What is really going on in politics? Get our daily email briefing straight to your inbox Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

The government's former housing chief tonight condemns the Tories for launching an “attack” on England's council homes.

Sir Bob Kerslake told the Mirror he was left with no choice after watching ministers help middle-class buyers “at the expense of lower-income people in desperate need”.

Since retiring to the House of Lords last year, independent Lord Kerslake has helped lead the fight against a cocktail of “fundamentally wrong” plans in the Tories' Housing Bill.

Peers have inflicted 13 defeats to water down the law – but MPs will debate overturning them tomorrow in the House of Commons.

Read more:

Now Lord Kerslake, who served as both Head of the Civil Service and Permanent Secretary at the Department for Communities and Local Government, has warned the Bill could destroy social housing as we know it.

It will end lifelong secure tenancies for council tenants and replace them with five-year terms – a move which sparked a Mirror campaign.

Lord Kerslake called for the change to be scrapped, saying: “I think we are now seeing another attack on social rented housing.

“What this involves is essentially saying 'you've got the property for as long as we consider you need it. It's not a home'.

“It effectively removes the security that people need to build a new home and build a new life.”

Ministers have compromised by extending some five-year tenancies to 10 years, and keeping families in one place until their children finish school.

But Lord Kerslake said: “I don't like the policy at all and where it's been tried by people piloting it, it hasn't been very successful."

Read more:

(Image: Getty)

He warned other plans in the Bill will combine to run down Britain's already-shrinking social housing stock.

They include replacing affordable rented homes with £450,000 'Starter Homes' to buy, making couples on more than £15,000 each 'Pay to Stay', and forcing councils to sell off high-value homes to fund extending the Right to Buy to housing associations.

Lord Kerslake warned there had already been a “fundamental shift” pushing millions more people into the private market.

He said: “If you go back to the 1980s a third of all people lived in social rented properties. If you roll forward to now you'll find it's half of that.

“There's good evidence to say in most developed countries about a quarter of the population don't earn enough to buy or pay market rents.

“You need lower rents for lower-income households.”

Lord Kerslake said he did not speak out while in office because Tory plans were often watered down by the Coalition.

But he warned: “In the 2015 election [their plans] went from being an additional source of housing to one that happened at the expense of social rented homes.”

He added: “I wasn't looking for an issue like this to challenge the government. It wasn't part of my plan when I stood down from the civil service.

“The more I got to see what was involved in the Bill, I came to believe it had some good bits but a lot that was fundamentally wrong.

“It's the actions to diminish affordable housing that worry me.

“It's the advancing of one group of people's interests on middle or higher incomes at the expense of lower-income people in desperate need.

(Image: Carl Court)

“It's those two things coupled with input from local authorities and individuals that compelled me to speak.”

Defeats inflicted by the House of Lords included reducing the number of people hit by Pay to Stay and giving councils more chances to keep the proceeds of forced sell-offs.

Peers also voted to replace sold-off council homes like-for-like and altered Starter Home discounts to stop buyers trousering a £100,000 taxpayer subsidy after just five years.

Tory Housing Minister Baroness Williams urged peers not to back the amendments saying they would compromise the Bill too far.

But she added last Wednesday: “The Government have listened carefully to the debate on starter homes and are carefully considering our response to the amendments.”