Social Housing Bill [Lords]

Debate between Bobby Dean and Deirdre Costigan

2nd reading
Thursday 10th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Bobby Dean (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

Some £7.9 billion a year: that is how much the Chartered Institute of Housing estimates is spent on housing benefit for tenants renting privately. In my local area, a lot of that will be going to people living on the St Helier estate, one of the largest London council estates built during the interwar period, much of which has been sold under right to buy over the past few decades. That means that instead of our local authority receiving rent from those properties, the national Government are paying market rates to private landlords on homes that we built. That is maddening and it surely makes the scale of right to buy sales, alongside the failure to replenish the stock, one of the single greatest policy failures for a generation.

[Deirdre Costigan]

I know the St Helier estate well, but would the hon. Gentleman not agree that it was his party, the Liberal Democrats, in coalition with the Conservatives, that massively increased the discounts for right to buy that caused the very problem he is talking about?