SNP rejects Right to Buy scheme in Scotland as Boris Johnson plans extension in England

dailyrecord.co.uk:

The Scottish Government has flatly rejected any prospect of reviving the controversial Right to Buy policy which allowed council tenants to purchase their homes.

Housing secretary Shona Robison told the Record that almost half a million properties had been lost to the social rented sector in Scotland as a result of the "unsustainable" scheme.

It comes as Boris Johnson will today announce an extension of Right to Buy in England which will see tenants being handed the power to buy properties from housing associations.

The PM will argue that £30 billion in housing benefit that currently goes towards rent could help people secure and pay for mortgages.The policy was first introduced by Margaret Thatcher in the early 1980s and saw thousands of council tenants able to get on the housing ladder at discount rates.But it has been widely blamed for creating a massive shortage of affordable homes - particularly in London and the south east.Many former council homes - built for and maintained by the taxpayer - are now in the control of private landlords.The SNP vowed to scrap Right to Buy and the policy officially ended in Scotland in 2014.Robison said: "The Scottish Government has no plans to reintroduce the Right to Buy, an unsustainable policy that took almost half a million homes out of the social rented sector and into private ownership."In the first ten years since the policy ended, we estimate that we will have kept up to 15,500 homes in the social rented sector – homes which will continue to be available to future generations at affordable rents."What’s more, in the four years to 2021 we delivered over nine times more social rented homes per head of population than England, and our per capita spending on affordable housing