Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, I rise to support the second amendment in this group, Amendment 128YAR, on the duty of care where compulsory purchase powers are involved. I do so from personal experience. Some 25 or 30 years ago, I had the Ilminster bypass through my farm. It was part of the improvements to the A303, which I strongly supported. I still strongly support more improvements to the A303 and hope we...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, I support this amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and others. The arguments have all been very well made, particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Best, with his great experience, so I want merely to emphasise a few facts. First, as we all know, the need for affordable homes is as great in the countryside as anywhere, because on average houses are more expensive...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: I thank all Members of the House who have supported the amendment. I again thank the Minister and, indeed, her Secretary of State for the compromise position that they have offered. I look forward to discussing the details of the government amendment that will be provided at Third Reading. It is quite clear that the process in national parks, AONBs, the Norfolk Broads and other special areas...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, once again, I am very pleased to report that I am aware that, after discussions, as the Minister has already hinted, the Government are minded to accept the case for the amendment, with a view to bringing forward their own at Third Reading, which I hope will go most of the way to catering for the problem that we are trying to resolve—we being me and the noble Lords, Lord Best and...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, I regret that during the Recess I failed to meet the DCLG ministerial team to discuss this and other rural amendments. The fault lies mostly with me because I was away in Rwanda for a lot of the time with a parliamentary group looking at agriculture. There was a certain amount of confusion over ministerial diaries early on as well. This morning I had meetings in Cornwall and was...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: If there are no other speakers—
Lord Cameron of Dillington: I thank noble Lords for their support and congratulations, if that is the right word. I, too, look forward to the detail and possibly to having future discussions with the Minister but in the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 11 withdrawn.
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, I support Amendment 1. For the purposes of Report, I declare my interests as a farmer and landowner, as a rural landlord of domestic property, and as the ultimate landowner of an exception site leased to Hastoe Housing Association. I wish to make only one point—to re-emphasise what others have hinted at. We are all aware of the shortage of affordable housing in our country. We are...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, I support my noble friend in his Amendment 70A and I echo his words about easing the transition, but I speak mostly to my Amendment 77A in the group. It concerns income variability in the context of pay to stay, which is something I raised at Second Reading. I realise that it has already been mentioned in both the previous groups by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, the noble Lord,...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: I thank all noble Lords who supported the amendments. I was struck, when listening to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, and the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, that it is a bit like Morton’s fork. You are offered two unpalatable options—one is to lose the incredibly important affordable housing that we have in the countryside and the other is to lose our countryside, which is also...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, I rise to speak to all of the amendments in the group, for two of which I am the lead name and two of which I am an also-ran. I must apologise, first, because the ground we are covering in this group is very similar to the ground we covered on Thursday, except that in this context we are dealing with the rural perspective. I controlled myself and bit my tongue several times on...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 57B, tabled in my name, and also Amendment 57D, where I am an also-ran behind the noble Lord, Lord Best. First I restate what I said at Second Reading: I am keen to encourage the Government’s desire to develop more home ownership. There is no doubt that the big change in social mobility since my post-war youth has been assisted by the growth in home...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, I had not really intended to intervene in this debate because better, more knowledgeable people than me have spoken. However, I add my voice in support. I have built houses in Scotland and England in the past 10 to 12 years and therefore put in a very low-carbon spec. No consumer of any intelligence would build a house without a low-carbon spec because the annual savings in heating...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: As I say, I have no doubt that we will be able to discuss this between now and Report. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 50A withdrawn. Amendments 50B to 50E not moved. Clause 4 agreed. Amendment 50F Moved by Lord Kennedy of Southwark 50F: After Clause 4, insert the following new Clause— “Infrastructure requirement: provision of starter homes (1) Prior to...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their participation in the debate and for their nearly universal support—especially the noble Lords, Lord Young and Lord Deben, who are both old hands in this area—even if they only assisted in the birth of the site, not being the rightful daddy, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, said. I was reminded when the noble Lord, Lord Deben, was speaking of a...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, the two amendments in the group concern exception sites and, for the purposes of clarity, they contain definitions of such sites. If you agree with the definitions of affordable housing in perpetuity to accommodate local households and so on, then the amendment needs little explanation. However, this is the House of Lords and so I shall proceed to give one anyway. The key point is...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, I put my name to Amendment 41. I was going to list the range of various abuses that I felt the starter homes regime would be open to, but that has been done with much greater expertise and experience by my colleagues, my noble friends Lord Best and Lord Kerslake, and, indeed, with greater eloquence.
Lord Cameron of Dillington: I do apologise; I meant Amendment 41A. The point that everyone has made, including the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, who I did not mention just now, is that the moment you falsify a market, there will always be someone looking to make a turn. If the Government are experimenting with a new product, I am certain that financiers and traders will be very quick to find new ways of taking...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, have the Government rural-proofed this policy? Has detailed thinking gone into how people without transport in remote rural communities can access pharmacies for their local, possibly life-saving medicines? I am sure that there are solutions to be had in IT and so on, but has that thinking and even understanding gone into the process?
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 48F and 50B, to which I put my name. I am aware that in this debate we are going over the same ground we covered in the debate before the dinner hour but my excuse is that I will look at it from a largely rural perspective. I must first declare an interest, for the purposes of the Committee stage of the Bill, in that I am a farmer and landowner. I am also...
