THOUSANDS of Merseyside tenants should be able to buy their homes according to a major new report by a Wirral MP.
Birkenhead MP Frank Field and senior Tory – and onetime leadership contender – David Davis are calling for a change in the law to allow those living in social housing to be able to buy their homes.
They are proposing an updated return to the key Thatcherite policy of the 1980s which saw some two million people buy the council houses they had been renting.
The report “Right to Buy 2.0” for the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) think-tank published today says the “radical new policy” would ease the pressure on social housing, as increasing numbers have joined waiting lists for homes in recent years unable to afford to buy their own properties.
Mr Field said this was the “right moment” in the economic cycle for the change and if adopted by the government could also help boost employment through extra house building.
He said: “I tried back in 1976/77 to get Labour to have this policy but Wilson and Callaghan said it was too difficult. Then it became a Conservative policy. We would have had all those people who voted for the Conservatives because of it voting for us if we had taken it on.”
He said although most council housing stock has been sold large amounts remain under the control of housing associations much of which is high quality and “well built, in nice areas with good neighbours – which is why many people stay in them”.
Mr Field said: “Right to buy should be extended to housing associations – but only on the proviso that all the money from the sales is reinvested in building more homes.
“Housing associations will be able to again begin house-building programmes, which in turn will boost employment.
“This will not affect the international banking system, this will come from money which is already in the system.”
In the IPPR report the MPs argue “there is a growing crisis in the social housing sector” and since 1997 “the number of families on social housing waiting lists has almost doubled” with around 50,000 households living in temporary accommodation.
They say allowing those living in housing association properties and increasing the discounts for buying council houses, with all the money being reinvested in building new properties, would ease these problems.
In their report the MPs said: “In 1980 Margaret Thatcher’s government gave council tenants the right to buy their homes. This policy transformed the lives of some of the least affluent in society, helping two million Britons become homeowners for the first time. It was a policy for the many, not the few.
“However the current rules mean many housing association tenants who are willing and able to buy their home are not allowed to do so.”
They added: “Reinvigorating and extending the right to buy would not only increase home ownership: by using all the funds raised to build new homes, the policy would lift the most vulnerable households in Britain off waiting lists, out of temporary accommodation and into a place they can call home.”
Mr Field said he was hopeful the government would listen to the proposal and that he and Mr Davis plan to have a debate and even introduce a bill in Parliament on the issue “so the Government will have to reply to us”.
