A former Liberal Democrat cabinet minister has likened the Conservative government’s plan to sell off housing association homes with Robert Mugabe’s seizure of white farmers’ land in Zimbabwe.
Ed Davey, the former energy secretary, said the proposed sell-off was a “completely ridiculous policy” and compared it to the Zimbabwe president’s fast-track reform, which led to predominantly white farmers being forced off their land, often violently and without compensation.
He stressed that he was not comparing David Cameron to Mugabe, but said: “One of the things I thought Conservatives didn’t like [about Mugabe] was the way he treated the Zimbabwean farmers and that he expropriated their land.”
“The expropriation is analogous,” he said. “I don’t know why there’s not more outcry amongst the Tories about this. I just think it’s a completely ridiculous policy ... you can argue about the right to buy a council house, as it is state money, but there’s something deeply wrong about selling off somebody else’s assets.”
Davey was speaking ahead of leader Tim Farron’s keynote speech at the party’s annual conference in Bournemouth on Wednesday, in which he is expected to confirm that the Lib Dems will oppose the sell-off of housing association homes.
The government’s housing bill, which will be voted on this parliament, is expected to offer discounts worth up to £102,700 in London and £77,000 in the rest of England to people renting from housing associations who want to buy their homes. The policy would not apply in Scotland or Wales, where the right-to-buy policy is being abolished.
A Liberal Democrat spokesperson said while they were very worried about the government’s proposals they would not use the same language as Davey, who lost his seat in Kingston and Surbiton, during the party’s near wipeout in May’s general election.
In his speech to Lib Dem members on Wednesday, Farron will say: “Housing is the biggest single issue that politicians don’t talk about. Well, we are going to talk about it, campaign on it, go on and on and on about it, and make a difference to the millions who have been ignored.”
“Communities up and down this country have spent 25 years building housing association homes, picking up the pieces of Mrs Thatcher’s destruction of council housing, and we will not allow David Cameron to destroy that work too.”
A party spokesperson confirmed the Lib Dems would be prepared to use their disproportionate power in the Lords to attempt to block the government’s proposed sell-off of housing association homes.
They said they would ignore the Salisbury convention, which dictates that the Lords should not vote down a governing party’s manifesto promises, describing it as out of date. The convention was established in the aftermath of Labour’s landslide victory in 1945, when the party only had 16 peers.
Despite losing 48 of their 56 MPs at the last election, leaving them as the fourth biggest party in the Commons, with only eight MPs, the Lib Dems have 101 members in the Lords – with 11 new Lib Dem peers appointed by David Cameron in the dissolution honours list.
The House of Lords Act 1999 removed the majority of hereditary peers, many of whom were Conservative supporters, and as a consequence it is the first time in modern political history that a Tory government has not also dominated the second chamber. Cameron has attempted to increase the Tory numbers in the Lords by appointing 26 new peers last month, but the government benches are still easily outnumbered by the opposition.
Speaking to party members, Farron will set out Lib Dem policy to oppose the forced sell-off of housing association homes; lift the borrowing cap for local authorities so they can build more houses; ban developers from advertising properties to overseas investors before they advertise them in the UK; establish a Housing Investment Bank to boost home building; and lay the groundwork to build at least 10 new garden cities in England.
While in coalition, the Liberal Democrats tried to push through a House of Lords reform that would have seen 80% of peers elected and the total number of members halved to 450. The plans were shelved in 2012 after opposition from the Conservatives and Labour party made it clear it would not pass through parliament.
