PUTTING a roof over the head of the people is the first duty of politics. As today’s economic crisis moves from the City and Wall Street to the real economy, what can the Labour Government do to open new areas of economic activity with a social purpose? How about building houses?
From John Wheatley in early 20th century Glasgow to Herbert Morrison in pre-war London to Aneurin Bevan, who was minister of housing as well as of health, the giants of Labour have housed the people.
Not any more. Labour has had a succession of well-meaning, decent housing ministers since 1997, but the one thing the Government has not done is build houses for rent that low-income citizens can afford.
In Yorkshire alone, 270,000 people are on housing waiting lists – a total of half a million if you add in children, spouses and partners. Labour’s health policy has all but abolished hospital waiting lists. Can we do the same to housing waiting lists?
The main reason for this ever-growing queue remains the ideological hang-up about allowing the one proven agency in the nation that can build houses to do so.
For Margaret Thatcher, the destruction of low-rent council housing was top of her list of ways to destroy equality and solidarity in Britain. Along with weakening trade unions, her sustained assault on social housing remains a legacy that Labour had not been able to overcome.
But she did it not by the kind of full frontal assault on kamikaze union militancy but by the more cunning Trojan Horse principle of allowing tenants to buy their homes.
As a result, today no council can easily contemplate building socially affordable homes if after two years they have to sell the flat or house.
No one can be against the principle of the right to buy law, but a temporary halt to council house sales may be the only way to tackle problems thrown up by the current housing crisis.
Only 1,340 new social homes were built in Yorkshire and Humberside in 2007. And for every new social home built last year, 2.5 were sold through the right to buy legislation. Right-to-buy means no right-to-rent. Councils must now be put at the heart of a new social housing programme. This will mean taking on vested interests which oppose building on spare land including on large gardens. It will mean that as in the 1950s, land currently covered in grass, scrub or trees may have to make way for human needs. Only 10 per cent of Britain’s land has dwellings on it and the rights of humans to housing may have to be given priority over the right to every
blade of grass or leaf to be protected.
No Labour MP or Labour councillor can be against the broad principle of right to buy, but the new urgency on housing requires new thinking – either in terms of altering the rules on right to buy or temporarily shelving the right to buy for the period of the present crisis.
Councils should again be enabled to start home building programmes. Councils can bring together land use, planning permission, infrastructure development and source locally in terms of building work.
At a time of recession, social house building is one of the best ways to keep firms as well as craftsmen like bricklayers, plumbers, electricians, carpenters and other building workers in employment.
Gordon Brown has brought back Margaret Beckett to take part in Cabinet meetings as housing minister. Anyone who knows Margaret understands that she is the exemplar of calm, can-do government. Can she do what it takes to get social housing back up to the top of government priorities? A vigorous council home building programme does not just make economic sense, it also delivers social justice. And it wins votes for Labour.
Denis MacShane is Labour MP for Rotherham
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