Baroness Thornhill (LD)

My Lords, I was busy trying to think of counterarguments; the noble Lord, Lord Young, has caught me there. We feel that what unites these amendments is an attempt to drag social housing policy backwards, and to revive a model of insecurity that simply did not work. We have heard this argument before—that fixed-term tenancies somehow make the system fairer or more efficient—but in reality they created uncertainty for tenants, instability for families and churning communities, without coming anywhere close to solving the real problem, which, as we all acknowledge, is a chronic shortage of social housing. With the exception of Amendment 70, which we have not heard about yet, and while my brain is still thinking about the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Young, these proposals feel less like a serious answer to today’s housing challenges and more like a re-run of policies that were already tested and found wanting. Take Clause 16, the power to give housing providers the right to raise rents as tenants get higher wages. I can imagine the dinner table conversation: “Great news: I’ve been promoted! I’m getting some extra money. We’ll get above ‘just about managing’. It might give us the cushion we need. But wait: won’t they put our rent up if they find out we’re earning more? Perhaps I won’t take that promotion”. We could not support a measure that would dampen self-improvement and aspiration, let alone the logistics of administering it. With regard to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Young, how does one logistically monitor those sorts of things within a tenancy? As Liberal Democrats, we took a very different approach from the Conservative Benches in supporting the renters’ rights reform. We believe that people deserve a secure home, not a tenancy that comes with a built-in expiry date and the constant threat of upheaval. It cannot be right that, just as we strengthen security for private renters, we simultaneously ask social tenants—who, as has been amplified, are those in the greatest need of stability—to accept less. Of course social housing must be used fairly and responsibly, and we are getting into that dialogue now, but fairness is achieved not by making tenancies more precarious but by building more homes and supporting tenants to move when it is right for them. I know that is tricky, but it can be done. One area where it needs to be done most is in the freeing up of family homes. Usually, this means a widow occupying a three-bedroom family house, when she could move down to a nice ground-floor, one-bedroom flat. This can be done, but we must ensure that the system works with people and not against them. In our view, these amendments would take us in the wrong direction. They would revive a failed approach and undermine the progress that is trying to be made. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Young, that the people whom we now house are very different. The statistics support that many people in social housing receive benefits, even though they are working. Therefore, I am not sure about what the noble Lord says with regard to private sector rents and whether people’s lives would improve so much that they could pay them in the same area. The cohorts that we are housing now do not seem to bear that out.