Social Housing Bill [HL]

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 15th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to have the opportunity to take part in this debate in Committee. I will not reiterate the comments I made at Second Reading, because I talked then about family provision in social housing and we will discuss that specific issue in later groups. I begin by congratulating my noble friend Lady O’Neill of Bexley on her promotion to the Front Bench, and it would be remiss not to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Curran, on her promotion. I think it is a promotion—anyway, she is back on the Front Bench.

As has already been said by my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, right to buy was one of the most transformative policies in British political history. It resulted in 58% of people owning their homes in 1981, being boosted to 69% by 2001, although that figure has now fallen back to 63%. Boosting home ownership boosts self-reliance, and 81% of people in most recent polls support the concept of owning their own home and being part of a property-owning democracy. In fact, 1.9 million homes were sold following the Housing Act 1980 to date, affecting 4.5 million social tenants. As we heard at Second Reading, right to buy improves social mobility, especially for those working people on low or modest incomes. We also heard demonstrable, empirical evidence from the London School of Economics about the impact being in homes that were bought under right to buy had on the educational attainment of children and young people. That was a longitudinal study, as noble Lords will remember.

I must say in passing that the views of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, are always sincere and well-resourced with research, but on this occasion I cannot agree with her for the reasons that my noble friend made clear. Capital receipts from right to buy were £51 billion, of which £47 billion was retained and remitted to His Majesty’s Treasury. The most recent sales in England in 2024-25 raised almost £800 million from 7,494 sales.

The important point to remember is that between 2012 and 2025, 48,000 units were replaced directly from recycled right to buy receipts back into the social housing stock. It is also important to nuance the arguments and remember that we had the renaissance of housing associations and alternative housing providers in that period, so it is not altogether correct to look at council housing and social housing just within the context of local authority housing.

There are a number of myths about right to buy, which is one of the reasons why I oppose the noble Baroness’s amendment. As my noble friend said, the level of social housing that we have is still high by international standards. I think we are fourth in Europe out of about 25 countries—significantly more than France, Italy, Germany and other large countries.

The fall in public sector housing construction began well before the advent of right to buy in 1980. Social housing waiting lists were, in fact, bizarrely stable when right to buy was at its most popular in the 1980s. There is a reason for that: social housing waiting lists were derived as a function of demand, not supply. So, in the period between 1981 and 1997, social housing waiting lists fell from 1.2 million to 1 million, in a period when we were selling off 100,000 council homes under right to buy. The problem, of course, was that the wider housing market was overheating, with a rise in real housing prices of 108% between 1997 and 2009.

The final myth is about discounts. Yes, you can say that discounted money is dead money to the taxpayer, but that criticism has to be misplaced. If one looks at the cost of, for instance, significant maintenance by local authorities and the payment of housing benefit then those alleged costs are significantly lower than claimed by those who oppose right to buy.

As my noble friend said, by abolishing right to buy we would remove the revenue and income stream for building more social homes, and that cannot be right. We would need to have an alternative if we were going to get rid of right to buy. Although I might not wholly agree with this Government’s objectives as outlined in the Bill, the noble Baroness’s proposal does not make sense because it would mean fewer homes for people who needed them, and that cannot be good. On that basis, I oppose the amendment.

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and a part-owner of rented property in West Yorkshire.

One of the strikingly important things for me, and I hope for all noble Lords, is the positive outcomes for young people exposed to the right-to-buy scheme from the 1980s. This is not wishful thinking on my part; it is clearly shown in research from the London School of Economics. I referred to this at Second Reading, but it is worth reminding noble Lords about.

The right to buy guaranteed detectable, sizeable school performance gains among young people exposed to it, increasing good grades in high-stakes exams. There is also evidence that there is an income effect, which gives more financial stability to households through home ownership, and there is a crime reduction effect from public housing tenants becoming owners of their own home. It is disappointing that such prejudice against right to buy is likely to remove from social housing tenants the opportunities which right to buy has created for so many.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, it is good to kick off our first day in Committee on this important Bill. As noble Lords will know from our comments and speeches at Second Reading, we broadly support the Bill, so I will endeavour not to make Second Reading speeches and to be as brief as possible, given our support for it.

We support tighter restrictions on right to buy—I think the evidence is clear—but we do not believe in its total abolition. As was said over and over by noble Lords at Second Reading, over 2 million houses have been sold this way since 1980 but nearly 1 million more have been sold than replaced. Looking at last year’s figures, 7,500 homes were sold and only 3,600 were replaced. More worrying was the net loss of nearly 4,000 homes last year. Losses outstripped gains. This is not sustainable, yet the need grows. Homelessness rates are growing. The number of families in temporary accommodation is growing. My local authority is now reaching the point that many others have already reached with the impact on their budget of temporary accommodation.

However, we believe that a total ban is not the right answer, which is why we cannot support Amendment 1 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, because housing need is not the same everywhere and local councils understand their own housing pressures best. In some areas, right to buy should definitely be paused; there should be a moratorium. In others, it should be more tightly controlled, but always—in the view of our Benches—with one condition: homes sold must at least be replaced on a one-for-one basis, if not better.

A blanket ban would remove that flexibility. It would replace local judgment with central diktat, and we believe that some transition to home ownership is aspirational and desirable. We are certainly not coming from the same place as Conservative colleagues in it being a holy grail. A healthy housing market should be able to staircase ownership for some people without the significant loss of much-needed social homes—hence some of our later amendments, which I hope will make sense as we go through. Be assured, we do not mean it to enable some local authorities to abrogate their responsibility to provide social housing of all types. We would definitely encourage more than one-for-one replacement. We want reform, not abolition, and devolution, not central diktat.

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Moved by

[Baroness Eaton]

2: Clause 1, page 1, line 6, leave out “ten” and insert “five”
Member’s explanatory statement
This probing amendment seeks to enable a debate on the Government’s decision to extend the right to buy eligibility period from 3 years to 10 years.

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to start the debate on this second group of thoughtful and varied amendments. We have just heard a spectacular defence from noble Lords of the right-to-buy scheme, which the Government seem determined to restrict quite drastically throughout the provisions in the Bill. In Clause 1, the Bill proposes to extend the qualifying period for right to buy from three to 10 years. I will focus on Amendment 2 in my name, which is a probing amendment as to the rationale behind this extension.

I already have concerns that tenants of social housing who are able and willing to buy their property should be forced to wait longer. I understand that the Government, in their manifesto, committed to increase the protections on newly built social housing, but this provision would affect existing social housing tenants too. There may be many tenants right now who are on the cusp of reaching the three-year eligibility requirement, with high hopes of finally being able to own their own home, but who will have to wait an additional seven years when the Bill becomes law, unless it is amended. That is a long time to wait and be on welfare. If the Government insist on an extension to the qualifying period, why not extend it to five years rather than 10, as my amendment suggests? Can the Minister explain what evidence base there is behind that number? In addition, exactly how much social housing stock is a 10-year extension expected to protect for us—as opposed to five, say—and how has the impact on existing tenants been assessed, if at all?

We must ensure that 10 years is not just an arbitrary number chosen randomly. If there is a justification, it should be outlined and explained clearly for the House to scrutinise. We must also remember that we are talking about real people living in social housing right now—people with hopes and aspirations, whose rights to buy a property should not be treated carelessly or without thought. What data do the Government have, if any, as to how many tenants are about to reach the three-year qualifying period? Can the Minister please share that data with the Committee? I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response and from other noble Lords who have tabled amendments in this group. I beg to move.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this Committee. I apologise to noble Lords that I was not able to be in your Lordships’ House for Second Reading. I declare my relevant technology interests as set out in the register, variously as adviser to the Crown Estate, Endava plc and Simmons & Simmons LLP, and as non-executive director of Avalanche (BVI), Inc and the Avalanche Foundation.

In my set of Committee amendments, I want to assist the Bill by bringing the strands of inclusion and innovation and talent and technology through every possible supportive clause of the Bill. In this group, I speak to Amendments 3, 10 and 13 in my name.

Amendment 3 sets out provisions to establish a digital life-cycle service for right to buy. In doing so, it would provide greater empowerment, knowledge, connection and communication to those who may wish to avail themselves of the right-to-buy service. This would be an effective and important use of digital technology and, through that, could play a positive part in enabling digital inclusion. Critically, the amendment does not seek to rely just on digital; it sets out provisions for alternative means of connection to ensure this life-cycle service could be achieved through systems such as text messaging. Amendment 10 would develop this in the context of fraud requirements, clearly supporting the measures in new Section 124A inserted by Clause 4.

Amendment 13 further seeks to use the benefits of technology to provide an immutable record—an audit trail—which is tamper-proof for all Section 122 applications. In 2017, I wrote a report on blockchain called Distributed Ledger Technologies for Public Good. At that stage, I wanted to set out not just the potential public use cases but the public value cases in which the distributed ledger and other technologies could assist across the state. My fear was that, if these potential use cases and value cases were not set out, the debate would get stuck and, whenever blockchain was mentioned, it would naturally be assumed that it meant just Bitcoin, which had nothing to say on beneficial provision for operations of the state across potentially all government departments and local authorities. Amendment 13 is therefore one such potential use case or value case, where there could be a clear audit trail, available for all, of use to the department, and indeed the regulator, with the safety, security and knowledge that it is a clear, accurate, immutable record of applications and any potential fraud hearings and investigations that have happened around right to buy.

These three amendments look to deploy the benefits of such potential technologies. I believe they would greatly support the provisions set out in the Bill.

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[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

That was not my understanding.

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her response and to all noble Lords who tabled amendments and provided insight in the debate. It is clear that the changes to right to buy need to be properly and thoroughly thought through, not only to ensure that they are backed by sufficient evidence but so that they consider the real-life consequences. This is certainly true for existing tenants of social housing who may not be aware of upcoming changes and who may have hopes of owning their own home for the first time.

I thank my noble friend Lady O’Neill of Bexley and my noble friend Lord Jamieson for considering in their amendments in this group how tenants can be better protected, particularly by promoting greater financial literacy and looking in detail at the commencement of the Bill’s provisions.

I also thank the Minister for her answers, but I hope that the Government will look further into the evidence behind extending the qualifying period to properly assess whether 10 years really is the most effective and necessary number. If the differences in predicted outcomes between five- and 10-year periods are marginal, the period should not be extended more than is absolutely necessary. We should not treat people’s aspirations with contempt and restrict their rights purely to undermine a scheme for the sake of it.

More broadly, therefore, I hope the Government will reflect on what these changes mean for existing tenants, whose hopes and dreams of owning a home should not be treated as chess pieces to be moved, or indeed looked down on. At this point, in Committee, however, I would like to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 2 withdrawn.