Social Housing Bill [HL]

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 15th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to government Amendments 4, 6 and 122 in my name now and then come back to close at the end, if that is all right with noble Lords.

The Government clearly set out in our response to the consultation on reforming the right to buy that we would prevent existing property owners or those who have previously benefited from the scheme exercising right to buy unless there are exceptional circumstances. This was supported by 91% of respondents to the consultation, including 86% of social tenants who responded. We have already drawn up the latter part of this commitment through Clause 2 of the Bill and intend to add to this by including a provision in new Clause 2 to prevent existing residential property owners exercising the right to buy. The Committee will appreciate that defining residential property ownership is complex, given the many forms that property ownership can take. Capturing this complexity in legal drafting required additional time, meaning that this clause was not present at introduction. Given that the intent behind the right to buy is to enable tenants of social housing to become home owners, preventing existing property owners using the scheme is a fair and rational approach.

We have set out in this amendment what we think is a reasonable definition of a residential property owner. The new clause will apply to anyone who owns a residential property, whether owned outright or with a mortgage. Leasehold and freehold properties will be captured, with exceptions for short-term leases under 21 years, as will joint ownership and any properties owned outside England, including those held in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and abroad. As in Clause 2, exemptions will be made for victims of domestic abuse who have moved from the accommodation that they were occupying for reasons connected to the abuse.

As part of the application process, tenants will be required to declare to the landlord whether they own another property and landlords will be able to check the information that the tenant provides. If tenants are seeking exceptionally to buy under a right-to-buy scheme, where they already own a residential property, because they have been a victim of domestic abuse, they will be required to provide evidence of that to the landlord. Amendment 4 thus follows through on our commitment to exclude existing property owners from using right to buy and is accompanied by Amendments 6 and 122, which are consequential and enable the new clause to operate as intended. I commend these amendments to the Committee.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I want to hear from the Minister about government Amendment 4, to try to understand a bit more about cohabitees. There are other legal rulings which have been made and I am led to believe that the Lord Chancellor will be bringing forward legislation about cohabitees, but the definition is not particularly strong. I want to understand how, in practice, the Government intend to put this in place. The new clause is suggesting that it is somebody who lives with somebody else as if they are married, but there are other benefits rulings where that entitlement was brought in only because of children involved. I want to get a better understanding because, in that particular case, the ruling is that you have to have lived with somebody for only a single day. I hear that the Lord Chancellor may be talking about something like three years. I would be grateful if the Minister, in her final wind-up, would elaborate further on how they will determine accurately whether somebody is a cohabitee.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

I have just a few words on this group. First of all, I failed to observe the social niceties and would like to say that I am pleased that I have already had conversations and emails with the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bexley, and I formally welcome her to the Front Bench. Her availability thus far has proved that she is going to be a good colleague to work with. I am also pleased to see the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, on the Front Bench, and I echo the kind words that she missed from the Minister regarding her contribution. The noble Baroness—Jane—was a really positive person to work with and I particularly respected the way she understood and respected political difference, and yet we could still have that cup of tea.

I thank the Minister very much for the email that she sent us recently, containing the appendix which outlined all the things that the Government were doing. I was a bit frustrated and had a meeting with the Minister, asking how this fits here and how that fits there. I was pleased that she responded positively. I still like it in diagram form, I must admit, but it really did help.

I have an anecdote on the eligibility period. When we were losing right to buy quite considerably, I noticed the number of homes that were lost within three to five years. It was significant. It had me questioning how people could afford to get social housing in the first place—do not forget that we are in a pretty high-cost housing area. That led us to look at that and we found that it was to do with the number of children, which seemed to be a main factor rather than any issue about household income and how people could afford to pay. I am pleased that we will look at housing allocation again at some point, because I think there are things to look at.

I can only be awestruck by the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond. I have looked through the whole load that he has tabled and I confess that I do not understand most of them. What I do know is that the House has a real expert and champion, and therefore I look forward to the Minister’s answer to the noble Lord.

To put it briefly, we will not support any amendments that are designed to continue right to buy in its current format, given the present crisis situation. We will agree with amendments designed to restrict eligibility and protect any further loss of stock, and thus we completely understand and support government Amendment 4. If someone owns another property, they should not be eligible for right to buy. It is as simple as that.

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Moved by

[Baroness Coffey]

14: Clause 5, page 5, line 4, leave out “five” and insert “20”
Member’s explanatory statement
This replaces the proposed reduction to the right to buy discount to five per cent with a reduction to 20 per cent, from the current rate of 35 per cent for houses and 50 per cent for flats.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, the intention of the Government is to change the discount on right to buy, dropping it from the current 35% rate for houses and 50% for flats all the way down to 5%. Taking Amendments 14 and 15 together, I agree with the intention to add percentages as the number of years of accommodation are covered. However, going all the way down to requiring 95% of the market rate to be paid is somewhat strong, recognising how quickly it is intended for this clause to come into effect. I went for a halfway house of 20%—because for other social housing providers the affordable rent is capped at 80% of market rent—thinking that this might prove a sensible way to help people to acquire a home; this 20% discount is similar to the discount that happens for the same property when it comes to rent.

Why is this? Not everybody who lives in social housing is on benefits—quite a high proportion are not. There is an assumption that it does not matter anyway. I appreciate that not everybody who lives in social housing—in a council house or one provided by a housing association—wants to buy where they live. But I fear that this will put a lot of people out. I am very supportive of some of the earlier clauses where we have extended how long somebody needs to have been living in that home. Would the Government consider something that is in parity? The approach to rent should also be the approach on the discount to buy. I beg to move.

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[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords who have spoken in this debate: the noble Baronesses, Lady Coffey, Lady Thornhill and Lady O’Neill, and the noble Lords, Lord Lansley and Lord Fuller. First, I will defend why Clause 5 should stand part of the Bill. The right-to-buy scheme continues to provide an important route for social housing tenants to own their own homes. However, we must ensure that the scheme remains sustainable. This includes 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.

The Government has already taken action to reduce the maximum cash discounts in November 2024 by returning them to pre-2012 levels. We committed to revising the discounts available as a percentage of the property value so that they align better with the revised cash cap amounts. Clause 5 delivers on our commitment to do this by reducing the percentage discounts so that they start at 5% of the property value after 10 years of public sector tenancy, with an increase for every extra year of tenancy up to a maximum of 15%.

As is the case now, these percentage discounts will be subject to the cash caps which set out the maximum cash discount that a tenant can receive in their local authority 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 also avoiding disproportionately large discounts in high-value areas. The revised percentage discount levels aim to strike a balance between the responses received during the right to buy consultation, where many respondents supported setting the percentage discounts lower than is proposed by this clause.

We are also simplifying the rules by applying a single set of discount arrangements to houses and flats, making the scheme clearer and more consistent for tenants. This clause also extends the discount repayment period to 10 years after the original sale from the current five years, during which a purchaser looking to resell the property will be required to repay all or some of the discount on a sliding scale. This measure was supported by 72% of all respondents to our consultation. It will ensure that there is less of an incentive for early resale, which can undermine the purpose of the scheme, and will encourage people buying under the scheme to retain the property and discourage some of the profiteering that we have seen. With this explanation, I therefore ask the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, to withdraw her opposition to the clause standing part of the Bill.

I turn to Amendments 14 and 15, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey. The intention of these amendments—to set the minimum percentage discount at 20% and the maximum at 30%—would undermine the core aims of the clause that I have just set out and would keep the percentage discounts too high. In practice, the lower maximum cash discounts would take effect over the percentage amounts, as the cash cap would often be the lesser of the two discounts and would determine the discount that the tenant would receive. This would also mean that tenants with longer tenancies would be less likely to benefit, because the cash cap would bite sooner on the actual discount received. I therefore kindly ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister for her response. I do not think we can base every decision or amendment on exactly where one lives—recognising that there are parts of the country where there are significantly lower costs and low market prices to be had. I also go back partly to what I said at Second Reading; there is a risk that, as people retire, they will start to claim benefits to continue to live in the places where they are currently social housing tenants. I think it would be worth looking at the maths again, but with that I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 14 withdrawn.

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[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 20 in the name of my noble friend Lord Cameron of Dillington, and I declare my various housing interests as in the register. Before considering Amendment 20, perhaps I could extend a word of dissent to the Clause 6 stand part notice in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bexley. It would remove the proposed extension of the right of first refusal, enabling the obligation to last in perpetuity.

It seems a helpful change to enable the local authority—or, more likely, a nominated housing association—to have a long-lasting opportunity to reacquire a right-to-buy property when it is being sold. The price paid would be the full market value, and it would be determined independently so would involve no loss to the outgoing occupier. Indeed, the vendor could expect a save on fees to estate agents. Although a social landlord buying at full price a home that they previously sold at a substantial discount sounds like a nonsense, this may well be the only or best way of securing the affordable homes that are so badly needed. Indeed, the Government have a fund—the local authority housing fund—specifically to enable councils to buy and modernise existing property.

If, as is likely, the property in question is on an estate or in a block of other homes managed by the local authority or by a housing association, the management and maintenance costs will be more economical for a social landlord than for anyone else. In the case of major upgrades to existing houses or flats on social housing estates, or even their redevelopment, being able to acquire the property will be essential, and the right of first refusal means that they cannot be held to ransom. Extending the right in perpetuity sounds sensible to me.

I added my name to Amendment 20, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington. The Bill, in listing exceptions to the right to buy, includes

“an area designated by regulations made by the Secretary of State as a rural area”.

In the past, the areas designated as rural exceptions have covered barely 60% of council homes in rural areas. My noble friend’s amendment seeks to define in a fuller way what a rural area should mean in this context. The case made by my noble friend is twofold: first, that rural areas at large have a particular problem with the right to buy; and, secondly, that for many years those working in rural areas have grappled with an inadequate definition of what comprises a rural area. The amendment makes plain that the exception to the right to buy would cover all sparsely populated areas with populations below 3,000. Clarity on this exemption would be greatly welcome.

I see the case for the widest possible exemption as very necessary. The extraordinary difficulty for the next generation of finding anywhere affordable to live in the rural communities of North Yorkshire, for example, was highlighted at an illuminating event at Ripon Cathedral just last Friday. We learned that social housing comprises 17% of the nation’s homes—and in passing I should make the point that social housing is determined or defined differently in different countries. The noble Lord, Lord Young, said that, in this country, social housing at 17% sounds rather high compared with some European comparators, but in reality in Europe the housing co-operatives and the co-ownership housing schemes—which are subsidised social housing in our sense—are not counted in those same statistics, giving a rather different comparison between us and other countries.

The extraordinary difficulty for the next generation of finding anywhere in North Yorkshire to make their home and remain in an area where they were born, were brought up and now are working was highlighted at this event. We learned that, although social housing comprises 17% of the nation’s homes across the country, in North Yorkshire the figure is only 6.7%. Local people, supported by the excellent rural housing enablers, funded in part by Defra, have struggled to secure a small number of new homes for rent and shared ownership. They have required the bringing together of willing landowners, committed housing associations, the local authority—the combined authority for York and North Yorkshire is behaving in an exemplary fashion—and parish councils. That is no small feat.

The loss of homes for future generations in these projects is not only a bitter blow, after all the work that has gone into their development, but poses an insuperable problem in trying to repeat the exercise to replace the homes that are sold under the right to buy—remembering that 40% of all right-to-buy homes sold are now owned by private landlords, letting at rents of up to three times the previous council social rents. In many rural areas, permanent social housing lettings purchases under the right to buy have gone for Airbnb and other short-term lets.

Where can another site be found to build replacement homes for those that are sold? It may have taken five or even 10 years of persistence to achieve the development for local people. Can this effort be repeated to compensate for the loss of such badly needed accommodation? While there are question marks hanging over the long-term usefulness of homes in these rural developments, how many landowners can be expected to donate sites for them or make land available on very favourable terms?

I strongly support the clarity that we hope this amendment would bring. As I understand it, this chimes with the position of the Minister, who has commented on this issue and whom I have not found so resistant to amendments proposed by noble colleagues.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I tabled Amendments 21, 23 and 24. Amendment 21 is designed to try to understand how the Bill works. It is my understanding that there already are regulations on what is defined as rural, and that they are set out as the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, referred to and use the 3,000 population as a base. As far as I am aware, when the population of a parish or village goes over that, it is not automatically removed from being rural—far from it. At the moment, it requires more regulation to be undertaken. That is why I am trying to understand why

“The power under sub-paragraph (2)(b) includes the power … to repeal”


something that is not yet law. I would like to understand how that will work in practice.

Contrary to other noble Lords, I am generally supportive of the right to buy in rural areas. I have heard the arguments multiple times about land, and I do understand that issue. But I am also conscious that the risk is that a lot of villages and small rural places start to become dormitory towns. Thinking about local families, I strongly support seeing what we can do to acquire more land to get more homes, but the issue is often a mixture of where there are jobs and where there are affordability issues in regard to LHA and, frankly, people want to be able to have their family continue in that particular small village or small town. But of course there is no right to pass on council houses or social housing to your children. Would it not be better if we had some way of keeping that character and sense of community by allowing parents—or perhaps a family clubbing together—to buy that social house? There would then be that sense of continuity from generation to generation.

Quite often, it is these same families who volunteer for the RNLI, and I appreciate that there is a technical or operational challenge with people who perhaps are volunteer firefighters. Let us bear in mind that most of the countryside does not have a fire station unless it is manned or staffed by local volunteers, which is quite extraordinary. The constituency I used to represent, of 280 square miles, did not have a single full-time firefighter in it but relied entirely on people who lived and worked locally. It is that lack of continuity of community, and of families who have lived there some time, that I am concerned about. I am concerned that will be lost if somehow there is not this element of being able to try to pass on one property in one family from one generation to the next.

On Amendment 23, quite straightforwardly, thinking of the escalator to home ownership and shared-cost or shared-ownership accommodation, I have never understood why that just stops at 75%. You are given part of the way to home ownership, but it makes you think, “What on earth is the point?”—especially when, quite often, it is pretty difficult to pass on and sell a lot of these homes. People have gone into them thinking that they are their way to get on to the home-ownership ladder, only for the ladder literally to be cut off before they can reach the end. That is also challenging when it comes to getting things such as mortgages and selling on. So I want to understand why we cannot do something more about that.