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Labour group leader Nasim Ali tackles minister John Healey |
From bouquets to brickbats... a week brings sea change in minister’s stance on council house sales
Cornered by CNJ, Healey pledges to take hard look at property auctions... only seven days after Lib Dems claimed to have his support for their policy. Richard Osley reports from Brighton
HOUSING minister John Healey has hinted he will crack down on the Town Hall’s sale of council homes, just a week after he had appeared to give his blessing to the property auctions.
In a hectic week at the Labour Party conference here in Brighton, Mr Healey was repeatedly challenged on the issue by party colleagues from Camden – and then by BBC newsreader Peter Sissons during a public meeting.
With nowhere to hide, he was also collared by the New Journal as he moved from one fringe meeting to another.
Stopped in the foyer of the Holiday Inn hotel on the seafront, Mr Healey told us: “I am looking at it very hard but I can’t say any more at the moment.”
Over his first few months in his new job the minister has been lavished with praise for attempts to turn around government attitudes to the less-than-sexy issue of council housing. He has impressed delegates by confirming plans for a £1.5 billion home-building project, designed not only to create thousands of affordable properties across the country but to provide jobs and apprenticeship schemes as well. Former deputy leadership candidate Jon Cruddas described him as the best housing minister in a decade.
But the hangover of a long, unresolved debate over who should pay for the refurbishment of existing council estates in Camden was still throbbing in Brighton.
Despite protests from tenants, the Lib Dem-Conservative coalition running the Town Hall is selling off a share of council homes on the private market in the absence of government funding. At their conference in Bournemouth last week Lib Dems waved around a letter from the minister’s office as evidence of his support for their policy.
Delegates in Brighton questioned whether the letter – not signed by the minister – accurately reflected Mr Healey’s thinking.
Certainly, at conference this week the minister appeared much angrier in person than the polite tone of the letter, written by an aide. He met Camden Labour group leader Councillor Nash Ali on Monday afternoon in private, reportedly pledging to look again at Camden’s case.
And later in the evening, he was directly challenged at a fringe meeting organised by the charity Shelter and the think-tank Compass.
David Offenbach, a former leading councillor and a solicitor, stood up in the banquet hall at the Holiday Inn and asked Mr Healey: “Can you make an order stopping local authorities from selling council homes in areas where there are waiting lists for homes – like in Camden, where thousands of people wait for homes but they are selling properties? It is an absolute disgrace.”
Mr Healey said: “At every meeting I have been to at conference there has been the voice from Camden. I spoke to the leader of the Labour group from Camden today and I said I will be looking very hard at what the Tories and Liberal Democrats are doing there.”
Before he could move on to another question, Mr Sissons, who was chairing the debate, jumped in and said: “What does that actually mean? Will you be stopping the sales of council homes here?” Mr Healey replied: “It means I can’t tell you today but I will be looking into it.”
Mr Sissons: “When will you tell us? Are you saving it for a big conference speech?”
Mr Healey: “You will have to wait and see.”
Labour group members were also present at a fringe meeting in the jazz cellar of the Globe pub at lunchtime on Monday organised by pressure group Defend Council Housing.
Tributes were paid to Alan Walter, the tenants’ leader from Kentish Town who had a major role in the campaign but died earlier this year.
Labour MPs Austin Mitchell and Michael Meacher vowed to continue the campaign against privatisation of homes. Camden tenants’ determined stand against privatisation led to a freeze in the government’s investment for creaking homes on estates five years ago. Lib Dems are adamant that they have no option but to sell in order to raise enough money to complete repairs.
Sadiq Khan |
Tube station congestion? Solution is down to Boris or Town Hall
TRANSPORT minister Sadiq Khan told the New Journal on Monday that it was up to Boris Johnson and Camden Council to sort out the future of congested Camden Town Underground Station.
He showed no sign of intervening directly but insisted he was not passing the buck by adding that he had made sure the London Mayor had been given enough money to improve the transport network in the capital.
Mr Khan said it was up to Mr Johnson to decide how the investment was spent but suggested he was not happy with the lack of progress at Camden Town Tube and warned of the “painful journey” he had been told that commuters faced at the station everyday.
Transport for London’s elaborate redevelopment plan for the station was spiked after a planning inquiry in 2005.
It had wanted to seize land around the station to create a new shopping arcade and a tower block on the site.
“I am not going to dictate what Camden Council and the Mayor of London should be doing about the Underground station,” he said.
“We are giving the Mayor £4 billion. Not even Ken when he was Mayor had that amount of money to spend.
“They need to be listening to local businesses who tell them that transport is a priority issue for them. They should be making the commute into Camden less painful – the investment is there.”
Mr Khan more than once told the meeting, organised by the Campaign for Better Transport, how voters in London had to live “with the consequence of having Boris Johnson as Mayor”.
He said: “There is a tension between wanting to give devolution to local authorities to make decisions about their local area and the unpopular decisions that may be made when you do that.”
But asked last week by the New Journal how it was moving forward with upgrading Camden Town station, Transport for London’s press office issued a statement at odds with Mr Khan’s claims.
“Some time ago London Underground identified Camden Town as a station that would benefit from an upgrade to increase capacity, reduce congestion and improve access and interchange,” it said.
“While there is now no funding available to progress a scheme at this time, it remains a long-term aspiration to redevelop the station in future.”
Tulip Siddiq |
A few bright sparks amid the battle-weary gloom
IT was freshers week in Brighton and the pubs and clubs were beating with red-eyed students excited for their first week away from the folks. Vodka strawpedos all round.
But just a few steps from the raucous bars of West Street, another class was registering for the first time, one which cannot afford to spend the next six months swapping homework for too many boozy nights out.
Inside the police-fortified walls of the Labour conference, supporters from Camden may have seen the week as a sort of changing of the guard. A handover. A rite of passage for a new gang.
A bit like in 2002 when a group of 30-somethings won the election in Camden for Labour before wresting control of the party from the old guard.
Those young lions, as this newspaper characterised them at the time, ran Camden Town Hall for four years before they were obliterated in an election meltdown. Once out of office, some of them were quick to lose their thirst for council business.
Theo Blackwell – a survivor of the past eight years – played a fatherly role in Brighton this week, although he too quits next May.
But if Camden's Labour Party is to fight back – and this was the fightback conference – it may be the ones enthused by their first time attending conference who will give them hope.
Unlike their predecessors, they are not shackled by being so closely connected with the Blair years.
Brighton’s halls were packed with grumpy, battle-weary delegates seemingly overwhelmed by the disintegration of their party’s power nationally. They were certainly harder work as company than delegates at conferences past. But from new council candidates like Tulip Siddiq, Luciana Berger and Awale Olad there was a genuine excitement which will have provided an antidote to the gloom for old hand Theo.
Being sharp, energetic and ready for battle won’t necessarily be enough, though.
In fact, in Labour’s case youthfulness seems to breed mistrust locally, especially in Camden where wise old heads warned against galloping after New Labour’s worst excesses.
But if this new pride of young lions can avoid the mistakes of the last lot, they could at least makes things interesting.
Watch out for more academies
ONE of Camden’s most high-profile school governors told a conference fringe meeting on Monday night how the Town Hall had sewn up a deal for a new academy without putting the idea to the public.
Fiona Millar, the former journalist who is on the governing body at William Ellis School, said Camden Council had used a “preferred bidder” system to ensure University College London got to be the sponsor of the borough’s first academy – to be built in Swiss Cottage. The agreement was reached without an open competition.
Speaking at a meeting hosted by the Anti-Academies Alliance, Ms Millar, who lives in Gospel Oak, said: “The preferred bidder is what happened in Camden where the council did its own deal over its academy behind the back of the community.
“I can’t believe I am arguing for competition but a competition would have given the public a say.
“I guarantee if you asked them they would have chosen for their new school to be part of the family of other secondary schools in Camden. Not run by an independent sponsor.”
Camden’s Labour party in Brighton |
Fine friends – How parking brought Theo close to Purnell
• SPOTTED: Former Culture Minister James Purnell – he of dramatic cabinet resignations and all that – shaking hands and grinning at Labour councillor Theo Blackwell outside the Grand hotel. Apparently, he used to incessantly badger Theo about parking in Camden when Labour ran the Town Hall.
• GEORGIA Gould is snapped in our main seafront picture – young blonde woman having a joke in the middle of the group. The daughter of Tony Blair's favourite pollster Lord Gould, it's her first picture in the New Journal since she appeared as a teenager on a school trip to meet former minister Margaret Hodge. She is standing for election in Kentish Town – the project she took on after missing out on the chance to fight for a parliamentary seat in Erith.
• DON'T shoot the messenger! Camden Lib Dem councillor Ben Rawlings became so incensed by reading the New Journal's Twitter feed – updated direct from Brighton – he filed a string of angry responses. In one post he insisted the Lib Dems were not “defeatist”. A few hours later, non-defeatist Ben wrote again to say he was giving up on posting any more responses.
• SPOTTED? You couldn't miss him. Labour councillor James Murray from across the borough boundary with Islington. Well known to colleagues in Camden, James was seen clapping furiously to welcome Gordon Brown to conference on Saturday. No wonder he had the full access-all-areas pass. |
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