Graham Evans Discusses Right To Buy On The Politics Show

“Class war cuts” to Right to Buy have kicked away the housing ladder

New figures expose how Ministers have snatched away opportunity for council tenants

Labour Ministers were today accused of making politically-motivated cuts to council tenants’ rights to buy their home. New figures reveal how Right to Buy discounts have plummeted thanks to Government cuts. As a result, even before the credit crunch, the opportunity to buy your council house has been denied to an increasing number of people on lower incomes.

The Right to Buy gives council tenants the right to buy their home or flat, with a discount to the sale price to make it easier to get onto the housing ladder. An estimated 2.5 million social tenants have benefited from the Right to Buy across the UK since 1980.

- Plummeting value of discounts: New figures from Parliamentary Questions have revealed that since 1998, the average Right to Buy discount in England has risen only from £22,880 to £25,340. As a result, the average discount as a percentage of the market value has plummeted from 50% of the house price to 24%. In London, the effect is even more extreme, with the discount falling from 53% to just 13%.

- Savage Labour cuts to the Right to Buy: Labour Ministers have presided over six different cuts to the Right to Buy. Government research warned in 2003 that the Right to Buy cuts would hit the "affordability of the purchase" and would become "more pronounced with time". Since 1997, the cuts have been:

• Reducing the maximum discount through new regional caps.

• Raising the minimum sale price.

• Further cutting maximum discounts in specific areas in London and the South East.

• Increasing the length of residency to be allowed to qualify.

• Never raising discounts in line with house price inflation.

• Not giving the Right to new social tenants, if the property is transferred to a housing association.

- Failure of Labour’s Social Homebuy: In 2005, Labour introduced a rival scheme – “Social Homebuy” – to allow social tenants to own or part-own their home. It was supposed to help 5,000 households a year. Yet new Parliamentary Questions have revealed that only a derisory 235 sales have taken place in the last two years. This is since the complex scheme is voluntary for housing associations and councils to offer to their tenants. Only a handful of bodies (69 out of 1,400 housing associations) actually do. The other Homebuy schemes are similarly suffering despite constant re-launches and repackaging.

- Improving the state of neighbourhoods: The Right to Buy allows tenants to get onto the housing ladder, frees up a receipt to invest in new housing, and creates mixed communities in council estates. Government research in 2005 advised that "the policy enabled many households to become owner-occupiers who would not otherwise been able to do so", with a "positive influence in maintaining mixed communities". Put simply, tenants who own their home have a vested interest in the state of their neighbourhood and their neighbours. Yet Ministers have ignored this benefit in tackling social deprivation.

Grant Shapps MP, Shadow Minister for Housing, commented:

“These new figures expose how unfair the Labour Government has been; kicking away the housing ladder and making it harder for council tenants to own their home. This is Labour’s class war in action – stripping people of the opportunity to move up and creating roadblocks to aspiration.

“The Right to Buy not only provides a vital boost to home ownership for those who aren’t well off, it also improves the state of neighbourhoods by giving people a financial stake in it. By cutting it back, Labour Ministers have been playing politics with people’s lives, perpetuating social deprivation to shore up their increasingly weak core vote.

“The Government’s housing policy has been a failure, and Gordon Brown is making it worse by the day. Conservatives believe more needs to be done to help social tenants own or part-own their home.”