Clause 2
Housing and Regeneration Bill
9:30 am
Alistair Burt (Shadow Minister, Communities and Local Government; North East Bedfordshire, Conservative)
I rise to support the amendment tabled by the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire and to respond to the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich. Having been the Minister with responsibility for disabled people, I rather regret that we did not do more to change the standards required. Of course, there was the inevitable tussle between Departments, but there is now greater recognition that the matter is not just about disability but about ageing.
When amendments are tabled on behalf of disabled people, or when people talk about the disabled lobby, there is sometimes not enough understanding in the wider community that virtually everything that is done for people with disabilities, particularly in relation to space, movement and housing, inevitably benefits anyone who is ageing as well as women with buggies and so on. A different approach needs to be taken, and the long-term needs of the people who benefit from such changes as my right hon. Friend suggests must be borne in mind. Will the Minister indicate how the agency will deal with that?
Such improvements also help to deal with a problem that we shall come back to from time to time. Despite the fair wind being given to the establishment of the agency, for reasons that we have already explored, a niggling factor in the back of many minds is that it may turn out to be just a numbers machine. Because the Government have set targets and understandably want to meet them, worrying that they have not in the past, there will be huge determination just to churn out units. When that is coupled with changes over the years that have meant that the space given to each housing unit is much smaller, it puts extra pressure on the needs of those with disabilities and those who are ageing. The Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation reckons that in the next 20 years, there will be an increase of between 57 per cent. and 67 per cent. in the number of disabled older people. A significant number of new people will be coming into that time of life, with needs that are not discretionary for them but crucial to their enjoyment of life—their accessibility to those things that we all too often take for granted.
I would be grateful if the Minister would indicate how he and the agency intend to handle that. I welcome my right hon. Friend’s amendment.