MP DID purchase home using ‘right to buy’ law she then campaigned against
THE Nationalist MP accused of ‘ hypocrisy’ after fighting the sell-off of social housing started her own property empire by capitalising on Margaret Thatcher’s right-to-buy policy.
The Scottish Daily Mail can today reveal how Lisa Cameron paid just £15,820 to buy her council flat, before selling it for a 147 per cent profit within four years.
She used the windfall to purchase an ex-local authority home, which is now one of the five properties she makes thousands of pounds from by renting to her constituents – who pay more than those in identical homes still in public hands.
One of those properties is a flat that Dr Cameron inherited from her grandmother Mary, who herself exercised the right-tobuy on it back in 1995.
But the SNP is staunchly opposed to the policy and it has been scrapped by the Government in Edinburgh, triggering fresh accusations of hypocrisy.
As the Mail revealed yesterday, Dr Cameron told voters before the General Election that she opposed ‘the sale of housing association homes’ arguing: ‘We need to make sure we have affordable homes for people within our communities.’
Approached by the Mail this week, Dr Cameron said she suppports the abolition of right-gto-buy y because ‘ things have changed’ in the years since it was introduced.
However, Scottish Conservative housing spokesman Alex Johnstone said: ‘The message from the SNP on right-to-buy is clear – it’s good enough for its MPs but not the people of Scotland.
‘It’s incredible that one of its politicians can build an entire property empire from the scheme, yet speak out against it when trying to chalk up votes.
‘The hypocrisy is quite remarkable, and it’s just the latest piece of evidence showing the SNP to be anything but the whiter than white party it claims to be.’
The death knell for one of Margaret Thatcher’s most popular policies was sounded after 34 years in a 2014 Holyrood vote. More than 450,000 council tenants have been able to buy their own homes thanks to the scheme, but more than 500,000 families now face missing out on their best opportunity to get a foot on the housing ladder.
SNP ministers claim that scrapping the policy could keep around 15,500 properties in the socialrented sector over a ten- year period.
Dr Cameron paid just £15,820 when she bought the ground floor flat from South Lanarkshire Council in 1999, taking advantage of the large discount on offer to sitting tenants. She sold it four years later for £39,000 – a profit of £23,180.
That meant when she traded up in 2003, Dr Cameron only needed a mortgage of £31,000 to fund a £75,000 house purchase.
The MP said: ‘I didn’t sell it for a large profit. I had rented it for a number of years and paid the money to the council and that was the scheme that operated then.’
She said others in her family, including her mother, had also exercised the right-to-buy.
‘My mum rented her house for 20 years and then she bought it,’ she said. Property records also show that her grandmother, Mary Cameron, bought her first floor home from the now-defunct East Kilbride Development Corporation for £9,000 in October 1995.
Pressed on how she could now support Nicola Sturgeon’s decision to scrap the policy, Dr Cameron said: ‘Things have changed. When I bought my council flat in the 90s, along with many others who were doing the same, it was believed the proceeds would be reinvested into building more.
‘The money wasn’t reinvested and that’s why we have the housing shortage we have today.’
She insisted the SNP’s position is the correct way of ‘dealing with the situation’ as it is now.
The Mail’s revelations caused a social media storm. Twitter user, Gordon McKee said: ‘Disgusting. I was at hustings meetings where she condemned private landlords charging excessive rates.’
Dr Cameron’s current property portfolio nets her an estimated £2,000 a month in rent. It includes an ex-council house in East Kilbride she purchased for £75,000 in 2003, taking out a £31,000 mortgage with Nationwide Building Society and renting it out from 2009.
Her next property, a first floor excouncil flat, was bequeathed to Dr Cameron by her grandmother Mary in 2012. Rather than sell it, Dr Cameron kept it on to rent out.
Then, amid a rising tide of house repossessions, she acquired her third rental property f or j ust £38,750 in cash – an ex-council flat whose previous owner could not keep up with their mortgage payments. It is likely the price was considerably less than the repossessed owner paid for it.
Nine months later, Dr Cameron bought another repossession for £42,000. Her next rental flat was bought from the estate of the previous owner after his death. The three most recently purchased flats were bought in the year-and-a-half after her husband Mark Horsham went bankrupt, yet she was able to pay £ 230,000 i n cash with no mortgage required.
The SNP has stood by the MP and said she ‘declared her interests in line with the rules’.
Comment – Page 14
‘The hypocrisy is quite remarkable’