Social Housing Bill [HL]

Earl Russell Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 1st June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and I endorse the comments that she has made.

Decent, affordable and secure housing is a basic human right. To start, I thank the Minister for the way that she introduced the Bill, particularly in sharing her personal experience, and for the briefing that has been offered to noble Lords in advance of today’s Second Reading. I declare my own housing interests as set out in the register. On these Benches, we broadly welcome the legislation, but we will scrutinise it carefully. After decades of ever-decreasing social housing stock under right to buy—a scheme which, regardless of its original intentions, has depleted one of our most precious public assets—we welcome that this Government are moving rather decisively to stem that flow.

Extending the minimum eligibility period from three years to 10, reducing maximum discounts and exempting newly built social homes from sale for 35 years after construction are substantive reforms. The Chartered Institute of Housing is right to call them a positive step. Kate Henderson, the chief executive of the National Housing Federation, spoke for many when she said that with 4.2 million people in need of social housing in England, these measures should make right to buy a far more sustainable scheme. I add my voice to that welcome, and welcome the extension in perpetuity of the right of first refusal.

However, what concerns me is not so much what is in the Bill as what is conspicuously absent. Last week, the UK broke the record for the hottest ever day in May, and a week-long heatwave caused the UK Health Security Agency to issue amber heat alerts. Heat is a slow motion and inescapable killer that preys most on those who are financially poor or in ill health. The Guardian reported that, in 2024, the summer heat in the EU claimed roughly three times more lives than car crashes, 16 times more than murders and more than 10,000 times more than terrorists.

The Climate Change Committee has just published A Well-Adapted UK, the fourth assessment of UK climate risk. Its findings for social housing tenants are alarming. We already know that not one of our adaptation pathways is adequate. Our climate is changing faster than our policies. The committee warned that, by 2050, 92% of existing homes are likely to overheat; that is the central assessment of the most rigorous, independent scientific analysis available to Parliament. The UKHSA estimated that, during the summer of 2022, there were 2,803 excess deaths among people aged 65 and over in England. The climate for which our housing stock was designed no longer exists. Labour plans to build 1.5 million new homes, many of them social or affordable. They must be climate-ready to be fit for purpose. Social housing tenants are disproportionately elderly, disabled and/or suffer from chronic illness. They are more likely to live in flats, which overheat faster than homes. They live predominantly in urban areas, where temperatures are higher. They cannot, in the main, afford the cost of air conditioning. We are debating the homes of the people most at risk of dying from extreme heat.

The Government will point to Part O of the building regulations, which already requires new homes to be designed to mitigate overheating risk, and to the technical review. I acknowledge this, but Part O is a building regulation. It sets a design floor, not a statutory duty tied to a social housing programme. It is not specific to social housing, it carries no enhanced standard for vulnerability and it lacks the weight of primary legislation. I do not dismiss what the Government are doing elsewhere either. The warm homes plan is a genuinely ambitious £15 billion programme and the energy independence Bill announced in the King’s Speech is likewise welcome, but neither is sufficient. The warm homes plan acknowledges the overheating problem and commits to incorporate passive cooling measures, but they are an aspiration, not a duty, and it applies primarily to retrofit. I see no evidence that the energy independence Bill will enact the required powers. The Minister will argue that this Bill is deliberately narrow in scope, but a simple provision here would not expand the Bill unduly and its absence would be a missed opportunity.

The Climate Change Committee’s A Well-Adapted UK report recommends approximately £11 billion of annual adaptation investment, with around two-thirds directly to the built environment. This is a recommendation of the statutory adviser to Parliament. I want to see this Government being prepared to translate that advice into a binding duty where it matters the most. In Committee, I intend to pursue a statutory obligation requiring that all new social housing, whether built by local authorities or registered providers, be designed and constructed to reduce the risk of overheating. Building in overheating prevention at the design stage costs a fraction of retrofitting. Every home built today without these standards is a home that will need costly remediation.

The Bill will be judged not only by what it contains but by what it chooses not to. Without additional adaptation, heat-related deaths in the UK could increase sixfold from around 1,600 a year today to 10,000 a year by the 2050s. We have a Social Housing Bill, a major housebuilding programme and the most authoritative climate risk assessment this country has ever produced, published just days ago. The question Parliament must answer is this: knowing all that, are we going to build the same dangerous homes over again? I say we must not.