults with learning difficulties. I was shocked and disappointed to find that some of my neighbours had decided “We don’t want that sort of people here”. They were banging on my door telling me that if I wanted their vote, I had to get it stopped. There were very nasty public meetings. The council stood its ground and granted the planning permission, and I lost the election.

However, I learned a very valuable lesson. People in my parents’ generation had been used to “that sort of people” being locked up in Victorian gothic institutions and they had massively entrenched views about the worth of such citizens and where they should live.

I am pleased to say that the residents moved in and one of the first things they did was to invite the neighbours to a barbecue. A good time was had by all and it was the start of a positive relationship with the home.

Would it not be good if I could say that that attitude has long gone? But it has not. Throughout my 16 years as mayor, some of the most acrimonious meetings were about the following: a drug rehabilitation clinic, a homeless shelter, accommodation for ex-prisoners and a women’s refuge. Yes, decent, civilised and, one might say, respectable middle-class people were screeching, shouting, swearing and baying for blood like film extras in a medieval hanging scene. Each meeting is etched in my memory.

I am left wondering whether this is at the heart of why vulnerable people across a wide spectrum of needs are very much the forgotten of the housing world. Think Grenfell Tower—they certainly felt forgotten; not seen and not heard.

It is clear from numerous reports and research that things are far from well in this part of the housing world, as articulated by noble Lords. There are many questions, but the one that struck me forcibly in those early days was: why should every local authority not have to provide for these vulnerable groups? Clearly, some opt out and find different ways to do so, particularly in two-tier areas where the upper tier has the duty to advise, support and provide the strategy, but the district council is not always obligated to work with this and provide accommodation in their local plan, so—guess what—some do not provide it. Guess why. It is because the attitude of, “We don’t want those sorts of people in our area” is still alive and well, often disguised as, “There’s no need for this here. We don’t have those sorts of problems”.

Is this why unscrupulous people feel that they can exploit and abuse such people? Who is checking up on them? Who gives a damn? The accounts given to the DLUHC committee last year made for difficult reading but did not surprise me. If some of our residents are regarded by some as the flotsam and jetsam of society, does that not make it easier to ignore them, at best, and, at worst, to assault and rob them? I hope the Minister will be able to tell us that quick wins will be had, loopholes will be changed and plans for long-term change are, at least, on the table. Finally, I am sure that she has got the message about the need for social housing. I apologise for going over time.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th March 2023 Lords Chamber

Amendment 187 would affect the position of the CCAs. The amendment in this group that seems the most powerful is Amendment 185A, which at least seeks to—I am not sure whether it actually does—give the local decision primacy. That is what the people of England are particularly looking for: the phrase “take back control” will be familiar to noble Lords, and there is a great hunger for that around the country. Here, we are down in the detail and the weeds of how the Bill works, but we are actually talking about something really important to how local elected representatives can decide how the future of their community is directed.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, the main debate on the new plan hierarchy was clearly spelled out in this Chamber last week, but Covid prevented me from joining in, although I listened with interest. I will not waste time going over that debate, but I still want to reiterate certain facts. As was well demonstrated in the debate on the last group, it is a fact that so much detail is still missing and so many important matters are still out for consultation—that is probably why there are so many amendments and why there is so much anxiety around the content of NDMPs. In particular, as was well expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, what will truly be left over for local councillors and their communities to shape their place? The Bill is very strong on the rhetoric of place shaping, but it feels that we are being disempowered to do that.

Before turning to the specifics of the amendment, I will say that it is absolutely clear that the potential for conflict is significant. Without some clarity and legal clout from the Bill—not just ministerial promises that there will be more details in the revised NPPF, or that it will be more clear when we have the NDMPs—what will happen as a result of this is that there will be plenty of work for the planning chambers and litigators going forward. There will be a long transition period—the Government are quite sensibly allowing for that—because this is a new system, so there will be quite some time before we get precedents set, we get used to it and we get to see which way it is going.

The amendments have regard to the obvious potential conflicts between NDMPs and local development plans, and they also question the increasingly all-powerful Secretary of State role and the position of combined authorities. The issues concerning Secretary of State powers have also been well articulated, but, as drafted, Clause 86, which was previously debated, and Clause 87 very clearly—I do not think there is any ambiguity—favour NDMPs over development plans. But they also transfer significant policy-making powers directly to the Secretary of State—this is yet another area of concern and potential conflict because, as we know, NDMPs come with no minimum public consultation or primary parliamentary scrutiny requirements. Despite the Government’s previous assurances that this undemocratic effect was not the intention of the clauses, no legal safeguards have been introduced, so this is an area in which we would certainly hope to see movement from the Government.

My first question for the Minister on this group is on the issue of local plan soundness, as it seems to me that a lot of conflict could and should be avoided if both the NDMPs and the local development plan are very clear about what they are trying to achieve, where the boundaries of their scope are, and where one might take over from another—I was envisaging the Venn diagram and hoping that there was not very much in the middle. It seems highly desirable that the overlap should be almost impossibly small, or as limited as possible, so can the Minister confirm whether a plan would be found sound under the new regime if it contained policies that were at variance with NDMPs?

The proposed introduction of gateway checks, which is an excellent suggestion, would seem to indicate that the intention is, on the one hand, to allow both parties an opportunity to point out unacceptable variance, or, on the other, for the local planning authority to present its evidence as to why local policies should deviate from the NDMPs and therefore receive advice and engage in constructive dialogue. From the thrust of the questions of the NPPF consultations and the subsequent Written Ministerial Statements, it seems that local variance is both expected and accounted for—good.

If that is the case, why do we need new subsection (5C), and why can we not just accept the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor? It is very definite and legally tight—too definite and legally tight to allow for circumstances when it might be absolutely legitimate to give the local plan precedence. Is that deemed to be a bad thing by the Government? If not, under the current system, in which decisions are now weighed and balanced, surely a degree of leeway is desirable—the more so, as has already been mentioned, as the main criticism around NDMPs is the worry that they will set a low floor and stifle ambition and innovation, which has always been, in the main, local authority-led. New subsection (5C) might sound definite, final and firm, and therefore intended to reduce conflict—but at what cost? Could there be unintended consequences?

If the Government do not accept that proposal, the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, provides a more nuanced response to a very complex issue to allow for a time when the NDMP may not necessarily be “Top Trumps” because it is appropriate in those local circumstances. I believe that the weight of new subsection (5C) does not allow that for that discretion, so we will certainly support that amendment. As to the discussion of the word “significant”, I respectfully suggest that planners, inspectors and litigators have always weighed up, and probably always will weigh up, these words. It is part of their bread and butter, it is what they do all the time, and this will be no exception.

Amendment 187 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, is a natural extension of that same logic. She can envisage times when a local plan can and should take precedence, especially if it relates to the additional responsibilities in a larger geographical area. On these Benches, we believe that there is real value in the Government incentivising, encouraging and supporting local authorities to work together to get a larger—and, dare we use the word, regional—spatial strategy of that sort. In effect, we would not want any barriers to be put in the way of that, because there is far more at stake in a local area, such as economic growth, than just meeting housing need.

The noble Baroness’s Amendments 192 and 195 are an interesting extension of this dilemma. I wonder whether her Amendment 193 could be logistically challenging, as the Secretary of State would have to actually hear and know about every single challenge and conflict. But the principle of a feedback loop regarding conflicts seems a good one, particularly during a period of transition, as all this will all new and very different territory for everyone. I think we would all like to know where the pinch points and places with the most disagreement are and, more importantly, how they are being resolved. We will be interested in the Minister’s thoughts on this thread of feedback, reporting, learning and, presumably, revising.

Amendment 187B in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, seems very sensible. If the Bill is, as we hear all the time, to truly make the system a plan-led system, it absolutely makes sense that local plans must and should be up to date. My concern, particularly now, is with the removal of the tilted balance and planning by appeal, plus the supremacy of NDMPs. Can the Minister explain how the Government intend to incentivise councils to keep their plans up to date? I cannot see how that will be done, as there appears to be no disincentives to do otherwise.

We will support any amendment to insert a process for the Secretary of State to designate and review a national development management policy, including minimum public consultation requirements and a process of parliamentary scrutiny, as has been set out in the Planning Act 2008 and is already deemed necessary for national policy statements. If local authorities are rightly required to consult on such policies when preparing local plans today, in future it must be right that Secretaries of State be held to account by the public and Parliament in a similar way. As with national policy statements, we ask that Parliament be required to scrutinise NDMPs and that the public be allowed to consult on proposed changes to them.

There are loads of possible advantages of NDMPs, and there seems to be a general acceptance of this in principle, but the devil will always be in the detail. The unprecedented level of central control for planning that they introduce means that safeguards are needed to maintain local consent. These amendments touch on only a few areas of potential conflict, and we had plenty in the previous group. We have yet to touch on street votes versus local plans, neighbourhood policy statements versus the rest, and—one matter that is starting to come to the fore—the turning of supplementary planning documents into supplementary plans and all that this will entail. Those are debates for another day.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I want to add a short footnote to the excellent speech made by my noble friend Lord Lansley, and to try to understand in what circumstances the conflict that we have been debating can arise—that is, the conflict between the local plan and the national development management policy.

Page 294 of the Bill—I appreciate that we have not got quite that far yet—describes the process that a local authority must go through when it prepares its local plan. New section 15CA(5) states that:

“In preparing their local plan, a local planning authority must have regard to … any observations or advice received from a person appointed by the Secretary of State … other national policies and advice contained in guidance issued by the Secretary of State”.


If that process has been gone through, the local plan should already be consistent with the national development management policies—it would have been spotted. So is it the case that the only time a conflict can arise is when, subsequent to a conforming local development plan having been adopted, the Government actually change the policy? Is that the only time that a conflict can arise? It cannot arise if a plan has gone through the process under the current NDMP.

Leasehold Charges

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. This is an important issue, particularly for older people who may be considering downsizing. It is just too complex at the moment. That is what we will be dealing with as we move forward, and I thank the noble Lord for all his help in doing so.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, the points raised in the Question from the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, are, in fact, all covered by very good codes of practice, advice from government and professional bodies. The problem is that there is no enforcement and no sanctions. Evidence from the First-tier Tribunal chamber and the Leasehold Advisory Service shows that this is happening all too often. When will there be a regulator with teeth, as recommended in the report by the noble Lord, Lord Best, or will the Government at least consider making the First-tier Tribunal’s decisions legally binding?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

We will certainly have a social housing regulator once we get the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill through the other place and back through here, and I hope that will be as soon as possible. Regarding the noble Baroness’s other concerns, we will have to be patient and wait for the Bill to come forward.

Local Councils: 2023-24 Budgets

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, adult social care has been an issue to be solved for not just this Government but many Governments before them. The Government are putting more money into adult social care. They put £2 billion more into local authority funding this year for it, and we will continue to look for better ways of delivering adult social care, working with the NHS as well.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, according to LGA evidence, without further government intervention 74% of council areas are at risk of losing their local swimming pool or reducing leisure services due to rising fuel costs, and that is this year. Can the Minister explain why the Government’s energy bills discount scheme includes museums and libraries, which is very welcome, but surprisingly excludes public leisure facilities? Can she please check whether the Government were aware of this evidence when they drew up the recent scheme? Will they seriously reconsider classifying pools and leisure centres as energy intensive, as they surely are?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, the energy bill relief scheme this winter provides a discount on energy for councils whose bills have been significantly inflated. This scheme was to run until 2023, and in January the Government announced that the energy bills discount scheme would run for a further year, until March 2024. But the noble Baroness opposite is right; I have already asked that question, and when I get an answer, I will come back to her.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 17th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, I begin by reassuring the House that my noble friend Lady Harris of Richmond is not leaving the House. The V next to her name on the speakers’ list stands for virtual, not valedictory.

I thank all the creators of the excellent briefings we received, which are too numerous to list individually. From them it is clear that the Bill carries a huge weight of expectation. It seems as though a lot of these experts —pressure groups, charities and professional bodies—are not convinced that it will ever deliver what it says on the title page, while welcoming many individual aspects, as do we. We believe that this Bill will neither measurably level up nor ensure long-term regeneration, which is regrettable. We on these Benches think it is a missed opportunity to do both. The rhetoric will not match the reality. To echo the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, it is like getting a soft Christmas present—you are hoping for a silk scarf but you get socks.

The Bill provides a framework for delivering the Government’s 12 missions for reducing inequality by 2030, but it is a shaky one at best. Someone has definitely failed to look at the instructions for assembly, as it really does not hold together. The Explanatory Notes give us four overarching objectives, but it is hard to see how they live up to the aspirations of the missions. The missions themselves are not part of the Bill—Part 1 sets out how they will be set, monitored and reported on annually but not how they will be effectively delivered and funded.

Let us be candid: aspirations of this breadth and magnitude have failed to a greater or lesser extent under successive Governments over many years. This is a herculean task which we all want to get behind. Our job is to ask the Government what will be different this time. I am certain that we all want to see the missions succeed, but is everything underneath them strong and clear enough to actually deliver? Is there really a cross-government focus on levelling up? After all, you do not fatten a pig by weighing it.

The second objective covers

“the devolution of powers through the creation of a new model of combined county authorities”.

Our view is that devolution should be much more than this, and so the Bill is yet another missed opportunity. It is centralist, with the regions of England controlled out of Whitehall still. It could be argued that it is about delegation with a bit of decentralisation, but it is not what we would call devolution. There is no significant commitment to fiscal devolution, nor to devolving appropriately down to parishes and districts—those closest, after all, to the communities that the Government seek to empower and engage with.

The third objective covers the regeneration of town centres and is probably set to be the most disappointing of all. For levelling up to work in the longer term, it must be about transforming the economic fortunes of left-behind areas. The proposals in the Bill are largely cosmetic quick wins, probably designed to arrive in time for the next election—heaven forbid—and not bold policy solutions to drive regional economic success. As a party, we will continue to work for more transparency in politics. We were particularly concerned at the apparent lack of impartiality in the distribution of the towns fund.

Your Lordships must excuse me while I take a drink: my cancer treatment has side effects, including dry mouth—I am sure lots of noble Lords are familiar with that.

A more attractive high street is important to how residents feel about where they live—I have no doubt about that. But a nice-looking high street will not thrive unless residents have more money in their pockets to spend in it and a reason to go to it. New businesses will not invest in challenging high streets without incentives, including serious reform of business rates and a costed and coherent plan to address wider economic factors. Drab, rundown town centres are a symptom of economic decline. This Bill does not address the root causes of that decline. Giving residents more say in street names and protecting alfresco dining does not quite get the investors’ pulse racing. I admit that proposals for high street rental auctions and compulsory purchases sound interesting, but on closer examination, which we will all surely do, they could well have the opposite effect of decentralising investment —something to scrutinise at the Bill’s next stages.

The fourth objective is the most controversial and has aroused the most comment. The Bill has at its heart the much-heralded planning reforms. We have been inundated with briefings from different organisations about this section, and they have been very revealing and sometimes worryingly contradictory in their interpretation. We will seek clarification on those contradictions.

One major concern is who wins at Top Trumps— the local plan or the proposed national development management policies? Which will the Planning Inspectorate give most weight to? These are really important questions. How will these play out in council chambers and planning offices up and down the country? We will be seeking an unequivocal answer during the passage of the Bill.

The Bill is full of words which are subjective and open to interpretation, such as targets being “advisory”, but what does this actually mean? The word “guidance” pops up a lot. When does guidance mean that you can take it or leave it, it is up to you, and when is it a very strong diktat with punishment for non-compliance, such as the current housing delivery test? The word is very useful when MPs are playing the blame game: “It is not the Government’s fault but the council’s interpretation of the guidance”. We will be seeking clarity on these issues. More seriously, the Bill is peppered with wide-ranging Henry VIII powers, not least the proposals in Part 5 to give the Government extensive powers to change a range of environmental protections, with very limited scrutiny.

One word we would like to see banished from the Bill is “affordable”, in relation to housing. It is meaningless; affordable to whom? Our country needs social housing on a scale not seen for decades, and we will support all measures to ensure that this happens. We are deeply concerned that although one of the missions is restoring pride in place, and talks about community engagement and empowerment, the only solution that is offered to the problem of the second homes and short-term lets which blight parts of the country is a registration scheme. We believe that the Bill could do more to respond to the concerns of these communities.

A new draft of the National Planning Policy Framework is out to consultation at the moment, including the delivery test. The consultation closes in March. The final details of both will be extremely important in the application and interpretation of many of the measures in the Bill. The draft of the NPPF is a serious document which deserves serious scrutiny. It may well, I hope, answer many of our questions and concerns and allay fears, but it may also provoke many more.

We are dismayed by the lack of focus on the role of the planning system in tackling the climate crisis. People living in the most deprived areas are often the most vulnerable to threats from a changing climate, and their homes urgently need to be prioritised for retrofitting. We are not convinced of the Government’s commitment to this, as the rhetoric does not seem to match reality. There is much in this Bill—too much, one could argue—and I am sure that your Lordships are looking forward to getting stuck into the detail, because the devil will be in the detail.

Housebuilding: Government Targets

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I think this question was asked last week as well. We are tackling the barriers to increasing use of modern methods of construction in the industry, which are cheaper and quicker to deliver, but it means we have to be joined up so that we have a sustained pipeline for these companies to be able to deliver these important new houses. Through our £11.5 billion affordable homes programme we are challenging the sector to increase the number of homes delivered through this modern method. Around 40% of current allocations made through the programme use modern methods of construction.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

Despite the Minister’s very genuine assurances, we are told that housing targets are now advisory, not mandatory, and we know that an increasing number of councils are actually stopping work on their local plans. Indeed, some are withdrawing them. The Secretary of State has said that councils do not need to pass as rigorous a test to get their plans through. Are the Government not now in danger of punishing the majority of councils that have complied with the manifesto and the rules and had their plans adopted, and letting off the hook or even rewarding those that have dragged their heels?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

No, we are not. The Bill that is starting Second Reading tomorrow in this House will make it very clear that local plans are what are required from local authorities. It is important that they have local plans. Only 40% of local authorities have up-to-date ones at the moment. It is important that all local authorities have up-to-date plans, because the evidence shows that local authorities that do not have a local plan often deliver up to 14% less housing than those that do.

Housing: Private Rented Sector

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My noble friend brings up an extremely important point. The Government have always welcomed new institutional investments in the private rented sector and will continue to do so. We have also made a number of interventions to support the build-to-rent sector, such as the build to rent fund and the private rented sector guarantee scheme. Build to rent boosts housing supply and diversifies the private rented sector, but it also increases quality and choice for renters in cities and towns across the country. I will take the noble Lord’s views back to the department, and we will look into this further.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her answer to the first part of the Question, but does she accept that part of the reduction in supply is due to some landlords choosing the more lucrative Airbnb lettings and platforms, and that the Government’s policy to restrict mortgage interest relief on buy-to-let mortgages has inadvertently contributed to this loss of homes by exempting those lettings from that relief? Will the Government look seriously at this and other tax issues to level the playing field in order to attract landlords back to much-needed longer secure tenancies?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

The noble Baroness brings up an important point. We know that this has become more important over the last year. We have committed as a Government to consult on the introduction of a use class for short-term lets; I think that is important. Subject to the outcome of that consultation, this will help local authorities to better control the increase of such uses where landlords seek to use existing homes for short lets, rather than using them for longer lets.

Housing: Cost of Living

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Thursday 15th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

Yes, I agree with that. We are seeing some difficulties within the private rented sector because of the issues of the maintenance of these private properties, but also because of the expectations, as the noble Lord said, about the decarbonisation of those properties. That is why we are offering a number of funding streams to SMEs at the moment in order to do that.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, given the Minister’s earlier answer to the noble Lord, Lord Young, will she concede that the Government’s refusal to unfreeze housing benefit and raise the local housing allowance is ignoring a rental crisis that is already unfolding, particularly in the private rented sector, and that consequently this winter homelessness and evictions will increase? Have the Government done an impact assessment of that decision? More importantly, will they now consider a temporary ban on no-fault evictions, as happened during the pandemic?

Renters Reform Bill

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Thornhill]

To ask His Majesty’s Government when they will be bringing forward the promised Renters Reform Bill based on the White Paper A fairer private rented sector published on 16 June.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

The Government’s consultation on introducing a decent homes standard to the private rented sector closed on 14 October. We are considering the responses carefully and will publish our response to the consultation as soon as we can. In the meantime, the Government have committed to ban Section 21 no-fault evictions to protect tenants and will introduce a renters reform Bill in this Parliament.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

I thank the Minister for that definitive Answer. As we were promised it in 2022-23, this definitely feels like a disappointing push-back of the much-needed reform of the private rented sector, which I and many others look forward to, as there is much work to do. For example, last week in the Budget the Chancellor said that rent hikes of 11% were unaffordable and acted to cap rent rises faced by social tenants. However, private landlords are still free to charge the going market rent and, according to Zoopla, this has increased nationally by 12% in the past year. In the same Budget, the Government chose to freeze—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

I will get to my question; I note that noble Lords have been more liberal with other speakers. In the same Budget, the Government chose yet again to freeze housing benefit and local housing allowance levels. Does the Minister believe that this is fair, as it disproportionately affects private renters? Are there plans to review these levels? Given that private tenants are likely to pay higher rents than their social sector counterparts, does she agree that they too deserve protection from unaffordable rent rises?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, the Government do not support the introduction of rent controls in the private rented sector. Historically, evidence suggests that this would discourage investment in the sector and lead to declining property standards as a result, which would not help either landlords or tenants. Recent international examples also suggest that rent controls can have an invertedly negative impact on the supply of housing and may encourage more illegal subletting.

Housing Market

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, to this House. I look forward to what will no doubt be a thoughtful, considered and pertinent contribution to this debate. We worked constructively alongside each other in Hertfordshire for many years. I hope to do so again in your Lordships’ House.

I will make a quick aside to the noble Lord, Lord Lilley. I was dubbed “the pro-development mayor” by my political opponents, so nimbyism is not confined to one party.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, for bringing forward this important debate. Quite rightly, we seem to be talking a lot about housing in both Chambers at the moment. As the noble Baroness cogently argued, we need a cross-sector housing strategy—one that spans 10, 15 or even 20 years. To succeed, I believe that it must have some degree of cross-party consensus. We on these Benches welcome this debate and the fact that the Labour Party, in common with us, is clearly putting housing front and centre of its political thinking. We too have just finished updating our housing policies, and it is not surprising that there appears to be much agreement, as there needs to be.

Across the many pressure groups, professional institutions, think tanks and government departments that provide us with many excellent briefings and statistics, there are clearly many areas of broad consensus, but none more so than the private rented sector, on which I will centre my remarks.

Change is so slow in coming. It is now more than three years since the then Prime Minister, Theresa May, declared with a fanfare of trumpets and a roll of drums that the Government would abolish no-fault evictions. In the words of the off-chanted song, why are we waiting? In that time, not only have hundreds of thousands of tenants been evicted through Section 21 notices, but more than 45,000 households have been threatened with homelessness as a result of being served such a notice. When will the renters reform Bill, based on the recent A fairer private rented sector White Paper, come to Parliament? Where is the timetable? We were promised that it would be enacted during the 2022-23 Session. According to an Answer given recently in the other place, this has now slipped to “at some point during this Parliament”. Will it abolish Section 21 evictions, or has there been some pushback from landlords?

Noble Lords may sense my frustration. The sector has always been characterised by insecure tenancies and high rents, and often poor conditions. In England, there are more than four million privately rented homes, housing more than 11 million people. There will always be a need for a decent, well-regulated private rented sector, but we do not have this now. House prices are getting beyond most low-waged and many median-waged workers, who cannot save enough to get a deposit together, given the significant rise in house prices and what they pay in rent. They can often be paying more in rent than a mortgage costs, but without the bank of mum and dad or an inheritance to provide the deposit, they are going to be renters for most of their lives.

This situation has become more acute in recent months, with letting agency statistics showing far fewer properties available to rent. Rightmove’s latest data shows that in the third quarter of this year, tenant demand for properties increased by 20% compared with the same quarter last year, and the number of properties available to rent was down by 9%—a loss of some properties, undoubtedly, to the more lucrative short-term lets market. Even the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has warned of rents increasing as a result of the rise in tenant demand; at the same time, the number of new landlord instructions is falling.

I have been shocked by local anecdotal accounts of the fierce competition for properties and the lengths desperate renters are going to in order to secure a property. There is evidence from letting agents of a beauty parade of renters who are competing for properties, resorting even to sending in CVs of their well-behaved children and photos of their equally well-behaved dogs, alongside the more obvious deals of offering more months’ rent up front, agreeing to do some repairs and decorating—in short, anything to get into a property. In this climate, there are no prizes for guessing who does not get the house. The like of this has not been seen before, as the country faces a financial crisis—we are now officially in recession—and a winter of much discontent. Thus the need for urgent action, and hence the frustration.

If fast-tracked through the system, the rental reform White Paper, with its 12 excellent proposals—again, broadly agreed on—could have eased the situation for many as the winter crisis looms. In the meantime, will the Government consider a two-year rent freeze while the current economic pressures are expected to reach their peak?

The Government have decided once again to freeze local housing allowance, which will push millions of hard-pressed tenants to breaking point. Will they reconsider this, if only as a temporary measure? Does the Minister agree that there is an imperative to prevent evictions as winter approaches?

Latest government figures show homelessness in England rising by 11% in three months. Also according to the Government’s own figures, eviction from private tenancies is the second leading cause of homelessness. What worries me most about these recent statistics is that, despite being in full-time work, 10,500 households were found to be homeless or threatened with homelessness. This is the highest number of people in full-time work recorded as homeless since the Government started collecting this data. There are massive implications and messages in that one statistic.

Let us not forget that those statistics are people: families, all wanting the same as we do. Eventually they tip up to their local council offices, which are cash-strapped because we have had year upon year of cuts. They are met by fewer council officers—because of the cuts—who have had years of rationing a scarce resource: namely, social housing. Given the increasing number of families and individuals in dire circumstances, that is a really tough job. In effect, they are having to play God, trying as fairly as possible to allocate a decreasing number of homes to a greater number of people. I am certain that others will elaborate on this sector.

My one plea to the Minister is: will the Government finally agree to allow councils to keep 100% of right-to-buy receipts with no strings attached, other than to build replacements? I look forward to the answers to the questions asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, on social housing. There will always be a need for a social rented sector, and recent legislation to improve it cannot become effective quickly enough, as the recent death of young Awaab Ishak, who was living in social housing, proves.

Some 21% of homes in the private rented sector are non-decent, according to the most recent English Housing Survey. Making all homes decent is surely a laudable, ambitious aim for any Government, doing the right thing by people as well as creating jobs and saving money for the NHS. A recent Building Research Establishment report found that poor housing costs the NHS £1.4 billion a year, and society as a whole £18.5 billion. I say to the Chancellor that these are potentially significant long-term savings, and just think of the considerable long-lasting good.

Is there the political will to do this? It is clear that we are going to be more heavily reliant on the private rented sector than ever before, and it is in need of urgent reform now, not to be pushed back. Does the Minister have a reason for the delay, other than another new Prime Minister and yet another Housing Minister? In view of the worsening economic situation, will the Government consider pulling together all the “could do” solutions that have broad consensus and fast-tracking them to help ease the crisis that will inevitably worsen over the winter and the next two years?

Finally, how will local authorities be given the support to help those increasing numbers who will inevitably end up at their doors or on their streets?