Housing: Private Renters

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, it is important to recognise the balance of having more tenants who cannot afford renting in the private sector having social or affordable homes. That is why we have an £11.5 billion Affordable Homes Programme, and we are seeking to double the amount of social rented homes that we build to 32,000, because clearly, the housing benefit bill has been growing astronomically and we need to contain that over time.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Agreeing as I certainly do with the thrust of the previous four questions, I ask whether the Minister can confirm that in the last 20 years, the proportion of households living in private rented accommodation has doubled, whilst the proportion of owner-occupiers has reduced and the proportion living in social rented accommodation has reduced dramatically. This is despite the fact, as the previous questioner has pointed out, that the private rented sector is often the most expensive and certainly the least popular of the various forms of tenure. Is the Minister satisfied with these trends and is he happy for them to continue, or does he not think that it would be preferable to enable more people to move into the owner-occupied sector or the social rented sector, and stop this huge rise in the private rented sector?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I am not going to glorify one type of tenure over another. The noble Lord is right, however, in the sense that we have seen a doubling of the amount of private rented, but it is approximately the same proportion of the amount of housing stock: it has broadly stayed around 19%. You can look at percentages, or at the absolute amount. One of the benefits of Governments over the last few decades is that the proportion of non-decent private rented sector homes—those with category 1 hazards—has come down dramatically. In 2006, to pick a date at random, it was 46%. It is now down to 21% of homes, which is still too high, but that is why we are bringing in these measures, to drive that down even further. For young people, who are mobile, private renting is often a very good option and I am not going to knock it, but we do recognise that we need to build more homes for sale and have more social homes. I acknowledge that, but let us not put one form of tenure ahead of another.