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While Gordon Brown eyes up No.10, the housing crisis worsens
MARGARET Hodge has opened a can of worms with her call for British families to be given council housing priority.
While there are likely to be mutterings of sympathy from those on Camden’s 14,000 strong waiting list, the fact is that the Minister for Industry has only looked at half the picture.
If examined, the other half would reveal a sorry picture of an acute shortage of supply of housing to meet the needs of young couples and overcrowded families.
Until there is a greater provision of housing by local authorities – masterminded by central government – anomalies in the process of selection of tenants are bound to occur, and have an exaggerated effect.
Yet, Ms Hodge, former leader of Islington council, may have been aware of an idea mooted in Camden in the late 70s and 80s known as the ‘Sons and daughters’ policy. Under this, proponents argued that local families on the waiting list should take precedence over new comers – in those days homeless families were shipping up at the Town Hall in their hundreds every year from Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Similar to the reaction against Ms Hodge’s line today, opponents dismissed the ‘Sons and daughters’ idea as being ‘racist’ in nature.
Among them was today’s London Mayor Ken Livingstone, then a leading Camden councillor.
The fact is that governments from the 80s onwards have failed to deal with a growing housing crisis. Gordon Brown believes housing associations can solve it. But their rate of supply of new homes hardly touches the problem.
Meanwhile, last night’s (Wednesday) decision by Camden Council to sell off council estates, albeit to housing associations, will only compound matters.
Only a massive investment in public housing, funded by central government, will ultimately solve the problem. The question is: Will Gordon Brown, with one eye on the next election, eventually accept the inevitable. That, finally, will depend on sufficient public awareness – and public pressure.
Meet MPs who cover up their deals
HOLBORN MP Frank Dobson obviously got different advice from Glenda Jackson and Islington’s Jeremy Corbyn when it came to the Freedom of Information Act.
He stayed away from the Commons on Friday while the other two were battling in vain to stop an amendment making MPs exempt from public scrutiny.
It is pretty clear that a group of self-interested MPs – and this does not include Dobson – shamefully want to keep their own dealings secret while every other institution has been opened to the public gaze.
Sadly, GordonBrown is thought to have backed these parliamentary dinosaurs.
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