Labour says some of Boris Johnson’s plans will make housing supply crisis ‘even worse’ –

Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, has giving interviews this morning about the housing plans being announced by Boris Johnson in the speech later. Here are some of the key points he made.

• Gove said that under the right to buy plans for housing association tenants, all homes sold would be replaced. “One of the things that we will be doing is making sure that there is a replacement – a like-for-like, one-for-one replacement,” he said. Asked on ITV’s Good Morning Britain how quickly homes that were sold would be replaced, he replied: “Instantly.”

• He said there would be a cap on the number of homes that could be sold through this right to buy scheme. Asked what the cap would be, he replied: “That’s something I will be discussing with housing associations.”

• He dismissed complaints that this was an old policy, because it had been in the 2015 Conservative manifesto. He said that because the policy had now been piloted in the Midlands, the government was in a position to roll it out nationwide.

• He said the government would be reviewing the way the mortgage market worked as a whole. He hinted that this could lead to people being able to get mortgage with smaller deposits.

• He said the government was looking at creating a new savings vehicle to allow people claiming housing benefit to save up for a deposit. This is necessary because under the current system, if people do have savings worth more than £16,000, they cannot qualify for means-tested benefits.

• He refused to saw how many people were likely to benefit from the proposal to let benefit claimaints use housing benefit payments to pay for mortgages. It was a “significant number”, he said. But, when pressed on this by Julia Hartley-Brewer on Talk TV, Gove admitted that he did not know how many people would benefit from it. Eventually he claimed it was a “silly question”.

Lisa Nandy, the levelling up secretary, has become the first Labour frontbencher to break ranks and publicly say she supports strikes by rail workers in the coming weeks if ministers fail to address their concerns. My colleague Jamie Grierson has the story here.

The government has just published its independent review on smoking policy. It has been carried out by Javed Khan, the former chief executive of Barnardo’s, and yesterday my colleague Jessica Elgot revealed that it would propose raising the legal age of smoking to 21.

In fact, the review goes even further. It recommends raising the age at which people can buy tobacco by one year every year, until no one can buy cigarettes. This is the key recommendation:

The government must stop young people starting to smoke, which is why I recommend increasing the age of sale from 18, by one year, every year until no one can buy a tobacco product in this country.

This is a policy that has already been adopted in New Zealand. And this is what the report says about it.

Never starting to smoke is much easier than having to quit. This recommendation will lead to a new smokefree generation, where young people below a certain age are legally prevented from buying tobacco products, including cigarettes, throughout their entire lifetime.

While other recommendations will help us reach smokefree 2030, this is about that as well as the long-term impact that will make smoking obsolete.

New Zealand, which is banning all sales of tobacco to anyone born after 2008, estimates that it could half smoking rates within 10 to 15 years of implementation, assuming effective enforcement of the law.

Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall, New Zealand associate minister of health, said in a speech at the launch of the Smokefree 2025 Action Plan, 9 December 2021: “We want to make sure young people never start smoking so we are legislating a smokefree generation … As they age, they and future generations will never be able to legally purchase tobacco, because the truth is there is no safe age to start smoking.”

Current smokers would not be prohibited from their addiction, but over time this action would help to protect millions of children and young people from ever becoming addicted. It will create a future society where smoking is no longer in demand or even relevant, as the legal age of sale to smoke tobacco becomes higher and future generations avoid becoming addicted to this deadly and costly practice.

A summary of the report is here. And here is the full document.

Boris Johnson is certain to be asked about this during the Q&A after his speech later. As an instinctive libertarian, it is very hard to see him supporting this proposal. He is one of those Tories who instinctively believes that banning things is un-Conservative.

Good morning. Since winning his no-confidence vote on Monday Boris Johnson has been determined to show that he has put Partygate behind him and is now focused entirely on delivering on his policy agenda and today he is going to demonstrate that by delivering what is being described as a major speech. It will cover housing, but also the cost of living and the economy more generally.

But in the past Johnson’s keynote policy speeches have not always landed particularly well (his levelling up one last year was seen as a flop) and the overnight preview for today’s one is hardly inspiring. “The prime minister will tell the British public he is firmly on their side as he reaffirms his commitment to supporting them throughout this challenging period,” the first sentence of the press notice says. Given that the PM is unlikely to tell the public that he is not firmly on their side, this does not count as news.

The press release says Johnson will address housing without giving detail of what he will propose. However, other briefing ahead of the speech has flagged up at least two policies he will set out: extending the right to buy to housing association tenants (a policy the Tories have been promising since 2015, when it was in the party’s manifesto); and letting benefit claimaints use housing benefit payments to pay for mortgages.

In his First Edition briefing, my colleague Archie Bland looks in detail at the right to buy proposal and points out that experts are sceptical as to its value. Archie’s article is here.

And Robert Booth has looked at what happened when this policy was piloted in the Midlands in 2018. Many of the homes that were sold were not replaced.

Lisa Nandy, the shadow levelling up secretary, has been giving interviews this morning and – in a reference to concerns that right to buy diminishes the stock of affordable homes because houses that are sold are not replaced – she claimed the PM’s plans could make the housing supply crisis even worse. She told Sky News:

We should be taking more action to increase the supply of affordable homes.

In the end, it’s the only way to really solve the housing crisis for most people.

The measures that the government announce today won’t begin to do that for most people, and in fact some of them will make the housing supply crisis even worse.

I will post more on what she, and Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, have been saying in their morning interviews shortly.

Here is the agenda for the day.

10am: Lord Pickles, chair of the advisory committee on business appointments, gives evidence to the Commons public administration and constitutional affairs committee.

11am: Katharine Birbalsingh, chair of the social mobility commission, gives a speech to the Policy Exchange thinktank.

Lunchtime: Boris Johnson gives a speech on housing and the cost of living in Lancashire.

And Keir Starmer is visiting Dublin and Belfast for meetings to discuss the Northern Ireland protocol, including one with the taoiseach, Micheál Martin.

I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.

If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

Alternatively, you can email me at [email protected].