There is a ritualistic quality about the political debate on housing. The social housing lobby argues that we all need to "raise the profile" of housing as an issue. The politicians solemnly agree, but know that housing is an also-ran in comparison with health, education and law and order. And everybody realises well that there is precious-little fundamental difference between the parties over policy.
This might sound heretical in the middle of an election campaign. Elections, after all, seek to highlight the differences between parties, not point out the commonality of approach. But the evidence is compelling. Both major parties preach the need to attract private investment into the stock of social housing. The mechanism for achieving this is transfer, introduced by a Conservative government and developed by a Labour administration.
Labour has certainly released money for repair and refurbishment, but any assertion that this demonstrates its abiding faith in the welfare role of local government as housing provider encounters a look of incredulous pity from the government's advisers. It has moved at snail's pace to offer the option of arms-length companies but it modified its rent control-cum-equalisation measures PDQ in the face of threat to transfer company business plans. The need to sustain the momentum of transfers will almost certainly loom early in the sights of the incoming administration.
The Conservatives will require councils to transfer, but the need to find able-bodied funders may well mean that any Tory scheme of compulsory transfer would, in practice, roll along at pretty well the same pace as Labour's guided voluntarism. The Tory heart lies in home ownership but schemes of promotion are running into the laws of diminishing returns while, apart from some gratuitous tightening of the rules for council house sales, Labour has taken care to proclaim its commitment to the property-owning democracy.
The Tories have decided that in a propertied society the interests of the homeowner may play more strongly than the aspirations of the would-be homeowner. Certainly, the campaign to attack Labour's housebuilding targets in the South East in the defence of green fields and the repudiation of the notion of regional planning give the Tories a sharp little local issue. They have successfully widened the attack to encompass a generalised sense of grievance on the part of south east local authorities about getting the thin end of the stick from the government in the funding of services.
But the answer of both parties to the implacable pressure on living space in the region is regeneration of brownfield sites and the inner city. The credibility of Labour's commitment has been diluted by the way its tax incentives have dribbled out of the Treasury and, in the eyes of the regeneration lobby, at least, by its failure to levy VAT on new build on greenfield sites. The fact that regeneration policy has descended into a plethora of initiatives has not helped. It badly needs to establish a clear coherence in this area.
The Conservatives are talking about an over-arching framework for regeneration which draws upon the experience of both Urban Development Corporations and City Challenge. But the force of their argument is compromised by their insistence in blaming migration from the North for the problems of the South East (it is migration from London and abroad which fuels the arithmetic) and their consequent tendency to think that building more houses in Liverpool will solve the problem. Indeed, if the enthusiasm for Liverpool by those who do not live there were matched by those who do many of that great city's problems would no longer burden us!
The parties will argue the toss over treatment of business. Labour will boast of its macro-economic stability with its historically low mortgage levels, favourable corporation tax regime and devolution of economic decision-taking through the as yet unproven Regional Development Agencies. The Tories will complain of red tape, intrusive social and employment regulation, burdens imposed on business by the Chancellor's tax credits, and the threat of new layers of regional bureaucracy. They are committed to repealing the climate change levy and any aggregates tax which survives the end-of-Parliament horse-trading.
The as-yet largely unspent Labour commitments relating to the public services and the argument for a smaller state belatedly discovered by the Tories in the wake of George Bush's victory will consume a large part of the political argument.
Both parties promise radical government. The electorate seems determined to get on with its lawn-mowing. Elections are wonderful for putting politicians in their places!
Source
Building Homes
