THE Tories’ vicious Housing Bill reaches the House of Lords for its second reading today as campaigners argue the policy will affect Britain’s hardest working the most.

The policy would see all existing council housing sold off to the highest bidder and put an end to secure tenancies.

Members of the Kill the Housing Bill campaign spent the hours ahead of the debate lobbying for the Bill to be scrapped.

Even social housing managers’ associations waded in, calling for amendments to the document that would ensure new council estates are still built.

Speaking to the Star about the plight of teachers under the two-pronged attack of rising rents and diminishing council housing stock, history teacher Rob Behan said he felt “stuck in a rent trap.”

The new father from London said: “With the ever increasing costs of housing, especially in London, it’s impossible for teachers to save anything up to get a deposit and you are constantly stuck in this rent trap.”

He explained that teachers like himself would like to look into council housing as an option but the Housing Bill will make the prospect of getting a social home even less likely.

Mr Behan himself had recently been removed from the waiting list at the estate he grew up on in north London without any explanation.

“We don’t qualify for the social housing which is there but we can’t save up anything in order to buy.

“David Cameron says: ‘We are going to be building 40 starter homes on council estates which we will bulldoze and in London they are going to be priced at £450,000’ — but on what planet is that affordable for someone who is earning the average teacher salary of somewhere between £23,000 and £35,000?

“It’s absolutely ridiculous, it makes me feel really frustrated about the lack of initiative that the government is taking to help key workers.

“It’s not just teachers, it’s police officers, it’s firefighters, it’s people working in the health service.

“Those people who provide the kind of essential services to the everyday running of the country who are being increasingly marginalised by the problems in the housing market.”

Together with fellow members of the teachers’ union NUT Mr Behan organises the London Teachers’ Housing Campaign which will this Saturday be marching with hundreds of others against the Housing Bill.

His concerns were echoed by the social housing managers’ umbrella group NFA chairman Hugh Broadbent who said: “We believe that across the whole country the government should provide at least one-for-one replacement, with no overall loss of social rented accommodation.

“We are urging government to uphold the principle of self-financing and make vital changes to the Housing Bill to enable ALMOs [arms-length management organisations] and councils to continue to build homes within our communities.”