Housing and Planning Bill

Lord Foster of Bath Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, a few minutes ago, the noble Lord, Lord Porter, began to introduce a debate about the broad principles of right to buy and whether people supported them or not. It is interesting to reflect on the history of the whole process. The Minister may be interested to know that the first time right to buy was proposed was by the Liberals—who subsequently opposed it on a number of occasions—way back in 1947. The Labour Party, which has a long track record of opposing the right to buy at various times, first introduced the proposal in their manifesto for the 1959 election. The Conservatives were very late to the party, until Horace Cutler proposed it for the Conservative-controlled GLC. It stopped briefly when Labour took control of that body, and was then reintroduced. All the political parties represented here have, at some time or another, been in favour of the principle of right to buy.

I continue to believe that the broad principle is correct. The issue has always been about the detail. The noble Lord, Lord Horam, was absolutely right to chide the noble Lord, Lord Porter, and say: “Let us get back to the specifics of the amendment”. The specifics of Amendments 57 and 60 are very important. Looking at some of the details of the right to buy in relation to council housing, the coalition Government were absolutely correct to introduce a requirement for one-for-one replacement. The Minister should note that I have not said “like-for-like”. However, since that was introduced in 2012, for every nine council houses that have been sold off, we have so far only had one replacement. It is inevitable that there will be a drag: it takes time to consider where a new home is going to be; to get planning permission; to gather together the finance and so forth; and then to have it constructed. I am hopeful—the figures give grounds for optimism—that the one-for-one policy initiative will gradually deliver, but it will take a very long time.

There are some 1.7 million council houses left, but there are 2.3 million housing association houses. If we are now to introduce a voluntary scheme for the right to buy housing association houses, depending on the decisions of the housing associations a very large number of properties could be involved. So it is important that we get right the issues that concerned us about the right to buy council housing.

We need to introduce at least a replacement scheme of one sort of another. Amendment 57 seeks to introduce that; it raises two issues and, very interestingly, does not raise, as I might have liked, the issue of size in the one-for-one replacement scheme. Amendment 60 would develop a way of speeding up the process so that a replacement plan would be in place, something that housing associations are more than capable of doing even before they get to the point of selling off any houses. We have a package of two measures on housing association properties that make sense in terms of the principle of having a replacement policy and a system of ensuring that housing associations have replacement properties coming on board. That is why I support both amendments.

Having sat in a similar position to the Minister and seen the sort of briefings that she gets, I know that she will come forward with reasons why there are technical problems with the amendments. I accept that there probably are technical problems with both amendments, but it will be very good to hear that in principle the Minister supports the idea of a one-for-one replacement scheme. We know that she does because it has been said already that for London it is going to be even better. Does she agree that the principle behind Amendment 60—that housing associations should get organised so that they can do a quick replacement—makes sense, and is she prepared to look at ways of improving any technical deficiencies there might be?

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Foster, has referred to the many attempts over the years to introduce a right-to-buy policy, which eventually came to pass. It is one thing to have a right-to-buy policy when you are building a lot of houses anyway; it is quite another when you are falling far short of demand and of meeting need for new houses. That has been a chronic situation for the past few years, and it has not materially improved. That is the context in which the issues have to be considered.

Having said that, I agree with the noble Lord that the wording of Amendment 57 may not be perfect; it is a question of replacing like for like, not just one for one. Unfortunately, the way in which much new housing has taken shape over the last few years means that we are looking at very small units. I keep saying this, but it is a fact—housing units built in this country are smaller than in any other major country in Europe. We are looking at, frankly, expensive housing offering little in the way of space in the market generally and, equally, in the event of a replacement scheme. I rather regret that my noble friend and I did not include like for like in the amendment. We may have to revert to that, because it would not do much good to replace a two-bedroom or three-bedroom house with a one-bedroom house or something equally small. The temptation to do that, I suspect, given the high land prices in London, would be very great.

It will be interesting to see whether the Minister agrees that we have to look at what we are replacing, rather than purely the numbers.

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[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, affordable rent for low-cost houses is certainly a lot cheaper than market rents, but I will take that particular point away and perhaps we can return to it on Report. I will need to think about it.

[Lord Foster of Bath]

I am very grateful that the Minister has agreed to look at that issue. She will be aware that the current default tenure for new rental properties is the affordable rent model, under which the rent is about 80% of the market rent, whereas social rent is about 50% to 60% of the market rent. The concern of many of us is that if we do not have some control over this, all social rent properties will just disappear.

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[Lord Foster of Bath]

I apologise as I recognise the lateness of the hour. Will the Minister acknowledge that many Members of your Lordships’ House and many members of the public have already had a pretty good sight of the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake? What we have heard from the Minister so far is that the Government are rejecting it merely on the grounds that they want the scheme for housing association tenants to be identical to the scheme for council housing tenants. Will the Minister tell us—perhaps she could write to us between now and Thursday—what assessment the Government have made of the noble Lord’s scheme and what assessment they have made of the likely drop in take-up were the noble Lord’s proposed funding scheme introduced rather than the one proposed by the Government, so hated by Members of your Lordships’ House?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I understand that point. As far as I am aware, the Government have not made an assessment of the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, simply because they made a manifesto commitment on the mechanism that I have just outlined.

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[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I will be equally brief. Amendment 59A, in the name of the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy and Lord Beecham, would require the Regulator of Social Housing to monitor and report where a community-led housing provider or TMO had used grants made by the Secretary of State in respect of a right-to-buy discount.

Let me be clear again that TMOs are not part of the right-to-buy arrangements. Under the voluntary right to buy, the landlord/tenant relationship is with the property-owning landlord as a registered provider, and the tenant would exercise their right to buy against that landlord. The amendment does not make sense in that landscape. If the concern is about different tenures—social tenants and owner-occupiers—being part of a TMO, there is no reason to believe that tenants and owners could not come together in this way.

I appreciate that the noble Lords, Lord Beecham and Lord Kennedy, want to protect TMOs and other community-led organisations that are not landlords so that they continue to help tenants to play an active role. The voluntary right-to-buy agreement contains protections that allow housing associations discretion not to sell properties that are important to their communities and clients.

The purpose of Amendment 82B is to create a definition of community-led housing, but there is no need to, as it is a colloquial umbrella term to cover a range of different and distinct structures and organisations, such as fully mutual co-operatives, community land trusts and tenant management organisations. The Government very much support community-led housing, and these bodies have distinct and specific legal definitions. Fully mutual housing associations are defined in Section 5 of the Housing Act 1985. Community land trusts are defined in statute in Section 79 of the Housing and Regeneration Act. TMOs are defined through the Housing (Right to Manage) (England) Regulations 2012, Part 1 Section 3.

Additionally, the organisations are different in nature. Fully mutual housing co-ops will generally own their homes, community land trusts may or may not, and TMOs will generally act as a managing agent for housing owned by a local authority. Imposing an additional overarching definition would be unnecessary. I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Foster of Bath]

I apologise but have an incredibly quick point to make. There is also a clause stand part debate in this group on Clause 64. I have read Clause 64 and the Explanatory Notes on it many times. It seems, basically, that the Secretary of State will draw up a set of criteria and tell the regulator to check what the housing association is doing against those criteria. The criteria will probably be those contained in the deal between the National Housing Federation and the Government, but they may be different and could be changed. Could the Minister provide a more detailed briefing in the fairly near future on what all of this means?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, yes.