Housing (Right to Buy) (Limits on Discount) (England) Order 2024
Debate between Baroness Taylor of Stevenage and Lord Berkeley of Knighton(2 weeks ago)
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Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)
My Lords, from listening to this debate, I recognise that there is a certain amount of agreement around the Chamber. It seems, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Porter, that this is very much a question of balance. Of course right to buy was a wonderful thing for many people, but the right to have a roof over your head is also pretty important. Therefore, if you take it too far and there are no council houses to put vulnerable people into, you will have a real problem. It seems there is a consensus that could lead to the right way forward—namely, the right amount of houses being available for right to buy but preserving enough and, as has been said, building more to protect fragile communities.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for bringing this debate. We are in the middle of the most acute housing crisis in living memory. Too many are left without access to a safe and secure home.
To the noble Lords who have been leaders of councils, I say: so have I. For many years as a council leader, I struggled really hard to persuade our treasurer to find the funds to build homes, only to see them sold for less than it cost us to build them. That is why the Government are committed to working with councils and other providers of social housing to deliver the biggest increase in social and affordable housing in a generation.
We have heard much about aspiration. For the over a million people sitting on those waiting lists for a long time and the 117,000 families in temporary and emergency accommodation, social housing is their aspiration. Our job as a Government is to get the balance right between offering homes for sale and retaining stock for social rent. That balance is critical to solving our housing crisis.