Adrian Owens: Time for bold policies to really help 'hard-working families'

Cllr Adrian Owens is a businessman and the Portfolio Holder for Finance and E-Government on West Lancashire District Council.

It’s rare to find a political speech these days that doesn’t refer to “hard-working families”, but does the policy menu offered provide a recipe for success?

18 months ago, a survey reported over half of working women felt like quitting work completely because of the pressure between work and home life.  A similar survey revealed that only 4% of mothers with very young children want to work full-time, while government figures reveal that more than 15% of such mothers actually have to work full-time. 

A similar discrepancy applies when comparing those who want to be full-time mothers to their young children and those who are actually able to fulfil this aspiration.  Before being accused of sexism, I should add that fathers too are increasingly working longer hours than they would wish in our long hours work culture. 

Why this difference between what people want from their lives and the daily reality?  The answer, of course, lies in the reason that most of us work – money. 

The fashionable term for this area of debate is work-life balance and in this area as in so many others, Labour have been quicker at recognising the problem than we Conservatives. 
The Government is extending maternity and paternity leave and subsidising “wraparound” childcare.  Rather than leaving it to individuals to decide how to make the difficult choice between the conflicting spheres of home and work, employers are being made to pay through the nose to sustain the fiction that no such choice need be made at all.  Meanwhile taxes rise to provide the subsidised “wraparound” childcare.  As taxes rise, parents have to work yet harder and longer to make ends meet, and so entrust their children to childcare providers for yet longer hours, and so the merry-go-round continues.

Here is a modern issue that demands a Conservative response.  Millions of working men and women with young families are looking for real solutions beyond the trite slogans thrown in the direction of Britain’s “hard-working families”. 

Of course no one can decide for families what their priorities should be. These are personal decisions.  So what role can a future Conservative Government play?

Firstly, it must eschew the social engineering mentality of New Labour.  The Government’s policies have been heavily influenced by Patricia Hewitt, whose Women and Equality unit famously said in 2003 that there was ‘a real problem’ with mothers who stayed at home to bring up their children.  Indeed the Government continues to have targets to get still more people into work.  It is ironic that we Conservatives have a reputation for telling people how to lead their lives when in fact it is Ms Hewitt and others of her ilk who hold sway.

Policies to increase productivity (stagnating under Gordon Brown) and reduce the tax burden will also help, but if we are to give people real choice over how they arrange their work and family care responsibilities we must tackle one major area – the high cost of housing in our country.

High house prices are the largest single reason preventing couples from exercising their choice to reduce working hours, or even for one partner, usually the mother, to give up work completely.  House price to income ratios are close to all-time highs – but what is different in the current context compared to the house price booms of the past is that household incomes are now based on two salaries when calculating this ratio.  Put simply, house prices are so high that in most households both partners need to work.

Where both partners make this as a free choice then that is their business.  However when, as seems clear from housing cost figures, both partners are forced to work, those in government should be concerned.  Given the social problems manifest in modern Britain relating to some young people, and given the clear evidence that increased parental commitment to child-rearing has a positive impact on these problems, then as Conservatives we need to reflect on whether some of our other cherished beliefs need to be reconsidered.

If we can increase the supply of new housing and reduce house prices in real terms we will enable more of those oft-quoted “hard-working” families to work a little less hard servicing their housing debt and spend a little more time raising their children and building the social capital of our nation.  Of course, lower house prices help those at the bottom of the housing ladder too. 

Any change would need to be gradual to avoid a severe house price slump, but it’s time to look again at relaxing our restrictive planning laws.  We should scrap Section 106 agreements in favour of direct compensation for those suffering reduction in property value; auction development rights; sell off the vast amount of surplus Government land and recognize that with only 8% of our land mass covered by built development there is plenty of scope to increase house building.

Time comes full circle.  In 1951 the Conservatives returned to power committed to tackling the nation’s housing shortage.  As housing minister, Harold Macmillan succeeded in building 300,000 new homes a year and laid the foundations for 13 years of Conservative government.  Today, the need is no less pressing, though the policy measures required might be different. 

Comments

[comstock]

"If we can increase the supply of new housing and reduce house prices in real terms we will enable more of those oft-quoted “hard-working” families to work a little less hard servicing their housing debt and spend a little more time raising their children and building the social capital of our nation. Of course, lower house prices help those at the bottom of the housing ladder too."

As a Labour supporter (and Tory hater) saying this makes me want to throw up, but yes FINALLY somebody is saying this.

Always struck me as mad that the Tories are supposed to be the party of the 'free market' yet it's always local Tory groups that complain when new house building is proposed. Stop being so selfish you Tory NIMBYs and let supply rise to meet demand.

[a-tracy]

I too initially thought that subsidised housing was a good idea but isn't it the person in the subsidised house that would benefit individually rather than the community at large? When the Council houses were sold to their tennants at greatly subsidised values it didn't lower the value of the houses around them rather it raised their value and the tenants that purchased were then able to capitalise on this when they sold them. Many of them sold in order to crystalise this gain and then moved into housing association properties banking and spending the profit. So how does this help the local community especially when alot of this money is spent abroad?

I do agree that there is a need to stop the spiralling rise in properties but the only way that I believe you can do this is to stop the supply of money (in high multiples) not increase the number of properties after all aren't we constantly being told that there are thousands of empty properties and many people actually have two homes in this Country. When the correction finally comes some people will lose out more than others but if you want society to benefit in the longer term a correction is needed.

I also get annoyed with the implication that workplace parents bring up socially inept children. I often wonder what facts back up this accusation. Is there proof that the children running amok have parents working full time? Do the children truanting have a higher percentage of full time working parents? The ASBO children as another example do their parents work full time to a higher percentage and were they left in creches from an early age?

I know people that work hard and share their parenting duties between both parents, working different shifts or different days, they want to provide their children with opportunities akin to those that wealthy children take for granted eg. Music lessons, swimming club, and going on holidays exploring new places. I know fathers that take on extra overtime at work so that their partner doesn't have to work full time sacrificing his time with his children so that they have Mum at home. God help us if we are all to live the same way - little work clones with prescribed times to wake up, eat, work, play, dressed in little costumes all the same and whilst we're all working a three day week who is paying the taxes to support all our largesse.

[Adrian Owens]

a-tracy,

I do not argue at all for subsidised housing. I argue for a freer market in housing supply.

While the housing market is complex it doesn't ignore the economic laws of supply and demand. An increased housing supply will feed through to reduced house prices and this will better meet the aspirations of more of Britain's hard-working families and might actually show the public that we "connect" with their concerns.

Evidence relating to child care is mixed but here is a link to a study published only last week.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4304528.stm

In any case, meeting the aspirations of voters and building an election-winning coalition was the major point of my piece. I am not a social engineer - I simply want to provide families with a real choice - a Conservative idea I would have thought.

[Rick]

Super...and where shall we build all these houses ? Presumably land should be sequestrated to keep costs down, then schools, hospitals, roads, water, gas, sewerage, electricity infrastructure expanded and who will bear the costs ?

Population is expanding in the London area........what about building more condominiums and banning matchbox houses ? Get a greater density per square mile. The US would need 2 billion more people to match England's population density but unless we accept shanty towns London will never compete with Sao-Paulo which is vibrant, dynamic and makes London look stodgy.

The fact is the British have created house inflation ever since Edward Heath deregulated lending in 1972 and every time we get credit boom, property boom, bust. Labour has just copied Tory strategy of letting house prices inflate on easy credit to make people feel good. Industrial production has increased miserably since 1973 but house prices have been the source of trade deficits as consumerism industrialises first Korea then China.

[carol]

I remember when the house prices took off. It was when the Building Societies started the take the wife's income into account, first just half then all of it. Before that it was assumed that when the children came along the wife would stop work. Prices rocketed and it became essential to have two incomes. It would be impossible to turn the clock back but before that change prices were stable for as long as I could remember.

[Rick]

Yes Carol, if you look at some of the old Lloyds Bank Reviews (wonderful papers) and the graphs of house prices from 1930s onwards it shows amazing stability until the early 1970s when it just took off.

I recently saw an advert for a house in an Estate Agents but I knew this same house since I had been going into land deeds and family wills............the compound rate of increase since the 1930s on that house had been around 15% pa, but we know that most of that was in recent years when the economic base of the country de-materialised into Services and away from Exporters..................so it can be seen that increasing credit multiples on gross not net income have driven prices ever higher and once a home-owner an even better credit prospect for unsecured credit

[Adrian Peirson]

If we reduced Welfare, there would be less immigration, that would slow down housing demand.
If we ever needed more people (which I doubt, 10% unemployed )into this country, what is wrong with providing that welfare to British women to have more children.
Instead we have a declining birthrate, 1.8 for Indigenous British women, a Govt Medical report suggesting that Women should continue taking the Pill because it helps reduce Cancer !!!!
and a 1 in 5 Pregnancies are aborted.
Even Adolf would not have tolerated this, so what is Our Govt doing to this country and its People.