This proposal will indeed discourage people from moving from a secure tenancy on a family home to an insecure tenancy on a smaller property. If it is the Government’s intention to ensure that people who have more space than the Government think they need move home, surely the answer is to build more properties in the first place so that there are more social rented properties for the people on the waiting lists who need them.
Finally, let us take this down to an individual level. Imagine a family sat round their breakfast table or a pensioner couple, who are now on a fixed-term tenancy, sitting in their home. They are waiting for the postman to come, bringing a letter from their local council or housing association. Perhaps in future, it might be called the “Lewis letter” when it drops on people’s doormats. That Lewis letter, when they open it with trembling hands, will tell them, without any forewarning, some six to nine months before their tenancy ends, whether they can stay in their home—these are not houses, apartments, flats or bungalows, but people’s homes at the end of the day—at the whim of the council for another five years, whether they can move to another property that is some distance away in a different neighbourhood, with a different school, or whether they will have no home at all from the council in the future. Just feel the tension in that household when the Lewis letter drops on the doormat and people open it. Even if the answer is, “Yes, you’ve been a good tenant and can stay in your home for another five years,” the trauma that this will put people through is beyond measure.
I hope that the Government will think again. This schedule is mean-minded and dreadful. I hope that the Government withdraw it and, if they do not, that amendments 142 and 105, which were tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods), will be successful, so that we can give families, pensioners and everyone else the security of tenure that they rightly deserve.