Social Housing Bill [HL]

Baroness Neate Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 1st June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neate (CB)]

My lords, it is a privilege to be part of this debate. As somebody who is still pretty new here, the sheer range of expertise and experience is striking to me. I declare an interest as a non-executive director of the Abri Octavia housing association.

We live in a country where people on a low income simply cannot afford a decent place to live, where 1.3 million people are on council waiting lists for social housing and where well over 350,000 people are homeless in temporary accommodation. Many millions are in poor-quality homes that they cannot truly afford. As I saw many times while I was chief executive of Shelter, the lack of a secure home breaks people’s sense that their country has any investment in their future. It breaks communities, damages trust and destroys people’s sense of belonging. Can noble Lords imagine how this entirely justified sense of unfairness could be weaponised to exacerbate blame, scapegoating and division? We do not have to imagine it; that is exactly what is happening in many of our communities right now. As a country, we cannot afford to let this continue.

For decades, and through successive Governments, we have failed to build the social homes that are the only solution to this emergency. Independent analysis commissioned by Shelter shows that if this failure continues for another decade, the cost to the economy and our public services will exceed £117 billion. This is why I very much welcome the current Government’s much-increased investment in building social housing and, in particular, the way in which they have rebalanced the priority of the so-called affordable homes programme towards the only genuinely affordable form of housing for people on low incomes—social homes. Our communities desperately need even more and they need it soon. I urge the Government to make bolder, faster and more ambitious changes, to get councils building social homes at scale once more.

Turning to the Bill, the reforms that it introduces to right to buy are critical and much to be welcomed. We also need to see the replacement of homes already lost to right to buy, which has meant that, over many years, we have been losing more social homes than we have built.

The Bill’s measures to protect survivors of domestic abuse will transform the prospects of many abuse survivors and their children, and are very welcome. To achieve its aims, the measures in the Bill will require significant co-operation between social landlords, the criminal justice system and local specialist organisations that support survivors. Post-separation abuse makes up 40% of calls to the national domestic abuse helpline, according to the charity Refuge. This could be exacerbated if perpetrators are forced from their home, as I know well from my time as chief executive of Women’s Aid. The measures in the Bill are a major step forward, but they require significant local co-operation and resources to be implemented successfully.

There is a major challenge around survivors’ ability to afford a tenancy on their own, particularly if the abuse has included financial exploitation and saddling the victim with debt, as is very common indeed. I propose that the Bill could be strengthened still further, by ensuring that domestic abuse survivors are exempt from housing-related debt rules, which are currently denying them access to social housing. If added to the Bill, this measure would be a huge step towards ensuring that domestic abuse is no longer a precursor to homelessness, as I have seen throughout my career. I would welcome the opportunity to talk to the Minister about this.

In 2017, when I first joined Shelter, I met a woman who had fled an abusive relationship, losing her job and social housing tenancy in the process, to another city over 100 miles away. She and her three children were living in one room in temporary accommodation, nowhere near friends or school. She was desperately isolated and fearful. Shelter helped her into new temporary accommodation that was somewhat better. Shockingly, however, when I left Shelter last year, nearly eight years later, she and her children were still there. They still had nowhere to call home. The measures in the Bill, particularly with the addition that I have suggested, will, I hope, mean that a woman going through the same experience now would have a different story. That would truly be an achievement.

However, for that family and hundreds of thousands like them, now and in the future, only a new generation of social homes will make the difference that they need and repair people’s sense that their community and country are somewhere where they can put down roots, feel secure and respected, and achieve their potential. This is not about the dream of home ownership. This is about the reality of working hard, paying your rent and getting security in return.