Housing: Young People

Those relationships will be crucial in getting a picture of the challenge, but also later on when one needs to draw on trust and good will to get reform through. You need to know which go-ahead directors of housing are making the weather, which housing associations have some interesting solutions, and which group of talents is turning around a difficult-to-let estate. There are some really good people in housing today.

More than that, you need to understand the complexities of public expenditure—you need to know your AME from your DEL—and you need to watch the Treasury like a hawk. That requires an understanding of Treasury theology as well as economics. If the Housing Minister is ever in doubt about what to do, he should consult the person who knows more about housing and has done more for housing than anyone else: the noble Lord, Lord Best. To make my point about continuity: who has been the most successful Cabinet Minister in this Parliament? Ben Wallace—he was there for four years.

The key word in the White Paper I mentioned, Fixing Our Broken Housing Market, was “market”. A market is where buyers and sellers meet and where supply matches demand. A good market would make it easier for people to move, promote mobility and make it easier to buy and sell. The group that would benefit most from this extra mobility are those waiting for their first home.

There are 3.6 million homes with two or more spare bedrooms. Many older people want to trade down or to rightsize, freeing up their homes for young families. Professor Mayhew estimated that we need 50,000 homes for older people who want to rightsize, but we are only producing 8,000. An older person rightsizing triggers a chain of movements, promoting labour mobility and making better use of the stock we have. The planning system should be more proactive in securing the right mix of new builds. The best way to help younger buyers is to help older buyers.

Stamp duty is an important impediment to the market—£15 billion of friction—and then there is the hassle of house purchase. Last year, I sold my car. I took a photo, uploaded the details on a website and had an acceptable offer within hours. Later that day, a flat-bed truck arrived and, as the car was driven up the ramps, the money arrived in my bank account. What comparable progress has been made using modern technology to simplify house purchases? None, since I bought my first home 60 years ago.

Many young people have to rent, but private landlords are leaving the market, due to high interest rates, fears about impending legislation, a less attractive tax regime and new energy efficiency standards. The NRLA says that private landlords are more than twice as likely to sell properties than they are to purchase them, exerting upward pressure on rents. We should say to private landlords that, if they sell to their tenant, no capital gains tax or stamp duty will be payable—not a right to buy but an incentive to sell. That would have a dramatic effect on home ownership for young people, almost certainly lowering their housing costs and enabling them to move up the ladder.

I support the Renters (Reform) Bill—by the way, what has happened to it?—but it will reduce supply. The Bill should have been accompanied by measures to increase supply and put the private rented market on a more sustainable basis. Other countries have a different model, which we should progressively adopt. In Europe, long-term institutional finance provides secure, well-managed rented accommodation; in this country, it provides 2% of the rented stock. We need to progressively reduce the overdependence on the private landlord, who can release capital only by selling, and get the pension funds and insurance industry to invest in what, historically, would have been a better investment than equities. The next Minister needs to get those institutions in the room with the Treasury and unlock the barriers to that investment.

I mentioned selling to the tenant, but what about the deposit? I read in the Times that there is £2.5 trillion tied up in housing equity. That is £2,500 billion, money will eventually end up with children and grandchildren, but not when they need it. I understand all the caveats about equity release and the need to take advice, but the product today avoids any negative equity on death and can reduce inheritance tax. People are cautious about it because of the unknown care costs. Many more would take that option, and help young people buy, if the next Government implement the recommendations of the Dilnot commission in 2011 and cap care costs. Again, focusing on the older generation helps the younger ones.

Many young people will not be in the fortunate position of having that help and will need access to social housing, adding to the 1.2 million people on the waiting list. My party needs to overcome its residual resistance to social housing. The old norms that trade unionists and council tenants voted Labour while home owners and professional people voted Tory have been blown out of the water by Brexit and the 2019 election. In 1953, 250,000 council houses were built and my party won the next two elections. What regime encouraged the local authorities, now going bankrupt, to invest in speculative shopping centres and office blocks when they could have been building houses?

A new Administration should look at the role of social housing for young people. Forty years ago, a young couple could put their name on the waiting list and be reasonably confident that, in due course, they would get to the top. Today, if that young couple are sharing with in-laws or living in rented accommodation, they are not likely to have that ability.

Social housing is focused, rightly, on priority groups: those threatened with homelessness—increasingly under Section 21—threatened with domestic violence, in poor health or living in very poor conditions. Then there is additional pressure from those from Ukraine, and as the Home Office stops using hotels for asylum seekers. Access to social housing has become an accident and emergency service. This raises the sensitive question of life tenancies. If a family face a crisis and then, thanks to social housing and the support that goes with it, rebuild their lives and other options become affordable, should they make way for another family who face the crisis that they once faced? I am not suggesting making them homeless again, but perhaps some nudges.

This is relevant because, the last time I looked, a young couple on the waiting list is eight times more likely to be rehoused through a re-let than through a new build. Increasing the flow through social housing will help them. There is a role for an expanded tenant incentive scheme to help families move on, securing a re-let for those on the waiting list at a fraction of the cost of new build and far quicker.

We need to build more new homes of all tenures to meet demand from first-time buyers. Veterans of the LUR Bill will know my views about planning, confirmed by last month’s CMA report, which referred to a

“complex and unpredictable planning system”

with “under resourced” planning departments. There is no need to increase public expenditure to unblock the system—just allow planning departments to recruit the staff they need and cover their costs with application fees.

Then my party has to confront the nimbys within our ranks. Yes, we may lose a few votes to the ever-opportunistic Lib Dems if unpopular development goes ahead, but we will lose far more if we do not have a coherent housing policy. We should recognise that the green belt is not sacrosanct and should reinstate local authority targets. You cannot rely on the good will of local government to provide the homes we need.

I do not have time to mention all the relevant factors: the tension between second homes and first homes, skill shortages in the building sector, the dominance of large builders, slow buildout rates and getting the balance right in social housing between new build on the one hand and maintenance of existing stock on the other. I hope other noble Lords will fill the gaps. Nor have I mentioned the many good things this Government have done, a deficiency that I know my noble friend, whose commitment to good housing I applaud, will remedy.

Finally, the next Minister will need what I call a following wind—public opinion. In 1966 “Cathy Come Home” did for homeless young families what “Mr Bates vs The Post Office” has done for sub-postmasters. It mobilised public opinion, drove housing up the agenda so that political parties had to respond, and gave birth to Shelter.

My most formidable opponents—Des Wilson and Sheila McKechnie of Shelter—were also my greatest allies. Their tireless, well-targeted and well-informed campaigning was deeply uncomfortable, but it strengthened my bargaining position with the Treasury and more broadly within the Government. We will need that following wind to open the door that was slammed in the face of a whole generation. I beg to move.

London is a different world from the rest of the UK when it comes to housing. For instance, there has always been a tendency for young professionals to move out of London when they start raising a family. It used to be when the children were approaching secondary school. Now, they move out when the children reach primary school age. This may explain why so many primary schools are closing in London. Most public sector workers in London with childcare expenses to pay would not be able to buy a house in London. This impacts on the ability to recruit and retain the best staff in London, particularly in Westminster and Whitehall.

The Home Builders Federation has stated:

“The UK is a very unaffordable place to buy or rent a home, and increasingly so”.

It echoed what has already been said:

“House prices in the UK have been growing faster than incomes and this disparity is greater than when compared to the EU benchmark”.

Belgium and France have seen house prices fall slightly as a proportion of income, and Finland has ensured that both rental and buying are more affordable.

In the UK, owner-occupiers aged 25 to 34 have dropped by 12% in 20 years. The average age of first-time buyers is increasing—last year, it was 33.5 years —while 58% of first-time buyers were among the highest earners. Research from the Resolution Foundation found that lower home ownership rates among young people mean that

“millennials spend longer in the private rented sector … a typical private renter spent over a third … of their net income on housing costs, more than three times the proportion of net income that a typical mortgagor devoted to their mortgage interest payments”.

I spoke to some of my neighbours when they moved in—young professional women sharing a rented house. Their rent was such that they would never be able to save for a mortgage. It is not a house in multiple occupation; a common feature, particularly in London, is that landlords sidestep HMO requirements and let the house to one name only, so they do not have the safety requirements. That is all too common, and there are not the resources in local government to ensure that it is stopped. If councils were properly funded, they would have an important role to provide accommodation for young people; the GLC, for instance, had a scheme for hard-to-let dwellings.

However, since 2010, councils have had a 60% cut in spending by central government. Government Ministers, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, has said, encourage councils to be more entrepreneurial and raise their own funds. In 2015, the Government abolished the Audit Commission, which kept a check on local government spending; this was an appalling act of irresponsibility.

This week’s New Statesman contains an article about the dire financial state of local government. It gave the example of Hastings in East Sussex as

“a borough full of Airbnbs and Londoners moving in and pushing up house prices”.

Hastings is spending nearly half its annual budget on temporary accommodation. The council leader has called for a Ukrainian refugee-style scheme to house local people in spare rooms.

The director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies has indicated that house price rises since rates were last set mean that the average property in the Westminster council area is taxed at 0.06% of its value, while a far cheaper property in Hartlepool is taxed at 1.3%. We all know that it would be a brave Government that did something about rateable values.

What difference do the various government schemes make? The Home Builders Federation has indicated that the closure of the Help to Buy equity loan scheme has exacerbated the challenge facing aspiring home owners. It states that the scheme supported a third of a million first-time buyer households to purchase a new-build home with an equity loan. It claims that it produced “a doubling in housing supply” and generated an estimated £65 billion in economic activity. What it does not say was that Help to Buy benefited those who could probably have afforded a house anyway, and the resulting inflation of house prices made it impossible for the lower-paid to put a foot on the housing ladder. This was taxpayers’ money, which would have been better spent on social housing.

My only question to the Minister is about the First Homes scheme, which was launched in 2021. Is there any information she can give us about how the scheme is going, and is there any consideration of expanding it?

Finally, I mentioned to the noble Lord, Lord Young, the other day that I am a fan of “Homes Under the Hammer” on television, and I like to think I can guess the price of a house anywhere in the UK. Key factors are whether it is in the north or south, whether it has transport links, the presence or absence of higher education institutions and the increasing numbers of younger entrepreneurs in the south who are buying houses in the north to refurbish and rent or sell off —or “flip it” in the jargon. Skills shortages and the steep cost of raw materials are slowing things down. Solving the issue of housing for young people is not a one-dimensional issue, therefore, and the Government’s record on local government, infrastructure skills, support for refurbishment schemes and controlling the cost of living is pretty woeful. This debate is an important opportunity to air these matters.

Interestingly, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the biggest shift has been with millennials on middle incomes—the people who hitherto would have expected to own their own home. Student loans, high deposits and higher interest rates have locked many into the rental market. The sector has seen increasing rents, making it difficult to save a deposit, as the percentage of income taken up with rent also increases. Recent data shows that people under 30 are spending more than 30% of their gross income on rent, more than any other group—30% being defined officially as unaffordable.

This has put pressure on the rental market; one estate agent described it to me as a beauty parade. Landlords can and do pick and choose; in the circumstances, who can blame them? Rents are rising and demand is growing. A recent Generation Rent survey showed that bidding wars and mass viewings are much more common. An anecdotal comment from estate agents is, “There’s always competition for rentals now”.

At the same time, we also hear that landlords are leaving the sector, or will leave if the Government remove Section 21 evictions. But are they? We have mixed messages. It is clear that they are moving to more lucrative short-term lettings such as Airbnb. The question for policymakers is: how do we actively incentivise landlords to move from short-term letting back to long-term, more secure tenures? I believe that this needs both carrot and stick, but I feel that government policy is concentrating on the stick. All the trends show that we need more private rented accommodation.

If even renting is not an option, young adults are back at home trying to save for a deposit, which in some areas is likely to take many years. This figure has also increased significantly. Results from the 2021 census found that more adults were living with parents in England and Wales than a decade previously. The ONS reported in 2021 that this equated to 4.9 million young adults—dare I say, young voters.

For me, a worrying trend is that we now seem to have a divided population of young people, and the inequalities between them are growing, as is their discontent. If you live in an affluent family, you will be fine. You will probably be helped with your deposit and regard it simply as getting your inheritance early. For those comfortably off, you might take equity release to give the youngsters their deposit or raid your retirement cushion that you have worked so hard to save, which now is not looking quite so plump.

Time was when low-waged young couples, such as the bus driver—my dad—married to the care assistant, might have been eligible for social housing, but no longer. The reduction in socially rented homes over decades has meant that a secure home to rent and put down roots in the community where you were raised is no longer possible for many, and it has changed the nature of social housing. In my home town of Preston, people were proud to have a council house. If you were on the Larches Estate, close to a beautiful park and rubbing shoulders with the posh parts of Ashton, you had hit the jackpot of affordable rent and secure tenure.

In a recent government survey of tenants, it was shocking to see that tenants now feel shame and stigma for being a social housing tenant. Bold solutions are needed. There is widespread clamour for more social and affordable homes; I would add shared ownership homes. In my view, mixed tenures and mixed estates are a positive way forward. Economic think tanks have also waded into the debate, pointing out the economic benefits of a significant increase in building these homes. It is win-win.

What worries me is that, shockingly, young people are the group most likely to experience homelessness. According to Centrepoint, more and more young people are approaching their local council for housing: 112,000 in 2021, an increase of 8% on the previous year. The data shows that unless they are afforded priority status by the local authority—for example, because they have come out of care—young people are frequently locked out of an already limited social housing supply. This means that they have to turn to sofa surfing, the unaffordable private rented sector, temporary accommodation or risking homelessness.

Government, housing providers and charities must work together in the long term to build a lasting coalition that aims to reinvigorate the social rented market and deliver new youth-specific housing products, which include one- and two-bedroom flats. My residents in Watford used to say, “Who wants to live in them?” Noticeably, as soon as they are erected, they are all filled. This should also be part of any mixed-tenure community.

Simply building more homes is not the answer. We need to build more social, affordable and shared ownership homes. The current emphasis on targets and numbers is demonstrably not working. Lots of expensive market-rate housing will not bring housing costs down to an affordable level for millions of people trapped in poverty by sky-high rents. Politicians are in a target-setting bidding war which perpetuates the myth that we can build our way out of this if only the planning system would improve, or this or that. But ramping up housebuilding will take many years to deliver and many more years to impact on house prices. In reality, nobody who wants a home wants that to happen, and the large housebuilders’ financial model will not let that happen. They build what they know they can sell in places where they know it will sell, not where it is needed or at a price that locals can afford.

We need to build and fund this housing differently, with much more diversity. We need to be braver and bolder and at least try to take the public with us and change the conversation towards those who are the future. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Young: in my experience, when it comes to opportunistic campaigning, no party has a monopoly on exploiting nimbyism.

My fear is that we have created a whole generation who increasingly feel politically isolated because their needs are not being met and their aspirations are unfulfilled. In short, they are being ignored by politicians because they are not home owners, and it is home owners who vote. They are yimbys, but the system forces politicians to listen to the nimbys, so no one is hearing their voice. Politically, that is a dangerous place to be. That is a subject worthy of its own debate.

What about the long term? We had a debate on 29 February in the Moses Room on a long-term strategy for housing. Apart from my noble friends Lord Jackson and Lord Bailey—who is not here today—every single contributor said that their long-term strategy was to have a long-term strategy. They did not tell us what it would consist of, and it certainly did not deal with the problem.

All those speakers reminded me—I make no apology for repeating this—of the challenge that is laid down by Zen masters to their disciples. The Zen master asks his disciples, “Describe the sound of one hand clapping”. All these debates are the sound of one hand clapping. We heard the sound of supply—we will allocate it differently or even build a few more, although of course we all admit to being nimbys—but no mention of demand. I am afraid it is a simple matter of arithmetic. The supply is not adequate. If there are, say, 30 million dwellings and 33 million wannabe households, then 3 million wannabe households will not be able to live in separate dwellings; they will have to share, subdivide or stay at home. There are two possible solutions: build more homes or stop adding to the number of households. Those are the only two solutions which will resolve it in the long term.

Before the 2015 election, I was challenged by my local Liberal Democrats to attend a public meeting in Harpenden and oppose the subdivision of gardens and people building extra houses in their gardens. They had a public meeting, so I went along. They had a big, wonderful slogan that said: “Harpenden homes for Harpenden people”. I asked the audience of several hundred people how many were born in Harpenden. There were 14 of them. “All right,” I said, “You are the only people the Lib Dems will house and the other 180 had better leave”. We must not go for these cheap nimbyist slogans.

In the 2015 election, I was presented with an ultimatum by the civic society in Harpenden—much influenced by the Lib Dems—that, unless I opposed all new housebuilding in and around Harpenden, they would either run a candidate against me or support any candidate who would make such a promise. I naturally refused, but I did attend a big public meeting, where I passionately argued that it is a moral issue. We have to build more houses, including in places such as Harpenden. If we do not, then young people in this country will not be able to get on the housing ladder and our children and grandchildren will not be able to live nearer to us than several hundred miles away, such as in the Orkneys.

I began studying this issue back at the beginning of this century because my constituency and all constituencies in Hertfordshire were continually facing higher and higher targets for the number of homes they had to build. That struck me as very odd, because the number of people being born in Hertfordshire was less than the number of those dying, so the population should have been going down. Of course, it was not going down because people were moving out of London, which they were doing because people were moving into London. All 17 statements made by the Government on the subject said or implied that they were moving into the south-east of England from the rest of the United Kingdom. When I looked at the figures, I saw they were actually moving out of the south-east of England because prices were so high and they had to move further away from London. The inflow was all from abroad, but no one dared mention it.

At that stage, we were importing the equivalent of the population of Birmingham every decade. I wondered how we would house an extra Birmingham and still provide extra homes for our own young people and people born here. A few years later, it was the population of Birmingham every five years and then every three years. Over the last two years alone, we have imported the net equivalent of the population of Birmingham. Does anyone seriously imagine that we can meet their needs and the accumulated, pent-up and unsatisfied needs of the young people for whom we have not built any homes over the last few decades? We cannot. But will anyone in this debate mention it? No. Perhaps on this side there will be some. I would be delighted if they did.

There will not be any mention of it on the other side; there never is. They should be deeply ashamed, because it is such a serious problem. Unless they can explain and justify why they support continuing mass immigration before they have met the needs of the people of all colours, races and sizes who are already here—who were born and grew up here—they should be deeply ashamed. I fear that, once again, we will have a debate that, with the exception of noble Lords on this side, reflects the sound of one hand clapping—some talk about supply, but nothing about demand. Until we do something about demand, we have an insoluble problem.

In supporting this call for creating and monitoring a long-term housing strategy, I suggest that policymakers must prioritise the housing needs of younger households in two overarching ways: first, of course, by increasing supply overall and, secondly, by ensuring that the supply reaches those with modest incomes. Supply is the problem—

Let me turn to the ways of ensuring that the supply of new homes benefits those on average and below-average incomes—the half of the population who currently can access only a fraction of new housing supply. Top of the list comes direct development of so-called “social rented housing”: this part of the housing mix has been in decline for years. Social housing is down from 34% of the nation’s homes to just 17% because of sales of council housing and the low-level programme of new build.

On 6 February, when Secretary of State Michael Gove appeared before the Lords Select Committee on the Built Environment, he said:

“We need to aim to have a net addition of 30,000 for social rent every year”.

He noted that some would regard this as unambitious, but it sets a far higher target for social rent—for the housing associations and councils—than has prevailed in recent years. What is needed is government investment to actually make this happen.

Currently, the sector faces headwinds from higher interest rates, building safety remedial work, the decarbonisation and upgrading of older stock, and management and maintenance costs rising by more than rents. But this country now has a highly professional social housing sector that is very fully regulated and can respond to the opportunities whenever government comes forward with the necessary resources.

Increasing supply by building new homes is going to take decades to achieve availability and affordability for all. In the meantime, we need a shortcut both to tackle the temporary accommodation emergency and, over time, to enlarge the social housing pool. The Affordable Housing Commission recommended a national housing conversion fund for the purchase and modernisation of run-down, privately rented accommodation. This fund would pay for itself by avoiding the huge costs of temporary accommodation in the private sector and, in the long term, would help a rebalancing between the much-diminished social sector and the greatly expanded private rented sector. I detect signs that the Government are recognising the value of this approach: a fund mostly for refugees is operating on this basis.

Investment in social housing—including the regeneration of some existing council estates and older properties—has a big payback in reducing health inequalities, alleviating fuel poverty, saving housing benefit and homelessness costs, cutting carbon emissions and supporting education and employment objectives. The National Housing Federation’s latest report shows how investing in a really major expansion of social housing is self-financing in a relatively short timescale, so boosting affordable social housing—largely ignored in the Budget—does represent incredible value for public money.

All this is not to say that the desire of younger households for home ownership should be ignored. Owner occupation means a secure home where you can put down roots and do your own thing. Acquiring and accumulating a capital asset for your later life is a big bonus, but, most significantly, your housing costs as an owner will reduce over time as your mortgage is paid off, whereas, as a renter, your housing costs will keep rising inexorably. No wonder the Department for Work and Pensions is expressing alarm at the prospect of a massive increase in housing benefit payments when a much bigger proportion of renters retires and their incomes fall, while rents keep going up.

How can the drop in home ownership levels be reversed so fewer people fall on the wrong side of the dividing line between tenants and home owners that can last a lifetime? This inequality in life chances is particularly unfair for those young people who are paying rents in excess of the cost of a mortgage but who cannot also afford to raise tens of thousands of pounds for a deposit without parental funding.

Shared ownership—with some important tweaks—provides one solution. Government mortgage guarantees can be effective and are almost cost-free, although the latest arrears figures, following interest rate rises, show some concerning increases. To underpin first-time buying in these difficult times, restoring the safety net of support for mortgage interest to its former, more generous position would be sensible.

Meanwhile, there are huge advantages for young people of planners requiring a proportion of new homes to be designed for older people. By addressing the pent-up demand for attractive, affordable homes for downsizers—“right-sizers”—two goals are met. First, older people can move to warm, accessible, convenient and companionable accommodation, achieving huge savings for the NHS and for adult care services. Secondly, this triggers a whole chain of moves, making family homes, not least precious social housing for families, available for the next generation, helping the young people with whom we are particularly concerned in this debate.

Polls tell us that almost two-thirds of 18 to 34 year-olds say that they are more likely to support a political party that invests more in affordable and social housing. Manifesto writers, take note. Let all of us in this House recognise the crisis facing younger people today and resolve to be part of the solutions we all want.

We have artificially restricted the supply of housing by means of the planning system and increased housing demand by means of immigration, but done nothing to restrict the supply of finance. What did noble Lords think was going to happen with the affordability of housing, even for people with good-quality employment? The planning system has become increasingly difficult to navigate and generally requires very deep pockets. This is not a problem for big organisations—ultimately they can appeal to the Secretary of State regarding their development, they can go to judicial review and they have all those tools—but for small developers it is hopeless. Therefore, the planning system keeps the rich rich.

I apologise for going slightly off-piste. There are multiple causes of our inability to improve the UK’s productivity, but one must surely be the malign effects of our planning system. Not only do we not build the housing that we need but we do not build, or allow to have built, sufficient small industrial premises. I live between Petersfield and Portsmouth. A few years ago I wanted to buy a small industrial unit of 1,300 square feet, below the small business exemption for rates. I needed it for my charitable engineering activities. I had the cash in the bank to pay for it, but I had to give up because there was nothing available to buy within 15 miles of where I lived. Interestingly, I detected from the Land Registry that a unit in a nearby industrial estate had been sold but had never even come on the open market. It all seemed to be by word of mouth.

When I look at SMEs local to home, I see that they are packed into units that are far too small and therefore internally poorly laid out. Furthermore, they are unable to invest in more equipment because they lack the space. This means that certain production processes must be undertaken elsewhere, but that uses transport with its associated emissions and other adverse effects.

Following on from the remarks by my noble friend Lord Lilley, we are increasing our population by about 1 million people per full Parliament, but we are steadfastly refusing to bring more and sufficient land into development, both for housing and for industrial use. It is all down to planning. The noble Lord, Lord Best, who I hold in very high regard, was very keen to keep this debate about housing and not immigration, but the fact of the matter is that the two are inextricably linked. If we keep increasing the population by 1 million every few years, we are bound to need more accommodation, both for people to live in and for industry. There is no getting away from it. It is no good talking about brownfield sites. The old industrial sites have already been turned into retail parks and housing estates up and down the country, but retail parks do not provide high added-value jobs, nor opportunities for improving productivity.

With all this, no wonder the support for my party among graduates of less than 50 years of age is apparently in single figures. I am very pleased to see that the party opposite regularly promises to reform the planning system. I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, will be able to say a bit more about this. My noble friend the Minister will tell us what the Conservative Government have been doing to improve the planning system. The output that I have seen is our local plan. That plan seeks to measure the requirement for land for housing and employment, and then possibly meet the requirement—but, of course, it never does. We certainly never hear about any desire to create a slight glut of housing or employment premises. If there was a slight surplus of both housing and industrial units, employees and businesses could be ideally accommodated because something would be available immediately when required. Much has been said about affordable housing. What would happen if, in any particular area, there was a slight glut of up-market and more profitable-to-build housing? It is obvious that developers would move on to building affordable housing without any intervention from government or the planning system.

I go back to where I started. The purpose and effect of the UK’s planning system is to resist development and keep the rich rich, the poor poor, and the rest where they are.

In Claremont ward in Blackpool, the concentration of families in HMOs converted from old B&Bs gives rise to a subculture where, for instance, many youngsters will not leave their bedrooms post-Covid. There are shocking health statistics, partly caused by the quality of accommodation. In a ward of just 9,000 people, 2,500 have mental health problems, 1,400 have respiratory issues, 900 have diabetes and 600 have asthma. Blackpool hospital reserves 19 beds every single day for unplanned admissions from Claremont, costing £11 million a year.

At this point, I would like to call out the Department for Work and Pensions. I have a great deal of respect for much of its work; for example, I have worked jointly with the department on careers fairs. In Blackpool, however, two things are wrong. First, housing benefit is paid to landlords whose housing is slum standard, with some failing category 1 standards, which means risk of death. Secondly, the help given to jobseekers is given in person, but these youngsters will only engage online at the moment and the DWP does not offer an online interview option for them.

So where are the glimmers of hope? First, there needs to be an urgent focus on providing long-term funding to local authorities to deal with the temporary accommodation crisis in a way that is cheaper, better quality and better suited to the inhabitants. Part of this needs to be linked to wraparound services for these youngsters, who will otherwise end up costing the public purse a great deal more—quite apart from the moral case for doing so. Too often, the housing crisis and challenges in public services are spoken about as separate policy issues, but vulnerable young people and families are in such a difficult housing situation that it has a negative impact on their quality of life and increases their need for other services. We have gained a lot from specialisation of our public services; practice has become more professional and more evidence led. Bradford, in particular, has an impressive research project called Born in Bradford, which follows 13,500 families over 10 years. We know, however, that a failure to join up public services is costing the Government between £1.5 billion and £5 billion a year, according to Demos.

Right to Succeed works in left-behind communities to support the transformation of children and family services, bringing together services to focus on the most vulnerable families. In the process, it becomes clear that different services have different addresses for the same family, but Right to Succeed now has an evidence base for the success of this approach.

In this vein, I would like to mention Element, the social enterprise founded in London by my daughter, and Positive Transitions Pathway in Blackpool. Both these approaches involve focusing on the needs of the care leaver, providing life coaching and being available for support for as long as it takes. Blackpool Council also provides tailored tenancy management. The Element experience of care-leaver accommodation is that it comes in all shapes and sizes; some is public sector, some third and some private, and the quality differs between different providers across all sectors. The lack of regulation of private landlords tends to provide less good accommodation and weaker support. I am aware that some supported accommodation in Blackpool provides feeble support, despite being paid to provide support. In both places, there is an urgent need to introduce decent home standards in the private sector, especially if they are being paid by the public sector for that accommodation.

Let me end on some high points. Following what is known as a “seeing is believing” visit to Sheffield last year, led by Business in the Community, IKEA has offered to provide beds for the hundreds of local children who do not even have a bed to sleep in. Here are two quotes from the youngsters themselves. Fatima, a care leaver, says:

“Before going into Element, things were very difficult. I was struggling with idea of socialising with other people. However, from the beginning, I felt at ease and loved spending time with some amazing staff and young people. Element really helped build my confidence in speaking in front of people. I wouldn’t be where I am today without them”.

Finally, a young Blackpool homeless person said:

“My Positive Transitions officer has helped with loads of different things, and also encouraged and supported me to apply for an internship. I got the job, which has made a massive difference to my finances. I have been able to pass a training course and get a small motorbike. They really helped my transition to adulthood and made living alone a lot less overwhelming”.