My Lords, I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, because it is possible that he has found a way to square a circle. Whether you support right to buy or have reservations about it in terms of the implications for waiting lists and so on, nobody today has defended the argument that local authorities should not find their stock sold to fund the tenants in another tenure. As the Camden Association of Street Properties said, why should they? They are not their tenants and it is not their property.
The noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, suggested—I understand that this is supported by Boris Johnson, the mayoral candidates and the like—a way to make it attractive, feasible and possible for people in housing association properties to buy and to take advantage of the opportunity to acquire that home, but to do so in a way that is not to the detriment of local authorities, which are expected to sell their stock, first, to fund the discounts, secondly to sort out brownfield sites, and thirdly to replace their own loss of property that has gone in sales.
The figures do not stack up. We know that it will take three years or more for receipts to flow from selling high-value property in authorities such as Cambridge and there will be a queue of would-be buyers knocking at the door to take advantage of the right to buy in housing associations. That means that the levy is going to have to be imposed, not just on local authorities with retained stock, but on local authorities which do not have a single council house left to sell, because they have gone over in stock transfers, so they will have to be levied appropriately.
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Either way, local authority tenants, local authority council tax payers and local authority councillors will be outraged at being asked to fund very large Christmas presents which are so high that they will induce a lot of abuse and some fraud, when alternatively, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, has suggested, we already have the very good example, which this Government have modelled, of Help to Buy. We can extend Help to Buy to housing association tenants and, as a result, the Government will achieve their objective of extending home ownership, and housing association tenants will achieve their objective of being able to acquire their own home, but local authorities will not be clobbered and penalised unfairly to pay for other people’s Christmas presents which invite abuse.
I very much hope that the Minister will hear the concerns around this Committee, not about right to buy so much as about the funding of the discounts, which have been expressed by almost everyone who has spoken tonight. Nobody has defended the method of funding these discounts tonight. In three hours before supper and now, nobody has defended it. All those who have spoken think it is wrong, in one way or another, but the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, has found a way to do it, modelled on the Government’s own schemes, which would seem to most of us to be fair, equitable and reasonable. It helps people into home ownership, but not at the expense of clobbering poorer council tenants who will never be able to afford to buy. I very much hope that the Minister will take this away. If so, she may, working with the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, be able to come forward with proposals for funding this which achieve consensus in your Lordships’ House.