An interesting little example of political rhetoric

Apparently it is some terrible scandal that local authorities do not build anew those houses that are sold under the right to buy legislation. The answer given to this accusation being that they do, but slowly. What neither side actually says being the important part: local authority housebuilding is simply not a relevant measure of anything interesting at all:

Local authorities in England have replaced one in 10 of the homes sold through right to buy since discounts were increased in 2012.

Government figures show there have been 49,573 sales since the scheme was relaunched, while 4,594 have been started on site or acquired by councils.

About this we are told:

John Healey, shadow secretary of state for housing and planning, said government decisions were “leading to a huge loss of genuinely affordable homes to rent and buy at a time when they’ve never been needed more”.

He said: “Tory ministers have repeatedly promised that every home sold under right to buy will be replaced one for one, but these figures show that they are failing by a huge margin. Only one home is being built for every eight sold.”

That would seem to be a slam dunk, wouldn't it? And yet:

The DCLG said: “Under the right to buy one-for-one additions policy, local authorities have three years from the date of the sale of each additional home to provide an additional affordable property. There were 1,326 additional sales between Q1 of 2012-13 and Q3 of 2012-13. There have been 4,594 starts and acquisitions since Q1 of 2012-13, exceeding the target for one-for-one additions.”

What is not being said is that all of this is entirely irrelevant, The housebuilding statistics are here. Local authorities started perhaps 1.700 houses last year, out of some 150,000 for the country. They're 1% of the market, no more. No, this does not mean that "affordable housing" is not being built (quite apart from the fact that a house people can afford is affordable). Because we simply do not use local authorities to build such housing these days. That is now done by housing associations. They have taken over that 15% of the market that used to be councils.

Local authorities and their activities in the housing market are simply an irrelevance. We don't use then as we used to, we've changed the structure of the system. Bleating about irrelevances is, well, it's irrelevant.