Housing Associations

Baroness Grender Excerpts

Thursday 8th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The stock of social housing fell by 420,000 under the last Labour Government. More council houses—social houses—were sold than built. We have reversed that: more social houses are now being built than sold and the stock has increased by 86,000 since 2010. The receipts from right to buy are reinvested in social housing. Far from the policy of generating receipts disadvantaging those on the housing list, by generating more receipts for local authorities to reinvest it increases investment in social housing.

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister believe that there is a crisis in this area, given that last year saw more homeless children than we have seen in a decade? Does he recognise that it is hard to believe that this Government see it as a crisis if expenditure is 79% on private housing and 21% on affordable housing? As he well knows, “affordable” is not really affordable for families on low incomes.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Baroness will know that, for any given sum of public investment in housing, you can build either more houses at slightly higher rents or fewer houses at slightly lower rents. In 2010, her party and mine decided to go for the higher-output option. That was the right decision at the time to make faster progress in adding to the stock of good-quality, permanent homes for rent. In October last year, the Prime Minister announced an extra £2 billion for affordable housing and made it clear that a big chunk of that should be redirected towards social housing, as the noble Baroness suggests. We have listened to the representations from housing providers. The £2 billion will be available for social rents as opposed to affordable rents, and by lifting the cap on what local authorities can borrow we are enabling local authorities to build more council houses.