That the Grand Committee takes note of the report Coming Home by the Archbishops’ Commission on Housing, Church and Community, and the case for setting out a long-term housing strategy.
The Archbishop of Canterbury
My Lords, I am very grateful to the usual channels for permitting this debate and to all noble Lords who are taking part. I express my sadness at the beginning at the sudden death of Lord Greaves, whose voice in this area, as in so many others, especially those involving the day-to-day concerns of people, will be deeply missed.
The Archbishop’s annual debate is normally held every year, just before Christmas—although I am not sure that it counts as a Christmas present. Due to the pandemic and other issues, it has not happened for a couple of years. You may have thought you were spared but that is not so, for, like Jairus’s daughter, the debate is not dead but was only sleeping. And when better to resurrect it than just before Easter?
While the rollout of the vaccine is a light at the end of a tunnel, people have experienced hardship in many different ways. I pray for noble Lords and parliamentary staff who have suffered in this time of turmoil, for those who have lost loved ones and for those who have felt afraid and isolated this year.
The Archbishops’ Commission on Housing, Church and Community is independent and comprised of people with very different views: academics, theologians, industry experts, people of faith and no faith, and people of different political persuasions. It has published what I believe, having not been on the commission, to be a brilliant, seminal piece of work, titled Coming Home: Tackling the Housing Crisis Together. It has not shied away from challenging the Church before it has challenged anyone else. I am very grateful for the strongly positive reception that this report has been given by the housing industry and by many across the Church. We have been overwhelmed by letters and offers of support from every part of the housing world, including developers, housing associations, charities and far beyond.
The way we have lived over the past year has shown us how important our homes are to our lives. Where we live is vital for our health, well-being, opportunities and flourishing. Our homes are the places from which we go out to grow and to which we return to feel secure and safe.
When we launched this commission, we knew that the focus had to be not simply on building more houses but on better communities. We wanted to build a positive vision for housing, one that has been lacking in our English national understanding for many decades and that has a holistic understanding of being human at its heart. I say “English” because two of the devolved Governments are ahead of us. Scotland’s Housing to 2040 strategy deals with the number of affordable homes, the number for social rent, zero carbon, housing standards and existing stock. The Future Wales strategy deals with co-locating homes, jobs and services, zero carbon, improving the well-being and health of communities, new priority areas for green energy, affordable housing and remote working.
I congratulate the most reverend Primate on securing this debate and, above all, on the powerful and heartfelt way in which he has presented what I think is an unanswerable case. I echo his words about the tragedy of the death of Lord Greaves. I shall miss his interjections and his dulcet north-western tones greatly.
This is a very appropriate moment for this report and the commitment of the Church of England to be presented to us. I am a Methodist, so I hope your Lordships will forgive me for intruding on the debate in terms of the stewards taking forward this report. I put on record my thanks to Charlie Arbuthnot for the conversations I have had with him and congratulate all those who have taken part in putting this excellent report together.
In a moment I will talk a little more about social value, to which the most reverend Primate quite rightly referred, but first I will talk about housing. When I was leader of Sheffield City Council, I discovered that all of us—because, thankfully, all of us had a home—thought we were experts in housing. I am not. I am quite clear that there are others contributing this afternoon who have much greater expertise, both in the economics of the housing market and in the critical issues that the most reverend Primate referred to in terms of the balance, the importance of affordable housing and the setting aside of the ideology that we are in favour of either renting or buying.
Actually, we are in favour of building houses for people to live in as a basis for them to be able to grow a family and to be active and committed members of a community—to secure, as described in those five pillars, a safe and environmentally acceptable way of living their lives. It is an absolute basic in terms of everything else that we stand for, all we talk about in terms of the security of the family, the safety of the neighbourhood, the commitment to building social capital and the capacity of communities, such as at the moment, to be able to deal with major catastrophes such as the pandemic.
My Lords, I thank the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury for enabling us to have this debate today. I remind the Committee that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
I am particularly pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, who said very many things with which I agree, not least on the importance of social value. He referred to the “clarion call” of the Church of England; that indeed is what this report is.
The report, Coming Home, from the Archbishops’ Commission on Housing, Church and Community, is a major contribution to current thinking on housing and on the need for a 20-year strategy. I want to talk first about values. Strategies and policies are built on values, and social values were very close to the thinking of my noble friend Lord Greaves, who spoke in the House only last week on housing and the private rented sector. The news of his death yesterday is deeply sad. He would have welcomed the commission report so very strongly.
There are several core values in the report. Homes and communities should be sustainable, safe, stable, sociable and satisfying. All of these are important words with which I concur. I will say something about safety first. The most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York has talked recently about resetting our compass. I agree. We should not accept homelessness, with all the risks to personal safety that it leads to. I wonder if the Minister might commit to speeding up the scrapping of the Vagrancy Act 1824, which makes it a crime to sleep rough. It belongs to another era, yet it is still being used to prosecute people who suffer from a variety of personal problems.
Then there is the safety of homes and the need to ensure the highest standards; for example, of electrical safety. The Grenfell inquiry has served as a wake-up call to address the shocking standards of building regulation in which hazardous products were allowed on to the market. There has been a culture of poor-quality building, in which cost-saving has been allowed to become the dominant consideration.
My Lords, I congratulate the most reverend Primates the Archbishops on their report on the housing shortage and I particularly congratulate the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury on the way he introduced it today. I welcome the report, first, because it recognises and highlights the importance of the housing crisis in this country. It is amazing how little attention is given to this problem, yet in my experience nearly all the social problems and many of the economic problems we face in this country are caused or aggravated by the shortage of housing. I fear it does not receive the attention it deserves because most of us in the chattering classes already own our own homes and subconsciously, or consciously, enjoy their rising value as demand outstrips supply and prices go up. The most reverend Primate’s reminder about where our true wealth lives is well made.
The second reason I welcome this report is because it urges the Church and Christians to lead by example by using Church land to build more homes. However, there is one thing that puzzles me about its conclusions and about the remarks the most reverend Primate made today.
The report advocates that housing should be sustainable, safe, stable, sociable and satisfying—jolly good things—but, despite its willingness to build more homes, increasing the supply of homes does not figure in the report’s alliterative list of priorities. I suggest that the word “sufficient” should be added, and that it be at the top of the list, because the only way to alleviate the housing shortage is to build more homes.
When I made this point in a speech in the Commons in 2014, it generated a headline in my local newspaper. For once, the headline was an entirely accurate precis of my speech: “MP says solution to housing shortage is build more homes”. Uncontentious, I thought, but what astonished me was the number of people who wrote to me and to the newspaper denouncing this assertion as ridiculous. Surely, they argued, our MP must realise that the housing shortage is the result of house prices, rents, land prices or mortgage interest rates being too high. The solution, they asserted, is for government to control house prices, rent, land prices and interest rates—and anyway, they invariably added, “We certainly don’t need to build any more houses in Hertfordshire”.
My Lords, I declare my relevant interests as in the register, including as chair of the Affordable Housing Commission and as a Church Commissioner for the Church of England. I congratulate the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury on establishing this housing commission and thank him for his inspiring presentation of its findings today, and I thank its chair, Charlie Arbuthnot, and the commissioners, for bringing together an excellent analysis of this country’s severe housing problems and their potential solutions. My comments are in two parts: first, a ringing endorsement of the commission’s main conclusions, and then a commentary on the specific recommendations to the Church of England on the use of its land assets.
I greatly welcome the commission’s housing policy recommendations. Its core conclusion is that
“the primary issue with the housing sector is not just a lack of housing”—
the lack of housing to which the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, rightly refers—
“but instead a lack of truly affordable housing, particularly for those on low incomes.”
This chimes with the theme of the Affordable Housing Commission, organised by the Smith Institute and funded by the Nationwide Foundation, which reported last year. We showed that, in large parts of the country, even if a landlord is willing to offer you a place, the rent is likely to absorb so much of your income—40% or even 50%—that you will end up in poverty, in debt, in arrears or, at worst, homeless.
I cite as an example the official statistics for poverty from Brent Council’s Poverty Commission, which I had the privilege to chair last year: before housing costs, 17% of households and 22% of children in the borough were classified as living in poverty; after housing costs were taken into account the figure rose to 32% of households and 43% of children. So the housing costs doubled the numbers living in poverty, to say nothing of so many being in the overcrowded, insecure and unhealthy conditions that have been shown up by the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on these communities.
3:27 pm
Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.
3:32 pm
The Archbishop of York [V]
My Lords, it is always a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Best, whose work and witness in housing has been such an inspiration to many of us. I pay particular tribute to the work that he has done as a Church Commissioner in recent years. It is an honour to speak in this debate and support my dear brother, the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, whose visionary leadership in this and other issues of social policy draws people of faith and good will together in developing a narrative of hope. I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for his reference, as this is the first speech I have made since returning to the House of Lords as the 98th Archbishop of York.
We need to reset our compass. As we emerge from the horrors and sorrows of Covid, we have all become much more aware of our interdependence. Just as Covid cannot be dealt with anywhere until it is dealt with everywhere, so it is with other challenges facing our common life. When we cheered the NHS last summer, we were also cheering a set of ideas that are precious to our national life—namely, that we belong to each other. There are some things, like health, that are so basic that we cherish the fact that they are available to everyone at the point of need and regardless of one’s ability to pay. Should not this principle apply to other things as well, such as food on everyone’s table and a roof over everyone’s head?
Unfortunately, part of the housing challenge facing our nation is that we have not approached this in a sufficiently joined-up way; we tend first to think of homeless people on our streets and the human tragedy and political, policy and social failures that this represents. However, as we know, this is just the visible misery on the surface of a larger and far more extensive set of challenges. Behind those who literally have nowhere to live are the hidden homeless, who move from place to place and sofa to sofa, in temporary and insecure accommodation. There are also those who are forced into inadequate and unsatisfactory housing because nothing else is available. Then there are those who cannot afford to live in the communities where they grew up—and the concomitant damage to morale and social cohesion. As we know, this is a big and complicated challenge—but it affects millions of people, not just the homeless, though they must always remain our most immediate concern. In this debate, may we then also take the opportunity to thank the amazing charities, up and down our land, who minister to the needs of those who currently live on our streets, with whom churches, faith groups and others are so involved?
The other visible sign of the problem we face is, however, less obviously a problem at first: the vast new estates that we are building. The housing may be very nice if you can afford it, but so much of the motivation is profit, and the infrastructure needed to make houses into homes and homes into communities is often lacking. There are of course marvellous exceptions to this—we must build on them, literally. That is what the Coming Home report is all about: establishing the values and finding the political will to tackle the housing challenge together with long-term, joined-up solutions. This requires a reset in our attitude to housing and how we approach what so often appear to be intractable problems.
My Lords, I want to pay my respects to Lord Greaves and his family after his untimely death. If he had been able, he would have been with us here today. It is very sad.
I thank the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury and welcome the commission’s report. I also thank the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York, who set out so well the situation for families living in bad housing or bed and breakfasts, or sofa-surfing—perhaps for not just weeks at a time but months and years—dragging children and unwell relations with them. This is difficult because the most important thing for children is space, including space for them to learn and have a sure start. As we come out of Covid, they must be our priority.
I commend the commission’s recommendations and support its actions, particularly its call for action to be taken by the Government and other actors in the housing market. We must continue to take firm resolution not to evict families or individuals at the present time; I hope that this can be extended for another year or so while we come through Covid, because it is not over yet.
Above all, there must be a national strategy, perhaps for 20 years. It must have clear objectives, it must not be short-term and it must be cross-party so that it can continue election after election. It must identify the roles of central and local government. Land must be released. At the same time, we must look at what is holding up planning. If the planning is agreed but it takes time for building to start, we must look at that too. It is necessary to improve the quality of our existing stock, the safety of which is deplorable and unsuitable. We really have to keep relooking at our stock.
The noble Lord, Lord Best, reminded me today of the London Borough of Brent, which I know extremely well. I have to say that the housing stock there needs a lot of support and improvement, like in many other inner-city boroughs. This report brings out to us what we have to do to increase the supply of new housing, which is vital. The new supply of housing must be truly affordable, with lower land prices and much greater public subsidy. That is vital for the future of Britain plc. If we do not do this, we will have to spend much more money on health, we will have undereducated children and we will not have the opportunities that there ought to be. The issue is well addressed in the commission’s report.
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As the Church of England, we have a major role in realising the vision we are proposing. Because of history, we are one of the largest landowners in the country. Collectively, we hold over 200,000 acres of land and a large stock of historic and many other buildings. But more than that, with 12,500 parishes and 18,000 clergy, we have a committed and continuing presence in every community in this country.
We incarnate Christ’s promise of love and hope, not just through our worship services but by offering food banks, debt advice centres, night shelters and so much more—worship reaches people online. There is precedent also for the Church’s involvement in housing; from almshouses to housing associations, it has for centuries been involved in the provision of decent places to live. We do not do this just to be nice—we are not an NGO with a pointy roof—but because we believe that Christ commands us to love our neighbour.
The Church can and should make a substantial contribution to the housing crisis, using our resources well to serve others. That is why I have submitted a motion to the Church of England’s General Synod, calling on it to recognise that
“addressing housing need and strengthening communities is an integral part of the mission and ministry of the Church of England”.
I am delighted that Bishop Guli Francis-Dehqani, the new Bishop of Chelmsford, has agreed to take up the role of bishop for housing, leading a national executive team in the next stage of the housing commission’s work. I look forward to her joining us in your Lordships’ House this summer.
That is also why the report has challenged the Church Commissioners, part of the Church of England, to consider how the 92,000 acres of land they own can best be used to resolve our housing crisis. It is why we have mapped, through Knight Frank, all Church-owned land across the nation and why we are endeavouring to remove every obstacle that currently stands in the way of parochial church councils, trusts and dioceses when they attempt to use their land well. We are prepared to put our money where our mouth is—some might say that we first have to remove our foot.
The commission has developed five values as a framework for building good housing which enables and encourages strong communities, each value beginning with S. Good housing should be “sustainable”: it should not undermine or harm our precious planet; we are called to be stewards of the Earth. It should be “safe”: our homes must be places where we feel safe, with security and privacy from unwanted intrusion by people, pests, danger or disease. It should be “stable”: our homes should be places where we can put down roots and plan for the future, and where we can build lives, families and communities. It should be “sociable”: we need to be able to offer hospitality to friends, family and neighbours, with public spaces which create strong community bonds. It should be “satisfying”: good houses should be a delight to return to, giving us pleasure and pride, both to live in and to look at. In summary, good homes, affordable for all. Those five values have resonated strongly across the industry, including with those with no connection to faith.
“Good homes, affordable for all”—far too many people live in housing that falls well short of that aim. The National Housing Federation records that 8 million people in England live in unsuitable, unaffordable or unsafe housing. Among them are more children than were in such housing when Ken Loach made “Cathy Come Home” in the 1960s. This number is likely to have risen as a result of the pandemic. This is not just one crisis: housing need looks very different depending on who you are and where you live. It affects many of us, but not equally. The brunt is borne by those who are in the most vulnerable positions—the poorest among us and often those with no voice. It is a national scandal.
My first question is this: will the Government and opposition parties agree with this definition of good housing, as set out by these five values? As a nation, we need an agreed vision, in the same way that we have one for the NHS which is beyond politics.
There is also a sixth S, which runs through this report and needs to be at the core of everyone’s response to the housing crisis: sacrifice. No one, not even government, can solve this on their own. Historic failure under all parties shows that. The Church wants to partner with other institutions on the ground: faith groups, local government, charities, housing associations, developers and anyone else who wants to work with us.
But to transform our housing landscape, there is a need for sacrifice, which will be required from all of us, whether we are individuals inclined to nimbyism, organisations and companies whose primary concern is profit or Governments whose priorities are influenced by short-term election cycles. As the report says, now is the time for a “bold, coherent, long-term” housing vision, which focuses on those who are facing the greatest need and which can be supported by all parties—good housing, affordable for all.
The housing commission makes two key points: first, it defines good housing through the five values; secondly, it calls for a long-term non-partisan strategy to deal with the crisis. The mess we find ourselves in is not the fault of any one Government of the left or right; it is more than 40 years in the making. Simply building more houses will not solve the problem. We cannot build them fast enough to make any meaningful impact on prices and, realistically, what Government would intentionally reduce house prices and thus the housing wealth of a large part of the electorate? Even if they did, electoral cycles are not long enough to incentivise long-term strategic thinking.
The commission has recommended implementing a 20-year strategy for housing to cover both new and existing homes, with a particular focus on those in the most need. So will the Government and opposition parties commit to developing such a strategy, and will they agree to work together to deliver the housing that people in this country so desperately need and deserve—good homes, affordable for all?
In the short term, our social security system, which supports those with no other way to cope, must urgently be reviewed. Families, both out of and in work, are being forced to choose between eating, heating and paying their rent. Also in the short term, we need to ensure longer-term security of tenure, introduce an explicit duty of care on landlords and improve the quality of temporary accommodation. The Grenfell tragedy reminds us of the urgency of removing unsafe cladding from buildings, without the costs falling on leaseholders. The vote in the other place to overturn your Lordships’ clear amendment on this subject was, frankly, a great tragedy and grave error. I will leave it to my right reverend friend the Bishop of Manchester to comment further.
As for the long term, we must build more homes—no one questions that—but there is no use building more homes if people cannot afford to buy or rent them, and then cannot afford to live in them. Affordability is as important as availability. We need a definition of “affordable” that is pegged to income levels and not based on market rates. A long-term strategy for housing needs targets for affordability that mean affordable in the sense that most people mean it—not discounted to market rate but still unobtainable for most. The noble Lord, Lord Best, has done important work on affordability with the Affordable Housing Commission, and I greatly look forward to his contribution today.
In previous Written Questions to the Minister on this topic, I asked what assessment the Government have made of the level of household income that would be needed to afford a home defined as “affordable”, and what assessment they have made of whether their target for the number of affordable homes that they want to see built is sufficient to meet the demand for such homes. The Minister graciously answered, but he did not describe how the cost of housing relates to household income, nor give the overall numbers of affordable homes that are needed. These two factors, essential ingredients for any national housing strategy, have been missing for too long.
So will the Government adopt a definition for affordable housing that is based on income, and will they outline any plans they have to increase the proportion of new homes being built that are genuinely affordable? To bridge the gap between market cost and truly affordable homes, we see no alternative, in the short term, to an immediate increase in public capital subsidy. However, the Coming Homereport also sets out how Governments might use the current planning system progressively to reduce land prices and the windfall gains to landowners to share the financial burden of delivering more truly affordable homes. I commend these ideas to the Government for serious consideration.
Land needs to be used to maximise long-term social and environmental benefits, not simply to sell for maximum price. Changes will be needed in charity law if we are to facilitate this across charities generally and I am delighted that the commission has started by seeking to clarify the law around Church land. But, according to data from the Government’s Public Land for Housing programme, only 15% of housing on land sold by the public sector was affordable, and less than 3% was for social rent. We must rethink our principles when public sector land is sold.
The early Church father, St Basil the Great, warned against making
“common need a means of private gain.”
So will all parties commit to ensuring that the law enables the use of all public sector and charitable land to maximise long-term social and environmental values, not just a crude measure of highest price?
Matthew chapter 6, verse 21 reads:
“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
I believe that this is a fight for the heart and soul—of the Church of England, yes, but also of our country. Where is our treasure? Is it in shoring up riches for ourselves, or do we say that our treasure is in our neighbours, our communities, those who are impoverished and struggling? Where are our hearts?
In the ruins of the Second World War, a group of people got together to reimagine the heart of the nation after 1945. Many of them—Beveridge, Tawney, my extraordinary predecessor William Temple—were Christians. We can seize the moment, as they did, or we can allow it to slip by and suffer the consequences.
Over the past year, we have seen a disproportionate number of cases of infection and death where people have had to live in unsuitable and overcrowded accommodation. Overcrowded families have struggled to find space to educate their children and to work from home. Outdoor space has been vital to our well-being but often limited to those who can afford a garden. Where we live is connected to our health, our opportunities, our relationships, our education—our capacity for flourishing.
The crisis has revealed the underlying conditions which have exacerbated the devastating effects of the pandemic. It is the poorest and most marginalised people among us who are suffering the burden of the housing crisis, and that will change only if we take collective responsibility and action.
This has been a lot of words—far more than noble Lords wished to hear from me today, I am sure—but I am adamant that the work of this commission cannot result simply in words. There has to be action—in the Church and elsewhere. There must be change. Good homes available for all is a moral imperative.
As the report shows, the Bible is a story of home—from the Garden of Eden to the new Jerusalem. God cares deeply about how we live here on earth, and I am determined to be part of a Church—and pray that I might be part of a country—that channels that care. Millions of people have stayed in their homes to protect their fellow human beings this year. Let us repay them by making sure that everyone has a home which is sustainable, safe, secure, sociable and satisfying.
This report is a challenge to us all. Sacrifice is never easy, but the example of Jesus Christ, which we remember in this season, shows us that it is transformational. The Church is determined to play its role in meeting this challenge. Let us work together to make good housing affordable for all a cornerstone in the architecture of post-Covid Britain. I beg to move.
It is fundamentally about the building blocks of a civilised society. It is also a major contribution not only to the well-being and lives of young people and their ability to build a future but to how we care for our older generation. It is about the importance of creative ways in which we can develop social care so it is neither isolation without support nor encapsulation in often very committed social care, which, by its very nature, removes independence and presents real difficulty in terms of uniting, and keeping united, couples in old age where the wife or the husband has fallen ill or become severely disabled.
I hope that all parties will be able to commit to the clarion call from the Church of England. I have a close friend, the Reverend Dr Alan Billings, who is now the police and crime commissioner in South Yorkshire. I have spoken to him at great length over the years about his time serving on Faith in the City back in 1983-84—another era of great division. He assures me as a Methodist that it was a commitment underpinned by radical and sustainable theology. I cannot speak to that, but I know that carrying forward reports such as the one we are debating today will happen only if there is political commitment. The most reverend Primate referred to the welcome that this has received from right across the housing market, from housing associations to local government. I hope that will continue to be the case in the months ahead.
I want to say a word or two about what the most reverend Primate referred to towards the end of his excellent contribution: the need to change the legal framework—obviously, this includes the Church—for selling church assets and to amend the law so that we can include social and environmental values. The report talks about church land and buildings being used for social and environmental, as well as economic, benefit. To be able to do that, it is really important that the Church continues to join others in ensuring that there is a redefinition of the maximisation of value.
I know that the practice note that has been agreed with the Charity Commission will help the Church do this. But my point this afternoon is that, if this is to be a combined effort, I hope that, despite the agreement it has reached on the use of its own land and property, which is very welcome, the Church will continue to work with others to make any change requirements that are necessary to the wider interpretation by the Charity Commission of how land and property can be disposed of.
The most reverend Primate will know that a very old friend of mine is Geraldine Peacock, who now has the major challenge of severe Parkinson’s disease, who was head of the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association and then the Charity Commission itself. Nobody can ever forget being approached by Geraldine because her tenacity and terrier-like focus on what needs to be done can never be overlooked. I very much welcome that. I hope we will be able to find a way forward, following the excellent appointment of the Bishop of Chelmsford, and find solutions to problems that have arisen in North Yorkshire and in Wells, where Geraldine has been attempting to develop a community asset. I make no bones about mentioning that this afternoon, because it is an important example of a community asset, following the sale of the deanery in Wells, being used for the benefit of the wider community.
If we can pull together and understand the critical importance of housing as a centrepiece of the community, and if we can overcome barriers—easily done through a statutory instrument—to ensure that the social value Act 2013 is carried into practice right across our country, so much the better. Critically, we must back the Church of England as being in the vanguard of ensuring that we take forward what is necessary now to provide housing solutions for the future.
Some builders urgently need to improve quality and restore public trust. For example, a few days ago, the Competition and Markets Authority ordered two companies to remove contract terms that have meant that thousands of leaseholders had been paying excessive ground rents. Further, some owners of new homes have been asked to sign non-disclosure agreements when their builder undertakes repairs on their new-build homes. Why is this permitted?
The commission has made important points about sustainability. In that respect, I want to comment on the Green Homes Grant policy. It was welcome in theory, but it suffered from an excess of media spin and insufficient attention to detail. It proved very difficult to get a grant. Delays, plus a lack of advisers and builders with the right skills, have meant that just 8% of the scheme’s target of 600,000 will have been reached by the end of the month. I understand that 128,000 householders applied for a voucher but only 5,000 have actually had the work carried out because of the lack of capacity in the industry. I wonder whether the Minister can explain a little more about how this situation was allowed to arise.
The commission has also talked about the importance of stability. Stability of residence leads to stability of communities, and stable communities mean more sociable and satisfying places to live.
On affordability, the truth is that affordable homes are so very often unaffordable. The word “affordable” should never be used to suggest genuine affordability, which surely relates to income. Everyone needs a secure job, a good education and a decent home—those are values to which we should all subscribe—yet household poverty has risen sharply during the pandemic. Some 220,000 more households live in destitution today—the number has doubled in a year. Furthermore, the pandemic has put 700,000 more people into poverty; the figure would have been twice that had the additional £20 a week in universal credit ceased.
As the commission says, 8 million people in England live in overcrowded, unaffordable or unsuitable homes, with many caught in a poverty trap made worse by the pandemic. Although the Chancellor’s recent decision to deliver 95% mortgages is welcome for those able to take advantage of it, the benefit freeze will hit low-income families. As Shelter has pointed out, some tenants can get £100 less a month than their rent. I have concluded that the social security system is failing to provide adequate housing support for many low-income families.
I challenge the notion that the current affordable homes programme is adequate. There are grants available for socially rented homes, which is welcome, but there is nothing like enough to build the number of social rented homes that we need. Only 7,000 social rented homes were built in 2019. Can the Minister tell the House how many are currently being built?
It seems that the Government’s priority is to subsidise owner-occupation over social housing. First Homes, which sells to first-time buyers at a 30% discount, is to be financed from planning obligations paid by developers. It therefore seems that there will be less money for social and affordable homes from that source, and yet council housing waiting lists are likely to rise significantly as a result of the pandemic.
I am very glad that the Church of England is to use its land assets to promote truly affordable homes. The Government should follow suit by ensuring that part of rising land values is always captured for social and community benefit.
I have one final point: overhauling the planning system will not support the Government’s ambitions to build 300,000 homes a year or the social homes we need. Nine in 10 planning applications are approved by councils and more than a million homes given planning permission have not yet been built. We should also note that 1 million homes are awaiting development—that is, homes on land earmarked for development that have yet to be brought forward for planning permission. I venture to suggest that it is the housing delivery system that is broken, not the planning system.
The most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury said earlier that we need good housing that is affordable for all. Surely that is an objective that we all share.
I am sure the most reverend Primate, who has worked in industry, knows that high prices, including rents and interest rates—which are prices—are symptoms of a shortage, not its cause. I shall put it very simply: the simple fact is that if you have 25 million dwellings and 26 million households wanting a home, a million of them are going to be disappointed. That is arithmetic. Young people may have to stay longer at home with their parents, others may have to share overcrowded flats with friends, and dwellings may have to be split into smaller units, even though the average size of our homes in this country is far smaller than anywhere else in the developed world. Those with no or low incomes will have to be helped by housing benefit to acquire a roof over their head, which is one reason why the housing benefit bill has been soaring. But every dwelling they occupy means that someone else, a bit higher up the income scale, will have to share or will be forced to occupy overcrowded properties.
We can ration housing by prices, rents and incomes, supplemented by housing benefit, or we can keep prices and rents below the market clearing level, and the Government will then have to allocate the supply of housing according to some assessment of need. In practice, we do a mixture of both, but, either way—however we switch the emphasis between the two—it does not alter the fundamental arithmetic. If there are only 25 million homes and 26 million would-be households, 1 million of them will have to share.
What should be clear is that reducing the rents of some of those 25 million dwellings below the market clearing level will not create a single extra dwelling, though in the long run it will reduce the supply of rented accommodation. Reducing the price of houses below the market level will not add a single home to the housing stock in the short term, though it will reduce the supply of homes in the long term. Reducing mortgage terms below the commercial level will not add a single home, though it will quickly add to demand and drive up prices facing those without access to cheap mortgages, as the Government are about to find out.
There is only one way to alleviate the housing shortage and that is to build more homes. Sadly, the report, and indeed the remarks of the most reverend Primate, were somewhat equivocal about that. On page 80, the report says:
“It is disingenuous to imply that ever higher targets for building new homes will somehow make them more affordable. It won’t and it hasn’t. Adding around 1% to the housing stock each year will not have much, if any, effect on housing prices.”
I am afraid that that statement is disingenuous: of course extra supply will not bring down prices relative to incomes if the demand is rising as fast or faster.
That brings me to my second question about this report. Where in it is the analysis and recognition of the causes of the housing shortage? I found it difficult to extract. Why have house prices in the UK outstripped incomes during the past 20 years, as it spells out? Why are they so much higher relative to incomes than in France, Germany or even Switzerland? There is only one possible answer: that the growth of supply has fallen short of the growth in demand. We have been building far fewer new houses now than was achieved decades ago by Harold Macmillan, and even our target is below the level he achieved.
At least part of the reason for that is nimbyism, the selfish attitude of those who own homes but oppose plans to build homes anywhere near theirs. The document mentions the issue, though only a couple of times. It rightly condemns it, though in rather equivocal terms, saying that
“There may be some good reasons to be a Nimby”
and then saying that there are not really any if you are a Christian. I would rather it to be a more ringing denunciation of nimbyism.
It is possible, though difficult, to overcome nimbyism. I faced it in my own constituency, where, before the 2015 election, a group of people said that if I did not agree to oppose all new housebuilding in the constituency, they would run a candidate against me. They belonged to the Harpenden civic society, which is the 1,000 most important people in Harpenden. I faced them down. I managed to persuade a big public meeting which they held that it was a moral obligation to support building more houses, for the reasons spelled out in this report. The Church will have to be prepared to be pretty robust when it starts building on church land, because it will be faced with nimbyism, but, as I say, it is possible to face it down.
Why has demand outstripped supply? Until 2000, the main factor in increasing demand was the declining size of the average household. It was declining by 0.5% a year, because of people living longer after their kids left home, so that there were only two in the home instead of four or whatever; some elderly people living alone after the death of their spouse; and, sadly, the break-up of marriages. For all those reasons, household size was declining. Actually, it ceased to decline, because people cannot afford to break up with their spouses and leave home early, and children are having to stay with their parents much longer and so on.
That was the main factor, but, in the last couple of decades, another factor has overtaken it: namely, net migration into this country. In recent years, typically 600,000 people have come to live in this country and 300,000 have left. We have had to build houses for the net 300,000 who have come here each year. Since Tony Blair took the locks off immigration, a net 5 million people have come here. We seem reluctant to mention this—it certainly does not get any mention in this report. The ONS says that, over the past decade, over three-quarters of additional new households are headed by someone who was born abroad.
This is an important issue. This is not the place to discuss whether we should have a higher or lower level of immigration, but we can surely agree that anyone who believes that this country should continue to be a destination of mass migration and settlement—which it has never been historically—must not then oppose every proposal for housebuilding in their area. Sadly, I found that it was very often those who criticised any tightening of immigration controls who also opposed every planning application in my constituency. I hope that I will have the Church on my side when I criticise such hypocrisy.
Our Affordable Housing Commission noted that so many more households are struggling with housing costs because of the switch to the private rented sector, with its market rents, which has doubled in size in less than 20 years, to 20% of the nation’s housing, while the social housing sector—housing association and council housing—with its much more affordable rents, has halved to just 17% of our homes. The solution is for the Government to support councils and housing associations to increase their output of so-called social rented housing to around a third of the Government’s target of 300,000 new homes per annum.
I turn to the special ingredient in the commission’s recommendations which relates to the Church of England itself in addressing the housing crisis. The report highlights the wonderful work done at the local level by members of faith groups in social action that helps homeless people and engages with housing support of different kinds. The commission sees a special opportunity for practical assistance to extend this commitment through the use of land and buildings in the Church of England’s ownership. This is enormously important because the price and availability of land is perhaps the greatest stumbling block to producing the affordable housing we need. However, this is by no means a straightforward matter, as my three years as a Church Commissioner, under the skilful and sensitive chairmanship of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, have taught me.
The first obstacle to attempts to dispose of a piece of church land or buildings on favourable terms—for example, to a community land trust or a voluntary body working for the homeless—is the confusing legal obligation on any charity to reject all but
“the best terms reasonably obtainable”.
In reality, the definition of “best value” should not be such a problem. Indeed, the price a housing association or other voluntary body can pay will often not be appreciably lower than that obtainable from a speculative development and other benefits will more than compensate for any difference—benefits not just to society but in the wider work of the Church itself, sometimes even with the provision of a nomination right to a rented flat for a church worker, curate or a retired vicar. I hope that ongoing discussions with the Charity Commission will resolve this long-standing valuation issue. However, it is possible that your Lordships’ help will be needed for legislative change to remove this irritating obstacle.
Then there is the anxiety that disposing of church land or buildings at anything less than full open market price will diminish resources for the Church’s core ministry. Land is a highly significant part of the Church’s historic assets. In addition to the commissioners’ land holdings of over 90,000 acres, there are hundreds more sites and buildings with development potential within the Church’s 41 dioceses, with initiatives in Gloucester and Newham, for example, already showing the way.
The Church Commissioners have been highly successful in promoting ethical investment for their stocks and shares, most prominently in exerting pressure on oil companies to decarbonise and meet sustainability goals. This sets the precedent for the commissioners to be a pace setter also in respect of the Church’s investments in land. The commission calls for generous, “sacrificial” action but I see a number of good reasons why ensuring that land assets serve a social purpose need not be in conflict with the need to achieve proper returns from this source.
First, it is the obtaining of planning consent that makes a development possible and unlocks its hidden value. This requires the backing of the local planning authority. There is widespread disenchantment with the volume housebuilders because, despite making substantial profits, so often they have demonstrated poor quality, poor design, lack of space and community facilities, leasehold scams, unjustified bonuses and, prominently, an antipathy to including affordable housing in their developments. Local authorities are likely to be far keener to deal with Church bodies that exercise responsible stewardship in the use of their land assets. Similarly, the locals who protest—often with much justification—at low-quality developments with no green spaces or community components, and with few, if any, homes affordable to local people, can be brought on side when a responsible stance is taken for Church-owned sites.
If the Church nationally and at the diocesan level has the reputation of insisting on high standards and achieving public good, those vital planning consents can and should be more easily secured. I am delighted that the Church Commissioners have signed up to adopting the good behaviour of the 2020 stewardship code when selling land. This is a step in the right direction and translating this into specific outcomes, with a stewardship kitemark, is the important next move.
Secondly, doing the right thing in utilising land holdings can also be a way of improving the return from this asset for years to come. By following the example of a growing number of other major landowners—including the Duchy of Cornwall with its successful Poundbury urban extension and its new scheme at Nansledan—and being a patient investor, long-term gains can be obtained. Simply selling to one of the oligopoly of housebuilders only enriches those companies. Instead, retaining land ownership and organising high-quality, community-enhancing developments, often in partnership with smaller building firms and housing associations, can keep the development profits in the Church’s hands.
It is good to note that investigations are now being undertaken by the Church Commissioners, with top-level property experts, to explore these opportunities. I commend the Citizens UK initiative, with which the Church of England is closely associated, alongside the Methodist Church and others, for a partnership with the Government that offers land release for social housing in return for funding to cover all the initial feasibility work. The Secretary of State, Robert Jenrick, has agreed to discuss this proposition further and I hope that the Minister will also engage.
In these ways, I am hopeful that, without weakening its financial position, the Church of England, and perhaps other denominations if they see fit, will maximise its direct contribution to easing the nation’s housing shortages. By encouraging responsible action by other landowners, from Oxbridge colleges to the Ministry of Defence to academy trusts and charitable foundations, it can magnify its influence for good, just as it has done so well with its ethical equity investment policies.
I conclude by reiterating my thanks to the most reverend Primate and I hugely welcome the appointment of the new bishop for housing, Bishop Guli Francis-Dehqani, who can take forward the Church’s renewal of its historic engagement with the housing scene. I wish her every success in helping all of us to up our game in tackling this most fundamental of our society’s problems.
The key word in this discourse, as with so many of the political challenges facing us at the moment, is “together”. We are unlikely to make significant progress until all parts of our society and all parts of government cohere around a common vision and, as this report identifies, a common set of values that can drive policy over a longer period of time, transcending the short-term fixes that are often dictated by short election cycles. Yes, this is a challenge to all of us—national, local and regional government, landlords and landowners—but there can be exciting ways forward and practical steps that we can take, when we move together.
As my most reverend friend the Archbishop of Canterbury said, the Church must lead by example and face these challenges itself, which is why the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Best, about the changes that may be needed in the Church’s use of land and that of other charitable bodies is so important. Working together will be helped by cross-party recognition of the sorts of values and approaches outlined here. At the very least, we should start by adopting a definition of affordable housing that is linked to income, as others have said.
Of the five values identified here as being fundamental to our vision for homes and community, I will, in the few minutes left to me, focus on the last one: satisfying. It would be possible to build sustainable, safe, stable and sociable houses, but they would not necessarily be things of beauty or a source of joy. I am delighted that this fifth element, which could so easily be seen as an optional extra, is kept in the mix, because it will encourage architects, builders, interior designers, artists, craftspeople and those at the cutting edge of developing the new technology we need for our homes to be sustainable to think and imagine how this can be achieved with beauty as well as simplicity and economy. We need to draw again on some of the great architectural visions of our history and European history to raise our expectations.
While being interviewed on the radio a few years ago—it was not a very hard-hitting interview; it was not Jeremy Paxman—I was asked about my likes and dislikes, foibles and peccadillos, of which there are many. I was asked about my favourite journey. I replied that I really liked driving round the M25 and up the A12. The interviewer looked at me askance—this was not the expected answer—but this was my favourite journey, of course, because it was my journey home. Now, having moved, I would say how much I love the A64.
However, my experience of joy and expectation when I turn the corner to arrive home is not the experience of many of our citizens, either because they have no home or because their home is not what it should be. During this past year, we know that inequalities in housing have callously accelerated the spread of Covid, where cramped conditions and lack of access to outside space have meant that those without good homes are also those without good health. This must change. Asking for such a change is not naive optimism; it is a vision of hope that can lift our spirits and stiffen our resolve. To do it is within our grasp. It is a matter of policy and political will. It is the right thing to do, but it will also save us money through improved health, social cohesion and well-being.
This report is called Coming Home. It aims for nothing less than ensuring that everyone can come home—and find joy and stability in that home. To build homes is to build community. To build community is to build stability. To build stability is to build peace—and is that not the first responsibility of government?
Part of housing is also green spaces, as some noble Lords have mentioned. Community areas should be available to residents but not only that: I have seen estates in other parts of the country where we insisted that banks were there so that they were accessible. I know that that is now online but in some way there should be access to finance, to the post office and to medical care so that people do not have to go miles and miles. There also needs to be access to transport and so I call on the Government to look clearly at their bus transport ideas that have just been mentioned and inner-London transport. It is vital that housing is comfortable and that when people go home they feel happy. We also have to help with rough sleeping and try to remove that from the future.