I totally agree; I am really pleased that my hon. Friend has reminded me that we need to consider how this area of the Bill affects council tenants and local authorities up and down the country.
Labour has tabled amendments to chapter 1 of part 4 to try to limit the negative impact of the right-to-buy provisions. Amendment 88 seeks to protect certain types of specialised housing and amendment 89 would require housing associations offering the right to buy to their tenants in London and elsewhere to reinvest all the money in replacement affordable housing, including a guaranteed like-for-like home in the same local authority area or London borough. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) was among those who tabled that amendment.
We have also tabled amendments that would prevent property sold under the right to buy from being converted into buy-to-let dwellings for a period of 10 years; amendments that would ensure that the discount for homes sold under the right to buy remained in perpetuity; and amendments that would ensure that housing associations were able to carry out proper checks before proceeding with the right-to-buy offer. Yet again, we find ourselves stretched for time. We are facing a chapter that has the potential to decimate the social housing sector, so I will speak to the amendments as one group.
Shelter has estimated that about 113,000 homes could be lost immediately through the provisions in the Bill. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that owing to the scheme’s current vagueness and the
“coalition’s less-than-impressive record in delivering replacement housing under the existing right-to-buy…There is a risk that these policies would lead to a further depletion of the social housing stock”.
What seems to have complete consensus across the housing sector is that there is no guarantee of like-for-like replacement for homes sold under the right to buy. Of course, the Minister will tell me that the Government are guaranteeing a two-for-one replacement of affordable housing, but that measure needs closer inspection. The Government’s new definition of “affordable” housing in new clause 31 includes starter homes, which can be up to £250,000 outside London and up to £450,000 in the capital. That means that a housing association home sold under the right to buy can be considered to have been replaced by another house or even another two houses that will be for sale at up to a quarter of a million pounds or almost half a million in London. That is not a replacement of like for like by any stretch of the imagination.