New Homes Commitment

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, there is a real commitment to build more social housing, including more affordable housing. As the noble Baroness knows, the programme is for some £11.5 billion, with a target of double the number of social rented homes in this particular grant period than the previous one. The Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill recognises that, in order to get the housing, we need the infrastructure in place and must ensure that neighbourhoods have mixed communities at their heart. That is what the Bill is planning to do.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, can the Minister tell us that all the new houses will be built with a high level of insulation, the quality of which is properly inspected, and will not be fitted with gas boilers but will be heated by renewable energy?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, we recognise that in order to meet our net-zero commitment we need to implement the future homes standard, which comes in, I believe, in 2025. Building regulations will reflect that ambition to ensure that we build not only more homes but more sustainable homes that use heat pumps and other devices to meet that target.

High-rise Buildings: Evacuation of Disabled Residents

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

This is the real issue, which is why I think the noble Baroness raised the importance of evacuation lifts and having means of exiting a building in that very case. We need to recognise that fire and rescue services need to work as fast as possible to respond and contain the fire. Above all, we need to keep all residents in that building safe.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

Did I understand the Minister to say in a previous answer, that in the absence of PEEPs, in the case of a fire, it could be up to family and friends to get a disabled person out?

Rogue Landlords Register

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Wednesday 26th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

The report that my noble friend refers to provides valuable insights, highlighting illegal evictions and behaviours by the most criminal and irresponsible landlords and agents. Such reports will be very helpful in developing our proposed reforms. We will be publishing the White Paper in the autumn and continuing to work with these stakeholders, who have valuable knowledge in these matters.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I declare that I have recently let one property. Generation Rent, in its report published today, recommends a national regulator for standards in the private rented sector that has responsibility for overseeing the sector and ensuring that enforcement measures work effectively. This would include a national register of landlords. Will the Government please consider this proposal, which is also supported by Shelter and other bodies?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are committed to ensuring that we build back fairer and to improving the relationship between landlords and tenants. We will certainly consider the policy ideas put forward by Generation Rent as part of our commitment to that reform.

Inclusive Society

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Walmsley (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for introducing this debate, which promises to be important and wide-ranging. As she said, to ensure a more equal society we need to build back better and learn lessons from the pandemic. I will raise four issues where there is great potential to do just that.

First, we need to build back greener. It is clear that, in coming years, there will be a demand for large numbers of new jobs in industries contributing to reaching our goal of zero carbon by 2050. This has already begun and must only accelerate—indeed, the sooner the better, as it is cheaper to act now than later. But there are thousands of workers, many of them young, in industries such as retail and hospitality, which may never reopen. Is this not an opportunity for a massive retraining programme to help equip us to tackle climate change while offering sustainable, well-paid jobs to those who have been hit hardest by the pandemic? Do the Government have a strategy to achieve this change of direction?

Secondly, the evidence that health inequalities have contributed to Covid-19 deaths is strong, and obesity has been a major factor in susceptibility to serious disease and death. The Government have published their obesity strategy but there is much more to do. I would like to see the Government mobilising the food industry to reduce the obesogenic environment which surrounds us. During the pandemic behaviour scientists have worked on the most effective messaging, both in content and delivery, to persuade us to adjust our behaviour to protect ourselves and others from the virus. I would like to see these advisers given the task of developing the messages which will help people reach and maintain a healthy weight in order to avoid non-infectious diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes, and to build resistance to future infectious diseases such as Covid-19.

There is a lot more to health inequality than obesity. Poverty is a factor as people are forced to choose cheap, high-calorie, less nutritious food when money is tight. We have seen children going hungry during the pandemic, relying on the goodness of local people and food banks. Will the Government ensure that they respond positively to the forthcoming food strategy to ensure that we are no longer a country in which children do not get enough nutritious food?

My third point is also about children. Abused or neglected children will struggle to achieve their potential in life. During the pandemic, social workers who monitor children at risk have had to do so remotely. Recently the Government laid a statutory instrument to extend this arrangement until September. This is undesirable—remote monitoring is much less effective, and we know that there has been an increase in child abuse during the stress of the pandemic—and entirely unnecessary. If you can go to a pub for a pint, why can you not meet a child at risk face to face in the open now and indoors as restrictions are lifted? Will the Government please withdraw this SI?

Finally, during the pandemic local councils were able to take homeless people off the street using empty hotels and student accommodation. Valuable lessons were learned. In tackling the many problems of homeless people, such as substance misuse, poverty and ill health, it has long been known, and it was reinforced during the pandemic, that getting them into stable housing is a very effective first step. Will the Minister say what plans the Government have to provide a sustainable solution to the problem of homelessness, learning the lessons from the pandemic?

No-fault Evictions

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I will have to respond to the noble Baroness in writing on the point about the housing board.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD) [V]]

My Lords, campaigners have asked for a coronavirus home retention scheme of £750 million in support to be made available to help renters in arrears, recover loss of income and avoid rent debt. Have the Government conducted a cost-benefit analysis comparing such a fund with the potential cost of making many families homeless because of rent arrears?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I am not specifically aware of such a cost-benefit analysis, but we will certainly look into that as we develop policy in this area.