My Lords, we are continuing to work towards our ambition of delivering 300,000 homes a year. This has always been a stretching ambition, and we have made strong progress: the three highest rates of annual supply in over 30 years have all come since 2018. We are aware that increasing supply even further will be made more difficult due to the economic challenges we face, but we are engaging with Homes England, developers and registered providers to understand the delivery challenges they face.
Has my noble friend seen today’s Times, which reports that new housebuilding is at its lowest level for 14 years, outside the Covid years? Has a much-needed recovery not been delayed by the concession on planning made in another place to a number of government Back-Benchers, which has already resulted in over 50 local authorities withdrawing their local plans with a view to submitting new plans with a lower number? If a Government make a manifesto commitment to build 300,000 homes, can they rely simply on the good will of local authorities to deliver it, or should we amend the levelling-up Bill to ensure that the country gets the homes it needs?
My Lords, I will start at the end. The proposed changes to the planning system set out in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill are designed to support more areas to get an up-to-date local plan in place, and therefore deliver more housing. The Government do not recognise the figure on withdrawn plans. Pauses and delays to plan-making are not something new, which is why we are determined, through our reforms, to reinvigorate local plan-making by simplifying it, speeding it up and strengthening the weight of democratically produced plans in this country. As for the article in the Times, yes, I have seen it and all I can say is that we still want to build more homes of the right type in the right places. We know that increasing housing supply will be made more difficult because of economic challenges, but we are working with the market very closely on the impacts, and to see what more the Government can do to provide support.
My Lords, could not a land commission be established to research what the impact would be of building on land acquired at agricultural prices, as proposed by Lisa Nandy, and sold for housing of a new form of ownership title, as I proposed in previous debates in the House? Only by that means can we guarantee the target of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, thereby providing affordable housing to a new generation of young people who, without inherited wealth, may never be home owners.
Are the Government looking at the possibility of expanding home ownership to groups of people who do not have that chance at the moment, thereby creating greater sociability out of poverty, because home ownership is one of the best ways of ending poverty?
I absolutely agree with the noble Lord, and this Government are committed to supporting home ownership and first-time buyers. Since spring 2010, more than 837,000 households have been helped to buy their own home through the government-backed schemes, including Help to Buy and Right to Buy. We have looked at stamp duty and made that much more positive for first-time buyers, and I believe we are spreading the opportunity to more people through our First Homes Scheme, giving a minimum of 30% discount to people who cannot otherwise afford to buy in their areas. That is what we are doing to support home ownership.
My Lords, I draw attention to my interests in the register. May I point out to my noble friend that Governments do not build houses—the private sector builds them? The private sector will build only when it thinks there is a market for them. The Bank of England’s crashing of interest rates in its failed policy to drive down inflation is not going to be the solution. My noble friend must remember that the only time this country has ever delivered 300,000 units a year was when councils were freed up to deliver 70,000 or 80,000 units. Her department has removed two of the historic barriers, but will she look at removing the third? We removed the cap on right-to-buy receipts being spent—councils can now spend 100%, which is brilliant—and the cap on councils borrowing against the existing value, but we still need to remove the cap on their ability to set locally determined discounts.
My noble friend is right: it takes a whole government, and many departments of government, to ensure that we have housing supply. DLUHC and the Housing Minister cannot do it on their own, so we need to work across government. As far as local authorities are concerned, my noble friend is right that we are removing the barriers and local authorities are now building houses.