Social Housing Bill [HL]

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 1st June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend on the Front Bench: it is quite right to debate the effective allocation of scarce public resources. That needs to be said.

The Government have brought forward the Bill ostensibly with the desire to protect social housing and facilitate the building of new supply. This is an admirable goal. We need more houses. The UK is building only 200 homes a year per 10,000 people added to the population over the past 20 years. However, there is an aspect of this discussion which does not receive the attention it deserves and which I will highlight later in my remarks: population and housing tenure.

I welcome in particular Clause 12 and Schedule 1 on victims of domestic abuse. However, the tenor of the Bill is generally hostile to right to buy and seeks, particularly in Part 1, to circumscribe and curtail the rights of those seeking to exercise their rights under the scheme. I know that, for many people in the Labour Party, right to buy is a totemic scheme to which they have been opposed by habit and tradition with tribal hostility. But for many of us, it represented and still represents the greatest and most profound transfer of capital via property rights, in our country’s history, to working people away from state oligopoly and, sometimes, municipal slum landlords. It gave a pathway to prosperity, self-reliance and family stability and success to thousands of British citizens of modest means from 1980 onwards and boosted home ownership to almost 70% by the early 2000s. I accept that it was by no means perfect and that more emphasis should have been placed not merely on paying off local authority debt but on building good-quality homes for working families—not merely substandard properties for those on welfare, which exacerbated multigenerational welfarism.

It is important to dispel the myths about right to buy. Your Lordships’ House will no doubt be aware of research published by the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics. Human Capital from Childhood Exposure to Homeownership: Evidence from Right-to-Buy demonstrates strong empirical evidence not just of increased prosperity and financial stability but of real demonstrable improvements in educational attainment. It generated detectable, sizable school performance gains among young people exposed to home ownership, showing an increase in the number of good grades in high-stakes exams as well as a reduction in crime.

Despite all that, I want to leave the ideological debate for Committee. Instead, I ask a fundamental question about housing and particularly social housing: what sort of housing do we want? What sort of homes would best serve the needs of the British people? What do we want our housing to do?

The ONS has argued that, from about now—mid-2026 onwards—deaths in the UK are projected to exceed births. The BBC reported two weeks ago that births have fallen to the lowest level in 50 years. The UK is facing an unprecedented situation that will have a significant impact on the strength and viability of our economy. Between mid-2024 and mid-2034, there are projected to be 450,000 more deaths than births. We all want economic growth, but low birth rates create an ageing population increasingly dependent on the state, leading to a vicious circle of higher government spending and a weaker economy.

How do we address that? Families are the building blocks on which a society is built. A 2026 poll commissioned by the New Statesman found that 81% of men and 82% of women between the ages of 18 and 30 said that they would like to be married or in a civil partnership one day. It also found that 75% of young women and 80% of young men wanted to have children at some point in their life. Analysis of the 2025 UK multifamily housing survey and historic surveys indicated that the perceived ideal family size has mostly stayed similar since 1945. British men and women in the 2025 survey said, on average, that they would be happiest with 2.1 or 2.2 children.

However, one significant issue that is often not factored in is housing tenure. The analysis of the UK multifamily housing survey found that housing was a significant factor in how British people approach having families. Some 81% believe that the cost and availability of family homes is making it harder for people to marry and start families; only 9% disagreed. Some 74% said that the type and size of housing available has a major impact on people’s decisions about having children. Some 65% of the public agreed that too many new homes are small flats, and that they are unsuitable for raising families. More than half personally know young people or couples who are delaying having children because they cannot afford a suitable home.

The public also have views on how to address the problem. A majority wanted new housing developments to include a higher proportion of family-sized homes, and 65% wanted three-bedroom homes to be prioritised in the planning rules for new development, so that families can put down roots and become part of a stable local community. A survey of people’s preferences from the Institute for Family Studies found that those who wanted to have children saw having a two-bedroom property, instead of a one-bedroom property, as having the same impact on their confidence in having children as a £1,900 to £2,600 reduction in their monthly housing costs.

Policy should not and cannot tell people whether they should have children, but it can make it easier for those who want to. In 2023, flats rose to almost 22% of housing stock, while detached homes and bungalows fell to between 25% and 26%. Our policies, under both parties, have focused on the number of houses and not on those that are compatible with the family. As we think about housing, and social stock in particular, including the aesthetics of new housing developments, we should look to support the family. Local plans and housing needs assessments should track and plan for the number of bedrooms and family-sized properties. Local and national policies should plan for the building of family-sized homes. Our planning policy should focus on schemes that are viable and conducive to families.

Finally, as I have exceeded my time, Britain is facing a crisis of the family and significant housing challenges. The policies we discuss in this House should attempt to deal with both those problems. For no other reason, I welcome the Bill and hope it gives rise to opportunities for the Government to begin to solve these pressing, significant societal issues.