Social Housing Bill [HL]

Lord Bailey of Paddington Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 1st June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to speak at the Second Reading of the Social Housing Bill. Before I come to my main comments, I just want to address what feels to me to be the demonisation of the right to buy.

I come from a very poor community, and I recognise the comments that my noble friend Lady O’Neill made on how our community purchased those houses to live in. They did not purchase those houses to become stockbrokers but to live in them. If we move on to the comments made by my noble friend Lord Jackson, they boosted great social outcomes. They boosted not only the economy of those local economies but the confidence of those families. It was the launching of those families into better exam results for their children and better social outcomes. I wonder how many people who sit in either of these two Houses could point to the fact that their grandparents or parents bought their house and that was the beginning of their journey to these Benches. We do this country a great disservice when we talk about those people as if they were profiteering. They bought their homes to support their families.

I also go to the comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey: what are we going to do with a huge number of people when they become elderly if they are all in social housing? We already spend £37 billion—I believe that was the figure I heard mentioned in this House—on supporting people in their homes, which is great, but that number will grow significantly if we do not help people on to the housing ladder. The main thrust of my speech today will be about young people and getting them on that ladder.

I start by saying that I can support many of the things in the Bill. I believe the Government are genuine when they say they are trying to protect social housing. I grew up in social housing but I also had the misfortune of being homeless for a long time. I sofa-surfed for many years. Anybody from my background would tell you that the older you get, the less cute you are, and the less prepared people are to put you up. Can you imagine coming home and finding me lying on your sofa so you have to sit in your bedroom? That is what many young people are facing in this country today.

It is right to protect newly built social homes from being lost too quickly to the right to buy. It is right that we look again at how homes are sold under the right-to-buy scheme. Where possible, it is right to bring them back into the social housing sector, and it is absolutely right to protect the victims of domestic abuse so that they are not forced to choose between remaining trapped in that situation and giving up their housing.

Those are sensible and humane provisions, but my concern today is that the Bill is too narrow in its outlook to address the scale of the housing crisis we face today. It protects parts of the existing system but does not yet answer the bigger question: how do we build enough genuinely affordable homes for people who need them now and for the generation to follow them? You have only to look at London and the staggering failure of the Mayor of London to produce enough homes. He was given a very generous settlement by the previous Government and an equally generous settlement by this Government but he has utterly refused to do that. Housebuilding in London has collapsed, and young people are at the forefront of bearing that.

Changing the right-to-buy rules may slow the loss of social housing but it will not by itself create the homes we need. The problem this country faces is not simply the loss of homes from the social housing sector; it is a failure to deliver enough homes over decades. But protecting the stock is not the same as expanding the stock. That distinction matters. My first challenge to the Minister is: where are the hard delivery mechanisms in this Bill? Where is the clear link between protection of the social housing stock and the building of new homes at scale? If the Bill is to be credible, it must be accompanied by a serious, long-term plan for delivery: not simply warm words about renewal but actual homes in actual places, with infrastructure to make this actually happen.

While I welcome the Bill’s protection for social housing, I ask the Minister: how will this legislation help a young person who needs social housing today and is not yet on the housing list, and how will that be delivered? If the Bill protects only those already inside the system, it will fail a generation outside the gates. The test of the Bill should be not whether it preserves social housing stock only but whether it improves housing opportunities for those currently locked in the system and those locked out of the system altogether.

The Bill needs to have stronger accountability and clearer outcomes. The House of Lords Library briefing notes that the Government have not published an impact assessment for the Bill. That is a serious omission. We are being asked to support legislation that changes property rights, local authority powers, tenant expectations, provider behaviour and the long-term economics of social housing, yet we do not have a clear assessment of what the Government think the impact of those changes could be.

How many additional homes do the Government believe will remain in the social housing sector because of this Bill? How many homes do they expect local authorities or providers to repurchase through the extended right of first refusal? How will the 35-year exemption for newly built social homes affect council and housing association investment decisions? How will Ministers measure whether young people, care leavers, domestic abuse survivors and homeless households are benefitting from the results of this Bill? These are not technical questions. They go to the heart of whether the Bill will work.

I urge the Government to be careful about adding process without adding capacity. For example, requiring notification before disposals may be sensible but if councils and providers do not have the funding, speed or institutional capacity to act on those notifications, the right to be notified risks becoming the right to watch homes leave the sector anyway.

The crisis that we face now is not just in social housing but in housing generally. Many people, particularly young people, who have great housing need will never get anywhere near a social tenancy. This Bill must affect the whole housing crisis, not just social housing. I am a massive fan of social housing and I am a product of social housing, but I have lived through the nightmare of social housing being inadequately resourced.