Affordable Housing: Social Homes for Rent

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2018 Lords Chamber

[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 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.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, will the noble Lord answer my noble friend’s question? The inheritance of council stock in 1997 was so bad that the resources of the Labour Government had to be put into restoring them to anywhere like living capacity.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

I would not acknowledge that. I acknowledge that work was done on that basis but I do not think that the Labour Party or Labour Government should get off the hook on their deplorable record of council house building in that period.