Terry McGrenera acccuses the Government of betraying Labour values with its obstinately market-based approach to the country’s severe shortage of affordable homes
THE Government is in denial about Britain’s housing crisis. This was presaged before this week’s bung to the private sector by Tribune’s interview (July 25) with housing minister Caroline Flint. She seems to regard a desperate situation, which will only get worse as the recession bites, as a “housing challenge”.
Her predecessor, Yvette Cooper, was equally blinkered. At a public meeting to debate housing last autumn, Cooper was asked by The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland whether there was a housing crisis. She said that, as a result of the failure to build sufficient homes over the past 30 years, the Government was now faced with a “challenge”. When pressed over her reluctance to use the word “crisis”, she replied that a crisis was in the eye of the beholder. It was the nearest she came to conceding the extent of the problem.
Echoing Cooper and describing the present dire circumstances as a challenge was the closest Flint came to agreeing that there is a housing crisis. It was also the closest the interviewer came to getting her to accept that the present Labour Government is largely responsible for it.
When Labour came to power in 1997, housing expenditure was down by 83 per cent on what it had been in 1979 when Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister. Labour was warned in 1997 that its proposals were unlikely to be an adequate solution to the country’s housing needs. The decision to stick to Tory public spending limits for two years after John Major lost office was a huge mistake. When Tony Blair first entered Downing Street, there were one million people on local authority housing waiting lists. That figure has now risen to 1.5 million. There were fewer homes built in 2001 than in any year since 1924.
Sadly, we already know the Government’s response to the housing crisis. It is encompassed in the Housing and Regeneration Bill. This legislation abolished the Housing Corporation and transferred its duties to two new bodies: the Housing and Communities Agency and the Office of Tenants and Social Landlords. The report stage of the bill was debated on March 31 this year. Several hundred amendments were proposed – some added as recently as the previous week. During the debate, Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes asked how many opposition amendments the Government had accepted. The answer was none.
One important amendment the Government chose to ignore was tabled by former Conservative housing minister
Sir George Young and concerned the worrying proposal to give housing associations the power to evict tenants who were just eight weeks in arrears with their rent. The Government also declined to accept the amendment put forward by Labour MP Austin Mitchell supporting the “fourth option” in housing – for local authorities to be able to invest in existing council homes now and into the future, together with a programme of new build.
With the chimes of Big Ben signalling the end of the debate, Sir George Young summed up the significance of the bill. He said: “The minister will have noticed that there has been a total change in the housing climate since we debate the bill last November in 2007.” The Government’s aim of achieving its affordable housing target was on the back of the market. But that is no longer possible. And that is the fundamental flaw in the Government housing policy.
The Housing and Communities Agency will not provide the solution to the housing crisis. It is another unaccountable quango. The Government’s refusal to accept any amendments to the Housing and Regeneration Bill that would have allowed local authorities to help to solve the housing crisis was the last act of betrayal of Labour values and one more reason why Gordon Brown must go.
Terry McGrenera is editor of the Green Paper; politics for the planet and its people
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