Baroness Taylor of Stevenage

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That the Bill be now read a second time.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)

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My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to open this Second Reading on the Social Housing Bill. I look forward to listening carefully to noble Lords’ contributions from across the House. I am particularly conscious that many in this Chamber bring deep experience of housing, local government, safeguarding and the realities facing communities. I therefore would like to begin by recognising the value that this experience brings to our debate and thanking noble Lords for giving the Bill the attention that it warrants.

Before I turn to the detail, I hope the House will allow me a brief personal reflection, because this Bill is really personal for me. This legislation is not abstract; I grew up in Stevenage in social housing. In those days, before everyone carried a phone in their pocket, before the internet shaped the world—I should add that not even every house had a phone; I am that old—and before cars were widely affordable, community was the bedrock of our lives. Part of the unwritten contract for my parents when they accepted the offer of a job and a home in Britain’s first post-war new town, which is 80 years old this year, was that their parents would be welcome when they retired and that their children could, if they wished, be housed as children of tenants.

One of the great strengths of living in Stevenage was the sense of continuity and belonging that it offered. Families put down roots, your parents could live nearby and, in time, you could imagine your own children building their lives in the same area with the possibility, if they needed it, of a secure, affordable home in the community they knew. That sense of security—that social housing could be there not only for you but for the next generation—is part of what social housing at its best can provide: stability, dignity and the foundation on which people can build a life.

Amidst the complexities of modern life and the cost of living crisis, retaining that sense of community is more important than ever. Yet for too many people, it is no longer something they can rely on. In Stevenage, the housing stock has fallen from around 32,000 homes in the 1980s to around 8,000 today, and many former council homes are now let to those on universal credit, costing the public purse more than double when compared with a council home and leaving over 2,000 families stranded on waiting lists. This is a picture that we see around the country.

Over time, social and affordable homes have become scarce. In many places, homes sold have not been replaced. The result is that families who could once have lived side by side, in the same town and neighbourhood, are now too often separated by necessity and forced to move far from the support networks they depend on. That is one of the reasons I care so deeply about this Bill. It is about restoring a sense of security and fairness for tenants today and for communities tomorrow. Everyone deserves to live somewhere decent, safe, secure and affordable, in a community where they feel at home.

That is why the social housing sector plays such a critical role in our system, providing a home to around 16% of all households in England and supporting many of the most vulnerable, including those on the lowest incomes and those living with long-term illness or disability. Yet, for many, that security is out of reach. Today, more than 1.3 million households are on local authority waiting lists for social housing and over 175,000 children are growing up without a stable home. Families are left with little prospect of secure housing in their community. They are forced instead into the increasingly expensive and insecure private rented sector or into temporary accommodation at significant personal cost and growing expense to the public purse.

This country has not built enough social and affordable housing for decades. While nearly one in three new homes in recent years has been social or affordable, overall delivery remains far below the historic highs of the 1950s and 1960s, when housing was delivered at a far greater scale. This decline reflects a combination of factors over recent years. including lower levels of public investment, constraints on providers’ ability to borrow and invest, and wider economic pressures, such as inflation, which have increased the cost of building and maintaining homes. At the same time, the steady and significant loss of social housing stock, particularly where homes sold under right to buy have not been replaced, has further undermined the ability and confidence of providers to invest in building the new homes that communities so urgently need.

The Government therefore placed social and affordable housing at the heart of our manifesto. We have been clear that addressing these long-standing challenges requires not just incremental change but a sustained programme of renewal, bringing together investment, reform and delivery across the sector. The priority of this Government remains to deliver the biggest increase in social and affordable housing in a generation, alongside a transformational and lasting change in the safety and quality of social homes. The delivery of these commitments is well under way.

In 2025, we set out a clear five-step plan to deliver a decade of renewal for social and affordable housing. First, we are delivering the biggest boost to grant funding in a generation through the £39 billion 10-year social and affordable homes programme to support social housebuilding at scale. Secondly, we are rebuilding the sector’s capacity to borrow and invest, supported by a stable 10-year rent settlement. Thirdly, we have established a more effective and stable regulatory regime by updating the decent homes standard, implementing new minimum energy-efficiency standards, and the passing of Awaab’s law to drive up the safety and quality of homes for tenants. Fourthly, we are reinvigorating council housebuilding, which this Bill directly supports, recognising the central role of councils in social housing delivery. Fifthly and finally, we are strengthening our partnership with providers and investors to unlock capacity and accelerate delivery, and with tenants themselves to guide our reforms—including addressing the social housing stigma that tenants highlight as a key priority.

This Bill forms one targeted part of this wider programme of renewal, making the necessary legislative changes to underpin our reforms. We have already given social housing providers the long-term certainty and stability they need to dial up their housebuilding ambitions, through grant funding, long-term certainty about their incomes, clear and final quality standards, and specialised support for councils. We now need to deliver the parts of our decade of renewal plan which require primary legislation. The Bill will protect the number of social homes available to those in need and, in doing so, incentivise the building of more social rented homes. It will create a fairer system, with stronger protections for tenants who are victims of domestic abuse. It will reduce unnecessary bureaucracy and clarify the statute book so that providers can invest in new social and affordable homes with confidence.

Taking each of these objectives in turn, I turn first to protecting homes and enabling new supply. Right to buy has long provided an important route into home ownership, helping many social housing tenants achieve greater security and a tangible stake in their community. Since its introduction, it has supported more than 2 million households to buy their homes and realise the benefits of home ownership. But—and this a very big “but”—too often the homes sold have not been replaced. This has led to a steady loss of social housing stock, reduced the availability of genuinely affordable homes, and weakened councils’ confidence and capacity to invest in new supply, particularly where homes are sold and do not return to the sector.

It cannot make sense for a council to invest in building a new home and then for a qualifying right-to-buy tenant to move in and purchase that home for significantly less than it cost to build. The Bill therefore builds on the existing tranche of reforms that the Government have already made to the right-to-buy scheme. The measures will continue the mission to deliver a fairer and more sustainable scheme, one that continues to support long-standing tenants to buy while ensuring that councils can replace what is sold and better protect existing social homes to meet future housing need. We will increase the eligibility period from three years of tenancy to 10 years, which better reflects current practice and ensures that the scheme is targeted at those with a long-standing connection to their home. We will also better align discounts with cash caps and introduce a 35-year exemption for new-build homes, protecting new supply and giving councils the confidence to invest in homes for the long term.

Alongside this, the Bill introduces a new requirement for private providers of social housing to notify their local authority and other potential buyers before selling a home. This will maximise opportunities to retain homes within the social housing sector. Taken together, these reforms will shift the trajectory of the system from one where stock has been gradually depleted to one where it is protected and can begin to grow again. These measures are not about undermining aspiration but about ensuring that it is delivered in a way that is fair, balanced and sustainable, so that future generations have the same opportunities as those before them. They are designed to ensure that the sector is larger in the future, not smaller, and more capable of meeting need, not less.

Secondly, on the protection of tenants who are victims of domestic abuse, all tenants deserve safety and stability but those experiencing abuse face acute risks and, too often, must choose between staying in their home and continuing to suffer that abuse, or leaving and risking homelessness. The Bill strengthens protections to help victims remain safely in their homes where possible or move to suitable alternative accommodation where necessary. These measures form part of the Government’s wider commitment to tackle violence against women and girls, ensuring that the housing system supports rather than frustrates a victim’s route to safety and recovery. This sits alongside wider government action to improve quality standards, strengthen tenant voice and ensure that the sector works in the interests of those it serves.

Thirdly, the Bill reduces unnecessary bureaucracy and clarifies the statute book, enabling councils and providers to invest with confidence. It repeals unimplemented and unworkable provisions from previous housing legislation, including requirements to sell high-value homes, impose fixed-term tenancies by default and charge higher rents to higher-income tenants. It also streamlines the outdated consents process so that councils can make more decisions about the management of their social homes without having to get approval first. These changes bring clarity and reduce barriers to delivery, setting up the social housing system for the ambitious future we are working towards.

Social housing is an essential part of a functioning housing system. It provides security for families, supports communities, reduces homelessness pressures and, when done well, represents good value for the taxpayer over the long term. This Bill is a vital part of our reforms, but legislation alone cannot deliver the decade of renewal we want to see across the quality and supply of social housing. As I have said, this Bill is one targeted part of a comprehensive and ambitious plan that the Government are already delivering through record investment into new social housing; through new modern and robust standards to improve housing quality and safety and to strengthen tenant engagement and landlord accountability; and through working with the regulator and the sector to ensure that the system is stable and investible. Ultimately, the Bill is grounded in the everyday reality of families who need secure homes, in the practical requirements of councils and providers that need certainty to build so that future tenants can access social homes, and in the principle that the state has a responsibility to ensure that safe, secure and affordable housing is available to those who need it.

In the course of this debate, I know that noble Lords will rightly scrutinise the detail—how reforms are implemented, how we safeguard fairness and how we ensure that the sector can deliver—and I welcome that scrutiny. But I hope that the House will also recognise the central purpose of this Bill: to strengthen tenant protections for victims of domestic abuse, to clear away barriers that prevent investment and delivery, and to protect and grow the social housing available across the country. I commend the Bill to the House.

Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)

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My Lords, I declare my interest as vice-president of the Local Government Association and of the National Association for Local Councils.

The Social Housing Bill attempts to address an important issue across many local authorities: namely, that we are not building enough social housing. Yet this Bill goes about this issue in completely the wrong way. There are, of course, some measures that we welcome. In particular, we welcome the Government’s efforts to give landlords and the courts more powers to protect tenants who are victims of domestic abuse. It is absolutely crucial that victims do not fall through the cracks of the system, and we will support efforts to strengthen the Bill in this regard.

However, for the most part, this Bill’s focus is not on the development of new social housing; it merely moves the goalposts on the existing housing stock. This Government came to power on specific promises in their manifesto to

“prioritise the building of new social rented homes and better protect our existing stock by reviewing the increased right to buy discounts introduced in 2012 and increasing protections on newly-built social housing”.

The first part of that pledge promises to prioritise the building of new socially rented homes, yet this is not what is prioritised in the Bill before us. Instead, the Bill goes into tweaking overdrive on the right-to-buy scheme. While we recognise the Government’s promise to review the discounts introduced in 2012, other provisions in the Bill represent an all-out attack on the right-to-buy scheme: a key Conservative legacy that has helped so many own their own home and has transformed social mobility across this country. Indeed, I heard the Minister describe the right-to-buy scheme as a “leaky bucket”. For a council that fails to build enough social housing, this may indeed be its point of view, but that is not whose side we are on. We on these Benches are not on the side of failing councils; we are on the side of hard-working families who do not want to be dependent on the state forever.

To be clear, we do not dispute that we need more social housing. Our population has grown rapidly, and development has not kept up with that demand. Under this Government, more landlords are exiting the market; unemployment is on the rise, especially for young people; and more and more people may be forced to look for social housing. But what do they find? They find the First Lady of Sierra Leone, who otherwise occupies a presidential palace. They find that social housing is being taken up by non-UK nationals, as was highlighted in the “Alternative King’s Speech”. Approximately 33,000 new social tenancies each year are going to households where the lead tenant is a non-UK national. At the same time, the Government invest around £4 billion annually to deliver roughly 30,000 new social homes. That is neither sustainable nor fair for British citizens.

According to the 2021 census for England and Wales, 72% of those who identified as Somalis live in social housing in the UK. That is an example of a dependency culture right before our eyes. This is not why the British taxpayer pays tax. This is not a functioning safety net, nor is it a welfare state working for its own citizens. Moreover, it is evidently not the right-to-buy scheme that is the problem here. We Conservatives know the solution. We need to build more new social homes for local people, not restrict their opportunities for home ownership.

We need the opportunity of right to buy, but at least one new home must be built with the money from the right-to-buy sale. If you do this, it is a win-win outcome. We need an honest and mature conversation about whom social housing is for and what the state can afford. We need to recognise that it is a finite resource and should be reserved for those who truly need it, without needlessly trapping people into welfare indefinitely and with no way out. We also believe that councils should have the powers to decide who to prioritise, such as those with existing connections to their local area, or veterans who have done so much for our country.

Reacting to the King’s Speech at the start of this Session, one Labour MP summed it up perfectly: “This is incrementalism”. That is exactly what we are seeing with this Bill before us now: tweaking with a successful scheme in order to weaken a proud Conservative legacy, rather than solving the problems the country faces today. This is red meat to appease Labour Back-Benchers in the other place, who—let us be honest—would rather see the right-to-buy scheme abolished altogether.

This is not serious policy direction, let alone a vision. This House and the British people deserve better. I repeat that there are measures in this Bill that we welcome, particularly to protect victims, and there are certain measures that we, of course, recognise as manifesto commitments. But we have serious concerns about significant aspects of this Bill: its implementation and commencement, the powers being handed over to the Secretary of State and all that is currently absent from the Bill to properly and adequately address the problems we face.

Where are the measures to keep larger social housing providers accountable to their local communities, for example? How can we make shared ownership schemes more workable in practice? How can we enable councils to have more choice over what works best for their residents? I look forward to hearing the contributions and insights of other noble Lords across this House on how we can make this a better Bill for the other place, and I look forward to engaging constructively with the Minister throughout the passage of the Bill.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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My Lords, I am most grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this very thoughtful and constructive debate. As ever, there has been an incredibly wide range of experience and insight brought by this House, and I really welcome the scrutiny given to the Bill today. The debate has covered a varied range of issues, and I will do my best to respond to as many of those issues as I can in the time allowed—but I assure noble Lords that I will check Hansard at the end, and if there is anything I do not get the chance to respond to, I will reply in writing.

I want to give one piece of statistical information in relation to the impact of the Bill. Under the previous pre-reform baseline, the system was projected to deliver a net loss of around 26,000 homes between 2026 and 2036 due to right-to-buy sales. By contrast, following implementation of the measures in the Bill, we expect to see a net gain of around 18,000 homes over the same period. I hope it will be many more than that, but the provisions in the Bill will deliver that.

Before turning to the specific points raised, I will make one general point. I was very keen to stress in my introduction that the Bill is a range of very specific measures in relation to right to buy, domestic abuse, and removing some of the bureaucracy around social housing. It does not cover all of the Government’s programme on social housing, because much of that programme does not need a legislative framework. In fact, we have already started to deliver much of it with a £39 billion investment. The social and affordable housing programme is already under way and will be delivering very soon. Many of the quality issues that were raised in the debate are also already being dealt with; there are extensive programmes to deliver them, and that reform is on its way already.

The Bill attempts to start easing some of the pressure on social housing, which is being caused by the specific issues contained within the Bill. I know the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, will sympathise when I say that if you bring an enormous Bill before this House—we went through the process of the levelling-up Bill together—you get criticised for doing a Christmas tree Bill. However, if you bring a narrow, tightly focused Bill like this one, you are criticised because you have not put everything in it. So as a Minister you are never going to win—but this is the right step to take at this point in time.

A considerable number of noble Lords—the noble Baronesses, Lady Scott, Lady Pinnock, Lady Shah, Lady Murphy, Lady Jones, Lady Neate, Lady Gill, Lady Young and Lady Thornhill, the noble Lords, Lord Best, Lord Lansley, Lord Babudu, Lord Sikka, Lord Bailey and Lord Bird, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester and the noble Earl, Lord Russell—talked about housing supply and the ability to deliver increased social housing supply. The fact that so many noble Lords mentioned this highlights the great importance of that issue. The Bill strengthens our commitment to building more social rented homes and to delivering what we all want: the biggest increase in social and affordable housing in a generation.

The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, spoke about the Conservative legacy, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, has just repeated that theme. We would not be where we are now if we had not had 14 years when this problem was pushed under the carpet. In the time that the Labour Government have been in power, we have delivered the Renters’ Rights Act, tackling the problems that private rented sector tenants have in their tenancies. We have passed the Planning and Infrastructure Act, which has swept away some of the planning bureaucracies preventing housing being built. We are now approaching this Social Housing Bill, as well as empowering local councils and strategic authorities to deliver the infrastructure and the homes we need to grow our country. So I will not be taking any lectures from the other side of the House about their legacy, which has caused the housing crisis we are now trying to fix.

Our reforms to right to buy, notably the 35-year exemption for new-build social homes, will directly support our ambition by ensuring that councils have the confidence to deliver. The Bill’s changes will stop homes being sold before councils have recovered the costs of building them. Anyone who has been a council leader will know the pain of building homes and having them sold for less than they cost to build. Crucially, the Bill builds on the funding and regulatory certainty we have already given the sector to boost supply, including the £39 billion of investment—the biggest long-term investment in recent memory. The programme aims to deliver around 300,000 social and affordable homes, including at least 180,000 for social rent.

As other noble Lords have said, I have been somewhat disturbed by some of the comments about allocations to non-UK nationals. Eligibility for social housing is tightly controlled. If a person’s visa status means they cannot access state benefits or local authority housing assistance, they are not eligible for an allocation of social housing. For all social housing, the overwhelming majority—88% of social housing lead tenants—are UK nationals, according to the 2024-25 English Housing Survey. It is not at all helpful to use some of the derogatory and mischaracterising tropes that often accompany discussions around social housing. That is just not helpful, and I hope we can avoid that in future discussions. Fraudulent tenancies are sometimes obtained, and where they are councils have very strong powers to deal with them. I hope that anyone listening to or watching this debate—including anyone in this Chamber—who is concerned about a fraudulent tenancy will do what they need to do: report it to the local authority concerned. I hope we can avoid comments like that during the rest of the discussions on the Bill.

Of course we have to support councils to build more homes. My noble friends Lady Shah, Lord Whitty and Lord Sahota, the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones, Lady Neate, Lady Young and Lady Lawlor, and the noble Lords, Lord Cameron and Lord Fuller, all spoke about that. In 2024-25, councils completed 10,480 homes, the highest number achieved in over 30 years. The Government are committed to reinvigorating council housebuilding, and councils are central to our efforts to deliver the biggest increase in social and affordable housebuilding. We have already taken decisive action to maximise councils’ engagement with our new social and affordable homes programme. Since April, for the first time, councils can mix right-to-buy receipts with grant funding, helping to improve the financial viability of their bids.

We have also allocated almost £9 million to 44 councils to support bid development through the council housebuilding support fund. This funding forms part of a £63 million four-year programme to support councils to improve their skills and capacity to build housing themselves. In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, I note that a great deal of work is going on with skills and capacity more generally in the construction sector. Finally, we are helping councils to borrow more cheaply to finance housebuilding by extending the preferential lending rate from the Public Works Loan Board for another year until March 2027.

The noble Lords, Lord Fuller and Lord Jamieson, my noble friend Lord Sahota and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, clearly highlighted the need to provide support. Local authorities need to deliver programmes that are right for their areas. This is about the Government providing that support and funding and then letting local authorities implementing that in the right way for their local community.

We are all concerned about the safety and decency of social housing. There have been a number of mentions of Awaab’s law in our debate today. The noble Lords, Lord Best, Lord Babudu and Lord Stoneham, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester and the noble Baronesses, Lady Murphy and Lady Jones, all highlighted these issues. Reforms are already under way which will deliver transformational and lasting change in the safety and quality of social homes. The newly updated decent homes standard will ensure that all rented homes in England are decent, safe and warm, designed with tenant safety at their core, while remaining proportionate and affordable for providers to deliver.

In addition, the Government have legislated on Awaab’s law, requiring social landlords to investigate and fix damp, mould and emergency hazards within strict timeframes. We have committed to bring forward regulations for further hazards using a test and learn approach. We will announce timings for the implementation of phase 2 in due course.

The Government have published a draft update to the national design planning practice guidance, which consolidates key existing guides and tools into one document. The updated guidance illustrates the Government’s priorities for well-designed places, helping local authorities to make planning decisions and developers and architects to submit planning applications to local planning authorities. It highlights that well-designed, liveable places should have a mix of house types and tenures to suit people of all ages and all stages of life, according to different needs, and integrated with other facilities. We are clear that this guidance should be applied across all housing sectors in this country, including social homes. A consultation seeking views on that guidance closed on 10 March, and we will publish a final version in due course.

The noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, referred to my spreadsheet about the quality of homes. I have just taken on this responsibility. I take it very seriously, and there is a lot of work to do.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Teather and Lady Young, and the noble Earl, Lord Russell, referred to energy efficiency in social housing. We are committed to ensuring that every tenant has a decent, warm and comfortable home. We are implementing new minimum energy-efficiency standards in the social rented sector, requiring all social homes to meet the new energy performance metrics. They will help make energy bills cheaper for millions of social tenants, reduce fuel poverty and make homes warmer, more comfortable and less susceptible to damp and mould.

We have also published the future homes standards, which will come into force in March 2027 for non-high-risk building work. All new homes will have excellent insulation, low-carbon heating systems and, in most cases, solar panels.

To answer my noble friend Lady Young—sorry, I should not call her that now, but she still is—social landlords will be required to meet one of the new energy performance certificate metrics. We have listened to the sector’s concerns about affordability and deliverability, and we have introduced two compliance dates to address these concerns, allowing providers to balance their time and financial capacity across other housing priorities.

The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, raised a key issue around investment in social housing and mentioned additional ways to generate capital to support investment in social housing. We are open to hearing innovative ideas that meet our core principles—delivering more homes for social rent and creating high-quality and sustainable places—so my officials are very happy to follow up with the noble Lord on specific proposals, and I hope he will be happy to discuss those with us.

The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, raised an issue about Clause 9. Clause 9 will not affect the increased flexibilities we introduced in July 2025. Councils will continue to retain 100% of right-to-buy receipts, and those flexibilities will remain in place indefinitely. From 2026-27, councils will also, for the first time, be able to combine receipts with grant funding for affordable housing, helping to accelerate the delivery of new homes. The purpose of Clause 9 is to reduce administrative burdens for councils and central government because currently, whenever the rules on receipts change, the department must reissue retention agreements to every stockholding authority. Clause 9 will streamline this by allowing the Secretary of State to modify the requirements by determination, removing the need to reissue agreements while maintaining oversight. It is a safeguard power rather than something that takes away the important retention of receipts.

The noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Stoneham, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Warwick, Lady Teather, Lady Watkins and Lady Thornhill, mentioned the important issue of estate regeneration. We are clear that increasing supply and improving the quality of existing homes must go hand in hand. Too many tenants are living in homes that fall short of modern expectations, and we are determined to increase the number of social and affordable homes and to drive up standards across the homes that already exist. That is why the reforms that I have already mentioned are under way—to improve the quality and safety of social housing.

We are committed to supporting estate regeneration schemes to transform neighbourhoods and deliver well-designed housing with a better quality of life for tenants. The core strategic objective of the new £39 billion social and affordable homes programme is to maximise supply, but it will also support regeneration schemes that provide a net increase in affordable homes.

The noble Lords, Lord Jackson, Lord Young and Lord Truscott, and the noble Earl, Lord Russell, among other Peers, all spoke on the right to buy. I want to be absolutely clear: the Government are not seeking to abolish the scheme. For many social tenants, it remains a crucial route into home ownership, opening the door to greater security and opportunity. However, as the noble Lord, Lord John, highlighted, we must also confront the reality before us. For too long, homes sold under right to buy have not been replaced at the rate needed, contributing to growing pressures on social housing supply and waiting lists across the country. That is why the Bill takes a balanced and responsible approach, retaining the opportunity for long-standing tenants to buy their homes, while protecting vital stock and ensuring councils can replace homes sold. So these are practical, necessary reforms that are designed to deliver a fairer, more sustainable scheme.

On the issues around home ownership and social mobility, raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Eaton and Lady Gill, and the noble Lord, Lord Bailey, the right to buy provides a pathway for social housing tenants to own their home. However, as I said, too many homes sold under the scheme have not been replaced. So we are reforming this, as we set out in our manifesto, but we are not shutting the door on home ownership; that pathway will remain for tenants who have lived in and paid rent on their homes for a long time.

On the wider issue of home ownership, there is an extensive programme going on now with the sector to make the buying and selling of homes much less complicated and much easier for first-time buyers, so your Lordships will hear more about that in weeks to come.

The one-for-one replacement of homes was raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Scott, Lady Warwick, Lady Shah and Lady Neate. We are moving away from the previous one-for-one replacement target for homes because that was introduced when there was no wider expectation placed on councils to build. We know that the right to buy has acted as a strong disincentive to council housebuilding, which our reforms will unleash. We are calling on councils not just to replace homes sold but to go further and play a central role in delivering a generational increase in social and affordable housebuilding. That reflects our wider programme and objective. We will continue to monitor right-to-buy sales and council housing delivery to make sure that this continues to be the case.

I want to speak briefly about the rural exemption, which was raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Coffey and Lady Thornhill, and the noble Earl, Lord Russell. Excluding rural areas from the right to buy reflects the very real and unique challenges of replacing social and affordable homes in those communities. Constraints on land, planning and supply mean that once homes are lost, they are often extremely difficult to replace. For that reason, we have taken the targeted decision to exempt designated rural areas from the scheme. We are not proposing to exempt any further areas from the scheme.

I have already spoken a bit about allocations, but I know that the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, was very concerned about these issues. The allocations framework is not included in the Bill, but work is going on with the sector to discuss further issues around allocations. The allocations framework gives priority to the groups who are most in need, and local councils have the freedom to manage their own waiting lists so they can develop solutions that make best use of their social housing stock. They are required by law to give priority to certain categories of people—for example, those who are homeless, as I know the noble Baroness will be very well aware—and we committed in our National Plan to End Homelessness to work with partners to update statutory guidance on social housing allocations to make sure that the framework is working effectively, and to support vulnerable households.

I will just briefly mention the mergers of housing associations, which was a common theme that came out during the debate. Housing associations of course play a vital role in delivering good quality homes and services, and landlords sometimes conclude that the best way to do this is through a merger with another housing association. Housing associations are independent organisations that make their own commercial decisions, and we do not direct how they run their business. However, all registered providers of social housing are required to deliver the outcomes of regulatory standards before and after any merger. In addition, under the transparency, influence and accountability standard set by the regulator, where a merger is being considered, tenants must be given the opportunity to influence and be involved in that process. A landlord must also be able to demonstrate to affected tenants how they have taken the outcome of the consultation into account when reaching a decision. I knew I was not going to get to all the points I wanted to make, but I will respond to noble Lords in writing on those I have missed.

Fundamentally, this Bill is key to ensuring that social housing continues to play the role it should in our society, not just for today but into the future. As I reflected at the beginning of this debate, social housing has long provided more than just a roof over people’s heads. It supports stable, connected communities, places where people can put down roots, build their lives and remain close to family and support networks. The Bill is a step towards restoring that stability—what the noble Lord, Lord Bird, called opportunity, security and comfort. Those were good words. It is protecting the homes we have, supporting the building of the homes we need and ensuring that the system works fairly for those who rely on it most. In doing so, it seeks to ensure that future generations can once again enjoy the security, opportunity and sense of belonging that I had growing up in Stevenage and that social housing has provided for so many in the past.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage

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That the bill be committed to a Committee of the Whole House, and that it be an instruction to the Committee of the Whole House that they consider the bill in the following order:

Clauses 1 to 12, Schedule 1, Clause 13, Schedule 2, Clauses 14 and 15, Schedule 3, Clauses 16 to 20, Title.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)

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My Lords, before I address the amendment, perhaps I may declare an interest, and in doing so apologise that I neglected to declare it at Second Reading. One of my daughters works for a housing association. I should have said that at Second Reading; it is in the register of interests. I also add my congratulations to those offered to my noble friend Lady Curran, who is appearing on the Front Bench for the first time today. I have already had a chance to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, to her new role, but I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Scott. She is not in her place today, but we have worked together for all the time I have been in the House on some very long and complicated Bills, and I am very grateful to her. I would like to put that on the record too.

I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this short debate. Before I respond on the specific amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, let me say that I am pleased to open this first day in Committee on the Social Housing Bill. As I set out at Second Reading, this is critical legislation that goes right to the heart of our current housing crisis. More than 1.3 million families in need of a home languish on local authority housing waiting lists and the number of children growing up in temporary accommodation continues to climb, so we must act now to turn around decades of losing more social homes than we are building.

This legislation brings forward measures to protect much-needed social housing and incentivise new building, as well as groundbreaking reforms to create a safer and fairer system for those experiencing domestic abuse. At Second Reading, I was clear that this Social Housing Bill sits within a much wider programme of social housing action which clearly demonstrates our Government’s ambition and commitment to deliver the hope for the future that decent affordable social housing represents. Together with the Government’s wider package of reforms and the £39 billion of investment, this Bill will ensure that we can provide decent, safe, secure and affordable housing for generations to come. I look forward to getting into the detail of the Bill’s provisions over the course of Committee, and to engaging with noble Lords on these important measures.

Amendment 1, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, intends to abolish right to buy. The noble Baroness has also given notice of her intention to oppose all the right to buy clauses, with the exception of Clause 6, standing part of the Bill, making it clear that this amendment accompanies that intention. The Government have no plans to abolish the right to buy. The scheme provides an important route for social housing tenants, many of whom may not otherwise be able to access home ownership, to own their own homes, boosting social mobility and opportunity, and supporting aspiration for families across the country.

Following the commitment in our manifesto, we are reforming right to buy through this Bill. This will deliver a fairer, better-value and more sustainable scheme, where long-standing tenants who have lived in and paid rent on their homes for many years can buy their own homes—but, crucially, where councils can replace them and contribute to the urgent and rising need for social and affordable homes.

The noble Lord, Lord Young, referred to the long called-for ability for councils to retain 100% of receipts, and this Government have facilitated that. By reforming the right-to-buy scheme, we will protect much-needed housing stock and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, said, more homes will be available to house those on waiting lists and those who are homeless.

We have committed to the biggest funding boost for social and affordable housing for a generation. I remind the noble Lords, Lord Jackson and Lord Jamieson, that many of the homes sold have never been replaced. Between April 2012 and March 2025, there were around 133,000 council right-to-buy sales, with only around 51,000 homes replaced over the same period. Not only has this depleted much-needed homes for households in need but it has reduced the motivation and confidence of councils to build, and it has restricted broader investment in council housing. I remind the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, that through the Renters’ Rights Act this Government have significantly strengthened renters’ rights, including with regard to rent increases.

We think we have the balance right here, making sure that we address some of the issues around right to buy but also continuing to give that opportunity and aspiration for those who want to purchase their own homes. We therefore oppose this amendment, and I kindly ask the noble Baroness to withdraw it.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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My Lords, I will speak to government Amendments 4, 6 and 122 in my name now and then come back to close at the end, if that is all right with noble Lords.

The Government clearly set out in our response to the consultation on reforming the right to buy that we would prevent existing property owners or those who have previously benefited from the scheme exercising right to buy unless there are exceptional circumstances. This was supported by 91% of respondents to the consultation, including 86% of social tenants who responded. We have already drawn up the latter part of this commitment through Clause 2 of the Bill and intend to add to this by including a provision in new Clause 2 to prevent existing residential property owners exercising the right to buy. The Committee will appreciate that defining residential property ownership is complex, given the many forms that property ownership can take. Capturing this complexity in legal drafting required additional time, meaning that this clause was not present at introduction. Given that the intent behind the right to buy is to enable tenants of social housing to become home owners, preventing existing property owners using the scheme is a fair and rational approach.

We have set out in this amendment what we think is a reasonable definition of a residential property owner. The new clause will apply to anyone who owns a residential property, whether owned outright or with a mortgage. Leasehold and freehold properties will be captured, with exceptions for short-term leases under 21 years, as will joint ownership and any properties owned outside England, including those held in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and abroad. As in Clause 2, exemptions will be made for victims of domestic abuse who have moved from the accommodation that they were occupying for reasons connected to the abuse.

As part of the application process, tenants will be required to declare to the landlord whether they own another property and landlords will be able to check the information that the tenant provides. If tenants are seeking exceptionally to buy under a right-to-buy scheme, where they already own a residential property, because they have been a victim of domestic abuse, they will be required to provide evidence of that to the landlord. Amendment 4 thus follows through on our commitment to exclude existing property owners from using right to buy and is accompanied by Amendments 6 and 122, which are consequential and enable the new clause to operate as intended. I commend these amendments to the Committee.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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My Lords, I will first refer to Opposition comments about government amendments, as that will probably be the most helpful. Tenants who own another property are, by definition, already homeowners, and the right-to-buy scheme was introduced to support tenants who otherwise would be unlikely to access home ownership. Therefore, they should not be given a discount to buy a second home when so many others have not been given the opportunity to purchase a first home. Existing homeowners can generally not join the housing register for the allocation of social housing, including those who own property outside their local authority or abroad, meaning that the measure to exclude such property ownership aligns with existing allocations guidance.

In response to the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, there is a very detailed explanation of the exclusion in the amendment itself. I will not read it out, because everyone can look at it in the amendment, but the cohabitee part of the amendment refers to

“the co-habitee of the person, or any of the persons, to whom the right to buy belongs; and, for that purpose, one person is the co-habitee of another person if they live together as if they were a married couple or civil partners”.

However, I will reflect on the noble Baroness’s comments if it is not as clear as we hope it is. But, from looking at it again, though, it seems very clear to me in the amendment we have tabled.

I will now tackle the question of whether Clause 1 should stand part of the Bill. Clause 1 increases the minimum tenancy length required for tenants to be eligible for the right-to-buy scheme from three to 10 years. The core aim of the right-to-buy measures in the Bill is to prevent social homes from being sold off without being replaced. Maintaining the eligibility period at three years would contribute to council homes continuing to be sold off at an unsustainable rate and would reduce the ability of our councils to replace those homes.

Furthermore, increasing the minimum eligibility period has received strong support from stakeholders. The noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, asked me about evidence. In our consultation on reforming the right to buy, 81% of all respondents, of which 62% were tenants, supported increasing the minimum period of tenancy required to at least 10 years. In fact, the majority of respondents, 54%, supported someone having to be a public sector tenant for longer than 10 years before becoming eligible for the right to buy.

This takes me neatly on to Amendment 2, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, which seeks to extend the eligibility period under the scheme to five years, instead of the proposed 10. The Government firmly believe that 10 years strikes the right balance between allowing longer-standing tenants the opportunity to own their own home and protecting our much-needed social housing stock. Increasing the eligibility requirement to 10 years will better support councils to rebuild the stock of council homes and will ensure that it is tenants who have lived in and paid rent on their social homes for many years who are able to own their own home through the scheme. Ten years is also the average length of tenancy of someone buying under the scheme currently, meaning that this will not substantially change the average eligibility period of those buying under the scheme.

Amendment 5, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bexley, seeks to amend Clause 1 of the Bill so that the provision only applies to secure tenancies entered into after the measure comes into force, which would mean that existing secure tenancies would still be eligible for the right to buy after only three years of tenancy. Excluding existing tenancies from the eligibility change would mean that the existing three years’ eligibility would continue to apply to the vast majority of council housing tenants and that we would continue to see homes being sold as early as three years after a tenancy is secured. As set out in the Government’s response to the consultation on these measures, we have been clear that the intention is that this change would apply to both existing and new tenants to protect existing social housing stock. For these reasons, we cannot accept this amendment.

Amendments 120, 121 and 123, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, seek to delay commencement of Clause 1 by three years. It is imperative that we increase the eligibility requirement for right to buy as soon as practicable to ensure we support long-standing tenants in retaining the right to buy, while ensuring that our councils are not losing homes at an unsustainable rate. As such, we intend to bring Clause 1 into force on Royal Assent. This ensures that we act quickly to protect council housing stock and that we prevent a potential spike in sales as a result of these changes. Allowing a three-year lead-in time for Clause 1 would only increase the loss of social homes to the right to buy. I hope that the noble Baroness will understand the reasons I have set out and withdraw her amendment, and I commend this clause to the Committee.

I turn now to Clause 2, which has been opposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. Repeat purchases through the right to buy go against the core aim of the scheme, which is to support tenants into long-term home ownership. It also undermines the objectives of maintaining and expanding social and affordable housing stock. The vast majority of respondents to the government consultation stated they would support preventing someone who has previously benefited from the right to buy from being able to exercise the right to buy again. Clause 2 delivers on this, with exceptions for victims of domestic abuse and in cases of irretrievable relationship breakdown. The terms of these exceptions are set out in the clause and will be reinforced by updated guidance when the Act comes into force. It will be for social landlords to be satisfied that the exceptions apply, for which they will be able to ask for evidence from the applicant as part of the application process. This is something councils are well practised at doing, as under the current rules those who have previously exercised the right to buy have their discount reduced if they seek to exercise the right to buy again.

I now turn to Amendments 7 and 8, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, which intend to probe whether the right to buy should be restricted if a spouse or civil partner of tenants have exercised the right to buy before. The Government have carefully considered these restrictions and feel it is appropriate that this policy should include where spouses and civil partners exercised the right to buy in the past, as the household in question can therefore be assessed as having already benefited from the scheme. Allowing repeated purchases within married couples or civil partnerships could lead to the gaming of the system and would undermine the objective of preserving and expanding social housing stock.

Amendment 9 seeks to probe how social landlords could be satisfied that, where a tenant is seeking an exemption to be able exercise the right to buy again due to relationship breakdown, the tenant was not married or in a civil partnership but were living as such—that is, that they were cohabiting. As part of the application process, applicants seeking an exemption will be required to provide evidence of their previous situation. If the landlord is satisfied with that evidence, the right to buy could then be exercised. To reiterate and reassure, we will be providing additional guidance to landlords on Clause 2 and how it will operate. With this explanation, I therefore kindly ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendments and commend Clause 2 to the Committee.

Amendment 35, also tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, intends to create a separate piece of guidance for the right to buy specifically aimed at promoting the scheme and financial literacy among young people. I point noble Lords to the existing guide Your Right to Buy Your Home, which is accessible on GOV.UK to all tenants regardless of age. This provides comprehensive guidance on the right-to-buy scheme, including on the costs of home ownership. The guidance will be fully updated in light of the reforms to the scheme. The guidance also includes information on how to access the Money and Pensions Service, which provides free, impartial advice to help people make informed choices about managing their money. This service is accessible to young people. As we do not wish to duplicate any existing guidance, the Government cannot accept this amendment. As I have already alluded to, we will continue to update and promote guidance to tenants on the right to buy through usual channels, notably GOV.UK. We will also share relevant information about the scheme and changes to it with local authorities so that they can disseminate it to their tenants.

Finally, I turn to Amendments 3, 10 and 13. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, for these amendments, and for his technical knowledge which enabled him to bring them before the Committee today. They seek to introduce a centralised digital lifecycle service for the right to buy, alongside new requirements for audit and fraud tracking. I recognise the intention behind these proposals—improving transparency, supporting tenants through the process and strengthening safeguards against fraud are all important objectives. However, the Government do not consider that a centrally mandated digital service is the right approach to achieve these aims. The right to buy is fundamentally a landlord-led process. Individual social landlords hold the relevant tenancy information, determine eligibility and manage applications directly with tenants. This reflects the fact that eligibility depends on detailed, case-specific information—such as tenancy history, property type and previous use of the right to buy—which sits with the landlord, not with central government.

These amendments would require a significant shift away from that established model, creating a national service to replicate functions that are already carried out locally. To operate effectively, such a service would depend on the continuous input and standardisation of very large volumes of data from social landlords across the country. That would not be a simple enhancement. It would require the design and delivery of complex digital infrastructure, the resolution of significant data-sharing and governance issues and the ongoing maintenance of accurate, real-time information across a highly diverse sector. In practice, this creates a substantial delivery risk. There is a real danger that such a system could become burdensome, duplicative and inflexible, placing new administrative burdens on landlords while not improving the core experience for tenants.

Similarly, mandating specific technologies, such as a blockchain-based audit trail, risks imposing disproportionate cost and complexity without clear evidence of additional benefit over existing systems. Landlords are already required to maintain accurate records and have processes in place to identify and investigate potential fraud. For these reasons, while I understand the objectives behind these amendments the Government consider that they would introduce unnecessary complexity, cost, and risk into a system that is best administered at the local level. We therefore cannot support these amendments and I kindly ask the noble Lord not to press them.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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As I set out in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, a clear definition is set out in the new clause. I accept what the noble Lord says. Perhaps, if he would rather reflect on this between now and Report, I will have further discussions with him on that. Is he suggesting that I should not move the amendment at this stage?

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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Forgive me, but it was my understanding that it had been agreed through the usual channels that we could move this amendment today.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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I move the amendment formally but I am happy to discuss it further with noble Lords if they have concerns about the definition.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords who have spoken in this debate: the noble Baronesses, Lady Coffey, Lady Thornhill and Lady O’Neill, and the noble Lords, Lord Lansley and Lord Fuller. First, I will defend why Clause 5 should stand part of the Bill. The right-to-buy scheme continues to provide an important route for social housing tenants to own their own homes. However, we must ensure that the scheme remains sustainable. This includes ensuring that discounts are set at the right level to enable long-standing tenants to buy under the scheme but without depleting levels of social housing stock.

The Government has already taken action to reduce the maximum cash discounts in November 2024 by returning them to pre-2012 levels. We committed to revising the discounts available as a percentage of the property value so that they align better with the revised cash cap amounts. Clause 5 delivers on our commitment to do this by reducing the percentage discounts so that they start at 5% of the property value after 10 years of public sector tenancy, with an increase for every extra year of tenancy up to a maximum of 15%.

As is the case now, these percentage discounts will be subject to the cash caps which set out the maximum cash discount that a tenant can receive in their local authority area. Aligning the discounts available as a percentage of the property value with the cash caps ensures that those who have been in their homes the longest benefit the most, while also avoiding disproportionately large discounts in high-value areas. The revised percentage discount levels aim to strike a balance between the responses received during the right to buy consultation, where many respondents supported setting the percentage discounts lower than is proposed by this clause.

We are also simplifying the rules by applying a single set of discount arrangements to houses and flats, making the scheme clearer and more consistent for tenants. This clause also extends the discount repayment period to 10 years after the original sale from the current five years, during which a purchaser looking to resell the property will be required to repay all or some of the discount on a sliding scale. This measure was supported by 72% of all respondents to our consultation. It will ensure that there is less of an incentive for early resale, which can undermine the purpose of the scheme, and will encourage people buying under the scheme to retain the property and discourage some of the profiteering that we have seen. With this explanation, I therefore ask the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, to withdraw her opposition to the clause standing part of the Bill.

I turn to Amendments 14 and 15, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey. The intention of these amendments—to set the minimum percentage discount at 20% and the maximum at 30%—would undermine the core aims of the clause that I have just set out and would keep the percentage discounts too high. In practice, the lower maximum cash discounts would take effect over the percentage amounts, as the cash cap would often be the lesser of the two discounts and would determine the discount that the tenant would receive. This would also mean that tenants with longer tenancies would be less likely to benefit, because the cash cap would bite sooner on the actual discount received. I therefore kindly ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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My Lords, before I respond directly to the amendments, I agree with much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, said about the issues around housing in rural areas. I might send her some of the Focus leaflets that I have seen objecting to rural developments.

I begin by focusing on Clause 6 regarding the right of first refusal for councils to buy back homes sold under right to buy. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to what has been a thoughtful debate on the amendments in this group. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, made a fairly sweeping statement about there being little ambition for increasing supply. I hope that she will have noted both the letter I sent in response to Second Reading and the annexe that was attached to that, which set out in great detail—I mentioned it at the start of Committee today—some of the action that the Government are taking to increase supply.

The first is the retention of 100% of right-to-buy receipts by councils. That was a big step forward—I campaigned for it for probably 15 years. There is the biggest boost to grant funding in a generation, rebuilding the sector’s capacity to borrow and invest; a road map for Section 106 delivery, which has been a constant theme of discussions in this House and elsewhere; a complete renewal of the planning framework; £16 billion of National Housing Bank funding; and an ambitious package of support for London. London has been mentioned a couple of times in this debate, and the Government have put in £11.7 billion of funding to support the building of housing in London. I do not consider that a lack of ambition for housing delivery. Of course, we are constrained by the finances available.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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I accept to a certain extent what the noble Baroness is saying. No one would be more ambitious than me to deliver more social housing. We are in government and we have to deal with the financial circumstances that we inherited, which included an enormous financial black hole. In that context, the amount of funding that we have allocated for social housing is significant—it is the biggest amount of funding for a generation—as are the other steps that we have taken to move the housing market along, not just in social housing but in other areas as well.

When the economy starts to grow again—we have already seen green shoots—we will be able to put more in, but, for the moment, we have indicated the ambition for increasing supply through what we have done already. We continue to be ambitious, and we will continue to support the growth of affordable and social housing alongside growth right across the housing market, which is really important. I was delighted to see the wraparound on the Metro this morning from Lloyds Bank, talking about how, for the first time since 1996, it has produced a £5,000 starter mortgage for young people. That is brilliant. All the steps that we are taking to increase housing supply across the board show a great deal of ambition, so I wanted to challenge the noble Baroness’s sweeping statement about little ambition for increasing supply.

The noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bexley, proposes to remove Clause 6 entirely from the Bill, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, has tabled Amendment 16 regarding the resourcing and monitoring of the right of first refusal. Let me start by setting out that the right of first refusal offers an opportunity for social landlords to buy back homes that have been sold under right to buy, at full market value, when they are resold. The right of first refusal period is currently 10 years after the original sale. Councils have 8 weeks to decide whether to purchase the home when informed by the owner that they are planning to sell, following which the property can be sold on the open market. Under Clause 6, the period will be increased to in perpetuity, so that councils will have the opportunity to buy back the property every time it is resold. This will give councils much more opportunity to buy back future properties sold under the scheme.

The change will apply only to applications to exercise the right to buy after the measure comes into force. Homes already sold under right to buy will be subject to the terms of the covenants that were attached to them when they were sold under the scheme. Where the right of refusal is for 10 years, as it is currently, that will continue to apply. I hope that that clarifies the point. It is for local authorities to decide whether to exercise the right of first refusal, taking into account their local priorities and financial position.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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As the noble Lord will be aware, we are moving to single-tier councils across the country, but he is quite correct in his assumption.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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My Lords, I will first address the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bexley, and moved by the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson.

I would like to reassure the House on our intentions behind Clause 9 of the Bill, which relates to the use of receipts from the sale of homes under the right-to-buy scheme. Clause 9 simplifies and modernises how the rules on right-to-buy receipts are managed. Every stock-holding authority currently has an agreement with the Secretary of State allowing it to retain all its net right-to-buy receipts, provided it spends those receipts on replacement social housing. In practice, this is administratively burdensome for both councils and central government. Currently, whenever the rules on receipts change—for example, permitting councils to combine their receipts with grant funding—the department must reissue all the retention agreements to every stock-holding authority, which is around 160 individual agreements.

Clause 9 replaces this with a simpler approach. It provides the Secretary of State with a power to modify these requirements by determination, removing the need to reissue agreements many times over while maintaining oversight. This clause therefore reduces administrative burden, improves responsiveness and supports councils to deliver more homes. The rules on pooling of right-to-buy receipts will continue to be governed by the regulations and any significant changes to those rules will continue to need to be made through a statutory instrument, subject to the negative procedure.

I know it has been a concern of some noble Lords that we may be seeking to use this clause to require councils to start repaying a portion of their receipts to the Treasury. I reassure noble Lords that this is absolutely not the case. We have committed to allow councils to retain all their right-to-buy receipts indefinitely, and Clause 9 makes it clear that the power of determination cannot be used to increase the amount that local authorities are required to return to the Secretary of State.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, for Amendments 26 to 32, which would replace the power Clause 9 introduces for the Secretary of State to make determinations on right-to-buy receipts with a requirement to use regulations in all cases. In July 2024, we were able to act quickly to give local authorities greater flexibility to spend their right-to-buy receipts to accelerate the delivery of new social and affordable homes. Importantly, this included permitting receipts to be combined with Section 106 contributions and removing the cap on the proportion of a new home that can be funded by right-to-buy receipts.

The amendments tabled by the noble Baroness would remove that flexibility and require all changes on right-to-buy receipts to be made through regulations. In practice, this would mean that the existing process would remain in place, with the administrative burden it entails for councils and central government. It would also result in delay and complexity in the system and make it harder to respond to the operational needs or make technical adjustments in a timely way. For these reasons, the Government cannot support these amendments. The current approach strikes the right balance between flexibility and oversight.

Amendment 33, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, would require the Secretary of State to consult local housing authorities before making any determination on the use of capital receipts. I reassure the Committee that the Government fully recognise the importance of engaging with local authorities on these matters. Where changes to rules governing the spending of right-to-buy receipts are proposed, it is standard practice to engage with the sector to ensure those changes are informed by local experience and delivery considerations. Placing a blanket statutory duty to consult in all circumstances would introduce unnecessary rigidity and could delay the implementation of technical or operational changes. It is important that we retain the ability to act flexibly and responsively while continuing to engage with our local authorities in a proportionate and meaningful way.

Amendment 52, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, proposes a new clause be added to the Bill to recycle right-to-buy receipts within the same housing market area before these are returned to the Secretary of State. Under the existing right-to-buy receipts framework, where local authorities are unable to spend the receipts on new affordable housing within the five-year period, the unused receipts must be returned to the Secretary of State. They are then given out as grant to other social housing providers by Homes England, or for receipts in London by the GLA.

Homes England seeks to redistribute those receipts where possible to the same geographical area in which they were generated, and all receipts generated in London are spent in London. Under the framework, local authorities are also able to work with other local authorities on the spending of right-to-buy receipts on new affordable housing and with other local housing providers. The Government are also extending the period in which receipts must be spent to 10 years for receipts generated from 2027-28 onwards, ensuring receipts are retained in the same housing market areas for longer. This is intended to support councils to plan and deliver longer-term and larger projects.

We therefore reject this amendment on the grounds that there is already flexibility with the right-to-buy receipts framework for local authorities to work with other local housing authorities and providers on delivering new affordable homes using those receipts, and that the system for the recycling of receipts already looks to prioritise the spending of the receipts in the area where they were generated.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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My Lords, as this group of amendments focuses on the outcomes and impacts of the measures in the Bill, I start by drawing the attention of noble Lords to the economic impact assessment for the Bill, published today on GOV.UK. I know this will be greatly welcomed by many in the Committee. The noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, asked me during Second Reading when it was going to be published, so I am pleased to say that it is now on the Government’s website.

England was on course to lose 26,000 social homes between 2026 and 2036. However, through this package of right-to-buy reforms, including allowing councils to keep all receipts from sales and reducing cash discounts, alongside the provisions in the Bill, we now expect a net gain of around 18,000 homes over the same period, instead of a loss. That is a 44,000-home turnaround, marking a clear shift towards rebuilding social housing and replenishing depleted stock at scale. This demonstrates the significant impact our Bill will have, in combination with the Government’s wider package of right-to-buy reforms, in turning around decades of social homes being lost and not replaced.

Amendments 34, 58, 58A and 73, tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady O’Neill and Lady Lawlor, are well intentioned and reflect a shared desire to ensure that the financial and wider impacts of the Bill are properly understood. As I have already set out, the Government have now published our economic impact assessment alongside the Bill’s parliamentary passage. We have established arrangements to monitor the effects of the Bill on the social housing sector and on those affected by it. These three amendments would require additional statutory reporting shortly after commencement and as soon as six months following Royal Assent. However, we know that many of the measures in the Bill will take time to emerge in practice and cannot be meaningfully assessed within that timeframe. A further statutory review would risk duplicating existing analysis, while providing only a partial and potentially misleading picture of the Bill’s true impact.

I point the noble Baronesses to the comprehensive suite of published statistics already available, including annual social housing sales and demolition figures, right-to-buy sales and replacements data, and statistics on the delivery of new affordable housing supply, all of which are published on GOV.UK. These datasets provide detailed information at local authority level, including applications, completed sales, replacements, discounts and property characteristics, and will continue to offer a clear and transparent overview of the impact of the Bill, including on home ownership, as it comes into force.

We are aligned in wanting a clear understanding of the Bill’s effects, but we differ on whether additional statutory reporting requirements are the best way to achieve that aim. Given the recently published assessment and our ongoing commitment to monitoring and reporting on the impact of the package of right-to-buy reforms and the wider Bill, I hope the noble Baronesses will reflect on these points and agree not to press their amendments.

Amendment 101, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, seeks to require local authorities and registered providers to publish annual social housing outcomes broken down by protected characteristics. Although the Government strongly support transparency and the importance of monitoring equalities outcomes, we do not consider the amendment necessary or proportionate. There are already existing statutory duties under the Equality Act 2010, including the public sector equality duty, which require local authorities and registered providers to have due regard to equalities impacts in exercising their functions.

In addition, providers are already subject to regulatory oversight and data collection requirements, and we are mindful of the need to avoid imposing duplicative reporting burdens that would divert resources from front-line delivery. The amendment would introduce a prescriptive and potentially rigid framework, including requirements around statistical thresholds and impact assessments, which may not be proportionate in all cases. We therefore consider that the objectives of the amendment are better achieved through existing duties and ongoing work with the regulator, rather than through additional primary legislation, and we ask that the amendment not be pressed.

On Amendment 104, also tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, while we support the ambition to improve energy efficiency and ensure better outcomes for tenants, we do not consider a statutory ESG framework to be the right approach. The Government are committed to ensuring that everyone has access to a warm and safe home, which is why we are introducing new minimum energy-efficiency standards for social housing. As part of the decent homes standard, this will require all social housing landlords to bring new and existing social homes up to reformed standards that will keep homes warmer and help to make energy bills cheaper for millions of social tenants.

The amendment would introduce a broad and undefined set of obligations under a single framework, which, given that we have already confirmed our new minimum energy-efficiency standards for social housing, risks creating uncertainty for providers about how these requirements would operate in practice and how they would interact with existing standards and investment programmes. The amendment also seeks to combine environmental requirements with equalities reporting in a single legislative framework, which may not be the most effective way to drive progress in either area. These issues are best addressed through targeted policy levers and sector-specific regulation, where expectations can be updated over time to reflect changing evidence and priorities.

The noble Lord, Lord Deben, referred to issues around rural housing. I cannot remember whether he was in the Chamber earlier when we had a short debate about rural housing. At Second Reading I was not able to respond to all the points that were made so I wrote to all Members who were present at that debate on 8 June, including a whole paragraph on rural housing. Therefore, I hope that he feels I have not ignored the points that were raised during the debate. We will continue to discuss rural housing in your Lordships’ House.

To return to the amendment on the ESG framework, we do not consider it appropriate to legislate for a new framework in this form.

On Amendments 117A and 119A, the Government are fully committed to considering equalities impacts throughout the development and delivery of policy. We do not consider it necessary or appropriate to place a requirement of this breadth in the Bill or to link it directly to commencement. Equalities considerations are already embedded through the public sector equality duty, which requires ongoing, proportionate and responsive assessment rather than a single static exercise covering every provision in detail. This ensures that analysis can evolve in the light of new evidence and real-world implementation, rather than relying on a single static assessment of the entire Act.

By contrast, Amendment 117A would require a full retrospective assessment of the entire Act in a highly prescriptive form. This risks creating a resource-intensive process that may add limited practical value, particularly where impacts are already understood or mitigated through existing safeguards, and could reduce the ability to refine analysis over time. For those reasons, we believe that the equalities impacts are addressed most effectively through the existing framework, which supports continuous, responsive decision-making, rather than through a one-off statutory requirement linked to commencement.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, for his Amendment 95. This seeks to introduce a requirement for social housing providers to assess and report on the impact of changes in planning policy, funding and standards on the availability and affordability of family-sized social rent homes. I agree with the importance of ensuring that there is sufficient availability of social rent homes for young families. However, this amendment is not the right way forward. It risks creating a burdensome new requirement for providers and many of its aims are already achieved through other means. The National Planning Policy Framework already requires local authorities to assess the size, type and tenure of housing needed for different groups in the community, including families with children and those who require social and affordable housing.

This assessment should be informed by estimates of the current and projected number of households which lack their own housing or cannot afford to meet their housing needs in the market, taking into account the number of households in overcrowded housing and those householders currently housed in unsuitable dwellings. I am sure that from his time as a council leader the noble Lord will remember this process very well. Local plans should reflect this assessment in their planning policies, including by specifying the type and mix of affordable housing that should be delivered on new developments to meet identified local needs. The Government already publish statistics on new affordable housing supply in England, showing the gross annual supply of affordable homes. Information on the number of affordable homes delivered under the Homes England affordable housing programmes is also published twice a year.

Social housing providers would cover both private registered providers and local authority registered providers. There are more than 1,300 of the former and more than 200 of the latter. It would be a significant ask to require registered providers to make a meaningful assessment of the impact of planning policy in the way proposed in the amendment. I would therefore have significant concern about the potential burden imposed by such a requirement. The Government are rightly demanding more than ever from our social landlords; in particular, that they deliver the quality homes and services that their tenants deserve and build the social homes that we need so much. Providers need to be able to focus on those priorities and we need to be cautious about imposing additional duties on them that might be better delivered through other means.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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I appreciate the noble Lord’s comments. I will check why that has not happened, but it is certainly on the GOV.UK website.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, for the error and thank him for his kind comment.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have taken part in the debate on this group of amendments, which consider a range of issues relating to the operation of the disposals measures in the Bill. The Bill is about supporting the supply of new social housing and to achieve this we must ensure that we are taking steps to protect the existing housing stock. In addition to the right-to-buy reforms we have discussed, the Bill’s new disposal notification requirement will ensure that councils and other social housing providers in the local area are notified before social homes are sold. That will improve transparency and provide earlier visibility where homes may be lost from the social housing sector, maximising opportunities for social housing providers to buy and retain social homes.

It is important that this new requirement is balanced against the need to ensure that private registered providers are still free to take their own responsible decisions about how they manage their assets, so they can keep their homes safe and decent and continue to invest for the long term. In some cases, this means selling homes, as we have heard from my noble friend Lady Warwick, which we do not seek to inhibit or restrict with this measure. Rather, this measure aims to strike the right balance, maximising opportunities to keep housing in the social sector while ensuring that registered providers can determine their own responsible approach to asset management.

Amendments 37 and 40 from the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Stoneham, would add the regulator of social housing to those bodies that must be notified prior to a disposal. The regulator plays a vital role in ensuring that our social landlords deliver the quality homes and services their tenants deserve. As part of the regulatory framework, private registered providers must be able to demonstrate a strategic rationale for disposals and understand the implications for their total social housing stock. I am not persuaded that requiring private registered providers to notify the regulator of a future disposal would enable them to better regulate against the standards that they set. The regulator plays no role in approving such disposals and that decision properly rests with the landlord. The regulator is already notified once a disposal has occurred, so that gives them an overview of the numbers and types of disposals that are occurring.

The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Best, would increase the period between notification and when a sale can occur from four weeks to eight weeks generally, and to 12 weeks in designated rural areas. Amendment 39 from the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, also seeks an extension to eight weeks. I hope noble Lords will appreciate there is no right or wrong period here for the time that must elapse before sale. It is a balance that seeks to ensure that enough time is provided as a minimum for the local authority, or any interested private registered provider, to ask questions and engage in dialogue but avoids unduly delaying the many sales that will continue to proceed.

I should also emphasise that this is the minimum period that must elapse. Where there is serious and active interest from other landlords, I would expect that a private registered provider would wish to engage and be flexible beyond that four-week minimum. However, I absolutely understand the noble Baroness’s point about the short length of time if decisions have to be taken, for example, through a democratic approval process or sometimes through other processes, so I shall reflect on this further.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, for Amendment 43, which seeks to ensure that, when exercising the regulation-making power in new Section 171B(6), the Secretary of State

“has regard to the operational and financial independence of private registered providers”.

I hope I can reassure, and already have reassured, the noble Baroness that the Government fully appreciate that private registered providers are just that: private bodies that should be left to make the decisions that deliver the best outcomes for them and their tenants.

Clause 11 is a light-touch measure to improve transparency and reflect good practice. The measure does not prevent disposal or restrict the means of disposal or to whom a property can be sold. It therefore does not cut across how private registered providers operate or how they legitimately manage their assets. New Section 171B sets out the type of sales that will be exempt from the notification requirement. These include sales to another registered provider and sales of shared ownership homes to the tenant. The regulation-making power that the amendment relates to enables categories of sales that are exempt from the notification provision to be extended. Imposing a constraint on the regulation-making power, as proposed by the amendment, would therefore achieve no benefit for providers. I also reassure the noble Baroness we have no imminent intention of using this regulation-making power. The power future-proofs the provision in Clause 11, allowing other categories of sale to be added in future if necessary—for example, should a new model of affordable housing be developed.

Amendment 44 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Best, would require that a notice included information as to whether it was a property that had been adapted to make it accessible for wheelchair users or others with mobility issues. The noble Lord may have predicted that I am sympathetic to what lies behind the amendment; losing properties from the social sector that have already been adapted to meet particular needs is particularly concerning. I will further consider this issue with the sector and whether that can be achieved without any unintended consequences, and I will work with the noble Lord on that.

Amendment 45 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, would extend further the information that must be required in all notices to include, for example, whether a property complied with the decent homes standard and its EPC rating. Amendment 48A would also require the private registered provider to inform the local authority and the regulator of the outcome of the proposed disposal. However, the particulars that must be included in the notice and contained in new Section 171C(1) are those that will be relevant and always of interest to other providers, such as the address and type of dwelling. Again, we have tried to strike a balance here about what legislation needs to identify as a statutory minimum to minimise burdens on landlords, recognising the ability of individual providers to make further inquiries on matters that might be of particular interest to them. Similarly, we do not wish to impose additional requirements on providers for further notifications post sale.

Amendment 46 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, would add additional requirements for disposals in designated rural areas, while Amendment 47 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, would restrict the number of areas caught by this measure by reducing the threshold to areas of 1,000 people or fewer—I think she agreed that we debated that part earlier on today. Again, I am sympathetic to what lies behind the amendment. As the noble Lord has set out, it is intended to ensure that a private registered provider and the relevant local authority discuss appropriate solutions to the possible disposal of affordable housing in sensitive rural communities well before a disposal has taken place. However, I am not entirely persuaded that the best way to achieve that outcome is by requiring annual reports on stock condition and statutory consultation on options for the regeneration of social housing prior to disposal. The provision in the Bill will ensure that a local authority is aware of a potential disposal, and I hope that will provide a local authority, particularly perhaps in rural areas, an opportunity to ensure that there is an effective dialogue about particular disposals and, perhaps more strategically, where it is aware of more than one. Requiring statutory consultation on the regeneration of social housing would likely place significant time and administrative costs on both local authority and registered provider and would materially impact the ability of registered providers to make the necessary commercial decisions required to manage their assets effectively and safely.

More broadly, through information published by the Regulator of Social Housing, local authorities can already access information about private registered provider-owned social housing stock within their local authority area, including information relating to whether stock meets the decent homes standard. An annual report on stock condition would be duplicative of these existing rigorous requirements and an unnecessary additional burden on providers. Therefore, while I am entirely sympathetic to what lies behind the amendment, I am not sure that legislating in this way is the best way to achieve that goal.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords for the amendments on data, digital systems and technology within the social housing framework. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Coffey and Lady O’Neill, for contributing.

Amendments 48, 49, 59, 60, 97 to 99, 114, 117 and 117B raise important questions about transparency, security and the effective use of data in delivering housing services. I will take each amendment in turn, beginning with Amendments 48 and 49 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. Amendment 48 sets out the details that the noble Lord would like to be included in a ledger prepared by housing providers. It would require the Secretary of State to publish annually an analysis of disposal data, cross-referenced with housing need data, that identifies areas of net social housing stock loss.

I appreciate that the noble Lord wishes to ensure that private registered providers maintain a robust record of their disposal notices. In turn, this supports the analysis he wishes government to undertake each year on disposals, housing need and the net loss of social homes. However, again, I think we must remain alive to avoiding undue requirements on registered providers, and indeed government, and also recognise the information and data already available.

The Regulator of Social Housing already collects and publishes data annually on sales by all large private registered providers. Local authorities already, as part of the plan-making process, publish their assessment of housing need. Finally, the Government already publish on GOV.UK statistics on affordable housing supply in England, including annual social housing sales and demolition figures, and statistics on the delivery of new affordable housing supply.

Amendments 59 and 60 seek to place cyber security requirements on landlords when handling data connected to the domestic abuse protections and would require the Secretary of State to establish a pilot programme to test zero-knowledge proof techniques. I must admit, that is not a term I had heard before I got involved in this debate. It is critical that the domestic abuse protection measures work in practice. I welcome the intent of this amendment and recognise the importance of landlords working sensitively and safely with data when considering cases and making a possession claim to the courts.

Social landlords work with tenants on a range of complex issues and can make possession claims on other sensitive issues such as anti-social behaviour. They are therefore very experienced in considering these matters. As the responsible data controllers, we expect landlords to handle tenant data responsibly. Social landlords are required to handle sensitive information securely and lawfully under UK data protection law, including the UK general data protection regulation—GDPR—and the Data Protection Act 2018. These laws are regulated and enforced by the Information Commissioner’s Office.

We will be working with landlords and the wider sector to ensure effective implementation in practice. That will include considering whether additional or further guidance or best practice is needed on data protection and confidentiality to support the safeguarding of victims as a result of these reforms. It is right that these considerations are alongside wider implementation, working with the sector. I therefore ask the noble Lord not to move his amendments.

Amendments 97 to 99 and 117B, also tabled in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, seek to put in place frameworks for data handling and sharing and the use of artificial intelligence in the social housing sector. I recognise and welcome the intent behind the amendments and support the aim of ensuring effective data protections. However, the amendments are not necessary. They would introduce prescriptive frameworks for data usage in social housing decisions, which would not be the right approach to achieving the desired aims. In gathering evidence and making decisions related to social housing, individual social landlords and multi-agency partners are best placed to identify the systems and approaches that best meet their needs. Local housing authorities, registered providers of social housing and government departments must already operate within UK data protection law, and decisions on data protection are taken within that context.

On Amendment 98, AI, if used well, has the potential to make organisations more efficient, effective and innovative. However, social landlords and other agencies should continue to be mindful of their data protection responsibilities and ensure compliance with UK law. When considering whether and how to use artificial intelligence, landlords and multi-agency partners must still consider data protection, including its lawfulness, fairness and transparency. Again, the Information Commissioner’s Office has published guidance on AI and data protection within this context. The amendments take a significantly prescriptive approach, requiring social landlords and partners to work within centrally set frameworks. We are of the view that the objectives of the amendments are better achieved within the current data protection legislative framework.

Amendment 117B seeks to require the Secretary of State to publish a report on the use of artificial intelligence and cyber security governance in social housing provision. I recognise the intention behind this proposal and the importance of ensuring that new technologies are used responsibly and securely. However, I do not consider a specific statutory reporting requirement to be necessary. Social landlords already operate within established data protection and cyber security frameworks, and wider work is under way across government to consider the appropriate use of artificial intelligence in public services. This would be an additional statutory requirement and risks duplication with existing work.

The amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, seeks to bring private registered providers within the scope of the Freedom of Information Act. We have already taken forward a targeted and proportionate approach to improving transparency for social tenants through the introduction of the social tenant access to information requirements, known as STAIRs. This will ensure that private registered providers proactively publish more information about their activities and share information with their tenants on request.

Following a direction issued to the Regulator of Social Housing in September 2025, this scheme will come into force on a phased basis over the coming year. From October 2026, private registered providers will be required to proactively publish information about the management of their social housing and, from April 2027, tenants and their representatives will be able to request access to information relating directly to the management of their homes. Unless it is reasonable not to, landlords will be required to fulfil their tenants’ requests for information within set timeframes. These requirements have been carefully designed to ensure that tenants have access to the information that matters most to them. With this in mind, the Government’s view is that a targeted, tenant-focused approach through STAIRs is the more appropriate way to deliver meaningful transparency for tenants.

I turn to Amendment 117, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, which would require local authorities to publish data on complaints received related to measures in this Bill. I hope that our commitment to introducing STAIRs demonstrates our commitment to transparency, which I share with him. However, we think it is important to look at complaints data in the round, looking at the whole service rather than focusing on specific measures. As such, the Housing Ombudsman publishes annual complaints reviews providing an assessment of complaints received across the whole sector. All registered providers of social housing are also required to collect and publish tenant satisfaction measures annually, including metrics on how satisfied tenants are with their landlord’s approach to complaints handling.

For all the reasons I have set out, while I recognise the important issues raised around data use, transparency and emerging technologies, the Government consider that these matters are best addressed through existing frameworks and ongoing policy development. I therefore ask noble Lords not to press their amendments.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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That is a good place for the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, to finish and a good place for me to start, because a central mission of the Government is to deliver the biggest increase in social and affordable housing in a generation, and a core objective of this Bill is to incentivise the building of more social housing.

I thank all noble Lords who have participated and submitted amendments in this group. We have already taken a significant wider step with the significant long-term investment—which I have spoken about many times—of £39 billion to build over 300,000 social homes over the next 10 years. I thank all noble Lords for the range of amendments on how we could further enable new supply and for the constructive debate on these important issues.

To respond to the amendments in turn, I will start with Amendment 51 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, which introduces a power for the Regulator of Social Housing to issue guidance relating to the large-scale transfer of stock. In addition to the power for the regulator to issue guidance, the amendment would require providers to have regard to any guidance issued, and the regulator’s guidance would relate to its fundamental economic objective, which includes supporting the supply of new homes and promoting private investment in social housing. The regulator already has a power in Section 195 of the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008 to issue codes of practice on matters relating to both its consumer and economic standards. Given that, I do not believe it is necessary to pursue this amendment.

However, I am aware that the aim of the amendment is to place a particular focus on the potential opportunities of large-scale transfers of homes to bolster the capacity of the sector to deliver more new homes. The noble Lord spoke enthusiastically at Second Reading about the need to explore new ways to increase the sector’s capacity to invest. In particular, he said we should be looking at how providers can, using the considerable assets that they own, partner with private investors to address the financial capacity constraints that many often face.

I assure the noble Lord that the Government are open to innovative ideas that meet our core principles, delivering more homes for social rent and creating high-quality sustainable places for the long term. I understand that the noble Lord had a fruitful meeting last week in relation to the ideas that he has. From those discussions, I hope he is reassured that my department is considering the many ideas that are being generated in this space.

In addition, the Regulator of Social Housing published last week, on 9 June, a discussion document, More and Better Social Homes, focusing on how its model of economic regulation could be updated to respond to a changing social housing sector. I met the Regulator of Social Housing last week to discuss this subject. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, is reassured that the Government are alive to the new ideas to bolster supply. Similarly, the regulator has just started an important discussion with the sector about how regulations should adapt to continue to be open to further innovation and change while effectively managing risk.

Turning to Amendment 71, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, the Government are strongly committed to a “brownfield first” approach, including for the development of social housing. We have been clear that brownfield land should be the first port of call. To support this ambition, the National Planning Policy Framework was revised in December 2024 to set out that proposals for brownfield should normally be approved unless substantial harm would be caused. We have expanded the definition of previously developed land in the framework and have recently consulted on further measures to strengthen support for development on brownfield land, including encouraging higher densities in sustainable locations and greater intensification of urban and suburban sites, and introducing a presumption that development inside settlement should be approved unless any adverse effects would be substantial enough to outweigh the benefits of doing so. In April, the Government committed to making regulations to ensure that strategic planning authorities have regard to the desirability of prioritising development on land that has been previously developed. All this demonstrates our strong commitment and continued support for brownfield development. As such, a requirement to produce a separate brownfield land social housing development strategy is unnecessary and duplicative, as the existing policy and relevant development plans already sufficiently achieve this aim.

Amendment 72, also tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, would introduce a new clause for the Secretary of State to conduct a review of regulatory burdens on social housing providers. We are committed to the regulatory system ensuring that landlords deliver quality homes and services while ensuring that providers can simultaneously drive up supply. Our decade of renewal plan, published in July last year, gave the sector much-needed clarity on the regulatory requirements they will need to meet in the coming years and confirmed a number of capacity-boosting measures to support them to do this.

We also engage closely with the sector in developing regulatory measures, with close consideration of the impact on it. We have published impact assessments for new measures that impact landlords. We continue to work closely with the sector to ensure that regulatory requirements are clear and deliverable. In the light of this and the impact assessments that we have already published regarding regulatory requirements, we believe that this amendment would be duplicative and therefore unnecessary.

Amendments 86 to 88 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, would introduce three new clauses for the Secretary of State to conduct reviews into accountability mechanisms and incentives for mayors and to establish a statutory framework to link their pay to performance. I am glad the noble Baroness is considering the role of elected mayors in our mission to deliver the biggest increase in social and affordable housing in a generation. For example, increased provision represents one way in which mayors can demonstrate progress against their integrated settlement objectives for housing and strategic planning, as well as supporting outcomes to reduce homelessness. Mayoral performance against these objectives and outcomes is monitored, with mitigations in place to deal with underperformance. That includes the possibility of direct government intervention, with the reintroduction of delegated funding limits, settlement suspension or funding clawback all options in the most serious cases.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)

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My Lords, before I speak about the Social Housing Bill, may I just wish our team England—well, it is “our team England” for some of us—all success this evening, and I hope we will be finished in time for some of us to see some of it.

I thank everyone for the lively and constructive debate we had on this Bill on Monday; it is a pleasure to be back to continue discussing it. Amendment 54, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, would require the Secretary of State to reconsider our one-for-one replacement policy. Relatedly, Amendments 55 and 56, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, would require a report assessing the viability of this requirement. Amendment 53, put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, would insert a clause requiring reports to the Secretary of State on sales and replacements. Separately, Amendment 58B from the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, would require a report to Parliament within a year on the impact of Clause 5 specifically.

We announced in our response to the consultation on right-to-buy reforms that we are removing the formal one-for-one right-to-buy replacement target. However, and I say this very specifically, this does not mean we are complacent about replacing homes sold. Far from it: we call on councils to go over and above replacing sold stock and to play a central role in the Government’s commitment to deliver a generational increase in social and affordable housebuilding. The one-for-one target was introduced in 2012, when the only social and affordable housing delivery that councils were asked to do was to replace homes sold under right to buy.

Our ambition far surpasses this now. We want to see more than one-for-one replacement and do not want a target that limits that ambition. As I set out my letter following Second Reading, this Bill is not the extent of our delivery ambition. Our ambition is to deliver 300,000 social and affordable homes over the course of the programme, and we are taking decisive action to reinvigorate council housebuilding, including supporting councils in our £39 billion social and affordable homes programme. We also invested £17 million last year to boost council housebuilding skills, and we have permitted councils now to combine their right-to-buy receipts with grant funding.

The Government’s impact assessment for the Bill forecast that England was on course to lose 26,000 social homes between 2026 and 2036. However, through our package of right-to-buy reforms, including allowing councils to keep all the receipts from sales—something we have long campaigned for from local government—and reducing cash discounts, alongside the provisions in the Bill, we now expect a net gain of around 18,000 homes over the same period, instead of what would have been a loss.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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I think the figures stated relate to what happens once we have enacted the Bill. As I have said many times, the ambition to deliver more social homes is not just about the replacement of right-to-buy homes. Right-to-buy sales may go down, but we still anticipate that the measures being taken in the Bill will result in a net increase of 18,000 homes over the period; whereas, because the sales were going up, we would have lost 26,000 homes. With the social and affordable homes programme adding to the overall total and the net increase in homes that we are seeing through the right-to-buy programme, which is 18,000 as opposed to a 26,000 loss, we will see an increase in social housebuilding.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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My Lords, the Government recognise the importance of regenerating existing social housing estates and the potential this can have to improve housing quality, energy efficiency and the overall supply of housing. Following Second Reading, I sent a letter to noble Lords outlining the Government’s intentions in this area; I hope noble Lords have had a chance to look at that.

I will respond first to Amendment 57, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill. While I appreciate the intention behind her amendment, we do not consider it appropriate to place a requirement of this nature in the Bill. As she will know only too well, estate regeneration is complex and highly place-specific. Decisions about funding, density and redevelopment are best taken through existing programmes and planning frameworks that can respond flexibly to local circumstances. As the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, said, it is very important that this is dealt with on a case-by-case basis at local level.

The amendment would also cut across existing policy development and spending decisions, including those taken through the spending review process, by mandating the production of proposals within a fixed timeframe, regardless of wider fiscal or delivery considerations. Therefore, while we share the objective of supporting effective and sensitive estate regeneration, we believe it is better taken forward through existing policy levers and funding mechanisms than through a new legislative duty.

I will make two further comments; first, on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham. The social and affordable housing programme supports regeneration where it delivers a net increase in social homes—which I set out some details of in the letter I sent out—as well as introducing wider reforms to standards, designs and quality. We can definitely support regeneration through that programme.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, referred to my efforts around regeneration—the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, was incredibly helpful to me during that process, so I recognise his significant expertise in that area.

There was also the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Young, about the housing action trusts. The noble Lord may be aware of the announcements made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State on Monday this week, on the right to manage and how we intend to extend it more widely and try to promote it to tenants, so that where a landlord is failing, they can exercise their right to manage. I know the Secretary of State is very keen to promote that. That said, I ask that Amendment 57 be withdrawn.

On Amendment 58 from the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, the Government are clear that supported housing has a vital role to play in supporting some of the most vulnerable in our society to live as independently as possible. We want to see the new supply of supported housing grow, which is why the social and affordable homes programme allows flexibility on grant rates, to help support accommodation where design and adaptation can result in higher costs.

In addition, the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act 2023 places a new statutory duty on local housing authorities to develop supported housing strategies. That will include a delivery plan setting out clear, time-bound actions for implementation. Any new requirement to set out a national strategy on the provision of supported housing will be duplicative of something that—as I see it—sits within the remit of local supported housing strategies. It would lack the detailed understanding that our local authorities have of specific needs in their local areas. For those reasons, I cannot support the amendment.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, for Amendments 83 and 107, which both seek to improve the understanding, and strengthen the management, of existing social housing stock. On Amendment 83, a substantial amount of data is already published on the condition and use of social housing, including through the English Housing Survey and the Local Authority Housing Statistics, covering many of the issues raised in the amendment. More broadly, and relevant to both amendments, the Government have already launched a review into how effectively social housing providers are managing and making best use of their stock.

In response also to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, this work is examining underoccupation, overcrowding, long term voids, tenant mobility, and how landlords can maximise the use of the homes they manage. The review is already under way, and we will report its outcomes later this year. In light of that, the Government do not consider it appropriate to legislate now for a further national audit or a statutory strategy.

Turning to Amendment 75, I want to be clear that illegal subletting is unacceptable. As the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, rightly said, it deprives those in genuine need of a social home and undermines confidence in the system. Tenants are responsible for fulfilling their obligations and complying with the terms of their tenancy agreement. They are also responsible for making sure that, when they apply for social housing in the first place, the information they give is accurate. Now that social landlords have much more access to online systems for checking applications on registers, I suspect that they are now rejecting far more applications where the information does not match up with the application concerned. Where a tenant has breached a term in their agreement, landlords may seek a possession order from the courts on the basis that there has been a breach of a term of the tenancy agreement, or housing fraud, or where one of the other statutory grounds for possession has been made out.

Where there are concerns about tenancy fraud, councils and landlords already have strong powers to investigate and take action—I believe that the noble Baroness opposite put those in place. We expect social landlords to manage their stock effectively, and anyone with evidence of a fraudulent tenancy should report it to the relevant local authority so that appropriate action can be taken. The Government are looking at this issue as part of the wider stock management review that I referred to. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, asked me how long properties are left vacant in between tenancies; I do not have that specific information to hand, but I will write to her on that point. We do not think that further legislation is needed here.

I am grateful, as ever, to the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for Amendment 116 and his powerful advocacy for it. I fully recognise the strength of feeling around the need to bring empty homes back into use. We do not believe that placing a new statutory duty on all local authorities to produce a detailed five year plan on empty homes is the right approach. Local authorities already have powers to identify and acquire empty homes and to bring them back into use. Many are actively doing so through locally tailored strategies that reflect their housing markets and priorities. As the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, said, there are many reasons why that takes longer than it should, and we should look at those obstacles. As the noble Lord said, we should not have empty homes while families live in temporary accommodation, and we are working with our councils to make sure that that does not happen.

However, the amendment would risk duplicating the existing planning and reporting requirements and would impose a significant administrative burden, regardless of whether empty homes are a material issue in a particular area. We are clear that progress on empty homes is best delivered through local flexibility, supported by existing powers and funding, rather than through a one-size-fits-all statutory process.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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Rather than the noble Baroness waiting for a letter from me, I can give her the answer to her question about the time spent between tenancies now. It is a median of 30 days.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this very thoughtful debate on these amendments. I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Best, for tabling Amendment 61, which addresses an important issue around the safety and security of tenants facing violence. I am very sympathetic to this amendment’s aims to protect all tenants of social housing providers registered with the Regulator of Social Housing and thank the noble Lord for bringing this important issue forward. I want to be clear that tenants should never fear losing their security of tenure if they need to move because of the threat of violence and abuse.

While I am supportive of the intent of the amendment, as drafted it will mean a fundamental shift in the role of the Regulator of Social Housing as currently set out in statute. The regulator’s statutory remit does not include intervening in individual tenancy decisions. The regulator focuses interventions on systemic issues, and this amendment would change this and risk cutting across established principles of regulatory best practice. Furthermore, the consumer standards set by the regulator already place on registered providers several requirements relevant to this amendment, including to work with partners to support victims of domestic abuse and to demonstrate how they deliver the outcomes of these standards.

In addition, there is already legislation in place that seeks to protect people at risk of violence in need of urgent rehousing. If a local authority grants a victim of domestic abuse a new tenancy for reasons connected with the abuse, it is required to give former or existing secure tenants another secure lifetime tenancy rather than a fixed-term tenancy. The social housing allocations framework dictates that where people are homeless or need to move on welfare grounds and apply to be rehoused through a local authority waiting list, they must be given reasonable preference—priority—for social housing. By extension, these protections can also engage private registered providers through the duty to co-operate with their local authority in housing people with priority. Homelessness legislation is also clear that, where appropriate, victims of serious violence are able to access support from homelessness services should they need to relocate, and that a vulnerable victim of domestic violence has priority need for accommodation.

Measures in the Bill to protect victims of domestic abuse also seek to achieve a similar aim to this amendment by ensuring that a joint tenant remains housed either in their original home or in suitable alternative accommodation where this is available. While it does not oblige a registered provider to act, it does empower it to do so. I therefore ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment. However, I recognise that this is an important issue and have asked my officials to consider this matter further. I or my officials or both would be happy to meet the noble Lord before Report to discuss this matter.

I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Best, for Amendment 62, which would introduce a new statutory route for registered providers of social housing to gain access to homes to meet statutory safety duties. I absolutely recognise the importance of ensuring that landlords are able to carry out essential safety checks, including gas and electrical inspections, and to ensure that smoke and carbon monoxide alarms are installed and functioning properly. I also recognise that access to homes is a growing concern. However, I am not persuaded that creating a new statutory access route is necessary to achieve this.

Landlords already have established routes for enabling access to homes. In addition, the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 and the Housing Act 1998 imply a right of access to tenancies where landlords are required to meet repairing obligations. Where a tenant refuses access, landlords can seek to remedy this through an injunction from the court. I reassure the Committee that, following a joint consultation with the Ministry of Justice on housing disrepair claims, we are currently analysing the responses to deepen our understanding of how the current process works, including what does not work or is unclear, so we can make sure that that process is as effective as possible.

Extending the needs of landlords to enable them to force access must be balanced, of course, against tenants’ existing rights, including the right to respect their private and family life and their home under Article 8 of the ECHR. Where a landlord has taken appropriate steps and cannot gain access, the Government made it clear in our response to the decent homes standard consultation that guidance will set out steps providers should take, and we will work with the sector and tenants to develop this guidance.

This amendment would introduce a separate, highly prescriptive statutory process alongside the existing routes and work we already have under way to consider access to homes for emergency safety reasons. In particular, the provision to authorise the use of reasonable force raises concerns about tenants’ rights and the potential impact on their sense of security in their own home. The amendment would also impose detailed procedural requirements that could reduce flexibility and delay action where timely access is needed to meet critical safety obligations. However, I recognise that this matter needs further consideration, so I intend to convene interested stakeholders to discuss access in emergency situations and identify the next steps.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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My Lords, I will respond first to the intention of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bexley, to oppose Clause 14 standing part of the Bill. I understand that this is a probing amendment seeking more detail on the Government’s rationale for repealing the powers. It is essential that local housing authorities have flexibility to manage their stock in a way that best enables them to meet the needs of their local communities. Clause 14 therefore removes provisions in the Housing and Planning Act 2016 that would have forced councils to sell their highest-value council homes whenever they became vacant. I say “would have forced” because these provisions were never implemented.

Even so, the presence of the provisions on the statute book had a very negative effect on local authorities’ spending plans, since they could not be certain of the income streams from these properties. The policy was intended to raise capital to supply new social homes but would ultimately have led to a net loss in social housing. The last Government chose never to implement these measures due to the negative impact they would have had on local authorities. We are now going one step further by repealing the provisions altogether. That time is now, and Clause 14 fulfils that commitment, so I commend it to the Committee.

I turn to Clause 15 and Amendments 66, 77 and 78. All these relate to the Government’s intention to repeal uncommenced provisions in the Housing and Planning Act 2016, which would have required most new secure tenancies offered by local authorities to be fixed term. I agree with much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, has just said. The Government fundamentally believe that people, families and communities all benefit from secure homes. That is why we enabled this for private renters through the Renters’ Rights Act. It would be entirely counterintuitive to remove that security from social housing tenants.

The probing amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, explores alternatives to lifetime tenancies, and Amendment 77, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, seeks to clarify that social landlords can continue to grant fixed-term tenancies. Nothing in the Bill prevents local housing authorities from granting fixed-term tenancies where they consider it to be appropriate—for example, to support time-limited resettlement schemes for Afghan and other refugee cohorts. The Bill does not change that. Schedule 3, paragraph 1 repeals uncommenced provisions that would have required most new secure tenancies to be granted on a fixed-term basis. Those provisions were never brought into force, and we are removing them to provide clarity. We want to make it clear that we support lifetime tenancies because they provide stability and security for tenants and help people put down roots in their communities. It is not right to require that most new tenants be offered fixed-term tenancies, as this would reduce their security.

Amendment 78 would require a review of the provisions in the Housing and Planning Act 2016 which would have replaced lifetime secure tenancies with fixed-term tenancies for new tenants. However, as we discussed, those provisions were never commenced, and the Bill repeals them. It is therefore not possible to review the measures. The Government already collect data on new social housing lettings, including tenancy type and length of fixed-term tenancies. We therefore already have an established source of information on how fixed-term tenancies are being used. The stock management review, which we are currently undertaking, is the right place to consider the issues highlighted for proposed review, rather than requiring a separate statutory review of provisions that were never brought into force. For those reasons, I ask that the amendments be withdrawn.

Turning to Clause 16, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, for Amendment 80, which would allow higher rents to be charged to higher-income social housing tenants. I note that the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, has set out her intention to oppose Clause 16 standing part of the Bill. The Government are reviewing both the statutory social housing allocations guidance and how social landlords are making effective use of their existing stock. Taken together, these amendments would, in effect, reintroduce the pay-to-stay policy, which was included in the Housing and Planning Act 2016 but never implemented. In fact, Amendment 80 would go even further than the current provisions in the Housing and Planning Act 2016 by requiring registered providers, as well as local housing authorities, to charge higher rents to higher-income tenants.

As I previously noted, these pay-to-stay provisions were never implemented, and the original provisions in the Housing and Planning Act 2016 received strong objections from noble Lords during the passage of that legislation. Indeed, the previous Government chose not to commence them as the costs outweighed the benefits. Social landlords already have flexibility to run discretionary schemes for higher-earning tenants, and it is right to maintain that approach. I echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, said: we want to avoid creating disincentives for tenants to increase their earnings, and avoid curtailing their aspirations and ambitions, through this process. For those reasons, these amendments are not necessary. I ask that they be withdrawn, and I commend Clause 16 to the Committee.

Finally, I turn to Amendment 70, from the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson. This would require a social landlord to conduct a tenancy review where a tenant is engaged in persistent anti-social behaviour. During the passage of the Renters’ Rights Act, I spoke about the challenges of tackling anti-social behaviour and drew on my 27 years of experience as a local councillor. No tenant should feel unsafe in their home as a result of the behaviour of others. Where behaviour is persistent and has a serious impact on neighbours and communities, landlords must be able to respond quickly and appropriately.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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My Lords, this group of amendments is about access to and eligibility for social housing. I want to make two opening points. First, it is important that debate on these issues is conducted carefully and respectfully, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, said. Language that stigmatises or mischaracterises people living in or applying for social housing is simply not acceptable. Secondly, I remind noble Lords that there is an extensive review of social housing allocations statutory guidance currently being undertaken, which will consider many of the issues raised as part of this group.

I will address specifically Amendments 69, 74, 82 and 84, from the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill. In 2024-25, 89% of lead tenants in new social housing lettings were UK nationals, 4% were European nationals and 8% were from outside the European Economic Area—broadly the same as the previous year. Eligibility for social housing is tightly controlled. If a person’s visa prevents access to state benefits or local authority housing assistance, they are not eligible for social housing. Only eligible people can join waiting lists and receive a tenancy. Where foreign nationals are eligible, they will have their housing needs considered on the same basis as other eligible applicants, in accordance with the local authority’s housing allocation scheme.

On 20 November, the Government announced the biggest reforms to the legal migration system in 50 years. These reforms will build a fairer immigration system for British people, while doing the right thing by migrants who have built their lives here and contributed to our community, the economy and public services. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, that I do not think we need to take lessons on asylum from the party opposite, which totally lost control of the system. That is still having an impact on housing and social housing now. We are addressing the system as a whole, which is the right approach, rather than stigmatising those who live in social housing. That is why we oppose Amendment 69. As the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, clearly outlined, the problem here is the lack of available social housing. We cannot blame other people for that —what we need to do is crack on and build some more.

Amendment 74, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, would give the Secretary of State power to issue guidance on eligibility for foreign public office holders and associated persons. That power and guidance are unnecessary. The Secretary of State already has a power under Section 196 of the Housing Act 1996 to issue guidance on social housing allocations. Foreign public office holders and associated persons are already subject to local authority allocation rules. Authorities can apply qualification rules such as local connection and income tests to reflect local priorities. I remember the very same debate in my own authority around the five-year local connection test. There is therefore no need for this power. It would not be appropriate for me to comment here in the Chamber on the specific case raised by the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, but I draw Members’ attention to the statement from Southwark Council on that issue.

Amendments 82 and 84, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, would both require assessments that we do not think are necessary. Amendment 82 would require an assessment of social housing demand arising from net migration. Social housing demand depends on many factors and the effect of migration is not direct, so a yearly assessment would not be proportionate. Demand for social housing comes from a multitude of factors that are likely to be correlated, including economic conditions and a range of government policies. It is artificial and potentially misleading to seek to neatly and reliably separate the impact of net migration from other factors.

Amendment 84 would require an assessment of the impact of temporary asylum accommodation on local social housing demand. It is important to reiterate that asylum seekers are not eligible for social housing, so they will not be adding to demand for social housing. Where an individual is granted refugee status, they may subsequently approach a local authority for housing support. Whether they access social housing will depend on meeting local authority allocation policies, including any local connection or residency tests.

I want to highlight the progress made on sharing asylum pressures more fairly across the country. Since 2022, the Home Office has shifted from a model where asylum accommodation was concentrated in a small number of areas to one where all local authorities share responsibility, with each allocated a defined, evidence-based share of demand.

Much of the data sought in the amendment is already available. My department collects and publishes extensive information on social housing waiting lists and allocations, including data on new lettings and household characteristics. The Home Office regularly publishes a breakdown by local authority of accommodated asylum seekers, and my department publishes the homelessness duties owed to those as a result of leaving asylum support as part of statutory homelessness statistics. With this explanation, I kindly ask that the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, does not press these amendments.

Amendment 68, also tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, seeks to require local housing authorities to take account of local connection when considering if an applicant for social housing should be awarded reasonable preference for an allocation of social housing. Local connection tests help local housing authorities manage social housing stock and are best placed to set the rules to ensure homes meet local housing pressures and that policies take account of the local context. We seem to have a bit of a theme of wanting to centralise these issues, but local authorities can set out in their allocation scheme that they will consider local connection as part of prioritisation. The vast majority, 89%, are choosing to consider it at an earlier stage as part of the qualification for the housing register, and we do not see the need to remove this choice from local housing authorities. I ask the noble Baroness not to press this amendment.

Amendment 113 would require local authorities to review applications on their housing register every three years. I of course support accurate and up-to-date housing registers and expect local authorities to review data regularly. However, it is for local authorities to determine how best to do that as part of how they manage their local social housing allocations schemes. This enables them to design schemes in a way that fits local priorities. A full review of the housing register might not always be the most efficient way to maintain an effective register. An applicant’s eligibility and qualification for social housing will be reassessed at the point of a home being allocated, so having ineligible households on a housing register does not mean that they will get social housing. With that, I kindly ask the noble Baroness not to press her amendment.

Amendments 91 and 93, tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Teather and Lady Bakewell, would require the Secretary of State to publish a report on access to social housing for former members of the Armed Forces and former offenders respectively. This Government are committed to making sure that those who have served and their families have access to social housing. Current and former members of the Armed Forces community benefit from strong protections in the allocations framework, including receiving the highest preference where they have housing need. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Teather, for recognising the work that the Government have done on that. Where local connection or residency tests apply, legislation exempts the Armed Forces community, regardless of when they last served, ensuring that they are not disadvantaged. There is also statutory guidance in place on improving access to social housing for members of the Armed Forces.

The noble Baroness, Lady Teather, referred to access to social housing even for those in the highest bands. I understand her point. That is why our Government have placed such a high priority on the delivery of new social housing. It is the lack of housing that prevents people in high bands getting it, not whether they are a priority. I will make further remarks on her valid points on adapted housing when they come up in a later group.

With our review of statutory guidance on social housing allocations already under way, we do not need to conduct separate reviews for specific groups such as former members of the Armed Forces or former offenders, so I kindly ask the noble Baronesses, Lady Teather and Lady Bakewell, not to press their amendments.

Amendment 94, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, seeks to ensure that local housing authorities get the information necessary to provide housing to prison leavers at risk of homelessness. This amendment focuses on an issue that my department and the Ministry of Justice are committed to tackling. I spoke to my noble friend Lord Timpson just yesterday about this, and my officials also met with the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, yesterday, as he said, to discuss his proposal in more detail. I am very grateful for the noble Lord’s work on this issue.

Supporting people into stable accommodation from their first night out of prison is critical to reducing homelessness and reoffending, as those without stable accommodation are more likely to reoffend, as we have heard. I support the intent of this amendment in reducing prison leaver homelessness. All prisons and probation services are already subject to the duty to refer under Section 213B of the Housing Act 1996. This requires them to refer anyone who is homeless or at risk of becoming homeless to a local housing authority of the person’s choice. We continue to work with colleagues in the Ministry of Justice to ensure that this process works as effectively as possible. My department also already collects data on the number of prison leavers provided with social housing by local housing authorities on release from prison and publishes this annually. Therefore, I ask that the noble Lord does not press his amendment, but my officials remain happy to have further conversations with him, if that would be helpful.

Finally, Amendment 81 seeks to create a new statutory requirement for the Government regularly to review income eligibility thresholds for social housing. As I have made clear, eligibility for social housing is considered through the allocations process. The Government do not set income eligibility thresholds; they are set by local authorities and private registered providers. This allows them to set thresholds that reflect the local context. I do not believe that it would be an appropriate use of resources for the Government to review every one of those independently set thresholds. The evidence is that it would cost more to implement than it would raise in revenue. A regular review would also penalise tenants for earning more and could lead to incentives to reduce working hours to avoid higher rent.

Income should not be equated with housing need or a lack of housing need. Some households may have additional needs or circumstances that mean that social housing remains the only viable or appropriate option for them. This can be the case, even where their income may be somewhat higher than others on the waiting list. Therefore, I ask that this amendment is not pressed.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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In my experience, most local authorities do exactly what the noble Lord is suggesting: they very carefully take account of the information submitted by applicants for the waiting register when they apply for it. I think that those processes are already in place.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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Again, I place great trust in our local housing authorities; they regularly assess their applicants. That has been even more the case as the availability of social housing has become more and more scarce. Local authorities take these responsibilities very seriously. If there were a change to a circumstance that had not been recorded, that would certainly appear at the time of the allocation.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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Local authorities take a great deal of care when people apply for the social housing register, because they need to make sure that they meet their local provisions. That includes local connections, whether they have income eligibility and so on. They take great care in that respect. Most local authorities conduct regular reviews of the information they have—I will not say “all local authorities”, because I do not have the evidence in front of me to suggest that, but I think that nearly all of them do so.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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My Lords, I start by responding to Amendment 76, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson.

I am pleased to reassure the noble Baroness and the noble Lord that the Government have already published guidance for social landlords on timeframes for repairs in the social rented sector, covering the first phase of Awaab’s law that came into force on 27 October 2025. This guidance includes information in relation to damp and mould hazards. This will be updated to include other hazards ahead of further phases of Awaab’s law coming into force. Guidance on implementing the revised decent homes standard will be published shortly; this will include further information about meeting a new damp and mould standard. Guidance on electrical safety was published in November 2025 and we have produced guidance that covers the operation and enforcement of the housing health and safety rating system. That guidance will be published this summer. The Housing Ombudsman’s complaint handling code sets out best practice that landlords are expected to follow to handle resident complaints effectively. For these reasons, I hope that the noble Baroness and the noble Lord are reassured that work is under way to address each of the issues in their amendment and are content to withdraw it.

Amendment 85 was tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Russell, and he knew that I would mention Part O. Part O of Schedule 1 to the building regulations requires that new residential buildings in England are built to mitigate the risk of overheating, protecting everyone, including the most vulnerable, the elderly and the very young. These requirements already apply to newly built social housing, ensuring that residents benefit from the same standards of overheating mitigation, regardless of their tenure type. The noble Earl made an important point on that, but it is clear that building regulations apply across tenures. A separate additional regulatory standard on top of this would be likely to add unhelpful duplication and complexity to the design and delivery of new social homes. Therefore, the Government cannot support this amendment. I kindly ask the noble Earl not to press it.

I turn to the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, in relation to accessibility. First, Amendment 100 would introduce a new statutory “inclusion by design” principle. Tenants must be at the heart of our social housing system and, to achieve this, landlords must actively engage with tenants and provide a range of opportunities for them to influence and scrutinise decisions.

To support the accessibility of services for all, first, I note that all social landlords are already subject to existing duties under the Equality Act 2010, including the public sector equality duty where it applies. In addition, the social housing regulatory framework already places clear expectations on registered providers that their services must be inclusive for all tenants. The regulator’s transparency, influence and accountability standard specifies that registered providers must take action to deliver fair access to, and equitable outcomes from, housing and landlord services for all tenants. They must also provide accessible support that meets the diverse needs of tenants.

The concern with this amendment is that it would create a broad new statutory duty across the whole Act, without clearly defining how it would interact with those existing equality, regulatory and housing duties. That would risk duplication and uncertainty, as well as additional administrative burdens, without necessarily improving outcomes for tenants. We also do not think it is necessary to require guidance to be published and reviewed on a fixed statutory timetable.

Formal work has already begun that will evaluate the effectiveness of the new regulatory regime by 2028, to make sure that it is delivering the improvements needed to fundamentally shift how residents are treated and to create a transparent and trustworthy system with residents’ views and needs at its heart. I am responsible for working with the Regulator of Social Housing as part of my ministerial responsibilities and I have spoken to it specifically on the issue of tenant engagement; I take it very seriously. For those reasons, I do not believe the amendment is needed.

On Amendment 102, the Government believe that everyone should be able to live in a home that is suitable for their needs. Building regulations are already in place, specifying the standards to which new or materially refurbished homes must adhere. Regarding accessibility, the existing M4(1) standard is the default, ensuring reasonable provision for access to and use of a dwelling and its facilities. The enhanced, optional M4(2) standard relates to housing meeting the different needs of occupants, including disabled individuals, and allowing adaptation to meet the changing needs of occupants over time. The M4(3) standard relates to requirements for wheelchair users, where provision must be made to allow simple adaptation of the dwelling for their needs.

These regulations, and the statutory guidance accompanying them, already apply to new building work or refurbishment work. I had a meeting with Minister Kinnock from the Department of Health and Social Care to consider what more we need to do in relation to this. We propose to go even further. The Government have recently consulted on revisions to the National Planning Policy Framework that will require local plans to set out the proportion of new M4(2) and M4(3) housing that must be delivered in new developments, to meet or exceed identified needs. In relation to M4(2), we propose to make it clear that these requirements should never be lower than 40%.

On the provision of an accessible housing register, we will be considering this further as we update the allocations guidance. I thank the noble Lord for his amendment, but we believe that our existing building regulations will help ensure the accessibility of new and materially refurbished homes, and any new standard risks duplication. For homes and households that require heightened adaptations, local authorities are best placed to understand and cater for the needs of people in their local area. Therefore, we cannot support this amendment.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, for Amendments 117C and 119B. I fully recognise the importance of ensuring that services are accessible, inclusive and easy to use, and the Government are clear that tenants should be able to engage with their landlords through channels that meet their needs. To this end, there are already well-established accessibility requirements, including existing standards and legal duties, which apply to digital services and ensure that providers consider accessibility as part of service design.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, for her amendments on shared ownership and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, for moving them.

Shared ownership has an important role to play in supporting households into home ownership who would otherwise struggle to purchase a suitable property. We had extensive debates on this during the Renters’ Rights Bill and, like the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Young, for his work on this. That is why we have committed to continue supporting the delivery of shared ownership via the £39 billion social and affordable homes programme. Through the launch of the programme, we have introduced new measures to support the delivery of shared ownership and to set clear expectations for providers to improve the customer experience that we have heard about this evening.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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My Lords, we seem to have wandered a long way this evening from the straightforward purpose of the Bill: to adjust right to buy, to give confidence to local authorities to deliver social housing, and to protect domestic abuse victims. Anyway, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, for his amendment. He says he is disappointed. I have probably been disappointing the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, for most of the last 15 or so years that we have known each other, so I am just carrying on in that vein, I am afraid.

We recognise how important home adaptations are in enabling disabled people to live as independently as possible in a safe and suitable environment. Disabled facilities grant funding helps adapt over 55,000 homes annually, helping disabled people and their families live independently, reducing demand for health and social care support. It is also important that local authorities make the best use of the homes they have available, particularly any adapted properties.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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My Lords, this group of amendments concerns a range of mechanisms to strengthen the tenant voice and engagement across the social housing sector. It is a bit odd, as the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, said, to be in this parallel universe where the Conservative Benches are arguing for more regulation—I find that a bit strange.

Matters relating to tenant voice and engagement are already central to the Regulator of Social Housing’s existing consumer standards. The regulator’s approach is proactive and outcomes-based, setting clear standards that providers must deliver, while allowing flexibility on how those outcomes are achieved. On that basis, my concern is that a number of these amendments would introduce new statutory requirements that would duplicate or cut across the existing regulatory framework. This would result in unnecessarily prescriptive requirements and potential confusion for the sector, without materially improving outcomes for tenants or communities.

I turn briefly to Amendment 90, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, and Amendment 109, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson. I am not persuaded that additional statutory guidance from the Secretary of State is necessary. Core elements of these amendments and any subsequent guidance are already central to the regulator’s regulatory standards.

The consumer standards require providers to deliver safe and well-managed homes, to engage with tenants and take their views into account, to work with partners to tackle anti-social behaviour, and to support the well- being of the communities in which they operate. The regulator already has the power, through Section 195 of the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008, to issue codes of practice on matters relating to its consumer and economic standards. These can be used to amplify requirements that registered providers must deliver, and the regulator exercised this power in 2024 in relation to consumer standards.

The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, raises the question of the balance between the development of new supply and the social responsibilities of registered providers. If he has not been notified of this, on 9 June, the regulator published a discussion document, More and Better Social Homes, which explores how the regulatory framework can be adapted to support the delivery of more and better social housing. I hope the noble Lord is reassured that the objectives behind the amendments are already central to requirements placed on registered providers by the regulatory standards and is content to withdraw.

On Amendment 110, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, I recognise the importance of governance underpinning effective services for tenants. However, as I said, the regulator already has a proactive role in assessing how far providers perform for their tenants, including through the regulation of consumer standards and routine inspections. The areas identified in the amendment, including tenant voice, accountability, transparency and performance, are already core components of the framework.

I turn to Amendment 111, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill. While oversight of registered social housing providers is important, it would be disproportionate to require a senior officer of a registered social housing provider to attend a local authorities’ overview and scrutiny committee. However, the Government will keep this under review, as part of the conversations we are having on local scrutiny committees, given their larger geographical footprint. It is important to establish scrutiny at the appropriate level. Imposing a statutory duty at local authority level, when a similar and more flexible function is being introduced at mayoral level, would be duplicative and may be unnecessary.

On Amendment 112, also tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, I recognise the importance of landlords being transparent and accountable to their tenants in supporting tenant voice and accountability. To that end, registered providers are already required to publish information through the tenant satisfaction measures. These measures have been carefully designed to ensure that tenants have the information they need to hold their landlords to account, and to ensure consistency across the sector while balancing the burden on landlords. In addition, private registered providers already submit data to the regulator through the annual statistical data return, and local authorities provide that information through the local authority housing statistics. We do not consider it necessary or proportionate to mandate the publication of quarterly void property performance metrics. This would introduce additional reporting burdens without any clear benefits to tenants.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, for the amendments on powers in Clause 17. I note that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee concluded:

“There is nothing in this Bill which we would wish to draw to the attention of the House”.


That conclusion gives important context for these amendments.

On Amendment 118, this is a standard consequential power that is found in many Bills and is limited to making a provision that is consequential on the Act. It cannot be used to introduce new policy; its purpose is to ensure that the legislation operates coherently once enacted, including by making any necessary technical changes to existing legislation. The Bill already provides an important safeguard where regulations under Clause 17 amend or repeal primary legislation. They are subject to the affirmative procedure, so both Houses must actively approve them. Removing the power entirely could leave technical inconsistencies or gaps on the statute book and make implementation less effective. It would mean that even minor consequential amendments to primary legislation would require further primary legislation. For those reasons, we consider the power necessary, proportionate and appropriately safeguarded.

On Amendment 119, the Bill already ensures enhanced scrutiny where regulations amend primary legislation. Applying the affirmative procedure to all consequential regulations would be disproportionate. Additionally, the power is limited to making provision that is consequential on the Act, and it is intended to be used only to ensure the effective implementation of the Act and to maintain a coherent legislative framework. I believe that the existing approach strikes the right balance. I hope the points I have made have provided some comfort to the noble Lord and the noble Baroness, and I ask them to withdraw their amendment—and come on, England!

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)

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My Lords, it is probably every Minister’s worst nightmare to stand up in the House just a few minutes after the Secretary of State has announced that he is no longer part of the Government. I hope noble Lords will forgive me for thanking our Secretary of State, Steve Reed, for his service to housing, local government and communities. He has worked tirelessly in his time to ensure that our places and the people in them can achieve their full potential. I wish him well for the future. I know he will continue to serve from the Back Benches, or wherever else he ends up in government. Thank you very much, Steve.

It is a great pleasure to bring the Report stage of the Social Housing Bill before the House today. My town was built to house people from war-torn London in 1946, and my passionate belief that good homes are the foundation for people and places achieving their potential comes from that. Our Government are delivering the biggest increase in social and affordable housing in a generation. In July 2025 we set out a plan for a decade of renewal in social and affordable housing, including a reinvigoration of council house building, and we have since launched a new 10-year £39 billion social and affordable homes programme, with a focus on maximising delivery and increasing the supply of social rent homes.

The Bill supports councils to build more homes, alongside funding through the Council Housebuilding Support Fund, allowing councils to combine right to buy receipts with a social and affordable homes programme, extending preferential public works loan board borrowing and providing a 10-year rent settlement to give councils and providers greater certainty to invest in supply. Our new Prime Minister recently wrote:

“If you do not give people a good home, what chance have they got of having a good life?”,


which I agree with. His pledge this morning was not to end homelessness—although I am sure that is his ambition too—but to end rough sleeping, and I absolutely support that wish.

In Committee I stressed the narrow focus of the Bill on the three key issues that are its purpose: enabling local government to build new social housing while keeping alive the aspiration for those tenants who wish to do so to buy their home; supporting domestic abuse victims so that they are not re-victimised by the housing system; and removing some former social housing provisions that have never been enacted. I am grateful to noble Lords for discussions that have been broad and constructive, and, in order to assist your Lordships, I have provided details of two parallel pieces of work that I hope have assisted with the wider issues raised by Peers: the thoroughgoing review of statutory guidance on allocations, and the comprehensive review of stock management. I have also asked today for all sources of data on social housing to be circulated, which I understand has been done; I hope that those will be helpful.

Amendments 1, 2 and 3, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bexley, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, repeat amendments already made in Committee. As such, I have already set out the rationale for increasing the minimum eligibility period for right to buy and made it clear that Clause 1 should stand part of the Bill. I have also confirmed that we have no intention of applying this clause only to new tenancies. These amendments would undermine the chief aim of our right to buy reforms, which is to preserve existing social housing stock while ensuring that long-standing tenants continue to be able to buy their homes.

Three years hardly represents a significant period of investing in a property through rental payments. In consultation there was strong support—from 81% of respondents—for increasing the eligibility period, and indeed 10 years is the average tenancy length for someone buying under the scheme currently. Excluding existing tenancies would mean that the existing rules continued to apply to the great majority of council housing tenants, and we would continue to see homes being sold as early as three years after a tenancy was secured.

To respond to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, about numbers, the reduced maximum cash discount levels still offer tenants significant financial support to buy their own home. Updated modelling suggests that a long-run average of around 1,500 council tenants annually will be able to buy their homes under the new discounts. Under the previous baseline, the system was projected to deliver a loss of around 26,000 homes between 2026 and 2036. By contrast, following the reduction in maximum cash discounts in November 2024 and the implementation of the Bill, we expect to see a net gain of around 18,000 homes in the same period. Taken together, this approach ensures that the scheme remains accessible and fair and delivers better value for the public while supporting tenants into home ownership. For these reasons, we oppose those amendments.

Amendment 4 seeks to retain the existing statutory timescales for processing right to buy applications by removing Clause 4 from the Bill. The Government do not support that. We have heard from social landlords that additional time is needed to process more complex cases—for example, in relation to valuation issues or safeguarding concerns. Additional time will also help landlords to undertake appropriate checks and identify cases that may require further investigation before a sale can proceed. Importantly, these revised timescales are maximum periods, not targets. We expect landlords to continue to process applications as quickly as possible, and tenants will continue to benefit from the existing statutory protections where delays occur.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate on these amendments. I will now address those amendments relating to the operation of the disposals measure in the Bill. This measure is simple: it will ensure that councils and other social housing providers in the local area are notified before social homes are sold. In doing so, we hope it will do what we all want it to do, which is to maximise opportunities for other social housing providers to buy and retain social homes.

The new requirement must of course be balanced against the need to ensure that private registered providers are free to make their own responsible decisions about how to manage their assets, so they can keep their homes safe and decent and continue to invest for the long term. I am pleased that noble Lords are largely supportive of the measure, and I have been grateful for the opportunity to discuss these issues raised in Committee with noble Lords ahead of this debate.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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The point I was trying to make was that the Regulator of Social Housing is undergoing a complete review of that subject at the moment. I think it is appropriate for us to feed all that into the regulator’s review and let it work out with the sector what information is appropriate.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, for tabling Amendments 23 and 25, and to the noble Baronesses, Lady Watkins of Tavistock and Lady Thornhill, for their support. I recognise the constructive and persistent way in which the noble Lord has raised issues relating to shared ownership throughout the passage of the Bill and, indeed, in previous Bills. In my responses, I in no way want to undermine the difficulties of shared owners, which I understand have caused great anxiety and for which I am deeply sympathetic. In a moment, I will come on to the work that the department is doing to provide support for some of the issues the noble Lord raised.

I turn first to Amendment 23. Shared ownership landlords are independent bodies and decisions about the repurchase of individual homes sit with them. However, landlords already have the option to buy back homes, including where shared owners are unable to sell due to building safety issues. Landlords can already use their recycled capital grant funding to cover up to 100% of the cost of that.

Furthermore, allocating social and affordable homes programme grant funding for use on shared ownership buybacks would not be conducive to the core strategic objective of that new programme, which is to maximise supply, particularly of social rent homes. We expect landlords to set out any buyback policies, or confirm if they do not have one, on their websites. Ultimately, the solution for those struggling to sell their homes due to building safety issues is the remediation of unsafe buildings.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, including the noble Lord, Lord Best, the noble Baronesses, Lady Warwick, Lady Neate, Lady Lister, Lady Teather and Lady O’Neill. I will be moving government Amendments 30 to 75; noble Lords will be pleased to know that I will move them en bloc and not one at a time.

This Bill introduces important changes to give greater security and stability to social tenants who are victims of domestic abuse while giving landlords stronger powers to take action against perpetrators. While these protections have been warmly welcomed, we have listened closely to the legitimate concerns raised that the Bill’s protections, which focused on abuse involving a resident partner or that partner’s resident family member, are too narrow. They risk excluding victims of familial abuse in non-partner relationships, such as abuse between adult parents and adult children, siblings or other relatives. The government amendments close that gap. I especially thank my noble friend Lady Hyde for her engagement on this issue.

The amendments align the Bill’s provisions more closely with the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. by focusing on the victim who is personally connected to the perpetrator tenant and who occupies the home or has had to leave because of the abuse. They additionally make a number of consequential changes to who the court should consider when examining reasonableness under the discretionary ground or approving suitable alternative accommodation in joint tenancy cases. These amendments will deliver a fairer outcome for victims of familial domestic abuse. They demonstrate our Government’s commitment to engaging with the House and stakeholders, and to strengthening the Bill where there is a clear case to do so.

Commenting now on Amendment 28, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Best, for tabling this amendment. It raises the serious issue of how the housing system responds when an existing social housing tenant needs to move urgently for their or their household’s safety. I thank the noble Lord for his constructive engagement with me on this issue. I also thank Helen Hayes MP; it was truly shocking to hear of the circumstances of her constituent, Georgia, and the shocking murder of Georgia’s son, Damarie Roye.

I agree that social housing tenants should not have to choose between their personal safety and the security of their home. There are existing protections: the social housing allocations framework requires that, where people need to move on welfare grounds, they must be given reasonable preference for social housing. Statutory guidance encourages local authorities to give additional preference to those fleeing violence. The Renters’ Rights Act will strengthen security of tenure for social housing tenants on assured tenancies from October 2027. However, I recognise the importance of considering whether we can go further to ensure that those who need to move for safety do not lose the security and associated benefits of their tenancy, which may have been built up over a number of years.

We need to consider carefully how any new duties on landlords would operate, particularly in assessing whether there is a threat to safety and where a landlord does not have suitable accommodation. We believe that further work is needed before any solution to this policy issue can be put forward. I have asked officials to explore this matter at pace, and we are keen to continue discussions with the noble Lord, Lord Best, and stakeholders on possible solutions, ahead of the Bill moving to the other place. I hope the noble Lord will understand how committed I am to ensuring that nobody should have to choose between their safety and their tenancy.

I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Best, for Amendment 29, which seeks to introduce a statutory route for registered providers of social housing to gain access to homes to fulfil their statutory safety duties. Since he last introduced this amendment, we have had a helpful discussion about these issues and my officials have been working closely with sector bodies. I recognise that there is growing concern from the sector that a lack of legal clarity leaves it unable to conduct necessary tests and repairs, and risks tenant safety.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, for Amendment 77. I recognise that the intention is to ensure that social housing stock is being used as effectively as possible by requiring local housing authorities to review lifetime secure tenancies at least every five years. But the Government’s position is clear: we support secure tenancies because they provide stability and certainty for social housing tenants in the long term, and for the communities in which they live. This is especially important for families, older people, disabled people and other vulnerable households, who need a stable and secure home and the ability to put down roots in their communities that comes with the certainty that lifetime secure tenancies offer.

Local housing authorities already have tools to manage their housing stock and to support tenants who wish to move to accommodation that better meets their needs. Local authorities can carry out checks to assure themselves that tenants are meeting the terms of their tenancies. I agree that social homes should be used as effectively as possible to support housing need and that we should support landlords to ensure that this is the case. That is why the Government have launched a review into how effectively social housing providers are using their properties. This work is considering how landlords understand tenants’ changing needs and support tenant movement, including where changes result in tenants underoccupying homes. I wrote to all noble Lords ahead of Report with further details of this review. It will report later this year and will be used to help inform future policy development. It is important that we let this work conclude to better understand current practices and challenges before taking action.

On the extensive social housebuilding programme, the answer to lack of supply and to the people on the waiting list is: build more social housing. We have an extensive social housebuilding programme. Inevitably, it had a lead-in time but, now that funding is being allocated, it will quickly accelerate—and I suspect it might accelerate even more quickly now we have new management in place, but that is to be seen later.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

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But it is a programme that we started on, immediately we came into power, to fill the gap left by not building social homes for all those 14 years before we were in power. I appreciate that it takes a bit of time to get going, but we need to make a start on it, get the money out to those who will build the homes, and get them built.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, for Amendment 78. I understand that this amendment seeks to ensure that social housing is focused on those most in need. However, we do not believe that this is the right approach. As I outlined in Committee, the provisions on high-income tenants contained in the Housing and Planning Act 2016 have never been implemented. To provide regulatory certainty, Clause 17 repeals the provisions. The noble Lord, Lord Young, spoke about ducking tough decisions. These measures were never implemented by the previous Government due to concerns that administrative costs would likely outweigh the revenue raised. We also want to avoid creating disincentives for tenants to increase their earnings.

Furthermore, income should not be equated with housing need or indeed a lack of housing need. Some households earning higher incomes may have additional needs that mean that social housing is the only appropriate option for them. This is an important consideration. Social landlords already have flexibility to run discretionary schemes for higher-earning tenants if they wish to do so, and they will retain this flexibility. For those reasons, I ask that these amendments are not pressed.