Lord Fuller (Con)

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Young-of Cookham, and also the sense behind Amendments 105 and 106. There is an asymmetry between the risk and the reward involved in shared ownership—all the costs but only half the uplift, if there is one. The risks include very large unexpected costs, which my noble friend raised and I do not intend to repeat. There is 100% of the costs, but only half the capital. This has been sold to people who one might say, without patronising, are less financially sophisticated, as a lower cost way of getting their foot on the ladder. But the facts bear out the assertion that mortgage costs on the whole would be less than the rent they are paying on the half. It is not necessarily low cost at all; one might go far as to suggest that there has been a degree of mis-selling here. So, I support Amendment 105, which calls for a review. We cannot carry on as we are. My experience in my own council work when I was the leader showed that the popularity of this tenure has gone down and down. There is now very low take-up. It is possibly a tenure whose time has passed. But the review could reinvigorate it. There is a case for low-cost housing for people to establish and build capital in their society. With this review, which I support entirely, there is the opportunity to try to get it back on track.