Paul Truswell says that supporting Right to Buy “has become a dogmatic obsession that has overridden the needs of millions of our fellow citizens“.
The Right to Buy is long past its sell-by date. Andy Burnham recently crystallised the reason in one telling phrase. Building new council homes while keeping the Right to Buy was, he said, “like trying to fill a bath but with the plug out.”
The pause on RTB that Andy called for would be a start. It would, however, take rather a long one to restore our council housing stock to a level where it readily fulfils its core purpose. RTB and the concomitant failure of successive governments to build new council houses has inflicted a crushing double whammy on millions of our citizens.
Abolishing the Right to Buy is not an especially radical demand. Our council housing system developed for 60 years without it. In Scotland and Wales it has already been abolished. The 2019 and 2021 Labour conferences overwhelmingly passed resolutions which called for it to be scrapped.
As it’s the vogue to share lived experiences to explain our political passions, here are mine. I was brought up on a large council estate by very low paid parents. My mum was a part-time laundrette attendant (think of Eastenders’ Dot Cotton with a Yorkshire accent). My dad did back-breaking work as a moulder in a scruffy little foundry. He was a pieceworker; when the order book dried up he had to throw on the dole. I cannot imagine what life would have been like for me, my family and millions of others like us without the security of that decent, affordable and secure council house. A Truswell remained the tenant of that council property for 72 years.
You may dismiss these as nostalgic but irrelevant ramblings into a bygone age. Regrettably, they’re not. During my 26 years as a Councillor and 13 as an MP I have been contacted by thousands of people in desperate housing need. Most elected members will have experienced countless heart-rending housing cases and the feeling of impotence that accompanies them. The need takes many forms: homelessness, illness, disability, family breakdown, overcrowding, flight from abuse, crime or anti-social behaviour, and escaping unfit or unaffordable private rented accommodation. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the vast majority of these pleas for help have come from women.
Some things have admittedly changed over the years. Council tenants and council housing were not always stigmatised to the degree they are today. It was not regarded as the tenure of last resort. And if the “sell one, build one” mantra ever had a time, it’s long since passed. It’s never going to fill Andy’s bath.
The current position in Leeds exemplifies this chronic shortage of council housing. When I was first elected as a Leeds City Councillor in 1982 Margaret Thatcher’s RTB juggernaut was only just cranking up. Back then it took just weeks in most cases to allocate a property to those in the greatest housing need. Today it takes two years on average. In 1982 Leeds had around 100,000 council properties. By 2024 that figure has almost halved to 53,000.
There are around 25,000 people on the council’s housing register. That’s just the number of applicants and does not include their partners, children and other dependents. Almost 7,000 of those applicants have the highest priority. Council housing registers, of course, form only part of the picture. We can only guess at the number of people paying through the nose for often defective private rented accommodation who would jump at the chance of obtaining a council tenancy if they had any real chance of securing one.
To its great credit, Labour-controlled Leeds has been building around 200 council properties a year. That’s a limited number given the huge unmet need, but it’s a better record than many councils. Meanwhile it is forced to sell over 600 a year. The equation is stark: build one, sell three. It graphically demonstrates Andy’s “bath with the plug out” analogy.
Over 170 of these high-quality homes – catering for a wide range of needs – were built in my former Ward. Many of the tenants who moved in were soon asking when they could buy their new home. Who could blame them?
Some members of the Labour Party are apparently admirers of Margaret Thatcher. I’m not one of them. One of the many reasons is the destruction she unleashed on our social housing system through RTB. Her motives were quite cynical: bribing people with taxpayers’ assets and locking them into mortgages in the belief it would make them less militant. We as a Party have been complicit in this privatisation and its devastating social consequences.
There’s nothing wrong with Labour reflecting people’s legitimate desire to possess their own home. But in England it has become a dogmatic obsession that has overridden the needs of millions of our fellow citizens. Advocating abolition of RTB is caricatured as denying people’s “aspirations.” But what about those who aspire to nothing more than having a decent, secure and affordable rented roof over their heads? Why do their desperate housing needs apparently rank below the aspirations of those who are already adequately housed? In effect we are offering properties and state subsidies at the expense of those in the greatest housing need.
The benefits of building more Council houses to high environmental standards and scrapping the RTB are clear. Housing is a cornerstone in tackling health, social and economic inequalities. Council houses are a public asset, owned by us and democratically managed through the Councils we elect. Many councils are paying increasing amounts for temporary accommodation. Every sale represents a loss of rent, usually from better quality properties that effectively cross subsidise the maintenance of older or deteriorating homes. It is estimated 40% of former Council houses have passed into the hands of private landlords. They are trousering vast amounts of state benefits with rents something like 60% or more higher than council ones. Recent events should make us ever mindful of how the shortage of council housing features in the playbook of right-wing hatemongers.
All the above might sound like a “back to the future” argument. I view it as helping people in desperate need to get their futures back. For me, scrapping the Right to Buy is not just a political passion, it’s a moral one.
Paul Truswell was MP for Pudsey 1997-2010, and a Leeds City Councillor 1982-1997 and 2012-2023
Labour Campaign for Council Housing 