7. 3. Statement: The Abolition of the Right to Buy and Associated Rights (Wales) Bill

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:57 pm on 14 March 2017.

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Photo of Carl Sargeant Carl Sargeant Labour 3:57, 14 March 2017

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, again. There were a lot of questions there—lots of those questions will be resolved through the scrutiny of the Bill as it take passage through the Assembly, which I’d be happy to debate with Members and the Member who asked those questions earlier on. Look, I’m not saying that the right to buy was a bad theory that was introduced, but it was fundamentally flawed. Mrs Thatcher had the opportunity to change many people’s lives and having the right to buy was one of their proposals too, but the problem was we weren’t reinvesting back into creating more housing stock. The public purse was shrinking and the issue of the housing revenue funding was going back disproportionately to Treasury. We’ve changed the rules now in terms of the HRA, and we’ve exited that programme where authorities are now able to keep 100 per cent of their capital receipts, but the stock level is so low. And that’s why we have to make sure, where we are making investments in these for the future, we protect them for the long term. Planning for the future is a piece legislation we introduced here in Wales, and this Act—hopefully, if passed by this Assembly—will help us complete that programme. But the Member did raise many issues, indeed, including the issues around Brexit, which I’m sure will come up during the discussions through the scrutiny of the Bill.