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Homes failures live on
• WHY is it that Labour politicians consistently refuse to take responsibility for their own actions?
Your article about the plight of council house tenants in Camden (Commons hears plight of ‘shit-heap’ homes tenants, January 24) is yet another case of a former government minister and a Labour housing spokesman acting as though they could wash their hands of responsibility for their actions/inactions and policies.
It is all very unpalatable.
Mr Dobson consistently chooses to ignore the fact that he has been a senior government minister in a Labour Party that has been in power for almost 11 years.
The very mess that he is complaining about is a direct result of his government’s policies.
Councillor Roger Robinson, for his part, acts and speaks as though he had not been a member of a Labour administration that had run Camden for 35 years. They had all the time and opportunity to maintain the housing stock to a decent standard.
There was a time when the Labour Party had some integrity and could rightly claim to be champions of the less well off in our society.
That is cleary a feature of a dim and distant past. The Labour Party’s candidates for the deputy leadership speaking in Camden admitted Labour had treated Camden’s council housing tenants and leaseholders in the most appalling manner – by refusing to hand over the promised £298 million for the upkeep of council properties.
The eventual winner, Harriet Harman, agreed that Labour’s arms’-length management organisation policy was not only a major mistake but left Camden’s council residents feeling blackmailed.
No action has been taken as a result of that acknowledgement and nothing has changed.
The Labour council knew that the government would only hand over the money if they were to set up Almos. Why did they not make that clear instead of pretending to present tenants with a choice when there was actually no choice at all?
Secondly, if the money is available why cannot Camden residents have it to fund the improvements that government ministers admit are so desperately needed? One answer might be that Labour needed it to help Gordon Brown fund the war in Iraq. His disastrous economic policies and the mishandling of the Northern Rock issue mean that there is even more pressure on the exchequer.
Labour’s housing debacle in not limited to council housing. Liberal Democrat shadow chancellor Vince Cable has warned that a house market crash is a real possibility and that the government needs to act now to ensure that millions of people do not face the misery of negative equity and repossessions.
This comes after figures show that the average UK household debt to disposable income ratio is up from 92 per cent 1997 to 152 per cent today.
The government should be working with banks to prevent large-scale repossessions and keeping families in their homes through properly regulated leaseback or shared ownership for families in arrears.
Vince Cable is somewhat more articulate Mr Dobson. The latters’ description of Camden’s council houses as “shit-heaps” is hardly appropriate language for an MP.
If, however, he wishes to describe the result of Labour’s policies in that way then who am I to argue with the instigators of those policies.
David Simmons
Holborn and St Pancras Liberal Democrats
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