Address by Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab) The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Volume 841: debated on Thursday 5 December 2024, Column 1342
My Lords, I am very pleased to respond for the Government on such an important issue. I grew up in social housing and I was very proud of my new-town pioneer parents who allowed me to do so—that was the housing of the 1950s and 1960s, referred to by my noble friend Lord Snape. I have campaigned on housing in general and social housing in particular for over 30 years, and this is the first Government I have known, in all that time, to show the level of ambition that we need. I thank my noble friend Lady Warwick for her ongoing work on housing and homelessness and for leading this debate today with her extremely powerful and thorough speech. One thing she said was that the facts are truly shocking, and shocking they really are.
It has been a great privilege to listen and respond to a debate in which the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury gave his valedictory speech. He was present at one of the most terrifying experiences I have had since I joined this House. He has been a great champion of housing, as many noble Lords have said, and introduced the Homes for All report, which had a good launch in your Lordships’ House. I thought I was just going to attend, but I arrived to find my noble friend Lady Warwick asking me whether I would speak. As I walked into the room, he was already speaking and I had to quickly gather my thoughts together and make a speech there and then.
The most reverend Primate has done such fantastic work. His deep and thorough knowledge of the banking system from his earlier career enabled him to speak out powerfully in 2013 against payday lending, which was a great passion of mine as well. He launched a campaign in favour of credit unions as an alternative. The annual Archbishop’s debate, under his watchful eye, has seen him raise the following areas: banking standards, soft power, reconciliation, education, British values, housing, freedom of speech, migration and families. His book Reimagining Britain, published in 2018, set out his thoughts on areas for specific social change and reform, including social care, housing and families—issues on which he and the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York founded policy commissions.
The most reverend Primate also has extensive knowledge of overseas issues through his travel around different countries and has made informed contributions in debates on foreign policy, including on Sudan, Afghanistan and Israel and Gaza.
Of course, in the 12 years that the most reverend Primate has been the Archbishop of Canterbury, he has offered spiritual counsel to six Prime Ministers and overseen many significant royal events, presiding at the Coronation of His Majesty King Charles III and delivering the sermon at the funeral of the late Queen Elizabeth II. He has also baptised Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, and married Prince Harry and Meghan at Windsor in 2018.
During his great speech on housing this afternoon, the most reverend Primate spoke about affordability, which I will come to later. He also spoke about community and building places for people, a topic that is very close to my heart in terms of planning. I thank him for the way that he has steered the Church Commissioners, if it is possible to steer them—he says no; I thought that was probably the case—because I believe there are extraordinary opportunities now regarding Church land. The Government welcome the opportunity to have that dialogue with the Church Commissioners.
There is no doubt in my mind that in my parish, as elsewhere in the Church, safeguarding is infinitely better than it was before his time as Archbishop. While we understand his very honourable reasons for resignation, I know that this House and the Church will miss him greatly. I can do no better than to quote his own words back to him:
“People of loving service are rare in any walk of life. Leaders of loving service are still rarer. But in all cases those who serve will be loved and remembered when those who cling to power and privileges are long forgotten”.
I thank him.
