Rents to Mortgages

HC Deb 20 October 1993 vol 230 cc264-6

6. Mr. Deva

To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many people he expects to benefit from the proposed rents-to-mortgages scheme.

Mr. Gummer

There are more than 1.4 million council tenants who pay full rent and who will be eligible. We hope that as many as possible will take up this new opportunity.

Mr. Deva

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the scheme, which extends choice and opportunity for council tenants who would not otherwise have the opportunity to buy their own homes, is an extension of our great policy of giving people their own homes and the right to buy?

Mr. Gummer

It is important that people who can build something for the future should be given the opportunity to do so. One of the strengths of Conservative party policy is that it spreads to the many the privileges that were once enjoyed only by a few.

Mr. Soley

Given the crisis in, and the lack of, affordable rented accommodation, how does the Secretary of State propose to replace the rented properties that are sold? Could he not put as much effort into a mortgages-to-rents scheme to prevent the nightmare of home owners being put into bed-and-breakfast accommodation because they do not have any rented accommodation to which to go?

Mr. Gummer

The hon. Gentleman misses the point. The homes are occupied; they are not empty. Under our proposed system, someone who would otherwise be paying rent for the rest of his or her life can begin to build up a capital asset, and so release capital for councils in other ways. The hon. Gentleman should be an enthusiast for the scheme. Yet again, however, any opportunity to spread ownership is opposed by Labour Members, who want to keep people under the control of local authorities.

Sir Anthony Durant

Will my right hon. Friend tell the House the Opposition's views on this new scheme? We do not seem to have heard anything from the Opposition.

Madam Speaker

Order. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the Minister answers for his own Government.

Mr. Battle

It is not the Secretary of State's duty to issue a "buyer beware" notice, instead of wasting more public money advertising this latest scheme? More than 70,000 people who have bought council flats under the right to buy now face massive repair and lease bills and service charges that they cannot pay. As mortgage companies are now refusing to lend money on former council flats and houses, what will the Secretary of State do about those people who have huge debts, who are unable to sell and who are trapped in their own homes? Will he endorse the comments of the Council of Mortgage Lenders, which recently told Wandsworth council simply to buy them back?

Mr. Gummer

What a miserable party the Labour party is. Here we have the largest extension of freedom that we have known in Britain for many, many years; here we have hundreds of thousands of families owning their own homes; here we have the removal of Labour party control over large sections of people's lives; and all that the hon. Gentleman can do is to moan on in that particular way. It is about time that the people of Britain see that if they want an optimistic future, they will have to support the Government.