Social Housing Bill [HL]

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 15th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[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 is: who 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.

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[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.

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[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.