“Lisa Nandy’s insinuation that opposition to the right-to-buy equates to opposition to working-class people owning their own home is disgraceful and divisive” says Carol Hayton
Lisa Nandy has used an Interview in the Times, published on 29th July, to recycle her suggestion that opposition to the Right to Buy is simply, “a totemic issue for a lot of people on the left.” She uses her apparent disdain for this vaguely defined group to reassert her support for the policy, which, she acknowledges, is directly responsible for the loss of over a million council homes. She also acknowledges that the failure to replace these homes has resulted in millions of people waiting on the housing register for social housing. She agrees that this is a disaster. However, she seems to imply that this dire situation is somehow acceptable to her as she is “unashamedly pro home ownership” and, therefore, “very strongly of the opinion that Labour telling working-class people that they can’t own their own home is just unacceptable.”
Lisa Nandy’s suggestion that the call for an end to the sell off of council homes is generated solely by “a lot of people on the left” is completely wrong. A wide range of organisations and individuals are seriously concerned about the policy which has fuelled a chronic housing crisis that successive governments, over the past 40 years, have failed to address. There is currently very broad consensus that this, policy which delivers a benefit to a few, but is severely detrimental to the chances of so many more, is a flawed policy. Included in this consensus group are;
- the Supreme policy making body of the Labour Party, which has consistently supported an end to the policy;
- key figures within the Party such as Andy Burnham, Sadiq Khan and many other MPs and council leaders;
- the leading homelessness charity Shelter;
- the National Housing Federation and
- leading academics.
This is hardly a group that you could largely characterise as, “people on the left.”
Lisa Nandy’s insinuation that opposition to the right-to-buy equates to opposition to working-class people owning their own home is disgraceful and divisive. Many of those who oppose the policy are working-class people who appreciate the benefit that a stable, secure and affordable council home provides and are worried about the many people in their families and communities who no longer have access to that benefit. They see that many people for whom home ownership is not an option have no alternative but to struggle to find appropriate housing in the private-rented sector. This offers no security, is increasingly unaffordable and often of poor standard. They are worried when they see so many people who have failed in that struggle, forced into overcrowded housing or with no home other than a shop doorway, a car or tent. They, like so many people, are concerned about the impact on the well-being and life chances of those that are affected most severely by the housing crisis.
In an article in the New Statesmen last year, responding to the government’s planned extension of Right to Buy to housing association tenants, Lauren Bond and Sean Benstead, from the Centre for Local Economic Strategies, summarised clearly those concerns. They wrote,
“Right to Buy was one of the most disastrous public policy interventions of recent decades. Far from creating a generation of homeowners, it has fuelled the growth of costly and poorly regulated private rented housing… Recent analysis has found that 40 per cent of the two million ex-council properties sold through Right to Buy are being rented through the private sector and over a third of a million private rented homes in the north fail to meet the Decent Homes Standard. The policy has contributed to an economy that, far from growing wealth for all, creates inequality and the very suffering the government is purporting to tackle…Against the rising tide of housing need and insecurity, our defences are woefully inadequate.
Extending the Right to Buy may benefit a small number who are able to assemble the funds necessary to buy their home, but will worsen the situation for many, fuelling house price rises and further reducing the supply of social homes. … If you’re looking for a policy that will make things worse for the most financially vulnerable in society, extending Right to Buy is it. If you want to make the cost-of-living crisis worse, this is the way. If you want to deepen the extraction of wealth from communities through housing policy, this is the one. If you’re looking for a vote-winning policy to restabilise a government, this isn’t it. These proposals can only be understood as the actions of a government more interested in headlines than housing reform. People, particularly those living in the private rented sector, deserve better.”
Those who oppose the sale of council homes want a housing policy that will improve the situation for everyone and not just those that Lisa Nandy wants to invite onto what she appears to consider the right side of a divide in the country, the one she describes as between people who have assets and those who don’t.
If the country is to avoid the current Housing crisis turning into a housing catastrophe under the next Labour government, Lisa Nandy would do well to avoid looking like a politician who is more interested in headlines than housing reform, instead she should give some considered attention to how to resolve the housing needs of all our citizens.
Carol Hayton
Labour Campaign for Council Housing 