THE SNP have rejected reviving the controversial Right to Buy scheme which gives council tenants the chance to buy their homes.
Boris Johnson is expected to say on Thursday he wants to extend the policy to people who rent from housing associations.
But housing secretary Shona Robison told the Daily Record almost half a million properties had been lost to the social rented sector in Scotland as a result of the "unsustainable" scheme.
She said: "The Scottish Government has no plans to reintroduce the Right to Buy, an unsustainable policy that took almost half a million homes out of the social rented sector and into private ownership.
"In the first 10 years since the policy ended, we estimate that we will have kept up to 15,500 homes in the social rented sector – homes which will continue to be available to future generations at affordable rents.
"What’s more, in the four years to 2021 we delivered over nine times more social-rented homes per head of population than England, and our per capita spending on affordable housing is more than three times higher than the UK Government’s.
"We want to ensure everyone has a warm, affordable home that meets their needs, and that is why we have committed to delivering a further 110,000 affordable homes by 2032, with at least 70% of these available for social rent."
Johnson is also set to suggest allowing housing benefit - that currently goes towards rent - to count towards a mortgage as he attempts to repair relations with Tory MPs.
Right to Buy was first introduced in the early 1980s by Margaret Thatcher and helped thousands of council tenants get on the property ladder at discount rates.
By 1997 more than 1,700,000 dwellings in the UK had been sold under the scheme.
But it has been cited as one of the major factors in the drastic reduction of social housing.
The SNP vowed to scrap Right to Buy and the policy officially ended in Scotland in 2014.
