Social Housing Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Matthew Pennycook and Patrick Spencer

Committee stage
Thursday 29th October 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Patrick Spencer]

We would not argue against that statement one bit. I am not trying to expunge social tenants from rural England. Suffolk is not just a load of farms and tractor driving; we have a lot of working-class towns. We need social housing, but we are talking about the future of social housing, the future of our economy and the future of our dynamism. We have always moaned jealously about the French, the Germans and the Americans for having dynamic economies with engines of prosperity outside the capital city, while we are stuck with a unimodal economy that is so rooted in London—it is crazy that I am making the Prime Minister’s arguments for him from the Opposition Benches, but anyway.

Surely this is an opportunity. If we are going to build 50,000 to 100,000 or 150,000 homes, and if we are going to tackle the 1.3 million people who are stuck on the waiting list for social houses, why do we not make sure that that is aligned with our responsibility for economic growth? We are all bored with hearing from experts, friends and family members about the lack of joined-up policymaking across Government. This Bill, which is not an inconsequential Bill but is one piece of a wide patchwork of legislation, is a good example of how we can align with a wider economic agenda that we can all get behind.

[Matthew Pennycook]

It is a pleasure to continue our proceedings and to see you in the Chair, Sir Roger. After the Opposition’s—to put it candidly—languid approach in our previous sittings, I welcome the fact that they have clearly woken up and are now fully participating in the debate. Partly for that reason, we had a remarkably productive first day in Committee on Tuesday. Our debates on many of the clauses and amendments were predictably spirited; nevertheless, they remained civil and, in the main, constructive. I hope we can proceed in that vein today.

Before I respond to the new clauses, I will make a general point—a point that the shadow Minister is clearly struggling to grasp. Our ambitions to deliver the biggest increase in social and affordable house building in a generation will benefit from the Bill, but they are not entirely dependent on this one piece of legislation. The supply statistics speak for themselves. Let me give the statistics from 2024-25. Overall social and affordable house building: 64,921, the highest level since 2014-15. Social housing on its own: 12,267, the highest level since 2012-13. Council-delivered homes: 10,600, the highest level since 1991-92. That is this Government’s record on social and affordable housing—and, by the way, this was all prior to the initial allocations from our social and affordable housing programme, which have now been made. We have increased supply, we will increase it further, and the Bill will make a material impact on doing so.

I turn to new clause 1. As the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington is fully aware, we are committed, in line with our manifesto, to delivering the biggest increase in social and affordable house building in a generation, to prioritising the building of new social rented homes and to supporting councils and housing associations to make a greater contribution to affordable supply. In the 27 months for which we have been in office, we have faithfully sought to honour those commitments. We have made the biggest long-term investment in social and affordable housing in recent memory, an investment that was topped up in yesterday’s Budget by a further £1.5 billion pounds, as the hon. Member rightly recognised. We are vigorously prioritising social rented housing, we are rebuilding the capacity of councils and housing associations to borrow and invest in new and existing homes, and we are reinvigorating council house building.

In his more generous moments, the Liberal Democrat spokesperson acknowledged the transformative impact of what this Government have done on social housing supply. I understand—indeed, I welcome and embrace—his encouragement and support for raising our ambition further. However, given the nature of our inheritance from the Conservative party, with social housing supply averaging a historical low of fewer than 8,000 units per year from 2013 to 2024, following the purposeful and deliberate pivot to affordable rented tenures, a target of 150,000 new social homes per year is not currently realistic. A statutory requirement to produce a strategy for delivering such volumes within 12 months of Royal Assent is not a proposition that we can support.

I say gently to the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington that his party continues wildly to underestimate the costs of supplying social housing on the scale that he proposes. The Government’s estimate of the grant funding required to support the delivery of 150,000 social homes is in excess of £20 billion per year. For obvious reasons, the hon. Member’s party has escaped the kind of scrutiny to which the Government and the official Opposition are subject, but if his party wants that 150,000 figure to be taken seriously it will have to set out a credible funding strategy. To date, it has not done so.

Social Housing Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Matthew Pennycook and Patrick Spencer

Committee stage
Tuesday 27th October 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank my hon. Friend for sharing his very considerable experience. There is a difference in experience between local authorities that have housing revenue accounts and those that do not, and those that build at scale and those that do not. However, it is certainly the case that councils knowing they can lose stock three years after building it without recuperating that investment is a disincentive to build.

[Patrick Spencer (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Pennycook]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman but then, in the interests of getting to the Opposition new clauses, which I am told they want to speak to, I will make some progress.

[Patrick Spencer]

I appreciate the Minister’s point about recouping councils’ investment, which is why there are elements of the Bill that change that deal for councils. What my residents and I do not understand—and what people across this country do not understand—is why the Government are restricting access to right to buy for a whole group of people, including young people, young parents and people at the beginning of their professional lives, who might want to get on to the housing ladder. It seems they are tackling one problem by focusing on the completely wrong element of the issue.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I think I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, but I respectfully disagree. It is a problem that local authorities up and down the country build new social homes but then, after three years, they can be purchased. That is leading to an unsustainable outflow of social housing stock from the system. We are not net positive on social homes—we have not been for many years—but the Bill will ensure that we are. It gives an incentive to councils to build, as they will know that they are building more than they are losing, and therefore the 1.3 million people on waiting lists will not increase but decrease over time.

I must turn to the amendments and new clauses tabled by the hon. Member for Orpington. New clause 57 would exempt existing secure tenants from the new 10-year minimum qualifying period introduced by the Bill. As I have said, a core aim of the Bill is to protect social housing stock better and to ensure that more social homes are built than lost. If existing tenancies were excluded from the changes to eligibility rules, the vast majority of tenants would be unaffected by our qualifying period reforms. I have no doubt that that is the hon. Gentleman’s intention, but the result would be homes continuing to be sold as little as three years after a tenancy was secured, and the continued loss of significant amounts of social housing stock. That is not the Government’s aim or the aim of the Bill. For that reason, the Government cannot accept the new clause, and I hope that the shadow Minister will not press it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Pennycook]

As I have already set out, the Bill’s reforms aim to ensure that the right-to-buy scheme is sustainable, including by ensuring that discounts are set at the right level to enable long-standing tenants to buy under the scheme but without depleting levels of social housing stock.

This Government already took action in November 2024 to reduce the maximum cash discounts, returning those to pre-2012 levels. We subsequently committed to revise the discounts available as a percentage of the property value, so that they align better with the revised cash cap amounts. Clause 6 delivers on that commitment by reducing percentage discounts so that they start at 5% of the property value after 10 years of public sector tenancy, and increase for every extra year of a tenancy up to a maximum of 15%. As is the case now, the percentage discounts will be subject to cash caps that set out the maximum cash discount that a tenant can receive in their area. Aligning the discounts available as a percentage of the property value with the cash caps ensures that those who have been in their homes the longest benefit the most, while avoiding disproportionately large discounts in high-value areas.

The revised percentage discount aims to strike a balance between the responses received during the right-to-buy consultation, in which many respondents supported setting the percentage discounts lower than those proposed by the clause. We are also simplifying the rules by applying a single set of discount arrangements to both houses and flats to make the scheme clearer and more consistent for tenants.

[Patrick Spencer]

Would it be possible for the Government to present some kind of analysis on the impact that this policy will have on the number of sales made available to tenants? That would be important to establishing the long-term economic impact on properties across the country.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I simply refer the hon. Gentleman to the impact assessment. If he has further, detailed questions about it, I am more than happy to answer, but we have set out our analysis of the impact of the Bill and in particular that of the ambition to go net positive on new social housing as a result of the changes we are making.

The clause also extends the discount repayment period from the current five years to 10 years after the original sale, during which time a repurchaser looking to resell the property will be required to repay all or some of the discount on a sliding scale. That measure was supported by 72% of respondents to our consultation and it will ensure that there is less incentive for early resale, which can undermine the purpose of the scheme. It will encourage people buying to retain the property and discourage profiteering.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 6 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Social Housing Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Matthew Pennycook and Patrick Spencer

Committee stage
Tuesday 27th October 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Matthew Pennycook]

Let me start with new clause 40, which seeks to clarify that social landlords can continue to grant fixed-term tenancies.

Fixed-term tenancies will no longer be available within the assured tenancy framework once the relevant Renters’ Rights Act 2025 reforms take effect. I therefore understand that the proposal is aimed principally at ensuring that local housing authorities and other secure tenancy landlords can continue to grant fixed-term tenancies when appropriate.

I want to be clear that the new clause is not needed. Nothing in the Bill prevents secure-tenancy landlords from granting fixed-term tenancies. As I have said, the Bill repeals uncommenced provisions in the Housing and Planning Act 2016, which would have required most new secure tenancies to be fixed-term tenancies. As we have just debated, those provisions were never brought into force and we are now removing them in order to provide clarity. Secure-tenancy landlords will still be able to offer fixed-term tenancies where they consider it appropriate to do so; as I have said, the Bill does not change that. The proposed measures risk repeating what is already the case in law for secure-tenancy landlords and would create confusion by suggesting that the Bill removes flexibility in this area when it does not. For those reasons, I ask the shadow Minister not to press new clause 40.

New clause 58 would require local housing authorities to review lifetime secure tenancies every five years. I made it clear when speaking to clause 17 that the Government support the use of lifetime tenancies because they provide stability and security for households and help people to put down roots in their communities. That is precisely why we are repealing uncommenced provisions in the 2016 Act that would have phased out lifetime secure tenancies in favour of mandatory fixed-term tenancies.

We expect local authorities and other social landlords to make the best and most effective use of their stock to meet housing need. However, we do not believe that a statutory requirement for local authorities to review every secure tenancy once every five years would be an appropriate way to support them in doing so, given the administrative burden that that would entail. We also believe that it would have detrimental impacts on tenants and communities. Those are some of the reasons why the previous Government did not commence the provisions they had legislated for in the 2016 Act.

[Patrick Spencer (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

I am losing track of the narrative in this debate. The Government do not want to sell the unit to the tenant, but that means they will forgo all the long-term health, economic, social and community benefits of home ownership. At the same time, you want to lock them into lifelong tenancies, which would take their house out of action and reduce its availability to other households that are more in need. Perhaps I have misunderstood the Bill, but that is the narrative that I understand the Government are setting out. Can the Minister confirm that for me?

[Patrick Spencer]

I apologise, Mr Western.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I fear that the hon. Gentleman does misunderstand the Bill in a number of respects. First, we are not abolishing or phasing out the right to buy. As I have persistently made clear, we want to ensure that the right to buy is available for long-standing tenants who have lived in—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman can intervene once I have answered his first question. I refer to those tenants who have lived in and paid rent on their homes for many years.

I have already made it clear in a previous debate that landlords can already consider the changing needs of tenants through a variety of methods, ranging from tenant surveys to direct engagement. They can already support tenants to downsize, to transfer or to mutually exchange their home if their circumstances change. The new clause would mandate, through primary legislation, a review of every secure tenancy once every five years. I simply put it to the hon. Gentleman—this picks up on the precise reason why the previous Conservative Government did not bring into force the provisions in their own 2016 Act—that that would entail huge administrative burdens for local authorities. We think, because we believe in the principle of secure tenancies in social housing—in terms of the benefits for tenants and for communities more widely—that we should not impose such a statutory review every five years. I am struggling to see how that is incompatible with trying to place the right-to-buy scheme on a fairer and more sustainable footing.

The Government are reviewing how effectively social housing providers are using their stock. That work is considering issues such as under-occupation, overcrowding and how landlords are supporting tenant movement. We will set out findings from that review and the next steps in due course. We think social landlords can, in some instances, make better and more effective use of their stock. That does not necessarily require, as a means to support them to do so, a statutory requirement to review every secure tenancy every five years.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Matthew Pennycook and Patrick Spencer

Monday 20th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Patrick Spencer (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

Suffolk has a huge flooding problem. Part of the problem has been driven by overdevelopment in low-lying rural areas. In her steps to reform the planning system—as well as building more houses, which I totally accept we need to do—can the Secretary of State promise to force councils and developers to properly account for flood risk, ensure that developers are held accountable to residents when developments are badly impacted by floods, and ensure that housing targets favour homes built in dense urban areas?

[Matthew Pennycook]

As I have made clear, we are prioritising development on previously developed brownfield land wherever possible, and we encourage local authorities to look to that option in the first instance. We have made changes to the NPPF to clarify flood risk and issues that relate to it. If the hon. Gentleman writes to me, I will be more than happy to look at the specifics in his area in more detail.