Baroness Thornhill (LD)

There are a lot of amendments in this group and I do not intend to comment on them all. To me, this group is less about the principle of right to buy and more about what happens to the money raised from it and, more importantly, who controls it. The amendments from the Conservative Benches broadly move in one direction: towards greater transparency, clearer rules through regulations rather than determinations, and more involvement of local authorities and receipts spent locally. Therefore, I hope it is not surprising from these Benches that we have some sympathy with that approach. We particularly sympathise with Amendment 52 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Fuller; his argument about the SHMA is something I would be willing to engage in further. We believe that decisions about receipts should be transparent and properly scrutinised, and that local authorities should have a meaningful voice in how they are used. These are the principles we would naturally support. However, we are equally clear and would exercise caution in that we should not over-constrain flexibility or make it harder to use receipts effectively to deliver new homes—those of us who have tried to do that know there is many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip and some schemes can take a lot longer to build out than others. We particularly know there is a need for mixed tenure in order to make schemes stack up. Therefore, a degree of flexibility is clearly required. The real issue to us is not just process; it is about outcome. This is where—spoiler alert—my Amendment 53 speaks directly to this group. It is not enough to argue about how receipts are controlled, although that is important; we must be able to show what they actually deliver. We can refine governance, tighten rules and improve consultation, but unless we can see, year-by-year and authority-by-authority, whether receipts are translating into new social housing, we are still in the dark. Transparency about process is important, but transparency about outcomes is essential. So, yes, let us discuss how receipts are managed, but we would prefer to have strong checks on whether these receipts actually replace the homes we are losing.