Housing and Planning Bill

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, I have some difficulty with all these amendments. I was not going to speak because it exposes my difficulty; however, I will do so briefly. When the then Conservative Government decided to introduce the right-to-buy policy in the early 1980s, I was one of a very few Labour MPs who had reservations about opposing it. That was because my constituency at the time was in quite a deprived area with a lot of property in very bad condition, and the only way round that problem that I could see was to incentivise people on estates to buy their homes and thereby spread a culture of prettifying those estates and making them look pleasanter and nicer to live in. Under that scheme, gardens were done up, windows and doors were changed, roofs were redone—all sorts of changes took place. When I look back over the years, I see that that scheme worked. However, the problem was that while I was living up there I was also living in London and I could never understand the justification for selling local authority housing in London. That has been an absolute disaster.

When I checked this morning, I found that 43% of all the local authority property in Westminster has been sold off. A lot of it is now in the hands of private landlords—we are trying to get the statistics for that in Westminster—who very often charge four times the rent levied by the local authority. This Bill will denude London of most of its public housing stock. That will be the product of the Bill. I consider the estimate that 76% of this housing in Westminster will be sold to be an underestimate. I think that a lot more housing will go from the public sector than anyone ever imagined. Therefore, I have a dilemma: in parts of the country I can see the justification for this measure, but in other parts it will be an absolute disaster.

The Government say that we should leave this issue to the housing associations to decide. However, as cuts are imposed and as housing associations find that they have reduced resources, they will feel under pressure to sell. Therefore, what may appear to be a voluntary arrangement now will become a de facto mandatory measure because the housing associations will need to draw in this money to enable them to invest further.

My noble friend has moved an amendment which is particularly important in many ways. I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Horam: I think it is possible to replace stock in the same borough—you just build high rise. If you compare high-rise and low-rise property, the figures stack up. I think I read somewhere that Boris Johnson—or was it Goldsmith?—had extracted an agreement from the Government whereby they were going to have to replace two for one in London. That is what we are talking about. Obviously, the Government have calculated that it is possible to do it, so my noble friend’s amendment must surely be in order. The reasoning of my former noble friend, the noble Lord, Lord Horam, must be wrong. The Government believe it is possible.

[Lord Horam]

In London as a whole, but not in the same borough.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I see. If that is the case, and they are not in the same borough, it does not comply with the spirit of my noble friend’s amendment.

If you get up at 6.30 or 7 am and get on a Tube train or a bus, it is full of people going to work. They are the people who service London and they cannot be coming in from Watford or outer London. They have got to have homes in central London because they service it. There is a whole world, which many noble Lords do not even know exists, of people getting up at unearthly hours of the morning to go to work. I wonder where they are going to live if 43% of Westminster is already sold off. Camden expects to sell off a huge amount of its property portfolio. Where are these people going to live? They are going to have to come in from the outskirts on Tube trains and buses. They will be exhausted. The whole arrangement is wrong.

Although people like me can see the case for the right to buy and believe it does work in certain areas, there are some parts of the country where it should not be allowed. If it is allowed, it must be on the basis of replacement by like property in the area where the property is being sold off. Otherwise, we totally disrupt the demography of central London in a way which is contrary to the public interest.

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[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Talking about looking forward to information, last week we were promised some statistical information on starter homes, but we have not received it. I wonder what is happening.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I did promise the noble Lord information on starter homes. I will be bringing it forward in due course, but I have not got it ready for today. I have not forgotten my commitment to him.

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[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, there will be abuse, and the incentives are very substantial. I have some figures on what is happening in Westminster which might be of interest to Members of the House. The average cost of a one-bedroom council flat in Westminster is £113.78 a week. When it is sold off and in the private sector, that same flat now fetches £480 a week. That is nearly four times as much. A two-bed flat is £128 a week in the social sector and £450 a week when it is sold off. A four-bed flat is £157 a week in Westminster and £738 a week when it is in the private sector. We are talking about former council flats here. That is £38,500 a year after tax for a former council flat that would be rented out today at £157 a week if it was still in the public sector. These figures are an absolute scandal. The Government are promoting all this in the Bill, and we cannot see why they insist on doing it.

Westminster City Council has its own residential department, CityWest Homes, which at least tries to bring some sanity to this market, but its rents are very high as well. The problem is essentially that private landlords and estate agents in London market these properties at silly prices, and they have a market. Who is the market? People I have discussed this with now tell me that these flats are not being taken by former council tenants in receipt of housing benefit because of the cap. I am told that 70% of all Westminster council flats that have been sold off now go to overseas tenants, because, obviously, they have the money. In other words, we are shifting people out of London into the suburbs and using the properties in which they formerly lived as private accommodation, which is being let to people from overseas who come to London. This is an absolute scandal, and I cannot see the sanity in what the Government are doing. That is all I need to say at this stage of the debate.

[Lord Porter of Spalding]

I will ask two questions. To go back to the same principle, what difference does it make whether somebody exercises the right to buy and then occupies a property or whether they free up the equity they have in it, buy something else, and then put that property back into the private rented sector? If somebody is living in it, they are living in it, so I am not sure that the noble Lord has the right end of the stick as regards the properties.

Can the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, say whether anybody has asked the mortgage providers whether they would still be happy to provide a mortgage if the use of that property was restricted in the way that is being proposed?

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

On top of that, the taxpayer will then go on, in appropriate circumstances, to pay the housing benefit on rents that have doubled or tripled.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

And on top of that, some people object to the fact that people can sell in London a council flat—for which they have perhaps paid a low rent for a number of years—leave London, retire to the countryside and live off the income that was gained simply by selling what was essentially public property. Sometimes—it gets worse—they move abroad. People from abroad, who are not even British citizens, buy this property and then live abroad on the rental income gained from tenants who are overpaying within the United Kingdom. The whole thing is ludicrous.

[Lord Beecham]

If people are moving in, paying the private rent and relying on housing benefit, that is a cost to the Exchequer, and if they pay the sort of rents that my noble friend referred to, they are likely to be in a much better position than other people in greater housing needs who cannot afford it.

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[Lord Campbell-Savours]

The Minister keeps repeating that, but it is just not true. People will not have the right to buy. Only some people will have the right to buy. That is different.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, the equity loan is not a discount. It is an equity loan. It is an entirely different mechanism. The discount gives an upfront reduction, whereas with an equity loan after five years you would have to start to repay it with interest. It is not comparing like with like. They are two different mechanisms.