Oral Answers to Questions

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Monday 14th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I find that absolutely astonishing when the Conservatives failed to meet their housing targets year after year. The Mayor of London has welcomed the money through the affordable homes programme. There is the amount of money we have given, and we are permitted to increase rents by CPI plus 1%. We are consulting on rent conversion, when the Conservatives prevented social landlords from being able to raise the money to provide the social housing that we desperately need. We are making the changes to get social housing where they failed miserably.

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

16. What assessment she has made of the potential merits of allowing local authorities to end the right to buy in their areas.

[The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)]

The Government do not intend to abolish the right to buy, either nationally or by giving local areas discretion to do so. We want to ensure that council tenants who have lived in and paid rent on their social homes for many years can retain the opportunity to own their home. We are, however, progressing fundamental reform of the scheme to better protect much-needed social housing stock, boost council capacity and ensure that more social homes are built than lost.

[Gideon Amos]

My Somerset councillor colleagues have for decades steadfastly protected and managed our stock of council houses, which has declined through right to buy from tens of thousands a number of years ago to only 6,000 now. While I welcome the recent attention to this issue by the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister, is it not time that communities decide for themselves whether to sell off council houses at all?

[Matthew Pennycook]

Although I respect the hon. Gentleman and his views, we have a principled difference of opinion on this matter. As I have made clear, the Government’s considered view is that long-standing council tenants should be able to buy the homes that they have lived in for many years. I hope, however, that the right-to-buy reforms that we have made and announced today—reduced maximum cash discounts, allowing councils to retain 100% of receipts and exempting newly built social homes from the right to buy for 35 years—will create a fairer and more sustainable scheme.