Boris Johnson tries to reset leadership with housing pledges

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Boris Johnson will promise to increase home ownership later in his career.

The prime minister is expected to say that he wants to give people who rent from housing associations the right to buy.

In the coming weeks, he will promise to cut costs.

A majority of his MPs voted against him in a confidence vote on Monday.

The result was worse than expected, following months of criticism over parties in Downing Street.

There is unhappiness among Conservative MPs over a number of issues.

New plans to allow lower-paid workers to use housing benefit payments to buy homes will be included in the prime minister's speech.

A large part of the housing benefit goes to private landlords.

The policies sounded like old Conservative pledges and would show the government was out of ideas, according to the Labour party.

Margaret Thatcher introduced a policy that allowed council tenants to buy their homes at a discount.

If your property was once owned by a local authority and you lived in it, then you can rent from a housing association.

The right-to- buy policy has been blamed for the exhaustion of social housing that has not been replaced.

Four million households lived in rented social housing in England in 2020. 4% of the total is rented from housing associations, while 3% is rented from local authorities.

The right to buy was extended to housing association tenants on a voluntary basis.

The Conservatives promised to extend pilot schemes in their election manifesto.

The National Housing Federation, which represents housing associations, has said any extension to the right to buy should include a guarantee that any homes sold will be replaced.

The money generated through sales is not enough to build new social homes, so it's hard to replace housing association stock.

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Mr Johnson would confirm his plans to help more people onto the property market.

The changes to allow people to use their housing benefit to pay a mortgage are thought to be part of this.

There's no way the Treasury will allow housing benefit to be used to pay a mortgage, according to Torsten Bell, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation think tank.

He said that reforms to the mortgage market would need to bring about significant increases in home ownership.

According to extracts of Mr Johnson's speech released by No 10, he will promise further measures on living costs over the next few weeks.

He is expected to say these will focus on food, energy, childcare, transport and housing.

The PM will say that they have the right tools to deal with rising prices. There are global challenges. Our engines are strong.

We will emerge from this a strong country with a healthy economy because you can be confident that things will get better.

The proposals for housing association tenants were said to be an indication of a government that is out of ideas.

He said that existing right-to- buy schemes have not been replaced like other social housing.

The problem of affordability is not being dealt with.

The government should be more focused on this. Look at the definition of affordability and link it to local wages if you want to do it correctly.