Right to Buy continues to fiercely divide opinion. Here, John Perry argues why he believes calling time on the 40-year-old policy is now the sensible thing to do

Here’s a good question for a pub quiz: what was Britain’s biggest ever privatisation? Was it British Gas, or perhaps water or electricity? All of these raised more than £5bn each but neither was the biggest. Perhaps, surprisingly, the answer can be found in table 60 of the annual UK Housing Review. The correct answer is, of course, the Right to Buy, which has so far raised over £55bn across England, Wales and Scotland and dwarfs all of the other privatisations.

In fact, adding the sales of all the privatised companies together produces a figure – £60bn – which is only slightly higher than the earnings from the Right to Buy. It seems extraordinary that when the popularity of privatisation has ebbed and the opposition is talking about renationalisation of the rail network and water, that Right to Buy not only survived but has been reinvigorated. It only continues in England, of course – in Scotland it ended in 2016, after more than 35 years, and in Wales it ended in January. Even in Northern Ireland, where Right to Buy is called the House Sales Scheme, a consultation began last year in which scrapping the scheme is the favoured option.

In the meantime, the evidence against keeping the Right to Buy in England piles up. Different surveys have confirmed that of the houses sold, some 40% end up in the private rented sector, where the rents charged are usually far higher than the original council rents. There are regular reports of convictions for Right to Buy fraud. Councils are having to buy houses back at inflated prices to house homeless families. And despite government promises, sales still far exceed the numbers of homes built or purchased to replace them. In 2018, there were almost 11,000 sales by English councils but fewer than 5,000 replacements.

Right to Buy is also shocking value for money. The average receipt in England since the scheme began is only £25,000 per property (currently it’s about £83,000). The average discount, which fell sharply in the mid-2000s, has been running at over £60,000 per property since the policy was reinvigorated in 2012 and is typically more than 40% of the market value.The injustice of better-off tenants receiving such a huge lump sum subsidy while poorer households wait in vain for an allocation has never been more obvious.