Home ownership has been stable over the past four years at about 63%. The right to buy has helped more than 86,000 council tenants into home ownership since 2012, under the reinvigorated scheme. This summer we launch a major pilot of the voluntary right to buy for housing association tenants.
Since 2010, we have seen home ownership levels fall to a 30-year low, while homelessness has doubled. If we want to end this dual failure to meet housing need and aspiration, and put choice in the hands of the many, not the few, should we not invest in building and renovating enough council and affordable homes to rent and buy, without taking away the rights that council tenants’ have had for 38 years under the right to buy scheme?
The hon. Lady is definitely right to say that the solution to everybody’s housing problems is to build more homes—as many as we can—across those parts of the country that need it.