Gove admits Treasury doesn’t know how it will fund Right to Buy scheme
The government does not know how it will fund its newly announced Right to Buy scheme, housing secretary Michael Gove has admitted.
Gove today said the Treasury has “agreed that it will be funded”, but that the government is not in “a position yet to say entirely how” that will happen and that ministers now need to “crack on” to find a solution.
Gove told MPs on Westminster’s Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee that funding will not come from his department’s current budget, but that it will have to come from the government’s current pool of total spending.
Boris Johnson announced a new Right to Buy scheme last week, which will see 2.5m housing association tenants able to buy their houses at discount rates.
Tenants will be able to buy their homes at a market discount of up to 70 per cent depending on how long they have lived there.
The Prime Minister did not reveal how much the policy would cost or how it would be funded.
When asked about where the money will come from today, Gove said: “I think we’ll have to say ‘watch this space’.
“By definition we better crack on, because we can’t necessarily have the conversations with housing associations we’d like without having a great degree of assurance of funding. That’s entirely understandable on their part.
“It is not anticipated or contemplated that it should have to [come out of the social housing budget].”
The uncertainty around the details of the plan will add to the perception among some that the plans have been pushed out prematurely in a bid for the Prime Minister to change the conversation away from last week’s vote of no confidence in his leadership of the Tory party.
Labour shadow housing secretary Lisa Nandy on Thursday called the government’s package of housing reforms a series of “back of the envelope policies”.