Right to Buy — House of Commons, 2015-10-12
Topic: Housing
John Healey (Labour, Centre-left): I am sorry that I have had to drag the Minister before the House this afternoon. I am disappointed that the Secretary of State made a written statement this morning, but is not prepared to account for himself to the public this afternoon on one of the Prime Minister’s central election pledges. The extension of the so-called right to buy to housing associations, funded by the forced sale of council homes, will mean fewer genuinely affordable homes when the need has never been greater. We will oppose it. This is a back-room deal to sidestep legislation and proper public scrutiny in Parliament We have said from the start that this is unworkable and wrong—and so it is proving. The Minister’s and the Secretary of State’s statements today are riddled with holes. They are promising 1.3 million housing association tenants the right to buy their own home. How many tenants will not, in fact, have this right next year? What about those in at least 37 housing associations who have said no to the deal, and those many more who have not been consulted and have not replied? What about those in the nine separate categories of the deal "where housing associations may exercise discretion over sales" What about those caught by the Secretary of State’s weasel words this morning in the written statement, whereby all this will be subject to "the overall availability of the funding of the scheme" What do tenants do when the landlord says no? How can this be a "right" to buy, with no legislation behind it? In truth, this is not a right-to-buy, but a beg-to-buy policy, and many housing association tenants will find next year that they have been badly let down by the Prime Minister’s promises I strongly back the desire of most of us to own our own home. That is why I commissioned the chief executive of Taylor Wimpey to do a report for me on the decline of homeownership, which has gone down each and every year in the last five years. This right-to-buy policy, however, is bad housing policy. Shelter warned that 113,000 council homes could be sold off to pay for it, with no-go areas for many lower income families to live in in many of our major cities and towns. What assessment has the Minister made of the number of council homes that will be lost, and when will he publish the full impact assessment of these plans, as he promised the House he would on 29 June, and when will Members be able to vote on these plans, as the Prime Minister promised on 27 May when he opened the Queen’s Speech debate The Minister has talked about one-for-one replacement of all homes sold—well, we have heard that before. In 2010, the same promises were made for council homes, and it has been five years of failure—not with "one for one", but with one home built for every nine sold. So what is the Minister’s guarantee for a one-to-one, like-for-like replacement for both council and housing association homes sold under this scheme, and how many of these genuinely affordable homes sold by housing associations will be replaced by homes that are not Finally, this is a challenge for the Chancellor as well as the Minister. This policy fails the test of good social policy and the test of sound economics. It squanders a long-term asset by selling it on the cheap. Will the Minister commit to publishing a full value for public money assessment because taxpayers will bear the cost three times over—first, for the public investment to build the homes; secondly, for the discount to sell them; and thirdly, for the higher housing benefit bill that will come when these homes are bought to let again to tenants at full market rents. If the Minister and his party really want to occupy the centre ground, they should drop this extreme policy. It is a bad deal for tenants and a bad deal for the taxpayer.