Affordable Housing: Social Homes for Rent

Lord Best Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, inherent in the noble Lord’s question is the importance of right to buy—and, indeed, refreshed right to buy and enhanced right to buy—which I acknowledge. I agree with him about the importance of permitting local authorities to use those receipts to build more. That has been happening at a greater rate, but I acknowledge that he is right to say that more could be done.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, following on from my noble friend’s question—

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Best.

[Lord Best]

Thank you, I am most grateful. I congratulate the Government on moving towards more genuinely affordable low rents. We are seeing a swing in the pendulum; I hope that it is just the start of a swing that goes a lot further than it has done so far, but we are now heading in the right direction. Can the Minister impress on his Treasury colleagues that it really is important that rents are low enough for people genuinely to afford because otherwise the Treasury is paying more in housing benefit, people’s work incentives are much worse, and we end up with homelessness? We can see already that housing associations and councils have to turn people away because those on the lowest incomes cannot afford the so-called “affordable rents”. It would be to the benefit of the Treasury if the Minister could argue the case for more grant aid in support of real social rents.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, the noble Lord has done a massive amount in this area. I acknowledge that a lot of my life is spent arguing with the Treasury about various issues, as he can imagine, but I would impress on him that when rent controls were in place, we had a far less vibrant rental market than we do now. We would not want to go back to that sort of control.