Social Housing Bill [HL]

Committee (1st Day)

15:53:00

Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)My Lords, before we start debate on the first group, I rise to remind the House of the rules on declaring interests. Noble Lords should declare any relevant financial interest the first time they speak at each stage of a Bill. This means that, in Committee, relevant financial interests should be declared during the first group on which a noble Lord speaks. Thereafter, the declaration does not need to be repeated in Committee. Declarations should be specific and brief. Members should briefly indicate the nature of their financial interest and not simply refer to their entry in the Register o f Lords’ Interests . Amendment 1

Moved by

1: Before Clause 1, insert the following new Clause— “Abolition of Right to Buy(1) The Right to Buy scheme is abolished.(2) The Housing Act 1985 is amended as follows—(a) omit Part 5 (the right to buy);(b) omit schedule 4;(c) omit schedule 5;(d) omit schedule 6;(e) omit schedule 6A;(f) omit schedule 9A.”Member’s explanatory statement This amendment seeks to abolish the Right to Buy scheme.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)My Lords, I begin with an apology for not taking part at Second Reading. My fellow Green Peer, my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, took part but is unable to be here today so we are doing a little tag team effort. I am afraid that I will not be here on Wednesday, but I expect that she will be back on Report.

I also begin with a little bit of explanation, because the groupings today are technically complicated. Clause 1 would abolish the right to buy. To introduce that involves me opposing various clauses in some subsequent groups. I am opposing Clauses 1 to 9. This is all for technical reasons. I have not pulled this out as a separate group. That is how it was arranged. That is why we have this slightly odd-looking arrangement—it is for technical reasons.

Clause 1 provides for the abolition of right to buy. This is heading in the direction that the Government propose for the Bill but going further. Others who are opposing other elements in the Bill are seeking to reverse the Government’s direction, but to be clear: I am aiming for us to go further. The case for abolishing right to buy is not some theoretical proposal. Scotland and Wales have already done it successfully. We have a central question here: should social housing be treated as a long-term public asset or continue to be sold off during a housing crisis?

In Scotland, right to buy ended on 1 August 2016. It has been estimated that since then, 15,500 social homes in Scotland have been saved for the public. That is a lot of housing—a lot of households living in their community and children being able to continue to go to the same school. The sort of stability that social housing has provided has continued in Scotland, but here in England we continue to see families torn out of their communities and a continual turnover. In Scotland, Dr Mary Taylor, the CEO of the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, said:

“SFHA is delighted that all forms of the right to buy policy in Scotland have now come to an end and this hasn’t come a moment too soon. Right to buy has had its day and has no place in modern Scotland”.

Wales came somewhat after Scotland with the Abolition of the Right to Buy and Associated Rights (Wales) Act 2018. The Labour Welsh Government said that these sales were increasing waiting times for social housing and reducing the access to affordable housing, which is a statement of the obvious. Ministers also argued—I acknowledge that the Government are doing something about this—that councils and housing associations had the confidence to build without fear that they would immediately lose that housing.

The Labour Welsh Housing Minister at the time, Rebecca Evans, said:

“By protecting the stock of social housing in Wales, we are ensuring it is available for the long term to provide safe, secure and affordable homes for the people of Wales”.

This is no longer an experiment. It is established policy across much of the UK.

We discussed the negative impacts of the right-to-buy policy extensively at Second Reading. I do not intend to go over all the same ground but will highlight a couple of points. I draw first on the public wealth aspect of this. A report from the Common Wealth think tank, Wrong to Sell: How Right to Buy Gave Away Billions in Public Wealth , described right to buy as one of the largest giveaways in UK history. It has led to a situation where one in six private tenants in England rents a former local authority home, with much greater cost and often worse maintenance, without the democratic oversight that you get with council housing.

Considering the overall value of that, the report estimated that homes sold by English local authorities through right to buy are now worth £430 billion in 2024 prices. This is only part of the great privatisation, but this estimate says that this a bit more than the £400 billion that we have lost by selling off public land into private hands. This has also meant a structural shift towards higher-cost private renting. We know how much the cost of private renting is affecting so many households—so many communities—particularly the young. There is also increased long-term housing benefit expenditure. I hear from my right a lot of concern about the welfare Bill—this is one of the very significant drivers of it. There is also the exposure to market volatility.

16:00:00

I will briefly mention one more reportthe UK Housing Review from the Chartered Institute of Housing. It notes the now very well-known figure that 40% of right-to-buy homes are now privately rented. That is a straight privatisation: out of public hands and affordable rent and into sky-high rents that then go to private benefit. What does this actually mean? I come back to the contrast I started with. Scotland’s earlier policy change and comparatively strong social housing completions mean that new lettings to new social tenants have fallen by only 3% there since 2014-15. By contrast, England, Wales and Northern Ireland have seen about one-quarter fewer lettings during the same period. That means that so many people are in insecure, often all too unaffordable, housing.

Surely it is past time for England to follow the lead of Scotland and Wales and end right to buy altogether, rather than simply attenuate it, as the Government are planning. I beg to move.

Lord Young of Cookham (Con)My Lords, I hope the House will not agree with Amendment 1. I feel a little bit personal about this because the amendment knocks out huge chunks of the Housing Act 1985, which I put on the statute book 40 years ago.

The noble Baroness talked about the erosion of the social housing stock. However, 17% of the housing stock in this country is social housing. That is roughly double the EU average of 9.3%, so already we are way out of line with our European neighbours in our provision of social housing. But I oppose this amendment because if one looks at Clause 9, it makes it clear that 100% of capital receipts from the right to buy will be ploughed back into social housing. So it is exactly the opposite of what the noble Baroness said, that the right to buy would increase the waiting time. What would increase the waiting time is acceptance of this amendment, because it would deny local authorities the capital receipts which would still accrue to them, so I disagree with her fundamentally.

There are other reasons for disagreeing with Amendment 1. For millions of people—1.8 million people—it was a foot on the property ladder for those who simply could not otherwise afford it, and many of those against the right to buy are people who own their own home. It gave people financial security which they would not otherwise have had. It became no longer the preserve of those on middle or higher incomes, and it gave something back after paying years of rent. Also, in the long term, it can reduce dependency, because those who bought their home now have an asset that can be taken into account if and when they move into care. There are wider benefits that we touched on at Second Reading, which I will not repeat. The right to buy helped break down the monolithic nature of some of our local authority estates. I very much hope that the Government, and indeed others in the House, will resist Amendment 1.

Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)My Lords, it is a pleasure to have the opportunity to take part in this debate in Committee. I will not reiterate the comments I made at Second Reading, because I talked then about family provision in social housing and we will discuss that specific issue in later groups. I begin by congratulating my noble friend Lady O’Neill of Bexley on her promotion to the Front Bench, and it would be remiss not to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Curran, on her promotion. I think it is a promotion—anyway, she is back on the Front Bench.

As has already been said by my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, right to buy was one of the most transformative policies in British political history. It resulted in 58% of people owning their homes in 1981, being boosted to 69% by 2001, although that figure has now fallen back to 63%. Boosting home ownership boosts self-reliance, and 81% of people in most recent polls support the concept of owning their own home and being part of a property-owning democracy. In fact, 1.9 million homes were sold following the Housing Act 1980 to date, affecting 4.5 million social tenants. As we heard at Second Reading, right to buy improves social mobility, especially for those working people on low or modest incomes. We also heard demonstrable, empirical evidence from the London School of Economics about the impact being in homes that were bought under right to buy had on the educational attainment of children and young people. That was a longitudinal study, as noble Lords will remember.

I must say in passing that the views of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, are always sincere and well-resourced with research, but on this occasion I cannot agree with her for the reasons that my noble friend made clear. Capital receipts from right to buy were £51 billion, of which £47 billion was retained and remitted to His Majesty’s Treasury. The most recent sales in England in 2024-25 raised almost £800 million from 7,494 sales.

The important point to remember is that between 2012 and 2025, 48,000 units were replaced directly from recycled right to buy receipts back into the social housing stock. It is also important to nuance the arguments and remember that we had the renaissance of housing associations and alternative housing providers in that period, so it is not altogether correct to look at council housing and social housing just within the context of local authority housing.

There are a number of myths about right to buy, which is one of the reasons why I oppose the noble Baroness’s amendment. As my noble friend said, the level of social housing that we have is still high by international standards. I think we are fourth in Europe out of about 25 countries—significantly more than France, Italy, Germany and other large countries.

The fall in public sector housing construction began well before the advent of right to buy in 1980. Social housing waiting lists were, in fact, bizarrely stable when right to buy was at its most popular in the 1980s. There is a reason for that: social housing waiting lists were derived as a function of demand, not supply. So, in the period between 1981 and 1997, social housing waiting lists fell from 1.2 million to 1 million, in a period when we were selling off 100,000 council homes under right to buy. The problem, of course, was that the wider housing market was overheating, with a rise in real housing prices of 108% between 1997 and 2009.

The final myth is about discounts. Yes, you can say that discounted money is dead money to the taxpayer, but that criticism has to be misplaced. If one looks at the cost of, for instance, significant maintenance by local authorities and the payment of housing benefit then those alleged costs are significantly lower than claimed by those who oppose right to buy.

As my noble friend said, by abolishing right to buy we would remove the revenue and income stream for building more social homes, and that cannot be right. We would need to have an alternative if we were going to get rid of right to buy. Although I might not wholly agree with this Government’s objectives as outlined in the Bill, the noble Baroness’s proposal does not make sense because it would mean fewer homes for people who needed them, and that cannot be good. On that basis, I oppose the amendment.

Baroness Eaton (Con)My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and a part-owner of rented property in West Yorkshire. One of the strikingly important things for me, and I hope for all noble Lords, is the positive outcomes for young people exposed to the right-to-buy scheme from the 1980s. This is not wishful thinking on my part; it is clearly shown in research from the London School of Economics. I referred to this at Second Reading, but it is worth reminding noble Lords about.

The right to buy guaranteed detectable, sizeable school performance gains among young people exposed to it, increasing good grades in high-stakes exams. There is also evidence that there is an income effect, which gives more financial stability to households through home ownership, and there is a crime reduction effect from public housing tenants becoming owners of their own home. It is disappointing that such prejudice against right to buy is likely to remove from social housing tenants the opportunities which right to buy has created for so many.

Baroness Thornhill (LD)My Lords, it is good to kick off our first day in Committee on this important Bill. As noble Lords will know from our comments and speeches at Second Reading, we broadly support the Bill, so I will endeavour not to make Second Reading speeches and to be as brief as possible, given our support for it.

We support tighter restrictions on right to buy—I think the evidence is clear—but we do not believe in its total abolition. As was said over and over by noble Lords at Second Reading, over 2 million houses have been sold this way since 1980 but nearly 1 million more have been sold than replaced. Looking at last year’s figures, 7,500 homes were sold and only 3,600 were replaced. More worrying was the net loss of nearly 4,000 homes last year. Losses outstripped gains. This is not sustainable, yet the need grows. Homelessness rates are growing. The number of families in temporary accommodation is growing. My local authority is now reaching the point that many others have already reached with the impact on their budget of temporary accommodation.

However, we believe that a total ban is not the right answer, which is why we cannot support Amendment 1 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, because housing need is not the same everywhere and local councils understand their own housing pressures best. In some areas, right to buy should definitely be paused; there should be a moratorium. In others, it should be more tightly controlled, but always—in the view of our Benches—with one condition: homes sold must at least be replaced on a one-for-one basis, if not better.

A blanket ban would remove that flexibility. It would replace local judgment with central diktat, and we believe that some transition to home ownership is aspirational and desirable. We are certainly not coming from the same place as Conservative colleagues in it being a holy grail. A healthy housing market should be able to staircase ownership for some people without the significant loss of much-needed social homes—hence some of our later amendments, which I hope will make sense as we go through. Be assured, we do not mean it to enable some local authorities to abrogate their responsibility to provide social housing of all types. We would definitely encourage more than one-for-one replacement. We want reform, not abolition, and devolution, not central diktat.

Lord Jamieson (Con)My Lords, I declare an interest as a councillor in Central Bedfordshire. I add my congratulations to those offered to the noble Baroness, Lady Curran, on returning to the Front Bench. I thank noble Lords for their contributions on this first day of Committee. This amendment would abolish right to buy altogether, and, in doing so, would remove one of the most significant routes into home ownership available to social housing tenants. The Conservative Government introduced right to buy, which was founded on the simple belief that ownership should not be the preserve of the wealthy or the fortunate few. Conservatives have long believed that people should have the opportunity to own their own home, build an asset, and enjoy the security and independence that home ownership brings. It is a hand up, not a handout.

16:15:00

More than 2 million households have benefited from right to buy—ordinary working families who, in many cases, had never previously imagined that home ownership was within their reach. Growing up, I had many friends whose families benefited from it, including some noble Lords in this House, and I have personally seen the transformational benefits. Right to buy gave them security, independence and a greater stake in their community that they could pass on to their children—a rung up the ladder to improve their lives and those of their families. As was raised by my noble friend Lady Eaton, LSE research has shown significant educational benefits for children in families who have exercised the right to buy.

In the Black Country, in mining communities across Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and County Durham, and in towns and cities across the Midlands and north, families who had rented for decades became home owners for the first time. That is social mobility in practice; it is not a policy failure. With great respect to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and to the Labour Government—who, while not seeking an outright ban on right to buy, are seeking to significantly curtail it—I say that this amendment illustrates the fundamental difference in our traditional views. We on these Benches have long believed that ownership should be extended as widely as possible across society. We do not view housing primarily through the lens of public ownership.

We have a housing crisis in this country. Housing is simply unaffordable for many, particularly so in London and the south-east. The reason is simple: housebuilding of all tenures has not kept pace with housing growth. Banning right to buy will not build one extra home; in fact, it will mean fewer homes overall. This gets to the heart of what we believe is the real issue: it is not only the failure to use the funding from right to buy to build replacement homes but the failure of successive Governments to build more homes in general.

Right to buy is not the problem; it is part of the solution. As my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham mentioned, it could provide the resources to build more social homes. As we will come on to later in this Bill, we believe—as does the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill—in at least a one-for-one replacement. That means two homes rather than one; it means two families, rather than one family, having a home, and it means a reduction in council waiting lists. In discussions, the Minister has said that the Government want to exceed that target. We share that ambition and would be very pleased if it was achieved, but if that is the case, how does it make sense to ban or curtail right to buy, if that would deliver more social housing? It is all rather puzzling. Banning right to buy not only benefits existing tenants but will result in additional social homes, so why would you ban or restrict it?

Building new homes also has other advantages, such as opportunities for estate regeneration, more energy efficiency, and the ability to focus on those homes in greatest need, such as supported housing. As I commented at Second Reading, in 1980, the average London renter was spending 14% of their income on rent. Today, for many, that figure is more than 50%. The gap between social and private rents in England has increased significantly. According to House of Lords research, since 1988, social rents have gone from 65% to 38% of market rent. Is it any surprise that, when the financial benefits are so huge, council waiting lists are increasing and tenants are increasingly reluctant to move on, even when they have the financial capacity?

Of course, we should not ignore the challenges. Replacement rates have for too long been inadequate. Too many councils have been unable to deliver the new social homes needed. To achieve that, they will need to establish building programmes, but that requires, among other things, certainty of funding and support for regeneration—issues that we will come on to later in the debate.

I confess that I find it difficult to understand why, when younger generations already face huge barriers—much greater than their parents and grandparents faced— to home ownership, the answer proposed is to remove one of the few established routes into ownership that remains available for those on lower incomes. Whatever the challenges facing social housing, and there are many, the solution cannot be reducing the opportunity further. Where the noble Baroness may see a house leaving public ownership, we on these Benches see a family entering home ownership. We see social housing, and benefits in general, as a stepping stone. It should be there when you need it, but the aim should be to help you move on in your life and become financially secure and independent. It should not leave you in a lifetime of state dependency.

Exercising the right to buy will not be right for everyone—but is it right or fair to deny the opportunity for those who can, simply for ideological reasons? As has been said earlier, it will mean fewer homes. It will mean longer council waiting lists. That is why I say, with respect, that while there may be many constructive debates in this Committee about the operation of the scheme and the future of social housing, it is fundamentally not right to abolish the right to buy.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab): My Lords, before I address the amendment, perhaps I may declare an interest, and in doing so apologise that I neglected to declare it at Second Reading. One of my daughters works for a housing association. I should have said that at Second Reading; it is in the register of interests. I also add my congratulations to those offered to my noble friend Lady Curran, who is appearing on the Front Bench for the first time today. I have already had a chance to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, to her new role, but I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Scott. She is not in her place today, but we have worked together for all the time I have been in the House on some very long and complicated Bills, and I am very grateful to her. I would like to put that on the record too.

I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this short debate. Before I respond on the specific amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, let me say that I am pleased to open this first day in Committee on the Social Housing Bill. As I set out at Second Reading, this is critical legislation that goes right to the heart of our current housing crisis. More than 1.3 million families in need of a home languish on local authority housing waiting lists and the number of children growing up in temporary accommodation continues to climb, so we must act now to turn around decades of losing more social homes than we are building.

This legislation brings forward measures to protect much-needed social housing and incentivise new building, as well as groundbreaking reforms to create a safer and fairer system for those experiencing domestic abuse. At Second Reading, I was clear that this Social Housing Bill sits within a much wider programme of social housing action which clearly demonstrates our Government’s ambition and commitment to deliver the hope for the future that decent affordable social housing represents. Together with the Government’s wider package of reforms and the £39 billion of investment, this Bill will ensure that we can provide decent, safe, secure and affordable housing for generations to come. I look forward to getting into the detail of the Bill’s provisions over the course of Committee, and to engaging with noble Lords on these important measures.

Amendment 1, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, intends to abolish right to buy. The noble Baroness has also given notice of her intention to oppose all the right to buy clauses, with the exception of Clause 6, standing part of the Bill, making it clear that this amendment accompanies that intention. The Government have no plans to abolish the right to buy. The scheme provides an important route for social housing tenants, many of whom may not otherwise be able to access home ownership, to own their own homes, boosting social mobility and opportunity, and supporting aspiration for families across the country.

Following the commitment in our manifesto, we are reforming right to buy through this Bill. This will deliver a fairer, better-value and more sustainable scheme, where long-standing tenants who have lived in and paid rent on their homes for many years can buy their own homes—but, crucially, where councils can replace them and contribute to the urgent and rising need for social and affordable homes. The noble Lord, Lord Young, referred to the long called-for ability for councils to retain 100% of receipts, and this Government have facilitated that. By reforming the right-to-buy scheme, we will protect much-needed housing stock and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, said, more homes will be available to house those on waiting lists and those who are homeless.

We have committed to the biggest funding boost for social and affordable housing for a generation. I remind the noble Lords, Lord Jackson and Lord Jamieson, that many of the homes sold have never been replaced. Between April 2012 and March 2025, there were around 133,000 council right-to-buy sales, with only around 51,000 homes replaced over the same period. Not only has this depleted much-needed homes for households in need but it has reduced the motivation and confidence of councils to build, and it has restricted broader investment in council housing. I remind the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, that through the Renters’ Rights Act this Government have significantly strengthened renters’ rights, including with regard to rent increases.

We think we have the balance right here, making sure that we address some of the issues around right to buy but also continuing to give that opportunity and aspiration for those who want to purchase their own homes. We therefore oppose this amendment, and I kindly ask the noble Baroness to withdraw it.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response and everyone who contributed to this short but passionate Committee debate. I join others in welcoming the noble Baronesses, Lady Curran and Lady O’Neill, to the Front Benches.

I think the Minister agreed with me that right to buy and the way it has been implemented up to now have done enormous damage. We are in agreement about the loss without replacement of so much social housing. I also acknowledge her points about the Renters’ Rights Act, which is a step in the right direction, although the Green Party would like to see this going much further, with rent caps.

In saying that, I respond a little to the comment from the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, for whom I have the greatest respect. He compared the percentage of social renters in the UK with other parts of Europe. Of course, the conditions and the arrangements for private renting in many parts of Europe give people far greater security of tenure and far greater security of life than our arrangements do, even with the Renters’ Rights Act.

A couple of other points from the noble Lord, Lord Young, really need to be referred to. On the idea that housing will be sold and then ploughed back, later we will come to Amendment 16 about buyback. If we see an extension of buyback, it is possible to imagine a home being sold under right to buy and, very quickly, the council buying a house so that another one is available immediately. But the more typical situation will probably be that a house is sold under right to buy and maybe 10 years later a new social housing unit appears as a result of that money. That is a very long gap, and of course there is still disruption to the community. It will not often be an immediate response. In picking up a couple of points from the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, I will not start a whole debate about where the rise in house prices comes from, but a study from King’s College London in 2018 estimated that, without foreign investment money coming in, prices would have been 19% lower then. Of course, we saw a great financial liberalisation—part of the whole right-to-buy scenario, where we have turned what had been secure and affordable places for people to live into something regarded primarily as a financial asset.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, who suggested that social housing should be only a short-term replacement until you move on with your life. We want people to have a secure and affordable place to live for life, if that is what they want. That should be the foundation of our communities. We are not stressing enough the impact on communities of right to buy; we are focused very much on the impacts on individuals. The turmoil that right to buy has brought communities should not be ignored.

16:30:00

I have one final point. I say this as someone who has lived in three separate homes, all in London, that had at some point gone from the social sector through right to buy. In each one of those blocks, I knew people who ended up in the most enormously difficult circumstances with right to buy, because they had borrowed a great deal of money and then they suddenly got a huge bill from the council to replace the roof, fix the lift or whatever, and they were just not able to stay in the home that they had hoped to stay in.

Under right to buy we have a lottery from which some people have benefited, but a lot of people have suffered and the whole community has suffered. Of course, this being Committee, it is my intention to withdraw this amendment, but we have to keep having this argument. Is housing primarily a financial asset, or is it a secure, affordable place to live? Is it a human right for people to have decent, secure housing? I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 1 withdrawn.

Clause 1Qualifying period for right to buy

Amendment 2

Moved by

2: Clause 1, page 1, line 6, leave out “ten” and insert “five” Member’s explanatory statement This probing amendment seeks to enable a debate on the Government’s decision to extend the right to buy eligibility period from 3 years to 10 years.

Baroness Eaton (Con)My Lords, it is a pleasure to start the debate on this second group of thoughtful and varied amendments. We have just heard a spectacular defence from noble Lords of the right-to-buy scheme, which the Government seem determined to restrict quite drastically throughout the provisions in the Bill. In Clause 1, the Bill proposes to extend the qualifying period for right to buy from three to 10 years. I will focus on Amendment 2 in my name, which is a probing amendment as to the rationale behind this extension. I already have concerns that tenants of social housing who are able and willing to buy their property should be forced to wait longer. I understand that the Government, in their manifesto, committed to increase the protections on newly built social housing, but this provision would affect existing social housing tenants too. There may be many tenants right now who are on the cusp of reaching the three-year eligibility requirement, with high hopes of finally being able to own their own home, but who will have to wait an additional seven years when the Bill becomes law, unless it is amended. That is a long time to wait and be on welfare. If the Government insist on an extension to the qualifying period, why not extend it to five years rather than 10, as my amendment suggests? Can the Minister explain what evidence base there is behind that number? In addition, exactly how much social housing stock is a 10-year extension expected to protect for us—as opposed to five, say—and how has the impact on existing tenants been assessed, if at all?

We must ensure that 10 years is not just an arbitrary number chosen randomly. If there is a justification, it should be outlined and explained clearly for the House to scrutinise. We must also remember that we are talking about real people living in social housing right now—people with hopes and aspirations, whose rights to buy a property should not be treated carelessly or without thought. What data do the Government have, if any, as to how many tenants are about to reach the three-year qualifying period? Can the Minister please share that data with the Committee? I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response and from other noble Lords who have tabled amendments in this group. I beg to move.

Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this Committee. I apologise to noble Lords that I was not able to be in your Lordships’ House for Second Reading. I declare my relevant technology interests as set out in the register, variously as adviser to the Crown Estate, Endava plc and Simmons & Simmons LLP, and as non-executive director of Avalanche (BVI), Inc and the Avalanche Foundation.

In my set of Committee amendments, I want to assist the Bill by bringing the strands of inclusion and innovation and talent and technology through every possible supportive clause of the Bill. In this group, I speak to Amendments 3, 10 and 13 in my name.

Amendment 3 sets out provisions to establish a digital life-cycle service for right to buy. In doing so, it would provide greater empowerment, knowledge, connection and communication to those who may wish to avail themselves of the right-to-buy service. This would be an effective and important use of digital technology and, through that, could play a positive part in enabling digital inclusion. Critically, the amendment does not seek to rely just on digital; it sets out provisions for alternative means of connection to ensure this life-cycle service could be achieved through systems such as text messaging. Amendment 10 would develop this in the context of fraud requirements, clearly supporting the measures in new Section 124A inserted by Clause 4. Amendment 13 further seeks to use the benefits of technology to provide an immutable record—an audit trail—which is tamper-proof for all Section 122 applications. In 2017, I wrote a report on blockchain called Distributed Ledger Technologies for Public Good . At that stage, I wanted to set out not just the potential public use cases but the public value cases in which the distributed ledger and other technologies could assist across the state. My fear was that, if these potential use cases and value cases were not set out, the debate would get stuck and, whenever blockchain was mentioned, it would naturally be assumed that it meant just Bitcoin, which had nothing to say on beneficial provision for operations of the state across potentially all government departments and local authorities. Amendment 13 is therefore one such potential use case or value case, where there could be a clear audit trail, available for all, of use to the department, and indeed the regulator, with the safety, security and knowledge that it is a clear, accurate, immutable record of applications and any potential fraud hearings and investigations that have happened around right to buy.

These three amendments look to deploy the benefits of such potential technologies. I believe they would greatly support the provisions set out in the Bill.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)My Lords, I will speak to government Amendments 4, 6 and 122 in my name now and then come back to close at the end, if that is all right with noble Lords.

The Government clearly set out in our response to the consultation on reforming the right to buy that we would prevent existing property owners or those who have previously benefited from the scheme exercising right to buy unless there are exceptional circumstances. This was supported by 91% of respondents to the consultation, including 86% of social tenants who responded. We have already drawn up the latter part of this commitment through Clause 2 of the Bill and intend to add to this by including a provision in new Clause 2 to prevent existing residential property owners exercising the right to buy. The Committee will appreciate that defining residential property ownership is complex, given the many forms that property ownership can take. Capturing this complexity in legal drafting required additional time, meaning that this clause was not present at introduction. Given that the intent behind the right to buy is to enable tenants of social housing to become home owners, preventing existing property owners using the scheme is a fair and rational approach.

We have set out in this amendment what we think is a reasonable definition of a residential property owner. The new clause will apply to anyone who owns a residential property, whether owned outright or with a mortgage. Leasehold and freehold properties will be captured, with exceptions for short-term leases under 21 years, as will joint ownership and any properties owned outside England, including those held in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and abroad. As in Clause 2, exemptions will be made for victims of domestic abuse who have moved from the accommodation that they were occupying for reasons connected to the abuse.

As part of the application process, tenants will be required to declare to the landlord whether they own another property and landlords will be able to check the information that the tenant provides. If tenants are seeking exceptionally to buy under a right-to-buy scheme, where they already own a residential property, because they have been a victim of domestic abuse, they will be required to provide evidence of that to the landlord. Amendment 4 thus follows through on our commitment to exclude existing property owners from using right to buy and is accompanied by Amendments 6 and 122, which are consequential and enable the new clause to operate as intended. I commend these amendments to the Committee.

Baroness Coffey (Con)My Lords, I want to hear from the Minister about government Amendment 4, to try to understand a bit more about cohabitees. There are other legal rulings which have been made and I am led to believe that the Lord Chancellor will be bringing forward legislation about cohabitees, but the definition is not particularly strong. I want to understand how, in practice, the Government intend to put this in place. The new clause is suggesting that it is somebody who lives with somebody else as if they are married, but there are other benefits rulings where that entitlement was brought in only because of children involved. I want to get a better understanding because, in that particular case, the ruling is that you have to have lived with somebody for only a single day. I hear that the Lord Chancellor may be talking about something like three years. I would be grateful if the Minister, in her final wind-up, would elaborate further on how they will determine accurately whether somebody is a cohabitee.

Baroness Thornhill (LD)I have just a few words on this group. First of all, I failed to observe the social niceties and would like to say that I am pleased that I have already had conversations and emails with the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bexley, and I formally welcome her to the Front Bench. Her availability thus far has proved that she is going to be a good colleague to work with. I am also pleased to see the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, on the Front Bench, and I echo the kind words that she missed from the Minister regarding her contribution. The noble Baroness—Jane—was a really positive person to work with and I particularly respected the way she understood and respected political difference, and yet we could still have that cup of tea.

I thank the Minister very much for the email that she sent us recently, containing the appendix which outlined all the things that the Government were doing. I was a bit frustrated and had a meeting with the Minister, asking how this fits here and how that fits there. I was pleased that she responded positively. I still like it in diagram form, I must admit, but it really did help.

I have an anecdote on the eligibility period. When we were losing right to buy quite considerably, I noticed the number of homes that were lost within three to five years. It was significant. It had me questioning how people could afford to get social housing in the first place—do not forget that we are in a pretty high-cost housing area. That led us to look at that and we found that it was to do with the number of children, which seemed to be a main factor rather than any issue about household income and how people could afford to pay. I am pleased that we will look at housing allocation again at some point, because I think there are things to look at.

I can only be awestruck by the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond. I have looked through the whole load that he has tabled and I confess that I do not understand most of them. What I do know is that the House has a real expert and champion, and therefore I look forward to the Minister’s answer to the noble Lord.

To put it briefly, we will not support any amendments that are designed to continue right to buy in its current format, given the present crisis situation. We will agree with amendments designed to restrict eligibility and protect any further loss of stock, and thus we completely understand and support government Amendment 4. If someone owns another property, they should not be eligible for right to buy. It is as simple as that.

16:45:00

When I listen to the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson—who always delivers his speeches in such a compassionate manner—I am sitting here thinking, “I kind of agree with this”. He talks about real people, but there are real people in temporary housing who are crying every night; there are real people who are paying far too high a percentage of their salaries or wages to put a roof over their head. They are the people I think about. We can match that rhetoric.

The noble Lord, Lord Young, mentioned the percentages and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, quite rightly took him up on that. It is about need, surely; it is not about numbers. We need houses that people can afford to pay the rent on. At the moment, we are very sadly lacking in that.

Lord Jamieson (Con)My Lords, it is very convenient that my noble friend Lady Scott is in the Chamber, so I can say many thanks for all that she has done and how she helped me come into the House. It is great following someone who is so good, because there is so much to learn and, fortunately, I am still able to access that learning, so I thank her very much.

My noble friend Lady Eaton rightly raises concerns regarding changes to the qualifying period, removing opportunity for many. What is the Government’s evidence that this will work and why is the change being made from three to 10 years? In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, who made either a compliment or a back-handed compliment—I am not sure which—it fundamentally comes down to our view that retaining a house with a family in it and not giving them the opportunity to buy it and stay in it, with the proceeds being used to build more social housing, does not remove anyone from the waiting list. Using that resource to build more housing, which could be temporary accommodation, social housing or specialist housing, is an opportunity to reduce the housing waiting list. It is about more homes for more people, and more opportunity.

I will use, if I may, the same pleading as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, that I do not fully understand what my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond is proposing. But, certainly, his expertise is far greater than mine and using things such as digital lifecycle services, better technology and encryption technology to support tenants to provide information and to reduce levels of fraud is, surely, a good idea. I look forward to the Minister’s response on those matters.

We have the same concerns about Clause 1, and we are opposed to it until the Government have outlined sufficient evidence on what impact extending the qualifying period will have, not only on housing stock but on tenants who want to own their own home. To many, this, along with other measures proposed in the Bill, would appear to be a deliberate government strategy to undermine right to buy: death by a thousand cuts, so to speak.

Amendment 5 proposes a mechanism to protect existing tenants, and as a result these changes would not affect those who have entered a secure tenancy before this clause comes into force. There is precedent for retrospective protection in legislation, as was done in the Housing Act 2004 passed by the previous Labour Government. There are tenants currently under the impression that they will have the opportunity to own their own home after three years and we should realise the impact that this will have. Alternatively, Amendments 120, 121 and 123 would delay the commencement of Section 1 by three years, thereby giving tenants who are just now entering secure tenancy the opportunity to exercise their current right to buy should they so wish, rather than suddenly snatching it away.

Amendments 7 and 8 reflect our concerns about Clause 2. These probe whether right to buy should be restricted on the basis that a spouse or civil partner, living or deceased, has exercised it in the past.

Amendment 9 also questions the ability of a landlord to be satisfied that persons not married or in civil partnership were none the less living together in that way. These provisions raise key questions about how the state treats two people living together and whether that should affect their property rights. How do the Government plan to communicate these changes so that tenants are aware how their relationships could affect their right to buy? This is particularly pertinent in relation to the Cohabitation Rights Bill, which has been brought forward by the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, and the Government’s consultation on reforming inheritance for unmarried couples.

Furthermore, the Government have tabled Amendments 4, 6 and 122 to introduce a new clause to prevent the right to buy being exercised if a person, their spouse, civil partner or cohabitee already owns other residential property. There are various scenarios I ask the Government to consider. First, as my noble friend Lady Coffey raised, how are the Government defining a relationship in this instance?

As we have seen recently in Scotland, a wife claimed to be completely unaware of a £125,000 motorhome owned by her husband for three years and parked on her mother-in-law’s drive. In all seriousness, it is an optimistic assumption that all those entering relationships are aware of their partner’s current finances and assets. So, how will the Government be able to justify taking away the right to buy from someone who is unaware of a separate asset that they have no stake in? Do the Government accept that there may be additional and unexpected complexities to this proposal?

It also seems to be a contradictory rationale to ban right to buy for tenants in this situation while simultaneously permitting a lifetime tenancy at below-market rates. That seems slightly puzzling. We are not willing to accept these amendments at this stage, and not until further scrutiny of these proposals has taken place on Report.

Finally, Amendment 35 would require the Secretary of State to issue guidance promoting the right-to-buy scheme and financial literacy among young people. People need to be aware of their options and rights, and young people especially need to be given roots to stand on their own two feet. As the Minister herself has previously said, young people need to be more aware of opportunities that are out there for home ownership. Of course, it is not just the case that young people are unaware; they need to be given the financial skills to help navigate the housing market.

I therefore hope the Government will consider our amendments on how we can better support young people to own their own home and look at delaying Clause 4 until such time as this House has had a greater opportunity to scrutinise it.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)My Lords, I will first refer to Opposition comments about government amendments, as that will probably be the most helpful. Tenants who own another property are, by definition, already homeowners, and the right-to-buy scheme was introduced to support tenants who otherwise would be unlikely to access home ownership. Therefore, they should not be given a discount to buy a second home when so many others have not been given the opportunity to purchase a first home. Existing homeowners can generally not join the housing register for the allocation of social housing, including those who own property outside their local authority or abroad, meaning that the measure to exclude such property ownership aligns with existing allocations guidance.

In response to the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, there is a very detailed explanation of the exclusion in the amendment itself. I will not read it out, because everyone can look at it in the amendment, but the cohabitee part of the amendment refers to

“the co-habitee of the person, or any of the persons, to whom the right to buy belongs; and, for that purpose, one person is the co-habitee of another person if they live together as if they were a married couple or civil partners”.

However, I will reflect on the noble Baroness’s comments if it is not as clear as we hope it is. But, from looking at it again, though, it seems very clear to me in the amendment we have tabled.

I will now tackle the question of whether Clause 1 should stand part of the Bill. Clause 1 increases the minimum tenancy length required for tenants to be eligible for the right-to-buy scheme from three to 10 years. The core aim of the right-to-buy measures in the Bill is to prevent social homes from being sold off without being replaced. Maintaining the eligibility period at three years would contribute to council homes continuing to be sold off at an unsustainable rate and would reduce the ability of our councils to replace those homes.

Furthermore, increasing the minimum eligibility period has received strong support from stakeholders. The noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, asked me about evidence. In our consultation on reforming the right to buy, 81% of all respondents, of which 62% were tenants, supported increasing the minimum period of tenancy required to at least 10 years. In fact, the majority of respondents, 54%, supported someone having to be a public sector tenant for longer than 10 years before becoming eligible for the right to buy.

This takes me neatly on to Amendment 2, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, which seeks to extend the eligibility period under the scheme to five years, instead of the proposed 10. The Government firmly believe that 10 years strikes the right balance between allowing longer-standing tenants the opportunity to own their own home and protecting our much-needed social housing stock. Increasing the eligibility requirement to 10 years will better support councils to rebuild the stock of council homes and will ensure that it is tenants who have lived in and paid rent on their social homes for many years who are able to own their own home through the scheme. Ten years is also the average length of tenancy of someone buying under the scheme currently, meaning that this will not substantially change the average eligibility period of those buying under the scheme.

Amendment 5, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bexley, seeks to amend Clause 1 of the Bill so that the provision only applies to secure tenancies entered into after the measure comes into force, which would mean that existing secure tenancies would still be eligible for the right to buy after only three years of tenancy. Excluding existing tenancies from the eligibility change would mean that the existing three years’ eligibility would continue to apply to the vast majority of council housing tenants and that we would continue to see homes being sold as early as three years after a tenancy is secured. As set out in the Government’s response to the consultation on these measures, we have been clear that the intention is that this change would apply to both existing and new tenants to protect existing social housing stock. For these reasons, we cannot accept this amendment.

Amendments 120, 121 and 123, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, seek to delay commencement of Clause 1 by three years. It is imperative that we increase the eligibility requirement for right to buy as soon as practicable to ensure we support long-standing tenants in retaining the right to buy, while ensuring that our councils are not losing homes at an unsustainable rate. As such, we intend to bring Clause 1 into force on Royal Assent. This ensures that we act quickly to protect council housing stock and that we prevent a potential spike in sales as a result of these changes. Allowing a three-year lead-in time for Clause 1 would only increase the loss of social homes to the right to buy. I hope that the noble Baroness will understand the reasons I have set out and withdraw her amendment, and I commend this clause to the Committee. I turn now to Clause 2, which has been opposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. Repeat purchases through the right to buy go against the core aim of the scheme, which is to support tenants into long-term home ownership. It also undermines the objectives of maintaining and expanding social and affordable housing stock. The vast majority of respondents to the government consultation stated they would support preventing someone who has previously benefited from the right to buy from being able to exercise the right to buy again. Clause 2 delivers on this, with exceptions for victims of domestic abuse and in cases of irretrievable relationship breakdown. The terms of these exceptions are set out in the clause and will be reinforced by updated guidance when the Act comes into force. It will be for social landlords to be satisfied that the exceptions apply, for which they will be able to ask for evidence from the applicant as part of the application process. This is something councils are well practised at doing, as under the current rules those who have previously exercised the right to buy have their discount reduced if they seek to exercise the right to buy again.

I now turn to Amendments 7 and 8, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, which intend to probe whether the right to buy should be restricted if a spouse or civil partner of tenants have exercised the right to buy before. The Government have carefully considered these restrictions and feel it is appropriate that this policy should include where spouses and civil partners exercised the right to buy in the past, as the household in question can therefore be assessed as having already benefited from the scheme. Allowing repeated purchases within married couples or civil partnerships could lead to the gaming of the system and would undermine the objective of preserving and expanding social housing stock.

Amendment 9 seeks to probe how social landlords could be satisfied that, where a tenant is seeking an exemption to be able exercise the right to buy again due to relationship breakdown, the tenant was not married or in a civil partnership but were living as such—that is, that they were cohabiting. As part of the application process, applicants seeking an exemption will be required to provide evidence of their previous situation. If the landlord is satisfied with that evidence, the right to buy could then be exercised. To reiterate and reassure, we will be providing additional guidance to landlords on Clause 2 and how it will operate. With this explanation, I therefore kindly ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendments and commend Clause 2 to the Committee.

Amendment 35, also tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, intends to create a separate piece of guidance for the right to buy specifically aimed at promoting the scheme and financial literacy among young people. I point noble Lords to the existing guide Your Right to Buy Your Home , which is accessible on GOV.UK to all tenants regardless of age. This provides comprehensive guidance on the right-to-buy scheme, including on the costs of home ownership. The guidance will be fully updated in light of the reforms to the scheme. The guidance also includes information on how to access the Money and Pensions Service, which provides free, impartial advice to help people make informed choices about managing their money. This service is accessible to young people. As we do not wish to duplicate any existing guidance, the Government cannot accept this amendment. As I have already alluded to, we will continue to update and promote guidance to tenants on the right to buy through usual channels, notably GOV.UK. We will also share relevant information about the scheme and changes to it with local authorities so that they can disseminate it to their tenants.

Finally, I turn to Amendments 3, 10 and 13. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, for these amendments, and for his technical knowledge which enabled him to bring them before the Committee today. They seek to introduce a centralised digital lifecycle service for the right to buy, alongside new requirements for audit and fraud tracking. I recognise the intention behind these proposals—improving transparency, supporting tenants through the process and strengthening safeguards against fraud are all important objectives. However, the Government do not consider that a centrally mandated digital service is the right approach to achieve these aims. The right to buy is fundamentally a landlord-led process. Individual social landlords hold the relevant tenancy information, determine eligibility and manage applications directly with tenants. This reflects the fact that eligibility depends on detailed, case-specific information—such as tenancy history, property type and previous use of the right to buy—which sits with the landlord, not with central government.

These amendments would require a significant shift away from that established model, creating a national service to replicate functions that are already carried out locally. To operate effectively, such a service would depend on the continuous input and standardisation of very large volumes of data from social landlords across the country. That would not be a simple enhancement. It would require the design and delivery of complex digital infrastructure, the resolution of significant data-sharing and governance issues and the ongoing maintenance of accurate, real-time information across a highly diverse sector. In practice, this creates a substantial delivery risk. There is a real danger that such a system could become burdensome, duplicative and inflexible, placing new administrative burdens on landlords while not improving the core experience for tenants.

Similarly, mandating specific technologies, such as a blockchain-based audit trail, risks imposing disproportionate cost and complexity without clear evidence of additional benefit over existing systems. Landlords are already required to maintain accurate records and have processes in place to identify and investigate potential fraud. For these reasons, while I understand the objectives behind these amendments the Government consider that they would introduce unnecessary complexity, cost, and risk into a system that is best administered at the local level. We therefore cannot support these amendments and I kindly ask the noble Lord not to press them.

Lord Jamieson (Con)I would like some clarification about government Amendment 4. This is an issue of principle, to some extent. This is an amendment of more than two pages; it is not a small technical correction. As the Minister will have heard from me and my noble friend Lady Coffey, we have some concerns about understanding issues such as what is a cohabitee and when is it defined, and so forth. We genuinely believe that there is a principle here that this House should have the opportunity to properly scrutinise government amendments, and this government amendment has come just after the Bill was published. Why was it not in the original Bill, and why should we not be given the opportunity, given that it is quite a large amendment, to take it to Report, which would give the Government and us the opportunity to clarify some of these issues that have been raised here today?

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)As I set out in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, a clear definition is set out in the new clause. I accept what the noble Lord says. Perhaps, if he would rather reflect on this between now and Report, I will have further discussions with him on that. Is he suggesting that I should not move the amendment at this stage?

Lord Jamieson (Con)Yes; we would be very happy if the noble Baroness did not move the amendment. We would prefer that that amendment is moved on Report after we have had the opportunity for clarification and conversations.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)Forgive me, but it was my understanding that it had been agreed through the usual channels that we could move this amendment today.

Lord Jamieson (Con)That was not my understanding.

Baroness Eaton (Con)My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her response and to all noble Lords who tabled amendments and provided insight in the debate. It is clear that the changes to right to buy need to be properly and thoroughly thought through, not only to ensure that they are backed by sufficient evidence but so that they consider the real-life consequences. This is certainly true for existing tenants of social housing who may not be aware of upcoming changes and who may have hopes of owning their own home for the first time.

I thank my noble friend Lady O’Neill of Bexley and my noble friend Lord Jamieson for considering in their amendments in this group how tenants can be better protected, particularly by promoting greater financial literacy and looking in detail at the commencement of the Bill’s provisions.

I also thank the Minister for her answers, but I hope that the Government will look further into the evidence behind extending the qualifying period to properly assess whether 10 years really is the most effective and necessary number. If the differences in predicted outcomes between five- and 10-year periods are marginal, the period should not be extended more than is absolutely necessary. We should not treat people’s aspirations with contempt and restrict their rights purely to undermine a scheme for the sake of it.

More broadly, therefore, I hope the Government will reflect on what these changes mean for existing tenants, whose hopes and dreams of owning a home should not be treated as chess pieces to be moved, or indeed looked down on. At this point, in Committee, however, I would like to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 2 withdrawn.

Amendment 3 not moved.

Clause 1 agreed.

Amendment 4

Moved by

4: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause— “Exercise of the right to buy by residential property ownersBefore section 121A of the Housing Act 1985 insert—“121ZC Exercise of the right to buy by residential property ownersProhibition on exercise of right to buy(1) The right to buy may not be exercised if any of the following persons owns other residential property—(a) the person, or any of the persons, to whom the right to buy belongs;(b) the spouse or civil partner of the person, or any of the persons, to whom the right to buy belongs (if they are living together at the relevant time in relation to the right to buy);(c) the co-habitee of the person, or any of the persons, to whom the right to buy belongs;and, for that purpose, one person is the co-habitee of another person if they live together as if they were a married couple or civil partners.(2) But that prohibition does not apply if—(a) the landlord is satisfied that—(i) the person or any of the persons to whom the right to buy belongs (“A”) has at any time within the relevant period been a victim of domestic abuse within the meaning given by section 1 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, and(ii) within that period A has for reasons connected to the abuse moved from the accommodation that they were occupying (whether or not more than once), and(b) the right to buy is being exercised by A (whether alone or with other persons).Residential property(3) In this section—(a) “other residential property” means residential property other than the dwelling-house to which the right to buy relates;(b) “residential property” means a building or a part of a building (whether in the United Kingdom or elsewhere) that consists of, or includes, property that—(i) is being used wholly or partly as a dwelling, or(ii) is constructed or adapted for use as a dwelling, but is not being used wholly or partly as a dwelling.Ownership: England, Wales and Northern Ireland(4) Subsections (5) to (7) apply for the purpose of determining whether a person owns other residential property that is in England, Wales or Northern Ireland.(5) The person owns the other residential property if the person is the beneficial owner, or one of the beneficial owners, of a qualifying interest in the other residential property.(6) For the purposes of subsection (5), any of the following is a “qualifying interest”— (a) the freehold;(b) a lease that was originally granted for a term of 21 years or longer.(7) For the purposes of subsection (5), a person (P) is a beneficial owner of a qualifying interest if—(a) the qualifying interest is not held on trust and P holds, or is one of the persons who hold, the qualifying interest, or(b) the qualifying interest is held on trust and P has, or is one of the persons who have, a beneficial interest under the trust;(and accordingly if P holds, or is one of the persons who hold, the qualifying interest on trust, P is not a beneficial owner unless P also has a beneficial interest under the trust).Ownership: Scotland(8) Subsections (9) and (10) apply for the purpose of determining whether a person owns other residential property that is in Scotland.(9) The person owns the other residential property if the person is the owner, or one of the owners, of the other residential property.(10) But where a person (“T”) holds other residential property in trust under the law of Scotland on terms such that, if the trust had effect under the law of England and Wales, one or more persons would be regarded as having an equitable interest in the trust property (the “notional beneficiary or beneficiaries”)—(a) the notional beneficiary or beneficiaries are to be treated as being the owner or owners of the residential property despite no such interest being recognised under the law of Scotland, and(b) T is the owner only if T is a notional beneficiary.Ownership: outside the United Kingdom(11) In determining whether a person owns other residential property outside the United Kingdom, regard must be had to the desirability of producing an effect that is as consistent with the effect produced by subsections (5) to (7) as is practicable (taking into account, in particular, any ways in which the law relating to the other residential property differs from the laws of the United Kingdom).Trusts and trustees: other provision(12) For the purposes of this section—(a) a qualifying interest (in relation to England, Wales or Northern Ireland), or ownership (in relation to Scotland), is not to be regarded as held on a trust created by a will unless and until the qualifying interest or ownership has been vested in the trustees;(b) a person is not to be regarded as holding a qualifying interest (in relation to England, Wales or Northern Ireland), or ownership (in relation to Scotland), if they hold it as a trustee in bankruptcy or otherwise in accordance with any legislation of any part of the United Kingdom relating to insolvency.””Member’s explanatory statement This would prevent the right to buy from being exercised if any person to whom the right belongs, or their spouse, civil partner or co-habitee, already owns other residential property.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)I move the amendment formally but I am happy to discuss it further with noble Lords if they have concerns about the definition.

Amendment 4 agreed.

Amendment 5 not moved.

Clause 2Eligibility if Right to Buy exercised previously

Amendment 6

Moved by

6: Clause 2, page 1, line 8, leave out from beginning to “Exercise” in line 9 and insert— “(1) After section 121ZC of the Housing Act 1985 (inserted by section (Exercise of the right to buy by residential property owners)) insert—Member’s explanatory statement This would be consequential on the new Clause (Exercise of the right to buy by residential property owners) in my name.

Amendment 6 agreed.

Amendments 7 to 9 not moved.

Clause 2, as amended, agreed.

Clause 3Timescales

Debate on whether Clause 3 should stand part of the Bill.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)My Lords, I outlined in our debate on Amendment 1 why I am opposing all these clauses, specifically Clauses 3 and 4 in this group. My opposition to Clause 2 was because I wanted to go further, not to ensure that there is no double-dipping within households or by individuals. I also make it clear that on Clause 3, I am not opposed to the extension of the period of eligibility and on Clause 4, I am not opposed to anti-fraud measures. There are people opposing these clauses for different reasons, but mine is a desire to stop right to buy altogether.

Clause 3 agreed.

Clause 4Fraud

Amendments 10 to 13 not moved.

Clause 4 agreed.

Clause 5Discount

Amendment 14

Moved by

14: Clause 5, page 5, line 4, leave out “five” and insert “20” Member’s explanatory statement This replaces the proposed reduction to the right to buy discount to five per cent with a reduction to 20 per cent, from the current rate of 35 per cent for houses and 50 per cent for flats.

Baroness Coffey (Con)My Lords, the intention of the Government is to change the discount on right to buy, dropping it from the current 35% rate for houses and 50% for flats all the way down to 5%. Taking Amendments 14 and 15 together, I agree with the intention to add percentages as the number of years of accommodation are covered. However, going all the way down to requiring 95% of the market rate to be paid is somewhat strong, recognising how quickly it is intended for this clause to come into effect. I went for a halfway house of 20%—because for other social housing providers the affordable rent is capped at 80% of market rent—thinking that this might prove a sensible way to help people to acquire a home; this 20% discount is similar to the discount that happens for the same property when it comes to rent.

Why is this? Not everybody who lives in social housing is on benefits—quite a high proportion are not. There is an assumption that it does not matter anyway. I appreciate that not everybody who lives in social housing—in a council house or one provided by a housing association—wants to buy where they live. But I fear that this will put a lot of people out. I am very supportive of some of the earlier clauses where we have extended how long somebody needs to have been living in that home. Would the Government consider something that is in parity? The approach to rent should also be the approach on the discount to buy. I beg to move.

17:15:00

Lord Lansley (Con)My Lords, I support my noble friend in her amendment. I should declare this first time in Committee my interests, as recorded in the register, as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum and adviser to other development forums, although all the views I will express will be entirely my own and not attributable to any members of those forums.

We arrived at a position back in 2024 when the Government radically reduced the discount rate for existing tenants. I felt very strongly, as I think my noble friend did, that there were significant legitimate expectations on the part of those who were tenants that they would be saving over a period of time and would have the opportunity to buy at a significant discount. I can see that the Government had the right as an incoming Government to adjust the discount, and they chose to do that, but I think they went too far. I firmly support my noble friend in saying that we want to continue to give tenants the feeling of hope that they will buy and that there has to be a sufficient discount to make it worth their while to do so, especially in many parts of the country where property prices these days are not necessarily increasing. We do not want them to not take the opportunity to buy because they fear that the property they would buy would no longer be of the value they have paid.

The discount that my noble friend is recommending in Amendments 14 and 15 firmly puts us in the right sort of territory for continuing to meet, to some extent, the legitimate expectations of many tenants and is sufficient to make it clear that we are not giving them an undue incentive to buy. When you combine my noble friend’s amendments with some of the Government’s amendments and others, which mean the right to buy is able to be established only over a significant period of time, as we have just recently discussed, that is quite a manageable combination. The Government should be willing to entertain that people who have been tenants for a long time, or are tenants for a long period of time in the future, are given a worthwhile discount of the kind my noble friend proposes.

Lord Fuller (Con)My Lords, I rise to speak in support of my noble friend Lady Coffey and to make the simple point that while the Government seem to be trying to reduce right to buy’s ability to give people an astonishingly important way to invest for their retirements, buy a stake in society, provide security for their family and so forth, the key point has been forgotten. Right to buy, when the receipts are recycled, is a very good way of renewing our social housing stock. For somebody who has been living there a long time to buy an older house—and there are provisions in the Bill to lengthen to 35 years the terms under which a new house may be purchased—acquiring it releases incrementally the funds to improve the stock over many years. This is not a bad thing but a good thing.

The purpose of my noble friend Lady Coffey’s amendment is to provide a meaningful incentive but not an overly generous one. It balances the rights of the individual, as my noble friend Lord Lansley said, to save over a long period of time in the expectation that they may acquire the home, which they have previously rented, with sufficient funds, 80% of the value—which is more or less the cost of producing a replacement. It balances that private interest with the public good, and I strongly support my noble friend Lady Coffey’s amendment. It does the right thing in the right way in the right quantum to ensure that there is a source of funding to upgrade and replace that core housing stock. Otherwise, it will fossilise and get old, and that is not in anybody’s interests.

Baroness Thornhill (LD)I will stick to my words at the beginning and be as brief as possible and to the point. If the aim is to preserve existing stock, clearly this is a lever you have to pull. We would not disagree with that, even though it is so low, but let us be clear: if the average house price in my area—actually, perhaps the average is not a good way of looking at it, but if the median house price is about £450,000, you are still getting a discount of £90,000. How many of us would say no to that?

The other question we have to ask ourselves iswho pays for the discount? However much detail we want to get into about finances, the bottom line is that a sale does not build another house and that money has to be added. Those are simple reasons why we support this direction in the Bill.

Baroness O’Neill of Bexley (Con)My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Curran, on her return to the Front Bench. I declare my interests as vice-president of London Councils—I will be there tomorrow morning—and as a part-owner of a rented property in Bexley. I also put on record that my parents had a right to buy. My dad was a bus conductor, and I am proud of that.

I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate on what is ultimately a question of proportionality. The Government believe that the current level of discounts is too generous and that they need to be reduced. The question raised by these amendments is whether the reductions proposed in the Bill go further than necessary, and hence we have probed the inclusion of Clause 5. My noble friend Lady Coffey’s amendments do not seek to preserve the status quo; rather, they offer an alternative approach that would reduce discounts while retaining a meaningful incentive for tenants considering home ownership, as my noble friend Lord Fuller said. In that sense, they seek a compromise between the current arrangements and the considerably lower levels proposed by the Government.

Noble Lords have referred to the importance of preserving the viability of the scheme. That is a legitimate concern. If discounts are reduced to the point where the financial advantage of exercising right to buy becomes marginal, there is a risk that the policy ceases to operate as intended. The issue before the Committee is therefore not whether discounts should ever change but whether the Government have adequately justified reductions at the scale proposed in the Bill. Having listened to the debate, I am not yet persuaded that they have. For that reason, I hope the Minister will give further consideration to a more measured approach to better preserve the opportunities that the right-to-buy scheme has offered to many tenants over the years.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords who have spoken in this debate: the noble Baronesses, Lady Coffey, Lady Thornhill and Lady O’Neill, and the noble Lords, Lord Lansley and Lord Fuller. First, I will defend why Clause 5 should stand part of the Bill. The right-to-buy scheme continues to provide an important route for social housing tenants to own their own homes. However, we must ensure that the scheme remains sustainable. This includes ensuring that discounts are set at the right level to enable long-standing tenants to buy under the scheme but without depleting levels of social housing stock.

The Government has already taken action to reduce the maximum cash discounts in November 2024 by returning them to pre-2012 levels. We committed to revising the discounts available as a percentage of the property value so that they align better with the revised cash cap amounts. Clause 5 delivers on our commitment to do this by reducing the percentage discounts so that they start at 5% of the property value after 10 years of public sector tenancy, with an increase for every extra year of tenancy up to a maximum of 15%.

As is the case now, these percentage discounts will be subject to the cash caps which set out the maximum cash discount that a tenant can receive in their local authority area. Aligning the discounts available as a percentage of the property value with the cash caps ensures that those who have been in their homes the longest benefit the most, while also avoiding disproportionately large discounts in high-value areas. The revised percentage discount levels aim to strike a balance between the responses received during the right to buy consultation, where many respondents supported setting the percentage discounts lower than is proposed by this clause.

We are also simplifying the rules by applying a single set of discount arrangements to houses and flats, making the scheme clearer and more consistent for tenants. This clause also extends the discount repayment period to 10 years after the original sale from the current five years, during which a purchaser looking to resell the property will be required to repay all or some of the discount on a sliding scale. This measure was supported by 72% of all respondents to our consultation. It will ensure that there is less of an incentive for early resale, which can undermine the purpose of the scheme, and will encourage people buying under the scheme to retain the property and discourage some of the profiteering that we have seen. With this explanation, I therefore ask the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, to withdraw her opposition to the clause standing part of the Bill.

I turn to Amendments 14 and 15, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey. The intention of these amendments—to set the minimum percentage discount at 20% and the maximum at 30%—would undermine the core aims of the clause that I have just set out and would keep the percentage discounts too high. In practice, the lower maximum cash discounts would take effect over the percentage amounts, as the cash cap would often be the lesser of the two discounts and would determine the discount that the tenant would receive. This would also mean that tenants with longer tenancies would be less likely to benefit, because the cash cap would bite sooner on the actual discount received. I therefore kindly ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

Baroness Coffey (Con)I am grateful to the Minister for her response. I do not think we can base every decision or amendment on exactly where one lives—recognising that there are parts of the country where there are significantly lower costs and low market prices to be had. I also go back partly to what I said at Second Reading; there is a risk that, as people retire, they will start to claim benefits to continue to live in the places where they are currently social housing tenants. I think it would be worth looking at the maths again, but with that I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 14 withdrawn.

Amendment 15 not moved.

Clause 5 agreed.

Clause 6Right of first refusal

Debate on whether Clause 6 should stand part of the Bill.

Lord Jamieson (Con)My Lords, I would like to begin this debate by stating our concerns with Clause 6. Perhaps they are the same concerns that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, has.

The right of first refusal dictates that, if you bought a property through the right-to-buy scheme and decide to sell it within 10 years, you are required to offer the property back to your former social landlord before putting it on to the open market. The current measure provides an opportunity for previous social landlords to reacquire. However, extending it indefinitely raises a number of potential complexities and practical issues. It also undermines the principle of property ownership. What happens if you leave the property to your children? Does it impact any subsequent sales if the landlord decides not to reacquire it the first time? Many owners will decide to stay on their properties well beyond the 10 years before they even think of selling, or they may decide, as I mentioned, to pass it on to their children. If the right of first refusal is extended in perpetuity, what happens if a former social housing landlord has changed? A council may have merged with another or split into two—or in some cases three, under the current local government reorganisation—and it is not clear who the former landlord is. The housing association may have closed. Have the Government considered these practicalities and scenarios, and who is responsible in each of them for ensuring that the right of first refusal is upheld? Perhaps that is one for my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond to consider with technology and blockchain.

Turning to Clause 7, we have several concerns. Amendment 17 in my name probes the necessity of replacing the specific and widely understood term “warden” with the general and less specific term “manager”. I would appreciate the Minister providing some justification for this change.

17:30:00

Amendments 18 and 25 address a more fundamental concern. Clause 7 will mean that those living in rural areas will not have access to the right to buy. While we appreciate the challenges of building new social housing in rural areas, again, we believe that the Government’s focus should be on overcoming those challenges. Further, there may be very good reasons why an authority would want to sell housing through right to buy to make better use of the proceeds elsewhere, where demand may be greater. On principle too, why should social housing tenants have fewer rights to home ownership simply because of where they currently happen to be housed? That is not fair to the individual.

My noble friend Lord Fuller’s Amendment 19 notes an issue in how national parks are defined, and, in their amendment, the noble Lords, Lord Cameron of Dillington and Lord Best, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, raise the issue of how rural areas are defined in relation to population density. As currently drafted, rural areas as a whole will be defined by the Secretary of State through regulations. What counts as “rural” is disputed and will have consequences for tenants who live there. Our Amendment 25 would require an affirmative procedure for such regulations to ensure that Parliament has stronger oversight over how rural areas are defined. I hope that this will have support of other noble Lords.

Lastly, Amendment 22 in my name probes the rationale behind setting a 35-year time limit before the right to buy arises on newly built social housing. To be clear, we recognise the manifesto commitment to increase protections for newly built social housing, but why 35 years? Landlords are already protected by a floor price, which should reflect the cost of building that home. We appreciate that the calculation of floor prices could be improved—for instance, by taking into account the value of land that has been transferred to a housing revenue account at zero cost—but why is there a need for a 35-year time period? Why not five, 10, or 15 years? I am interested to hear of the evidence base behind setting a 35-year limit, or is this just a further attempt to undermine right to buy? I hope that the Minister can provide some further details on this. I look forward to her response, and to the contributions of other noble Lords to this group. I beg to move.

Baroness Pinnock (LD)My Lords, on Clause 6, I have a contrary view to that of the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson. I start by reminding the Committee that I have a registered interest as a councillor on Kirklees Council, which directly manages council housing in the borough.

The amendment in my name is related only to Clause 6, which is about social landlords’ right of first refusal to buy back properties. My reason for this amendment is that, first, there is wide agreement that there is a national housing emergency—despite what we have heard in debates on earlier amendments—due to a chronic lack of properties at a social rent. As we have heard from my noble friend Lady Thornhill, we on the Liberal Democrat Benches support the principles underpinning the Bill. Although the primary purpose of the Bill relates to constraining the right to buy, there is, unfortunately, very little ambition to rapidly increase the supply. A rapid increase is desperately needed, given the numbers—over 1 million people on housing waiting lists, the increasing number of people who are homeless, and the absolute scandal of over 170,000 children living in temporary accommodation for long periods.

Clause 6 provides a route by which councils can relatively quickly increase their supply of housing at a social rent. The changes it makes to the right of first refusal are significant. By removing the previous 10-year time limit, the Bill grants local authorities an indefinite right to repurchase former council homes every time they are resold on the open market. That is a powerful mechanism to reclaim lost stock and ensure that these homes return to the social housing sector, where they are so desperately needed.

However, a right is only as effective as the resources available to exercise it. Clause 9 helpfully allows the Secretary of State to let councils retain more of their right to buy receipts by modifying pooling requirements. Although welcome, I am afraid that it is but a drop in the ocean. Retention of receipts alone is not enough. For the following reasons, a dedicated additional funding stream is needed to support Clause 6 repurchases.

The first reason is market value realities. Clause 6 allows councils to buy back homes at market value. Homes sold decades ago have appreciated significantly, meaning that the retained receipts from a limited number of current sales under Clause 9 will be insufficient to buy back a meaningful volume of older stock. In other words, there is not enough cash available.

The second reason is that significant financial savings by both councils and the Government can be achieved by investing in repurchases. Local authorities currently spend £1.7 billion on temporary accommodation every year. That figure, which is from two years ago, has increased by 62% in just five years. Providing additional central funding to buy back permanent social homes would drastically reduce this unsustainable cost to local government.

The third reason is to stop the private transfer of homes. Currently, four in 10 homes sold under right to buy end up in the hands of private landlords, which rather undermines the argument we heard earlier. When they are sold to private landlords, rents inevitably rise significantly and support for tenants is much reduced. Without additional funding beyond the provisions in Clause 9, councils will be forced to watch as these homes are sold to the highest private bidder because they lack the immediate capital to exercise their new indefinite right to first refusal—which we support.

Clause 6 is a positive change, and Clause 9 provides a helpful start for self-funding, but to truly end the housing emergency and deliver the 90,000 new social homes every year that advocates such as Shelter call for—let alone the 150,000 that the Liberal Democrats want—councils must be given access to supplementary grant funding specifically for repurchases. It would be a win-win. Having the funding to buy back former social houses would rapidly increase desperately needed supply and enable families in temporary accommodation to be housed permanently, which both saves expenditure on temporary accommodation and provides families, and especially children, with the stability of a permanent home, which is very important to young people. I hope that the Minister will provide a positive response and open those government purses so that we can achieve a greater number of former council homes being bought back to house folk who desperately need them.

Lord Fuller (Con)My Lords, before I speak to my Amendment 19, I would like to support my noble friend Lord Jamieson in his promotion of Amendment 25 in respect of rural areas. I have been in enough debates in this House to know how hard it is for the term “rural” to be defined. The lamented right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans entertained us all with a debate about 18 months ago on what rurality meant. There is no definition within the Government or in this country of “rural”. There are a lot of contended assertions that rurality might be this thing or that. So unclear is the term that the Bishop commissioned his own research, and we debated it. I am bound to say that we were no further forward at the end than at the beginning—although last week, in the debate on the rural economy, as the noble Lord, Lord Katz, who is in his place, will recall, I advanced the definition of rural as that place where at 11 pm you cannot get an Uber to take you home from the pub, because in the sticks we do things differently. I make this point because if we are to have the term “rural” in Clause 7, it should be much more tightly defined so that we know exactly what we are getting and it goes beyond, “Can you get an Uber or not? Are you in the town or not? Where does the town begin? Where are the suburbs?”, and so forth.

I have made that point, and I now want to dwell on my Amendment 19. I am trying to be helpful here, because later, on Amendment 52 in the next group, I will talk about the concept of locality and recycling the right-to-buy receipts. It has been said that locality is not part of this Bill, but here it is in Clause 7, where the right-to-buy carve-out exists for social homes in national parks. Those places have some of the greatest housing pressures, as well as restrictions on new build, because new homes are restricted in national parks. My amendment aims to be helpful, because when we had the ministerial drop-in before Second Reading there was a slip of the tongue. The words “national parks” and “national landscapes” were used interchangeably. I have taken that as my cue, because Clause 7 mentions areas of outstanding natural beauty. I am entirely in accordance with those, but there are only 34 areas of outstanding natural beauty, whereas there are 46 national landscapes. Collectively they make up 15% of England, and there are other places in Wales, such as the Gower, and in Northern Ireland there are about half a dozen, including the Antrim Coast and Glens.

I am seeking to avoid confusion between what I believe is the old term—areas of outstanding natural beauty—and the new term, now preferred by government: national landscape. That is why my proposed new sub-paragraph (1)(aa) would make it clear that where there is a national landscape, which includes areas of outstanding natural beauty, covered in new sub-paragraph (1)(b), it really means national landscape. This small amendment seeks to extend the provisions of Clause 7(3) from national parks, to avoid leaving a gap between them and areas of outstanding natural beauty. This should provide the clarity and certainty to make it consistent with the Government’s new nomenclature.

Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 20. Before I do so, I must refer to my interests for the purposes of this Committee as a retired member of a Somerset farming family which lets some houses on the farm. I thank noble Lords who have supported this amendment, notably the noble Lord, Lord Best, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Thornhill and Lady Royall. Unfortunately, the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, who is not in her place, was late with her timing so did not make it to the Marshalled List.

At Second Reading I outlined the affordable housing crisis—I do not think that is overstating the case—that has overtaken many parts of rural England, and how rural housing waiting lists are larger, or are growing faster, than their urban equivalents. I explained that rural communities, rural social networks and even rural services have broken down, while the rural economy is stuttering, with businesses finding it harder to recruit their necessary workforce, and how all this is caused by a lack of affordable housing in the countryside. So it is vital that the local authority housing in rural England is protected from the right to buy.

17:45:00

All the evidence suggests that there are particular challenges of a lack of affordable housing in parishes with a population of fewer than 3,000. Only 9% of housing stock in such parishes is owned by local authorities or housing associations, compared with 17% in urban areas. New build rates of affordable housing in these rural communities are also much lower, reflecting the constraints on delivery. As a result, the calculations of “affordable housing need” show that the need is far greater in rural parishes than urban.

My first instinct was to table an amendment that simply stated that parishes with fewer than 3,000 people should be exempt from the right to buy—a clear definition that I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, would approve of. As a definition it is simple to understand and simple to designate. It is also fairly simple to de-designate when a parish grows too large and thus, hopefully, no longer needs the protection that such an amendment might give. Furthermore, it would also have given certainty and instant understanding to all involved—both the local authorities and the tenants. Giving the right signals to get on and build houses in those parishes was an important consideration for me.

My next thought was that we should stick to the tried and tested wording, so I turned to the Housing Act 1996, which exempted settlements from the right to acquire from registered providers—that is, parishes with a population of fewer than 3,000 and certain areas and parts of specific parishes. This amendment would have nearly covered the same areas as my simple 3,000 description. But then we received the Minister’s letter, setting out what was intended by the current wording in the Bill. So it seemed logical to use the words in her letter in my amendment, because then neither she nor her team could possibly reject it. However, I still have that sinking feeling. The Minister is not known for her acceptance of amendments.

I suspect the Minister will want the Secretary of State to have powers of flexibility and discretion to make up his or her mind in future, to fit in with other agendas and priorities. Do not forget that these powers will apply not only to this Secretary of State but to future Governments—and who knows what they will want? I, on the other hand, would like the rural definition to be instantly clear to everyone and to be in the Bill. Bearing in mind that the Minister’s definition, given in her letter, would include 91% of all parishes with a population of fewer than 3,000, that is acceptable to me. I am happy to accept her definition.

Sadly, the original designation in Section 157 of the 1985 Act, as implemented, excluded more than 60% of parishes with a population of fewer than 3,000. That was because the relevant section required local authorities to apply to the Secretary of State, and most local authorities, in their ignorance, failed to do so. This time, let us get the definition clear and in the Bill so that everyone understands where they are—government, local authorities and, above all, tenants. As I said, the Minister’s normal starting position is to repel all amendments, hence my sinking feeling. So can I put in a plea that if this amendment is not acceptable to her and her Government in this form, we can get around a table to discuss a way forward that gives rural local authorities and their tenants something a bit clearer and more understandable than we currently have in the Bill?

Lord Best (CB)My Lords, I support Amendment 20 in the name of my noble friend Lord Cameron of Dillington, and I declare my various housing interests as in the register. Before considering Amendment 20, perhaps I could extend a word of dissent to the Clause 6 stand part notice in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bexley. It would remove the proposed extension of the right of first refusal, enabling the obligation to last in perpetuity.

It seems a helpful change to enable the local authority—or, more likely, a nominated housing association—to have a long-lasting opportunity to reacquire a right-to-buy property when it is being sold. The price paid would be the full market value, and it would be determined independently so would involve no loss to the outgoing occupier. Indeed, the vendor could expect a save on fees to estate agents. Although a social landlord buying at full price a home that they previously sold at a substantial discount sounds like a nonsense, this may well be the only or best way of securing the affordable homes that are so badly needed. Indeed, the Government have a fund—the local authority housing fund—specifically to enable councils to buy and modernise existing property.

If, as is likely, the property in question is on an estate or in a block of other homes managed by the local authority or by a housing association, the management and maintenance costs will be more economical for a social landlord than for anyone else. In the case of major upgrades to existing houses or flats on social housing estates, or even their redevelopment, being able to acquire the property will be essential, and the right of first refusal means that they cannot be held to ransom. Extending the right in perpetuity sounds sensible to me.

I added my name to Amendment 20, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington. The Bill, in listing exceptions to the right to buy, includes

“an area designated by regulations made by the Secretary of State as a rural area”.

In the past, the areas designated as rural exceptions have covered barely 60% of council homes in rural areas. My noble friend’s amendment seeks to define in a fuller way what a rural area should mean in this context. The case made by my noble friend is twofold: first, that rural areas at large have a particular problem with the right to buy; and, secondly, that for many years those working in rural areas have grappled with an inadequate definition of what comprises a rural area. The amendment makes plain that the exception to the right to buy would cover all sparsely populated areas with populations below 3,000. Clarity on this exemption would be greatly welcome.

I see the case for the widest possible exemption as very necessary. The extraordinary difficulty for the next generation of finding anywhere affordable to live in the rural communities of North Yorkshire, for example, was highlighted at an illuminating event at Ripon Cathedral just last Friday. We learned that social housing comprises 17% of the nation’s homes—and in passing I should make the point that social housing is determined or defined differently in different countries. The noble Lord, Lord Young, said that, in this country, social housing at 17% sounds rather high compared with some European comparators, but in reality in Europe the housing co-operatives and the co-ownership housing schemes—which are subsidised social housing in our sense—are not counted in those same statistics, giving a rather different comparison between us and other countries. The extraordinary difficulty for the next generation of finding anywhere in North Yorkshire to make their home and remain in an area where they were born, were brought up and now are working was highlighted at this event. We learned that, although social housing comprises 17% of the nation’s homes across the country, in North Yorkshire the figure is only 6.7%. Local people, supported by the excellent rural housing enablers, funded in part by Defra, have struggled to secure a small number of new homes for rent and shared ownership. They have required the bringing together of willing landowners, committed housing associations, the local authority—the combined authority for York and North Yorkshire is behaving in an exemplary fashion—and parish councils. That is no small feat.

The loss of homes for future generations in these projects is not only a bitter blow, after all the work that has gone into their development, but poses an insuperable problem in trying to repeat the exercise to replace the homes that are sold under the right to buy—remembering that 40% of all right-to-buy homes sold are now owned by private landlords, letting at rents of up to three times the previous council social rents. In many rural areas, permanent social housing lettings purchases under the right to buy have gone for Airbnb and other short-term lets.

Where can another site be found to build replacement homes for those that are sold? It may have taken five or even 10 years of persistence to achieve the development for local people. Can this effort be repeated to compensate for the loss of such badly needed accommodation? While there are question marks hanging over the long-term usefulness of homes in these rural developments, how many landowners can be expected to donate sites for them or make land available on very favourable terms?

I strongly support the clarity that we hope this amendment would bring. As I understand it, this chimes with the position of the Minister, who has commented on this issue and whom I have not found so resistant to amendments proposed by noble colleagues.

Baroness Coffey (Con)My Lords, I tabled Amendments 21, 23 and 24. Amendment 21 is designed to try to understand how the Bill works. It is my understanding that there already are regulations on what is defined as rural, and that they are set out as the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, referred to and use the 3,000 population as a base. As far as I am aware, when the population of a parish or village goes over that, it is not automatically removed from being rural—far from it. At the moment, it requires more regulation to be undertaken. That is why I am trying to understand why

“The power under sub-paragraph (2)(b) includes the power … to repeal”

something that is not yet law. I would like to understand how that will work in practice.

Contrary to other noble Lords, I am generally supportive of the right to buy in rural areas. I have heard the arguments multiple times about land, and I do understand that issue. But I am also conscious that the risk is that a lot of villages and small rural places start to become dormitory towns. Thinking about local families, I strongly support seeing what we can do to acquire more land to get more homes, but the issue is often a mixture of where there are jobs and where there are affordability issues in regard to LHA and, frankly, people want to be able to have their family continue in that particular small village or small town. But of course there is no right to pass on council houses or social housing to your children. Would it not be better if we had some way of keeping that character and sense of community by allowing parents—or perhaps a family clubbing together—to buy that social house? There would then be that sense of continuity from generation to generation.

Quite often, it is these same families who volunteer for the RNLI, and I appreciate that there is a technical or operational challenge with people who perhaps are volunteer firefighters. Let us bear in mind that most of the countryside does not have a fire station unless it is manned or staffed by local volunteers, which is quite extraordinary. The constituency I used to represent, of 280 square miles, did not have a single full-time firefighter in it but relied entirely on people who lived and worked locally. It is that lack of continuity of community, and of families who have lived there some time, that I am concerned about. I am concerned that will be lost if somehow there is not this element of being able to try to pass on one property in one family from one generation to the next.

On Amendment 23, quite straightforwardly, thinking of the escalator to home ownership and shared-cost or shared-ownership accommodation, I have never understood why that just stops at 75%. You are given part of the way to home ownership, but it makes you think, “What on earth is the point?”—especially when, quite often, it is pretty difficult to pass on and sell a lot of these homes. People have gone into them thinking that they are their way to get on to the home-ownership ladder, only for the ladder literally to be cut off before they can reach the end. That is also challenging when it comes to getting things such as mortgages and selling on. So I want to understand why we cannot do something more about that.

18:00:00

Finally, I am a little bit suspicious about this new part of the clause, and this is a probing amendment to test what would be deemed “practical completion”. Basically, it says that we have all these newly built affordable houses coming, so what is to stop housing providers right now stopping completing accommodation? What is

“fit for occupation as housing accommodation”?

They might just decide that they are not going to install the bathrooms or the kitchen just so that none of these houses will be eligible for right to buy in the future. I am not sure I like the sound of that, and I wanted to test with the Minister how she would be certain that this sort of behaviour would not happen.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)My Lords, I will speak to the clause stand part notices and to Amendment 16 from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, to which I have attached my name. Just for clarity, for the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, his reasons and mine for signing the Clause 6 stand part notice are—I think we can safely say—directly opposed. As I have made clear all the way through, all my clause stand part notices are because I was seeking to end right to buy entirely with Amendment 1. I think that is made obvious by my signing of Amendment 16, a buy-back right to buy. This is also known as “buy the supply”, and my honourable friend Siân Berry in the other place has been a particular leader in this area, not surprisingly when you look at Brighton and Hove, which has lost almost a third of its social housing since right to buy came in in 1980.

If you look at the figures across England, by the end of this Parliament we are talking about more than 1.3 million homes lost. What we want to do is get some of those homes back—those homes that were very often built with high-quality build standards, good-sized rooms—a better provision of housing, I dare say, than pretty much anything we are likely to build today. We want to get those homes designed for social housing back into social housing. I note also that my honourable friend—who was previously a London Assembly member, and a member of its housing committee—urged for us to be able to buy back those lost homes.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, referred to families in temporary accommodation. Of course, this is a huge issue. It is everywhere, but particularly so in London, where we are seeing often very vulnerable families shipped out of the city very far away to produce huge profits for private landlords in far-flung parts of the country. If London could buy back the supply, that would be potentially transformatory, either for permanent homes or for being able to buy back temporary accommodation. It is also worth noting that my honourable friend—for those noble Lords who have not seen it—has a zine out urging us to buy the supply. It is a lovely, cheerful cartoon publication that noble Lords might like to look up.

I want to make one other comment about the state of where we are now. We have, of course, a struggling housing market. Broadly, the average price of homes in England did not change from March 2025 to March 2026. In fact, there has actually been a decrease in the price to May. I note one market commentator said that we were in the strongest buyer’s market we have seen in years. Surely this is a great time for local councils to be able to be the buyers, to start to reverse some of the damage that has been done. The structure of the amendment reflects the limitations in your Lordships’ House of what we can do in terms of directing the Government to spend money. I will put this on the record here to note that my honourable friend in the other place will be going further, but I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, has given us a very good start.

Baroness Thornhill (LD)My Lords, indeed I agree that my noble friend Lady Pinnock has given us a very good start, and she was quite passionate in what she was saying. I did tell her there would be a “but”, but it is only a very small one. We absolutely agree in principle that the right of first refusal should apply in perpetuity, but I have concerns about how this would work in reality, and I have raised these with the Minister. The noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, outlined some very serious questions and points that I think we would all appreciate being answered, just about the sheer logistics of how this would actually work for buyers as years go down the line. I am worried that there would be unintended consequences and I am looking forward to the Minister’s answer.

My fear is that in reality this will actually be less effective as a means of getting social housing than we might wish it to be. If a council does have a buy-back fund, there absolutely is no reason why it cannot buy houses on the open market, as indeed I did when I was Mayor of Watford. I just think this one sounds like something that is really going to be good and should happen—and I do believe that; I just think there may be unintended consequences, the logistics might be difficult, and it might not be the silver bullet. But because I believe in retaining social housing stock, I will hope that I am wrong about that.

I want to just pull together a few thoughts about the rural amendments, because one thing I think that we have all noticed in relation to the Bills that we have done—first with the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, and now with the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage—rural housing and rural issues do not seem to be given the importance that they absolutely deserve. I am an urbanite but I sit here, time after time, listening to those who know better than me, and colleagues on my own Benches who feel very strongly about this, and I guess my message to the Minister is that the nettle must be grasped on rural issues. I think we would all appreciate seeing a real improvement in that, which is why I found that the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, and the noble Lord, Lord Best—as ever—brought clarity and expertise to this group of amendments that I cannot better.

Amendment 20 is actually a modest, targeted fix to stop the right to buy quietly hollowing out our rural communities, which is happening; but I am also going to be a bit controversial, because one thing that I follow very closely with my housing brief is planning issues, and I note that there are very often major planning disputes. In fact, councils have changed control over rural communities’ campaigning: “Stop the housing development in our village. We do not need this sort of housing”. It is really worrying to me that that is often the case, and it is evidentially the case. The nimbys are absolutely going bananas. There is no doubt about that, and I think that somewhere, we need some leadership around those areas. If you do not have a housing estate that has homes for children, then the local school will undoubtedly die.

There are real issues for regenerating our rural communities, and I think that, unfortunately, they are being hollowed out. I feel very much that the need is greater. Somebody mentioned that phrase in relation to rural communities, but I would also say that the consequences of not doing so are of greater significance; for example, the young people who cannot get to the college in the nearest city or big town. The issues around rurality are huge.

Turning briefly to Amendment 17, I think “warden” is a horrible word. I absolutely agree that the Government should change it. I am not sure about “manager”, because I am not sure of the context, but I absolutely understand why they do not want wardens.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)My Lords, before I respond directly to the amendments, I agree with much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, said about the issues around housing in rural areas. I might send her some of the Focus leaflets that I have seen objecting to rural developments.

I begin by focusing on Clause 6 regarding the right of first refusal for councils to buy back homes sold under right to buy. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to what has been a thoughtful debate on the amendments in this group. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, made a fairly sweeping statement about there being little ambition for increasing supply. I hope that she will have noted both the letter I sent in response to Second Reading and the annexe that was attached to that, which set out in great detail—I mentioned it at the start of Committee today—some of the action that the Government are taking to increase supply.

The first is the retention of 100% of right-to-buy receipts by councils. That was a big step forward—I campaigned for it for probably 15 years. There is the biggest boost to grant funding in a generation, rebuilding the sector’s capacity to borrow and invest; a road map for Section 106 delivery, which has been a constant theme of discussions in this House and elsewhere; a complete renewal of the planning framework; £16 billion of National Housing Bank funding; and an ambitious package of support for London. London has been mentioned a couple of times in this debate, and the Government have put in £11.7 billion of funding to support the building of housing in London. I do not consider that a lack of ambition for housing delivery. Of course, we are constrained by the finances available.

Baroness Pinnock (LD)The Minister has provoked me now. All those are positive moves, but how much do they add up to? That is the question. The enormous sum of money that the Government have made available for affordable—I hate that word—and social housing adds up to 180,000 new homes over 10 years, whereas Shelter advocates that 90,000 new social homes to rent are essential every year. That is the scale of the problem, which is why I used the word that I did to criticise the Government for a lack of ambition. We are desperate for increased numbers of social homes. I appreciate what the Government are doing, but I am pretty sure that it does not add up to anywhere near enough.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)I accept to a certain extent what the noble Baroness is saying. No one would be more ambitious than me to deliver more social housing. We are in government and we have to deal with the financial circumstances that we inherited, which included an enormous financial black hole. In that context, the amount of funding that we have allocated for social housing is significant—it is the biggest amount of funding for a generation—as are the other steps that we have taken to move the housing market along, not just in social housing but in other areas as well.

When the economy starts to grow again—we have already seen green shoots—we will be able to put more in, but, for the moment, we have indicated the ambition for increasing supply through what we have done already. We continue to be ambitious, and we will continue to support the growth of affordable and social housing alongside growth right across the housing market, which is really important. I was delighted to see the wraparound on the Metro this morning from Lloyds Bank, talking about how, for the first time since 1996, it has produced a £5,000 starter mortgage for young people. That is brilliant. All the steps that we are taking to increase housing supply across the board show a great deal of ambition, so I wanted to challenge the noble Baroness’s sweeping statement about little ambition for increasing supply.

The noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bexley, proposes to remove Clause 6 entirely from the Bill, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, has tabled Amendment 16 regarding the resourcing and monitoring of the right of first refusal. Let me start by setting out that the right of first refusal offers an opportunity for social landlords to buy back homes that have been sold under right to buy, at full market value, when they are resold. The right of first refusal period is currently 10 years after the original sale. Councils have 8 weeks to decide whether to purchase the home when informed by the owner that they are planning to sell, following which the property can be sold on the open market. Under Clause 6, the period will be increased to in perpetuity, so that councils will have the opportunity to buy back the property every time it is resold. This will give councils much more opportunity to buy back future properties sold under the scheme.

The change will apply only to applications to exercise the right to buy after the measure comes into force. Homes already sold under right to buy will be subject to the terms of the covenants that were attached to them when they were sold under the scheme. Where the right of refusal is for 10 years, as it is currently, that will continue to apply. I hope that that clarifies the point. It is for local authorities to decide whether to exercise the right of first refusal, taking into account their local priorities and financial position.

18:15:00

The amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, would require the Secretary of State to determine whether authorities have “sufficient” resources, which would be difficult given the locally determined nature of council housing finances. It would also create an expectation of further central intervention where constraints are identified. The Government are instead strengthening the existing framework, including by extending the right of first refusal in perpetuity, to give councils more opportunity to buy back homes. For these reasons, I respectfully ask the noble Baronesses not to press the stand part notice or amendment, and I commend this clause to the Committee.

I turn to Clause 7, which is opposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. As part of our reforms to right to buy, we have looked at the current exceptions to the scheme under which specified types of property cannot be sold. As with our overall approach to the reforms, this is necessary to ensure that the scheme remains fair and sustainable, that councils are able to replace the homes that are sold, and that councils have the confidence to build new social homes. Under the scheme, exceptions already include homes suitable for occupation by the elderly, sheltered housing and homes due to be demolished. Of the respondents to our consultation, 76% agreed that the existing exceptions should be retained. The clause makes a small change to amend outdated terminology in the current exemption for dwellings for persons of pensionable age to update the reference to resident or non-resident “warden” to resident or non-resident “manager”.

Clause 7 also introduces three new exceptions. First, it exempts newly built social homes from the scheme for 35 years, giving councils the confidence to invest in new supply. At present, councils are disincentivised from building because homes can be sold before costs are recovered through rent. This is a significant supply side reform. From my own experience, I know that the frustration of seeing newly built homes sold off immediately, before they can meet local need, is extensive, so this is the right step to take. The Government’s manifesto committed to better protecting newly built social housing from the right to buy, and introducing an exemption was supported by 78%—the vast majority—of respondents to our consultation.

Secondly, Clause 7 exempts homes in national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty and designated rural areas from the right to buy. This recognises the particular pressures in rural areas, where land and planning constraints mean that homes are significantly harder to replace once lost from the rental sector. There was clear recognition of these challenges during Second Reading, where noble Lords highlighted the difficulty of replacing rural homes and the importance of protecting stock in these areas. The exemption for rural homes responds directly to those concerns and will help to safeguard much-needed rural social housing. Existing rural designations will continue to have effect under the amended scheme. The covenants attached to homes that have been sold under right to buy in rural areas, which restrict the resale to a local person or a social landlord, will continue to apply.

Thirdly, Clause 7 exempts council-owned market rent homes from the right to buy, supporting councils to use mixed-tenure and cross-subsidy models to deliver more housing. This recognises the important role that market rent plays in enabling councils to generate additional income to reinvest in new social and affordable homes. As I continue to emphasise, these changes are part of the wider package of reforms to ensure that more homes are built than lost, while maintaining a route to home ownership for long-standing tenants.

I turn now to Amendment 17. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, for this amendment, which seeks to retain the term “warden” in the legislation. However, the change made by Clause 7 is a straightforward and sensible update to modernise outdated terminology in the existing exemption for housing for persons of pensionable age. The term “warden” was historically used to describe the support arrangements in sheltered housing, but it is no longer commonly used across the sector. In practice, services are now delivered in a range of different ways, often by individuals or teams whose roles are more accurately described as managers. The intention of this provision is not to change the substance of the exemption but simply to ensure that the language used in legislation reflects current practice and is clear and accessible. For these reasons, the Government consider that this amendment is not necessary.

Focusing now on the exemptions in relation to newly built social homes, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, for this probing amendment on the length of the exemption period. Our starting point is that any exemption period should reflect the time it takes for rental income to repay the costs of building a home. This payback period is generally between 30 and 50 years, depending on the viability of the site, and of course that will vary around the country. We therefore concluded that a 35-year exemption strikes the right balance: it ensures that councils are not losing homes prematurely while maintaining a route to home ownership for tenants over the longer term. Reducing that period to 15 years would not provide sufficient protection for a council’s investment and would risk undermining confidence to build, which is central to the objectives of these reforms. For these reasons, the Government cannot accept this amendment.

Amendment 24 seeks to remove the definition of when a newly constructed dwelling is to be considered practically complete for the purposes of the right to buy new-build exemption. The definition makes it clear that practical completion occurs when the dwelling first becomes fit for occupation as housing accommodation. This provides a clear and objective trigger point for when a property can be included in the exemption for newly built affordable housing. This is an important definition to ensure consistency and transparency across the sector. It avoids ambiguity and subjective or inconsistent interpretations of completion and it provides a clear and verifiable standard that landlords must apply. Removing this definition would introduce uncertainty and increase the risk of dispute, which could in fact slow down the process and undermine the effective operation of the scheme.

I recognise the concern that social landlords may seek to delay completion in order to avoid the property becoming eligible for right to buy. However, there always has to be a date on which new legislation comes into force. This measure will also come into force on Royal Assent, which will reduce the risk that landlords could seek to delay occupation.

On Amendment 23, also tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, my understanding of the purpose of her amendment is to seek to bring shared ownership within the scope of right to buy by removing the reference in Clause 7 to “low-cost home ownership accommodation”. The lines which the amendment proposes to remove are included only to define social housing in relation to the newly built social homes that will be covered by the 35-year exemption, which is defined as

“social housing within the meaning of Part 2 of the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008 that is not low-cost home ownership accommodation (within the meaning given by section 70 of that Act)”.

The consequence of removing that reference would be that low-cost home ownership accommodation could in theory be captured within that new-build exemption, but that would have no impact in bringing shared owners within the right-to-buy scheme, as they are not included as eligible within the eligibility criteria for the scheme. It could also create some unhelpful confusion in relation to defining the new-build homes included under the exemption.

More broadly, the Government are not in favour of bringing shared owners into the right-to-buy scheme. Right to buy is limited to social homes for rent and low-cost home ownership accommodation as defined in the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008. It is deliberately excluded from the scheme. This distinction is fundamental to the policy. Right to buy is designed to support tenants who do not currently have an ownership stake in their home to take their first step into home ownership. Shared ownership, by contrast, is already a home ownership product. Individuals purchase a share in their home and can increase that share over time through staircasing. Including shared ownership within right to buy would blur these distinct policy objectives. It could create a two-tier market and, more broadly, cause unnecessary overlap between the schemes and risk destabilising a key affordable home ownership product. For these reasons, I ask the noble Baroness not to press her amendments.

Amendments 18 and 19, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, and the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, respectively, relate to the exemption from right to buy of homes in rural and protected areas. Amendment 18 would remove the new exemption from right to buy for homes in national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty and designated rural areas. The Government do not consider this to be the right approach. These exemptions reflect the reality that homes in rural and protected landscapes are significantly harder to replace once lost from social housing stock. Land constraints, planning restrictions and limited development opportunities mean that, in many cases, replacement is simply not feasible. Without this protection, there is a clear risk that social and affordable homes in these areas will continue to be lost, exacerbating shortages and reducing access to housing for local communities, with all the consequences that the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, rightly highlighted, of the loss of housing affecting the loss of other amenities as well.

Turning to Amendment 19 on national landscapes, I recognise the intention to reflect updated terminology. “National landscapes” is the new name by which areas of outstanding natural beauty are now known. However, the legal name for these areas continues to be “areas of outstanding natural beauty”. As such, it is not necessary to make this change, as these areas will be fully captured in the exemption. The areas of outstanding natural beauty map exactly across to national landscapes. I think the confusion in numbers may have occurred because we have 34 in England, but there are of course a further 12 in the UK. However, housing policy is devolved, so there is a difference in the numbers. For these reasons, the Government consider that the current drafting of these provisions strikes the right balance and I kindly ask the noble Lord not to press his amendment.

Amendments 20 and 25, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bexley, take different approaches but relate to the same underlying issue: how rural areas should be defined within the right-to-buy framework. Amendment 25, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, seeks to increase the level of parliamentary scrutiny by requiring regulations to be subject to the affirmative procedure. However, the subsection of the Bill the amendment seeks to change is concerned with Section 37 of the Housing Act 1985, which covers disposals in rural areas rather than the right to buy. That said, I recognise that the intention may be to apply this to right-to-buy provisions more broadly, and I will address it on that basis.

The approach set out in the Bill is designed to ensure that rural exemptions can be aligned with existing designation frameworks and updated where necessary in a timely and proportionate way, and the designations are technical and evidence-based. The current criteria applied to applications for rural designation under Section 157 of the Housing Act 1985 are that an area should have a population density of no more than two persons per hectare and a population of 3,000 or fewer. These are well-established criteria which were introduced to protect affordable housing in rural communities. The Government have no current plans to amend them.

As set out in the delegated powers memorandum for the Bill, which has since been cleared by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, the negative resolution procedure is considered appropriate for rural designation regulations, which is the long-established approach that has been taken to date for existing rural designations. It is appropriate that the regulations are subject to the negative procedure. This will allow for designated areas to be updated and added where they meet long-established criteria, and we cannot see the need for additional parliamentary scrutiny.

Amendment 20, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, would place the criteria for rural designation directly into the Bill, using the existing population density and settlement size thresholds. While, as he says, it reflects long-standing established criteria, placing these thresholds in legislation could risk the criteria becoming outdated—I am afraid he guessed my words here—and reduce the Government’s ability to ensure that rural protections remain effective and appropriately targeted. Retaining the criteria in regulations ensures that they can be updated where necessary, while still being subject to parliamentary scrutiny through the negative procedure. For those reasons, the Government cannot accept these amendments.

Amendment 21, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, is a probing amendment to test the interaction between Clause 7 and Clause 8(2). The lines the amendment seeks to remove perform an important function. The new regulation-making power in Clause 7 will allow the Secretary of State to specify and, where appropriate, update the areas to which the new rural exception to the right to buy applies. Clause 8 ensures continuity during that transition. In particular, Clause 8(2) provides that existing rural designations will continue to have effect after commencement, as if they were made under the new powers introduced by Clause 7. This means that there is no gap in protection for rural areas. The Government will then bring forward new secondary legislation after commencement to formally restate and update rural designations under the new framework, including the ability to add further areas where appropriate. The Bill also includes a power for the Secretary of State to repeal this transitional provision once regulations designating rural areas have been made. It is this power that the amendment is probing.

Finally, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, opposes the question that Clause 8 stand part of the Bill. As I have set out already in my response to the previous amendment, Clause 8 ensures that the reforms to right to buy are applied fairly and consistently. Together, these provisions ensure a smooth and legally certain transition, protecting both tenants’ rights and the integrity of rural housing protections. I commend them to the Committee.

Lord Jamieson (Con)I believe the Minister made a very helpful clarification, and I want to ensure that I heard correctly that it would be up to the local council to have the right of first refusal. Therefore, somebody who owns a right-to-buy house would have to contact only the local council and give it the opportunity of right of first refusal. Just for clarity, I am assuming that, in two-tier areas, it would be the council which has the housing responsibilities.

18:30:00

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)As the noble Lord will be aware, we are moving to single-tier councils across the country, but he is quite correct in his assumption.

Lord Jamieson (Con)I thank the Minister for that clarification; it certainly would make it easier that somebody does not have to chase 15 different housing associations that have merged or demerged.

This has been an insightful debate, and I thank noble Lords for the points they have raised. There are evidently some concerns about the Bill’s implications across the Committee, not just about the practicalities but about fairness and things such as definitions of rurality. I am grateful to the Minister for her response to our concerns. However, we still have concerns about extending the right of first refusal in perpetuity and about how this will affect families in the future and former landlords. The clarification addresses some of the complexities, but it is still a basic principle that if you own a house for some period of time, it should truly become yours. I ask the Government to look again.

Clause 7 is certainly controversial, and a number of noble Lords have spoken about the definition of rurality. We have not heard many noble Lords in this Committee saying that they want to give the opportunity to the Secretary of State to define rurality without sufficient parliamentary oversight or without a proposed definition accompanying the Bill. We appreciate that defining rurality is not straightforward—I am pleased with my noble friend Lord Fuller’s definition, “Can you get an Uber?”, and on that basis I am definitely in a rural area. This requires further debate, and I am sure that we will come back to this at a later stage. The point is that, while we recognise the challenges of delivering homes in rural areas, we do not believe that removing the right to buy is fair on those tenants. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, that we need to find ways of building new homes in rural areas because the demand is there, and without ensuring that we have a thriving community, the schools, pubs and shops will shut. As an example, in one of my villages, 100 new homes had been built on a new housing estate and when I was knocking on doors—as I do quite regularly—people were saying that the school cannot cope. I had to inform them that the school was half full and that, without that housing estate, it would shut. We are having fewer children per household, and we need to think about having a thriving community, which in some cases needs more houses. We need to think about that more.

On the question of the 35-year restriction for newly built social housing, there is a genuine lack of clarity. I appreciate that the Minister said that 30 to 35 years is often the period over which you recover the full cost of the house. But you are selling the house, and in doing so with the appropriate floor price, you would recover the funding anyway. So it is not clear to me why that is necessary.

Amendment 16 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock and Lady Bennett, raises some interesting questions. I appreciate that this is a probing amendment, and as a councillor I am all in favour of councils receiving more resources for the good work that they do, but I want to understand the implications of this amendment financially. How many homes would this apply to? What level of resource would it involve? Is it a few million pounds, or could it be billions of pounds a year? There are times when it will be right to buy an existing home. However, at a time when we have a housing shortage and desperately need to build more homes, should we really be focusing limited resources on buying existing homes rather than building new social homes? We need to do more than just think about how we move around the ownership. We need to look at how we increase the number of homes. That is one of the reasons that we are in favour of right to buy: it provides more resources rather than calling on the Government’s limited resources.

I hope that the Government will reflect further on the points raised across the Committee and ensure that these various amendments are duly considered before Report.

Clause 6 agreed.

Amendment 16 not moved.

Clause 7Exceptions to the Right to Buy

Amendments 17 to 25 not moved.

Clause 7 agreed.

Clause 8Application of sections 1 to 7

Clause 8 agreed.

Clause 9Right to Buy: receipts

Amendment 26

Moved by

26: Clause 9, page 8, line 7, leave out “a determination” and insert “regulations” Member's explanatory statement This amendment removes the power of the Secretary of State to make a determination, but that changes to the use of capital receipts must be made by regulations instead.

Lord Jamieson (Con)My Lords, I speak to the amendment in my name and that of my noble friend Lady O’Neill. Our amendments are concerned with the governance of capital receipts, and in particular the scope of the Secretary of State’s powers under Clause 9 to determine their use. As currently drafted, Clause 9 confers a very wide discretion, including the ability to vary provisions between local authorities and to apply determinations retrospectively. Our concern is not with the principle of having some flexibility but with the balance of power between executive powers and parliamentary scrutiny, and the need to provide certainty to councils which are seeking to build new social homes to replace those sold through right to buy.

We have had discussions earlier in the Bill about the difficulty of getting new social homes built. From my time leading Central Bedfordshire Council, I can attest that setting up a programme to build new council homes is not easy. It involves building a team with the appropriate skills, acquiring sites to build on and generating a pipeline of projects and the financing to fund it. The key to this is a good degree of funding certainty, and that means ensuring the certainty of right-to-buy receipts. Making these potentially subject to the whim of the Secretary of State could fundamentally undermine any such council housebuilding programme. These amendments, therefore, provide that changes to the use of capital receipts should instead be made through regulation rather than through determination. This ensures that changes affecting local authority finances are set out in a transparent framework, subject to appropriate scrutiny and clearly understood by those required to operate within it.

It might have been better for the Government to put their planned level of capital receipt retention in the Bill so we could debate that today. The Government have chosen not to do so, but I hope that the Minister can tell the Committee at what level they intend to set the capital retention. Will local authorities retain 100% of these receipts, or in future will it be set at a lower level, at the whim of the Secretary of State?

Amendment 30 is particularly important. It would remove the ability of the Secretary of State to apply different provisions to different local authorities through determination. Quite clearly, if a council is seeking to build homes in its area and putting in all the effort, and potentially funding, then the last thing that it would want to see is right-to-buy receipts transferred to another authority. While we recognise fully that housing pressures vary across the country, the principle remains that differentiation should be achieved through considered and published frameworks, not through ad hoc determinations decided solely by the Secretary of State. Consistency of framework is the foundation of fairness between authorities.

Amendment 33 introduces a requirement for consultation prior to determination. That reflects a basic principle of good governance: that local authorities, whose financial capacity and housing delivery are directly affected, should have the opportunity to contribute before decisions are made, not simply respond afterwards. Amendment 34 provides for a review of the impact of the Act on home ownership rates. This is a sensible accountability measure: if the policy is intended to support and sustain routes into ownership, Parliament should be able to assess whether it is achieving that objective in practice.

Taken together, these amendments are not about constraining government unnecessarily; they are about ensuring that significant financial decisions in the housing system are taken within a framework that is transparent, consistent and properly accountable to Parliament, and about providing greater certainty for councils seeking to establish their own council housebuilding programme. I look forward to hearing the insights of other noble Lords on this subject. I beg to move.

Lord Fuller (Con)My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 52. Before I do so, however, I am sure my noble friend Lord Jamieson misspoke when he referred to Amendment 34, which is actually in the next group.

At Second Reading, I explained that I had a bit of previous in the delivery of social housing; when I was the leader of South Norfolk Council, we consistently delivered more than 1% of the entire national social housing stock in each and every year of the 2010s. We built more affordable homes than the rest of Norfolk put together: it can be done. We were able to do that because I welcomed the way in which receipts received by a council can be recycled by that council in pursuance of the replacement principle. That method—when a home a sold, a new one is built—allows us to refresh the stock of social housing in general.

I have concerns, however, that the Bill will prevent receipts in one authority being applied to a neighbouring one, even if they are in the same housing market assessment area. Let me explain. When my neighbour, Norwich City Council, could not spend its right to buy receipts in time, they were transferred to me, as their neighbour, and new social homes were built in my district, but no more than a mile from the city boundary. My reading of the Bill—and I am quite happy to be corrected on this—is that this desirable substitution behaviour would be left to chance. This is an omission that would see receipts that could really help a local area being grabbed by Ministers instead.

Separately, councils aside, we know that RSLs can allow homes to be acquired but, sometimes, those RSL homes are lost too. My amendment, therefore, would ensure that, for both councils and RSLs, the receipts should be applied to a replacement in the same strategic housing market area, the SHMA, by default. The SHMA is a technical study used by planning authorities to understand current and future housing needs; it evaluates population growth, economic projections and market trends to inform the local plan and housing policies. The SHMA is a thing, and it exists over a housing market area rather than respecting the administrative boundaries of individual councils. SHMAs provide the natural canvas over which people live their lives.

If you are in the housing or planning game, you know what one of these is. Your plan is based on the boundary of the SHMA, not necessarily the administrative boundary of the council, and the numbers for today and tomorrow are predicated on it. I was therefore grateful to the Minister for the drop-in where she explained that it was very difficult to define these territories. I disagree. It is easy: it is in the SHMA. That is how we define housing need. In the previous group, we heard that the Government have defined place-based carve-outs for national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty, so it is not that hard to define these territories after all.

My amendment would ensure that receipts must be recycled locally by default in a cascade: initially within the council and then between neighbouring councils before being snaffled by the centre; and, in the case of the RSL, within that area. As part of my ward work last week, I was surprised that a home in Brooke in Norfolk, in my ward, where I live, is now managed or directed from Gloucester. The freedom to move receipts from Norfolk to Gloucester within the RSL estate does not really help local people at all. Unless we protect stock in local markets, a large provider may focus on where it is cheaper, not where it is needed.

So we should recognise that protecting the stock cannot just be a national numbers game and that housing is more local than that. There is a sense that housing is not just part of a place; it defines the place. Ensuring that recycled right to buy receipts are recycled within the place that is defined by the strategic housing market assessment, which all the players in the housing market and planning market know—you can see why my amendment is so important.

18:45:00

Baroness Thornhill (LD)There are a lot of amendments in this group and I do not intend to comment on them all. To me, this group is less about the principle of right to buy and more about what happens to the money raised from it and, more importantly, who controls it. The amendments from the Conservative Benches broadly move in one direction: towards greater transparency, clearer rules through regulations rather than determinations, and more involvement of local authorities and receipts spent locally. Therefore, I hope it is not surprising from these Benches that we have some sympathy with that approach. We particularly sympathise with Amendment 52 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Fuller; his argument about the SHMA is something I would be willing to engage in further.

We believe that decisions about receipts should be transparent and properly scrutinised, and that local authorities should have a meaningful voice in how they are used. These are the principles we would naturally support. However, we are equally clear and would exercise caution in that we should not over-constrain flexibility or make it harder to use receipts effectively to deliver new homes—those of us who have tried to do that know there is many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip and some schemes can take a lot longer to build out than others. We particularly know there is a need for mixed tenure in order to make schemes stack up. Therefore, a degree of flexibility is clearly required.

The real issue to us is not just process; it is about outcome. This is where—spoiler alert—my Amendment 53 speaks directly to this group. It is not enough to argue about how receipts are controlled, although that is important; we must be able to show what they actually deliver. We can refine governance, tighten rules and improve consultation, but unless we can see, year-by-year and authority-by-authority, whether receipts are translating into new social housing, we are still in the dark.

Transparency about process is important, but transparency about outcomes is essential. So, yes, let us discuss how receipts are managed, but we would prefer to have strong checks on whether these receipts actually replace the homes we are losing.

Lord Lansley (Con)I was not planning to speak in this group, but, after listening to my noble friend and other noble Lords, and after reading Clause 9, it is clear that the Government are intending to take a power to reduce the amount that is payable to the Secretary of State under the regulations. I am not clear why that power is being taken and for what purposes? Under what circumstances would that payment be reduced? Clearly, there is going to be a method for making a determination, but I do not think we know what it is. It would be jolly helpful if we were told what it is.

In particular, it would be helpful to know why the Localism Act insertion into what is currently Section 11(6), which allows the Secretary of State to enter into an agreement with the local authority about this, has been taken out. An agreement of that kind is exactly the sort of way in which the Secretary of State might want to enter into a means of supporting particular use of capital receipts in particular local authorities.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)My Lords, I will first address the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bexley, and moved by the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson.

I would like to reassure the House on our intentions behind Clause 9 of the Bill, which relates to the use of receipts from the sale of homes under the right-to-buy scheme. Clause 9 simplifies and modernises how the rules on right-to-buy receipts are managed. Every stock-holding authority currently has an agreement with the Secretary of State allowing it to retain all its net right-to-buy receipts, provided it spends those receipts on replacement social housing. In practice, this is administratively burdensome for both councils and central government. Currently, whenever the rules on receipts change—for example, permitting councils to combine their receipts with grant funding—the department must reissue all the retention agreements to every stock-holding authority, which is around 160 individual agreements. Clause 9 replaces this with a simpler approach. It provides the Secretary of State with a power to modify these requirements by determination, removing the need to reissue agreements many times over while maintaining oversight. This clause therefore reduces administrative burden, improves responsiveness and supports councils to deliver more homes. The rules on pooling of right-to-buy receipts will continue to be governed by the regulations and any significant changes to those rules will continue to need to be made through a statutory instrument, subject to the negative procedure.

I know it has been a concern of some noble Lords that we may be seeking to use this clause to require councils to start repaying a portion of their receipts to the Treasury. I reassure noble Lords that this is absolutely not the case. We have committed to allow councils to retain all their right-to-buy receipts indefinitely, and Clause 9 makes it clear that the power of determination cannot be used to increase the amount that local authorities are required to return to the Secretary of State.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, for Amendments 26 to 32, which would replace the power Clause 9 introduces for the Secretary of State to make determinations on right-to-buy receipts with a requirement to use regulations in all cases. In July 2024, we were able to act quickly to give local authorities greater flexibility to spend their right-to-buy receipts to accelerate the delivery of new social and affordable homes. Importantly, this included permitting receipts to be combined with Section 106 contributions and removing the cap on the proportion of a new home that can be funded by right-to-buy receipts.

The amendments tabled by the noble Baroness would remove that flexibility and require all changes on right-to-buy receipts to be made through regulations. In practice, this would mean that the existing process would remain in place, with the administrative burden it entails for councils and central government. It would also result in delay and complexity in the system and make it harder to respond to the operational needs or make technical adjustments in a timely way. For these reasons, the Government cannot support these amendments. The current approach strikes the right balance between flexibility and oversight.

Amendment 33, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, would require the Secretary of State to consult local housing authorities before making any determination on the use of capital receipts. I reassure the Committee that the Government fully recognise the importance of engaging with local authorities on these matters. Where changes to rules governing the spending of right-to-buy receipts are proposed, it is standard practice to engage with the sector to ensure those changes are informed by local experience and delivery considerations. Placing a blanket statutory duty to consult in all circumstances would introduce unnecessary rigidity and could delay the implementation of technical or operational changes. It is important that we retain the ability to act flexibly and responsively while continuing to engage with our local authorities in a proportionate and meaningful way. Amendment 52, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, proposes a new clause be added to the Bill to recycle right-to-buy receipts within the same housing market area before these are returned to the Secretary of State. Under the existing right-to-buy receipts framework, where local authorities are unable to spend the receipts on new affordable housing within the five-year period, the unused receipts must be returned to the Secretary of State. They are then given out as grant to other social housing providers by Homes England, or for receipts in London by the GLA.

Homes England seeks to redistribute those receipts where possible to the same geographical area in which they were generated, and all receipts generated in London are spent in London. Under the framework, local authorities are also able to work with other local authorities on the spending of right-to-buy receipts on new affordable housing and with other local housing providers. The Government are also extending the period in which receipts must be spent to 10 years for receipts generated from 2027-28 onwards, ensuring receipts are retained in the same housing market areas for longer. This is intended to support councils to plan and deliver longer-term and larger projects.

We therefore reject this amendment on the grounds that there is already flexibility with the right-to-buy receipts framework for local authorities to work with other local housing authorities and providers on delivering new affordable homes using those receipts, and that the system for the recycling of receipts already looks to prioritise the spending of the receipts in the area where they were generated.

Lord Jamieson (Con)My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. Much of the discussion has centred on the proper balance between flexibility and accountability. No one disputes that government requires a degree of flexibility in managing housing finance, and for minor technical changes there is reasonable ground for a determination or something similar. There is also no disagreement that local circumstances differ across the country.

However, while I appreciate this is a complex area and some of these things may require a degree of complexity, the basic principle that right-to-buy receipts should be recycled and reused in the area in which they arise is something we feel is important, and it should not be subject to a Secretary of State determination without consultation or some affirmative procedure in the House. That is the key question here. If the Minister is going to bring forward suggestions at a later stage that differentiate between a minor technical change and the principle we are talking about, that would be a much better solution than those we have seen here, which potentially give the Secretary of State much greater powers than many of us would like. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 26 withdrawn.

Amendments 27 to 33 not moved.

Clause 9 agreed.

Amendment 34

Moved by

34: After Clause 9, insert the following new Clause— “Review of the impact of this Act on home ownership(1) Within the period of two years beginning with the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must publish a review of the impact of this Act on rates of home ownership among former social tenants.(2) The review under subsection (1) must include an assessment of this Act on—(a) the number of Right to Buy applications,(b) the number of completed Right to Buy purchases, and(c) the ages of former social tenants who successfully purchased their homes through Right to Buy,in the calendar year prior to the review.(3) The Secretary of State must lay a copy of this review before both Houses of Parliament.”Member's explanatory statement This amendment would require a review of the impact of this Act on rates of home ownership.

Baroness O'Neill of Bexley (Con)My Lords, in moving Amendment 34, I shall speak also to Amendment 74, in both my name and that of my noble friend Lord Jamieson.

Too often, housing legislation is judged by the intentions rather than the results it produces. Yet, it is the outcomes that matter, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, said earlier. Whether we are considering home ownership, social housing provision, affordability, public expenditure or the impact of the policy on different groups within society, Parliament should have access to the evidence necessary to determine whether reforms are working in practice.

To begin on Amendment 34, home ownership remains one of the most important aspirations for many people across this country. The amendment would require a review of the impact of this Act on those very ambitions. The Bill contains a number of significant reforms to a system that has aided home ownership. Thus, it is entirely reasonable that Parliament should understand what effect those reforms have on people’s ability to own their own home.

I was also pleased to see Amendment 58A in the name of my noble friend Lady Lawlor. There is a clear connection between her amendment and Amendment 34. If Parliament is to understand the impact of this legislation on home ownership, it should also understand the impact on right to buy and the opportunities available to social tenants who aspire to own their own home.

Amendment 73 would require a fiscal impact assessment of the Act. This is not an onerous request. The measures in the Bill will have implications for housing providers, local authorities, taxpayers and wider public finances. Parliament should be able to assess those impacts in a systematic and transparent manner.

These amendments are not about frustrating the implementation of the Bill. Rather, they are about ensuring that Parliament retains the ability to evaluate its effectiveness. Good policy should not just withstand detailed scrutiny but be rooted in evidence. If the Bill succeeds, the Government should be able to demonstrate that success. If it falls short, Parliament should have the evidence necessary to understand why, and to make improvements. That is the purpose of these amendments, and I beg to move.

19:00:00

Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)My Lords, I rise to speak to my Amendment 95. As is clear, it is a probing amendment, and a permissive amendment that would require the Government to make provision by regulations for requiring social housing providers to publish data and evaluation on policies for developing social rented housing for families. This amendment is clearly in scope, but the important context to remember is that housing is an important part of economic and social policy, and particularly social housing. Getting housing policy right has an impact on population, on public services and on economic growth.

This is an important amendment, and will require debate and discussion within government, because we have a crisis in family formation. The total fertility rate is 1.39 children per woman, compared with the 1960s when it was 2.9 and the 1970s when it was 1.7. It has been declining since 2012. There were 585,396 live births last year, a reduction on the previous years. There are societal reasons for that, principally around childcare costs but also housing costs and other societal issues, including financial uncertainty about delayed parenthood and more women being involved in the labour market than in the 1960s and 1970s. This amendment is saying not that women should have more children per se but that it is good policy for the Government to be in a position to understand their duties and responsibilities in a wider economic sense to collate, collect and analyse information, and to encourage registered social providers and local authorities to help families who want to get into social housing.

For instance, the Government might require local plans and housing needs assessments to track and plan for bedrooms and family-sized homes, not only total dwelling numbers. We know that the experience over the last 10 or 15 years has been a drive, because of affordability issues, in planning policy across local authorities, towards flats and smaller units. This is essentially inimical to families being able to move into social housing accommodation.

We would expect local plans and housing needs assessments to specify an evidence-led bedroom mix in areas with strong demand from young families, and to use policy design codes and public funding levers—particularly in social housing—to secure an adequately supply of three-bedroom homes in both urban and suburban locations. Planning policy should actively favour small and medium-sized schemes, which deliver an above-average share of three-bedroom homes and usable private or shared play space, especially where developments are under 50 units and local impacts are modest. National planning policy and local design codes should encourage mid-rise terraces and mansion block-style flats with shared gardens, courtyards and safe streets, rather than long corridors of single-aspect one-bedroom units. I do not expect the Minister to respond to this amendment in detail, but it is a good start to enable local authorities and the Government to get a handle on encouraging families to access social housing. That would make a big contribution to a good social and community mix across all communities—rural, suburban and urban. I look forward to the Minister’s response, and I hope that this begins a useful debate on an issue that is important to us all, and particularly important to an ageing population with fewer young people in the workforce, and to resolving the significant issues we have around family formation and the provision of social housing.

Baroness Lawlor (Con)My Lords, I rise to speak to my Amendment 58A in this group. I am delighted to support the other amendments in the group about which the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, has spoken, asking the Government for various assessments of impact.

The Government contend that they want to protect the stock of social housing but also to maintain the right-to-buy scheme, but under the Bill tenants are likely to be discouraged from exercising the right to buy by obstacles, delays and uncertainties posed for a renter aspiring to home ownership. My amendment would require the Government to provide on an annual basis, once the Bill comes into operation, an analysis of the income to the public purse as a result of any change in the number of sales, broken down by the numbers sold, the resulting income and additional income from cost savings from overhead and maintenance when a property is sold and no longer a charge on the council. This should equip the Government to assess the scheme and its costs in the round against competing commitments when establishing an order of priority in spending, as Governments must do, and an overall budget. Councils too would have the essential figures to judge how best to meet their competing commitments and responsibilities.

Indeed, for a democratic system such as the UK, Parliament should also be given the full picture to assess matters and judge how the legislation is operating. Above all, the public, who foot the bills through council tax, rates and general taxation, and who face the highest overall levels of certain taxes—income tax et cetera—since records began in 1948, should also know what impact these changes will have in respect of right-to-buy sales. One of the most popular measures passed by any Government since the 1980s, right to buy has enabled 1.9 million council homes in England alone to be sold to tenants so that they can stand on their own two feet.

There are two deeper reasons for my amendment. First, there is the imperative of obliging any Government to take account of the finances of the country in making policy, and the burdens their policies might place on the economy and on the people and businesses who work and pay taxes. Secondly, there is a need to reduce benefit dependency, yet one of the most effective ways of reducing dependency is to help people to buy their own homes. By contrast, one of the most dangerous ways of encouraging dependency is to put increasing numbers of people in the socially rented sector, where already 25% of households fall into the economically inactive category and other inactive categories. This is excluding people who are retired or have a physical impairment. If the Government are serious about reducing dependency, they should not be putting new obstacles in the way of people who want to buy their council houses.

I hope the Government will accept this modest amendment for an impact statement on the results of the Bill. This would ensure that the Government themselves, the councils and everybody who needs to know has the knowledge of the outcomes of the new arrangements, so that we have the evidence to measure the impact of the Bill on right-to-buy sales and associated finances. On that basis we can review the Bill and, if necessary, make changes.

Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 101 and 104 in this group, which are in my name. Quite simply, they would impose equality impact assessments and ESG assessments, ensuring that, in this important area of work, local authorities and landlords are doing the right thing by tenants but in a way which is equitable across all protected characteristics for the many vulnerable people they have in their care in the social housing sector.

That is critical as, without an EIA, it is impossible to have the evidence that something is occurring. This would be good not only for tenants and those who want to see that the right thing is being done but for landlords and those with responsibilities. The evidence could be brought to bear that they are operating in a way which is equitable and accessible, and they could prove that point. If the EIA demonstrated that that is not the case, action could be taken to address those inequalities.

On Amendment 104 and the ESG assessment, the environmental case is clear for housing with the energy crisis we currently have. Equally important are the “S” and “G”, which often do not get the same focus. Looking at the composition of housing boards here is critically important as well. Quite simply, the two amendments would fit together to ensure that there is clarity around EIA and ESG when it comes to this important area of work.

Lord Deben (Con)I support the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, in particular on the ESG framework. The reason is, frankly, that we need better figures about what is happening. I say to the Minister that this is not because I disagree with the Bill—in many ways it is a perfectly reasonable Bill—but because Parliament needs to know more about what happens when we make decisions and what is actually on rather than what we hoped was going to happen. That is why these two amendments are valuable.

I hope the Minister will not be disappointed if I say that I am very much concerned about the protected characteristics. However, I also want to say that I was disappointed that, in her summing up at Second Reading, she did not refer in any way to the problems of rural housing. We talk about protected characteristics, but the way in which this House increasingly ignores what is happening in rural areas is a disgrace. The ESG framework, proposed in Amendment 104, is important here, because there is a particular problem in the countryside with the quality of social housing that is provided. I hope that the Minister will, in future, always think about the particularities and worries of the countryside. Above all, we need to know, because then we can assess whether this is as good a Bill as we hope it will be or whether it will need changes in the future. If we do not have the figures, we cannot possibly make proper statements.

I hope that housing can be more and more understood as something that can be cross-partied agreed, disagreed and argued, and then it will come down to the facts. For far too long we have argued about housing from principles and party-political views and have not got down to where we actually are. The noble Lord, Lord Holmes, has done the Committee a great service in asking that we get facts and know what is actually happening in order that we can make decisions in the future.

19:15:00

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)My Lords, as this group of amendments focuses on the outcomes and impacts of the measures in the Bill, I start by drawing the attention of noble Lords to the economic impact assessment for the Bill, published today on GOV.UK. I know this will be greatly welcomed by many in the Committee. The noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, asked me during Second Reading when it was going to be published, so I am pleased to say that it is now on the Government’s website.

England was on course to lose 26,000 social homes between 2026 and 2036. However, through this package of right-to-buy reforms, including allowing councils to keep all receipts from sales and reducing cash discounts, alongside the provisions in the Bill, we now expect a net gain of around 18,000 homes over the same period, instead of a loss. That is a 44,000-home turnaround, marking a clear shift towards rebuilding social housing and replenishing depleted stock at scale. This demonstrates the significant impact our Bill will have, in combination with the Government’s wider package of right-to-buy reforms, in turning around decades of social homes being lost and not replaced.

Amendments 34, 58, 58A and 73, tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady O’Neill and Lady Lawlor, are well intentioned and reflect a shared desire to ensure that the financial and wider impacts of the Bill are properly understood. As I have already set out, the Government have now published our economic impact assessment alongside the Bill’s parliamentary passage. We have established arrangements to monitor the effects of the Bill on the social housing sector and on those affected by it. These three amendments would require additional statutory reporting shortly after commencement and as soon as six months following Royal Assent. However, we know that many of the measures in the Bill will take time to emerge in practice and cannot be meaningfully assessed within that timeframe. A further statutory review would risk duplicating existing analysis, while providing only a partial and potentially misleading picture of the Bill’s true impact. I point the noble Baronesses to the comprehensive suite of published statistics already available, including annual social housing sales and demolition figures, right-to-buy sales and replacements data, and statistics on the delivery of new affordable housing supply, all of which are published on GOV.UK. These datasets provide detailed information at local authority level, including applications, completed sales, replacements, discounts and property characteristics, and will continue to offer a clear and transparent overview of the impact of the Bill, including on home ownership, as it comes into force.

We are aligned in wanting a clear understanding of the Bill’s effects, but we differ on whether additional statutory reporting requirements are the best way to achieve that aim. Given the recently published assessment and our ongoing commitment to monitoring and reporting on the impact of the package of right-to-buy reforms and the wider Bill, I hope the noble Baronesses will reflect on these points and agree not to press their amendments.

Amendment 101, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, seeks to require local authorities and registered providers to publish annual social housing outcomes broken down by protected characteristics. Although the Government strongly support transparency and the importance of monitoring equalities outcomes, we do not consider the amendment necessary or proportionate. There are already existing statutory duties under the Equality Act 2010, including the public sector equality duty, which require local authorities and registered providers to have due regard to equalities impacts in exercising their functions.

In addition, providers are already subject to regulatory oversight and data collection requirements, and we are mindful of the need to avoid imposing duplicative reporting burdens that would divert resources from front-line delivery. The amendment would introduce a prescriptive and potentially rigid framework, including requirements around statistical thresholds and impact assessments, which may not be proportionate in all cases. We therefore consider that the objectives of the amendment are better achieved through existing duties and ongoing work with the regulator, rather than through additional primary legislation, and we ask that the amendment not be pressed.

On Amendment 104, also tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, while we support the ambition to improve energy efficiency and ensure better outcomes for tenants, we do not consider a statutory ESG framework to be the right approach. The Government are committed to ensuring that everyone has access to a warm and safe home, which is why we are introducing new minimum energy-efficiency standards for social housing. As part of the decent homes standard, this will require all social housing landlords to bring new and existing social homes up to reformed standards that will keep homes warmer and help to make energy bills cheaper for millions of social tenants.

The amendment would introduce a broad and undefined set of obligations under a single framework, which, given that we have already confirmed our new minimum energy-efficiency standards for social housing, risks creating uncertainty for providers about how these requirements would operate in practice and how they would interact with existing standards and investment programmes. The amendment also seeks to combine environmental requirements with equalities reporting in a single legislative framework, which may not be the most effective way to drive progress in either area. These issues are best addressed through targeted policy levers and sector-specific regulation, where expectations can be updated over time to reflect changing evidence and priorities.

The noble Lord, Lord Deben, referred to issues around rural housing. I cannot remember whether he was in the Chamber earlier when we had a short debate about rural housing. At Second Reading I was not able to respond to all the points that were made so I wrote to all Members who were present at that debate on 8 June, including a whole paragraph on rural housing. Therefore, I hope that he feels I have not ignored the points that were raised during the debate. We will continue to discuss rural housing in your Lordships’ House.

To return to the amendment on the ESG framework, we do not consider it appropriate to legislate for a new framework in this form.

On Amendments 117A and 119A, the Government are fully committed to considering equalities impacts throughout the development and delivery of policy. We do not consider it necessary or appropriate to place a requirement of this breadth in the Bill or to link it directly to commencement. Equalities considerations are already embedded through the public sector equality duty, which requires ongoing, proportionate and responsive assessment rather than a single static exercise covering every provision in detail. This ensures that analysis can evolve in the light of new evidence and real-world implementation, rather than relying on a single static assessment of the entire Act.

By contrast, Amendment 117A would require a full retrospective assessment of the entire Act in a highly prescriptive form. This risks creating a resource-intensive process that may add limited practical value, particularly where impacts are already understood or mitigated through existing safeguards, and could reduce the ability to refine analysis over time. For those reasons, we believe that the equalities impacts are addressed most effectively through the existing framework, which supports continuous, responsive decision-making, rather than through a one-off statutory requirement linked to commencement.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, for his Amendment 95. This seeks to introduce a requirement for social housing providers to assess and report on the impact of changes in planning policy, funding and standards on the availability and affordability of family-sized social rent homes. I agree with the importance of ensuring that there is sufficient availability of social rent homes for young families. However, this amendment is not the right way forward. It risks creating a burdensome new requirement for providers and many of its aims are already achieved through other means. The National Planning Policy Framework already requires local authorities to assess the size, type and tenure of housing needed for different groups in the community, including families with children and those who require social and affordable housing.

This assessment should be informed by estimates of the current and projected number of households which lack their own housing or cannot afford to meet their housing needs in the market, taking into account the number of households in overcrowded housing and those householders currently housed in unsuitable dwellings. I am sure that from his time as a council leader the noble Lord will remember this process very well. Local plans should reflect this assessment in their planning policies, including by specifying the type and mix of affordable housing that should be delivered on new developments to meet identified local needs. The Government already publish statistics on new affordable housing supply in England, showing the gross annual supply of affordable homes. Information on the number of affordable homes delivered under the Homes England affordable housing programmes is also published twice a year.

Social housing providers would cover both private registered providers and local authority registered providers. There are more than 1,300 of the former and more than 200 of the latter. It would be a significant ask to require registered providers to make a meaningful assessment of the impact of planning policy in the way proposed in the amendment. I would therefore have significant concern about the potential burden imposed by such a requirement. The Government are rightly demanding more than ever from our social landlords; in particular, that they deliver the quality homes and services that their tenants deserve and build the social homes that we need so much. Providers need to be able to focus on those priorities and we need to be cautious about imposing additional duties on them that might be better delivered through other means.

Lord Lansley (Con)My Lords, the Minister has referred a number of times to the publication of the impact assessment. I am not aware that the Minister wrote to Members of this House who spoke at Second Reading or who might be tabling amendments this evening to draw attention to this being published. It is not to be found among the Lords papers on the table outside, so we were not aware of it coming into the House for this purpose. It is not to be found on the parliamentary website. I understand that it is to be found on GOV.UK, but that is not satisfactory. My expectation is that if a Minister at the Dispatch Box refers to a paper, that paper should have been provided to Parliament.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)I appreciate the noble Lord’s comments. I will check why that has not happened, but it is certainly on the GOV.UK website.

Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)I feel duty bound to correct the Minister. She promoted me to being a former leader of a council. I had the honour to be a borough councillor for eight years and a constituency Member of Parliament but never a leader of the council. Also, the very helpful and comprehensive letter that the Minister sent to noble Lords in the wake of Second Reading was helpful and the best letter that I have received from a Minister. I thank her for that.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, for the error and thank him for his kind comment.

Baroness O’Neill of Bexley (Con)It is certainly one to note, is it not?

I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate and to the Minister for her response. The amendments in this group all seek to understand how we will know whether this legislation has succeeded. My noble friend Lady Lawlor rightly focused on the impact of the right-to-buy scheme and the opportunities for home ownership. I thank her for her work on this.

I was also interested in Amendment 95, tabled by my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough—who was not a council leader. It raises important questions about the availability of homes delivered and whether the housing stock being provided actually meets the needs of families and communities. Understanding the impact of policy on the availability and affordability of larger social rented homes is certainly worth while.

The amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, raise broader questions about transparency, accountability and how Parliament monitors the impact of housing policy across different communities. Noble Lords may have differing views on the precise mechanisms proposed, but these amendments seek to ensure that the consequences of the policy are properly understood and that disparities are identified where they exist. I listened carefully to the Minister’s response and will reflect on the points that have been made during this debate, as well as look at the equality impact assessment. However, I hope that the Government will also reflect on the broader principle that sits behind this group; namely, that Parliament should not simply legislate and move on but retain the means to assess whether its legislation is delivering the outcomes that are intended. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 34 withdrawn.

Amendment 35 not moved.

Clause 10 agreed.

House resumed. Committee to begin again not before 8.29 pm.