LABOUR should abolish right to buy instead of proposing restrictions on it for new builds which will have minimal impact, a Communist Party housing expert said today.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has said that she wants to stop new council homes in England from being sold under Margaret Thatcher’s flagship scheme ahead of a consultation on the issue later this year.
Scotland and Wales have ended the significant discounts for social housing tenants to buy their homes. Labour has separately said that the discount will be reduced to between £16,000 and £38,000, depending on location.
Communist Party political committee member Lorraine Douglas said that by failing to abolish the scheme in England, the proposals come “nowhere close to solving the housing crisis.”
“Proposals around housing currently are wrong-headed and still focused on the private sector delivering housing when we know from the last 40 years that they have never built the houses needed, precisely because controlling supply maximises profits,” she said.
“That's where Labour are going wrong at the moment, they are still relying on the private sector to solve the crisis.”
Right to buy “was Thatcher’s flagship policy ... it remains popular but we’ve seen after 40 years that it has not been about individual tenants buying their own homes and living their lives in them. In the majority of the cases, they have sold them off a few years later at a huge profit.
“It makes absolutely no sense — unless of course as a Labour government they are wedded to supporting the private sector and private-sector landlords.
“Of course there are quite a few Labour MPs who are private landlords as well — so there are vested interests in here too.”
Labour Campaign for Social Housing secretary Martin Wicks said the government’s plans are “better than the status quo” but that the “quickest and the best means of stopping the loss of council housing stock is to simply abolish right to buy as was done in Scotland and Wales.”
Generation Rent deputy chief executive Dan Wilson Craw said: “One of the reasons councils aren’t building new homes is because they can be lost so easily through right to buy, even if discounts are reduced.
“If new homes are guaranteed to stay in the public sector, as Angela Rayner suggests, and remain available for people who need low-cost rents, then councils will have more confidence to build more of them, and help more people escape the extortionate grip of private landlords.”
