Nandy backs right to buy and reducing greenbelt but shuns rent controls

The Labour party backs tenants’ right to buy social housing to “extend wealth ownership”, but does not support rent controls or untargeted mortgage relief, according to a shadow cabinet member.

Lisa Nandy also highlighted the “taboo” around the greenbelt, using a speech to the Housing 2023 conference to say Labour would remove greenbelt development restrictions on “poor-quality ex-industrial land and dilapidated, neglected scrubland”. She called for honesty about “what the green belt is and what it isn’t”, with succcessive governments seeing higher-quality greenbelt land lost.

“Ending the Tories’ right to buy” was part of Labour’s 2019 election platform, as well as a council “buy-back scheme” to buy at least 5,000 ex-council homes back into public ownership.

The Shadow Minister for Levelling Up, Housing, Communities and Local Government had also said last September she was “personally very interested and attracted” by the idea of giving metro mayors and local authorities powers to freeze rents over the winter. She told a party conference event at the time she had asked her team to look at whether it would be a “workable” proposal.

But last month the Financial Times reported Labour was set to reject demands from politicians like London mayor Sadiq Khan for such rent powers.

Warning over ‘well-intentioned’ short-term fixes

Today Nandy said: “As the mortgage crisis deepens – for homeowners and renters alike – it is perhaps inevitable that the debate has turned again to short term fixes. But as well intentioned as they might be, grants to help one couple get on the housing ladder won’t help the next.

“Untargeted mortgage relief that fuels the inflation crisis is no substitute for stabilising the economy and getting interest rates under control.

“And when housebuilding is falling off a cliff and buy to let landlords are leaving the market, rent controls that cut rents for some, will almost certainly leave others homeless.”

There are understood to be concerns rent controls while mortgageholders’ costs are soaring risk exacerbating a shortage of rental properties if more landlords sell up.

Nandy also highlighted the fact that the Right to Buy, often seen as one of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s flagship and contentious policies and whose “abolition has come to be a totemic issue for many on the left”, was “originally a Labour policy”.

But she added: “It was the decision of the Thatcher Government to fail to replace the council housing stock that was sold, pitting the rights of the individual against the rights of the community.”

‘You have to replace [sold social housing] like for like’

Asked further by Inside Housing, the industry magazine reports she replied: “We support the Right to Buy, what we don’t support is the loss of stock.

“But you have to replace like for like. When [former Labour leader Hugh] Gaitskell originally proposed the Right to Buy policy, it was about giving people the right to own their own home, to the assets that sustain you and the security and stability that working class people have been shut out of for too long.

She added: “What we’re not proposing to do is take away from people the right to access their own assets. In fact, we want to do the opposite: we want to extend wealth ownership, asset ownership, to people in every nation and region in this country.”

Much of her speech focused on Labour’s “builders not blockers” housebuilding agenda, as well as promises to hand “power” to private tenants and “end the feudal system of leasehold”.

It included a promise to put “social and genuinely affordable housing at the very heart of our plans to jump start the housebuilding industry”.

The comments on mortgage relief and rent controls are likely to come as a blow to many renters and homeowners hoping for change under a Labour government, while the support for Right to Buy may anger some on the left.

‘Disappointing’ stance on Right to Buy

Martin Wicks, secretary of the Labour Campaign for Council Housing, argued in a LabourList piece earlier this year that ending Right to Buy had helped halt declining social housing stock in Scotland and Wales, but noted fears the Tories would argue Labour was “opposed to aspiration”.

Housing campaigner Kwajo Tweneboa called Nandy’s position on Right to Buy “disappointing”, warning it had “got us into this mess”.

Inside Housing deputy editor and author Peter Apps argued it was not possible to back Right to Buy but oppose depleting social housing stocks. While Labour promise to replace homes sold, “it’s just not that easy to get new council housing built, but it’s very easy to sell it at a massive discount”.

A spokesperson for campaign group Momentum said it “beggars belief” Nandy opposed rent controls given her previous comments, and opposed mortgage relief given the costs facing homeowners and renters.

“Once again, policies supported by unions, Labour members and progressive Labour mayors like Sadiq Khan and Andy Burnham are rejected by a UK Labour Leadership which seems allergic to good, popular policy.”