ConservativeHome's ToryDiary

Nick Herbert to investigate practicalities of charging housebuilders to invest in compensatory environmental protection

In the last couple of days the Tory leadership has been making a determined effort to show that green Conservatism is alive and kicking.  Yesterday George Osborne announced ten new green initiatives in advance of Wednesday's Budget.  Speaking to the Wildlife Trust today David Cameron has announced that Nick Herbert MP, Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, will investigate the practicalities of setting up a scheme that will ensure any development that damages the environment makes a compensating investment in the environment elsewhere.

The Tory scheme was first reported by The Guardian in February.  A cost of £5,000 per average house was mentioned by that newspaper at the time although ConHome doesn't expect the Tory proposal to be so expensive.  Nonetheless, it could significantly raise the cost of housebuilding but would release enormous sums for investment in new parkland or for protecting areas of outstanding natural beauty.

Thatcher offered a Right-to-Buy; Cameron will add a Right-to-Move

Tomorrow at 11am Grant Shapps MP, Shadow Housing Minister, will launch Stage II of his approach to housing.  Stage I included incentives for local communities to accept new housing.  Stage III will look at urban regeneration.

We'll have more in the morning on Stage II but BBC1's Six'o'clock News has just lifted the veil on plans to introduce a new Right-to-Move.  The Centre for Social Justice has already highlighted the extreme problems of some social housing 'ghettoes' and some CSJ ideas - such as equity rewards for good tenants - have found their way into tomorrow's announcement.  The work of previous Housing spokesmen, Michael Gove and John Hayes, is also coming to fruition in what has been titled 'Extending Opportuinities'.

The key proposals from Grant Shapps are:

• The piloting of a ‘Right to Move’ by half-a-dozen local authorities where good social tenants can demand that their social landlord sell their current property and use the proceeds, minus transaction costs, to buy another property of their choice – anywhere in England.  The new home will remain a state-owned property but will aid mobility.  The innovative Hammersmith & Fulham council have already expressed an interest in being part of the pilot.
• Harnessing the power of the internet there will be the reintroduction of a comprehensive national mobility scheme for tenants who wish to move but to stay in the social sector - matching people who want to move beyond local authority boundaries.
• Protection of Right to Buy discounts for tenants moving within the social sector.

Tim Montgomerie

8.30pm: It has just been drawn to my attention that The Right to Move was a Policy Exchange idea.  More here.

Iain Duncan Smith raises concerns about how council house sales created ghettoes

11.45am update: Aware that only selected quotes from his interview had been released, I asked Iain Duncan Smith if he could add some context to his remarks. He has now got back to me and says:

"What the full interview should show is that I pointed out I am a supporter of the sale of council houses but that when the allocation of council houses to replace those who moved out was restricted to a ‘needs’ based criteria the estates suffered. Only the neediest, ie: broken dysfunctional families, came on to the estates and this has ghettoised such families as the good working families left.

"I made the point that the next phase for Thatcher was social reform which she admits she never completed. It is in the Centre for Social Justice's housing report published a few months ago which shows conclusively that once upon a time social housing was about mixed tenure with two parent families and families in full time work. That is no longer the case and less than a third have full time work on estates and a very small number have two parents. This style of life for the children now ensures they are more likely to repeat the behaviour of their community and grow up out of work and dependent in their turn. Most children will not see a two parent family or someone who goes out to work.
 
"The sale of council housing was never enough on its own - that is why we need to complete the social reform agenda so that we can change all this. Our housing paper points out that future sales should be set in such a context of breaking down these monolithic estates and using social housing as a support to lift people out of dependency and into work."

The CSJ's full report on Housing Poverty can be downloaded here.

---

The sale of council houses during the 1980s has generally been hailed as a flagship policy of the Thatcher Government which sought to help create a property-owning democracy.

Yet the consequences of that policy appear to be being questioned by Iain Duncan Smith.

In a yet-to-be-published interview with the Left-wing Fabian Review, the former Conservative leader and founder of the Centre for Social Justice seems to suggest that as a stand-alone policy, the sale of council houses meant that many of the country's most vulnerable families got "left behind", since further social reforms were not forthcoming.

Grant Shapps offers practical advice for those fearing repossession

With the Council of Mortgage lenders having this morning released figures showing that there were 40,000 repossessions in 2008 - and predicting 75,000 repossessions in 2009 - shadow housing minister Grant Shapps is giving a practical response to the news.

He is today launching the Conservatives' Repossession Advice Pack, which aims to help home-owners who are worried about paying their mortgages.

Mr Shapps said:

“Tens of thousands of people face the prospect of repossession this year and there will be even more who are privately worried. We wanted to do something really practical to help and so got together with housing, mortgage and debt counselling experts to produce the Repossessions Advice Pack."

The pack will be available to download from the Conservative Party website shortly - and I will link to it when it is.

Update: You can dowload the pack here

Jonathan Isaby

David Cameron wants those without homes to be offered empty homes

There are nearly two million families on the housing list and more than a million empty homes across the UK - and David Cameron is announcing today that he wants the former to be offered accommodation in the latter.

He and shadow housing minister, Grant Shapps, are launching the policy in Denmark Hill, south east London, today and the Evening Standard carries the following excerpt of what Mr Cameron is saying:

"At this incredibly difficult time, it is vital we focus resources on helping families and people struggling at the sharp end of this recession. But we must do so in a way consistent with the long-term economic and social changes Britain needs. That's why the Conservatives will temporarily relax Labour's stringent rules and regulations making it easier for the affordable housing sector to bring some of the one million empty homes into use. This will provide real help now to the two million families currently on the social housing waiting list, and the one hundred families that are having their home repossessed every day."

The report states that the policy would aim also to "help reduce crime and anti-social behaviour associated with empty housing, and prevent an over-correction in house prices by putting a floor in the housing market".

I'll add further details here once the party releases more on the policy.

Update: The proposals have been unveiled as the "Empty Property Rescue Scheme" and will temporarily relax current restrictions in order to encourage use of some existing empty properties for the benefit of those on the waiting lists.

According to the party, the scheme will encompass the following measures:

• Encouraging housing associations or others to pursue a variety of models for bringing empty properties back into use;
• Allowing short term tenancy agreements of, for example, 3 to 5 years;
• Aiming to provide tenants with an option to buy or obtain shared equity in the future;
• Partially suspending Design and Quality Standard requirements - for the existing empty homes - to enable the EPR programme to flourish under these special circumstances; and
• Removing the requirement for the empty property stock to comply with Sustainability Codes (although the sustainability of all homes used under this scheme will be increased by making them eligible for installation of smart meters and ensuring that they benefit from our £6.5k ‘Just Do It’ energy efficiency retrofit programme10).

Jonathan Isaby

George Osborne reacts to the gloomy economic news of the first working day of 2009

It's the first working day of the New Year and already there is some gloomy economic news to impart. I fear that it rather sets the scene for 2009.

There are two sets of figures relating to the housing market which have been released this morning:

• House prices fell by 16.2% during 2008 - the biggest drop for a calendar year on record, according to the Halifax.
• Bank of England data shows that the number of mortgages approved for house purchase dropped to an all-time low during November.

Shadow chancellor George Osborne has reacted by saying that this is proof that the Government's policies to deal with the recession are not working:

"First we discovered that there were fewer shoppers in December despite the VAT cut, now we discover house prices are falling sharply and mortgage approvals at a record low despite the stamp duty holiday introduced three months ago.

"The new year shows that Gordon Brown’s policies are not working and the recession is getting worse not better. That is because an economic recovery depends on confidence in the future, and people do not have that confidence while we have a Labour Government in power bankrupting the country."

Jonathan Isaby

A timely announcement from Grant Shapps on homelessness

As we think of those less fortunate than ourselves at this time of year, shadow housing spokesman Grant Shapps is today launching the Conservative blueprint to tackle homelessness.

This time last year, he spent a night sleeping rough and recorded his experience here on ConservativeHome.

The blueprint being launched today aims to go beyond dealing with homelessness purely as a problem of housing, but instead accepting the multi-faceted nature of homelessness. One key point which it aims to address is the way in which some released prisoners quickly re-offend because jail provides a roof over their heads.

Among the measures being proposed by the party, according to today's newspapers, are:

• Criminals being made to save part of their prison pay to fund accommodation on their release;
• Ensuring that troops returning from the frontline are not put at the bottom of waiting lists for housing;
• Making rough sleeping statistics more accurate;
• Reforming benefits to make sure people were better off by getting a job.

This is how the Telegraph explains the scheme being proposed for prisoners:

"Under his proposal, most pay for prison work would go into a fund for victims, some kept for purchases behind bars and the rest put in a "trust". That money would partly be used to secure accommodation - probably in the private rented sector."

Mr Shapps was also keen to stress his aim to look after "heroic servicemen" who have served overseas:

"When people have put their lives at risk for the sake of our security it is a national disgrace that they can return from service with no certainty about their living conditions."

I'll add a link to the more detailed proposals when they are published later this morning.

Update: You can now download the pdf document by clicking here or look at it and other documents about homelessness at Grant Shapps' website. As Grant points out, there has been a cross-departmental approach on this document, so the sections relating to prisoners, for example, have involved Nick Herbert and the Justice team - some of whose ideas were put forward in their Prisons with a Purpose policy paper.

Jonathan Isaby

How many people will gain from the Government's mortgage support scheme?

Doubts are already being raised about how effective the mortgage support scheme unveiled by Gordon Brown yesterday will be.

It was revealed during the debate on the Queen's Speech that homeowners would be able to take a two-year mortgage holiday if one adult in the household lost their job and that eight banks had already apparently signed up to the agreement.

Margaret Beckett, the housing minister, is being reported as having said that only 9,000 people were likely to benefit.

Dizzy has taken the Government to task on the issue this morning, whilst George Osborne is also far from emphatic in his support.

The shadow chancellor has told us:

"Yesterday, we discovered that 75,000 people are forecast to have their homes repossessed this year, near the peak of the last recession, so of course we need to do everything possible to keep people in their homes. We've been calling for action on repossessions for a year.

"As ever with Gordon Brown's announcements we'll need to look at the small print to make sure this doesn't fall apart under scrutiny.

"Where we really need radical action is to keep people in their jobs, so we're disappointed that the Government didn't take up our proposal to get to the heart of the credit crisis and underwrite lending to businesses."

Jonathan Isaby

Government and banks agree up-to-two-year mortgage holiday if you lose your job

The FT has more.  Reaction to follow.

10.15am Thursday: Dizzy examines the positive publicity that has greeted Brown's proposal but doubts whether it is quite as Brown has presented it.

Good council tenants should be helped to own their homes, recommends IDS

A wide-ranging report from Iain Duncan Smith's Centre for Social Justice think tank warns today that many social housing estates have degenerated into often violent and dysfunctional "ghettoes" and calls for urgent remedial action.  IDS writes of estates "where worklessness, dependency, family breakdown and addiction are endemic".

Central to the CSJ's action plan are rewards for tenants that are socially constructive.  Here is the key section of the report:

"We encourage an incoming government to look at releasing some of the value in social housing to sitting tenants who pay their own rent and make a contribution to the community. This could take the form of a  discount on the purchase price for those moving to outright or shared ownership.

However, the most radical approach is also the most important. We recommend that economic analysis be  commissioned into the rewarding of constructive behaviour in the community, including, but not limited to, a  genuine effort on the part of a social housing tenant to find work, by giving social housing tenants increasingly larger equity stakes in the home.

Having a stake in a home is both a privilege and a responsibility. It would inculculate the values of constructive social behaviour and create, from the vicious cycle, a virtuous cycle, that encourages social housing tenants to improve their own family’s future."

As Harry Phibbs has already noted, the report seeks to end the “stifling requirement” that social housing tenancy be secure for life.  Instead local authorities should be freed up to adapt tenure agreements to meet the needs and aspirations of clients.

> Download PDF summarising recommendations of report

Tories promise to tackle root causes of homelessness with new Foundation

Speaking yesterday at the launch of the Conservative Party's new Homelessness Foundation, at the Crisis charity, David Cameron said: "Homelessness isn't just about literally having no roof over your head.  We're also ignoring what's called the 'hidden homeless'.  That's the people who move from one sofa to another, night after night, with no stability and no security.  And it's the families who are forced to live in crowded conditions in hostels and B&Bs while they wait to be re-housed."  David Cameron's full remarks are here.

The Foundation will look at how public policy might be reshaped to tackle homelessness in all of its forms.  There will be a particular emphasis on the root causes of homelessness.  Grant Shapps, Tory housing spokesman, told ConservativeHome that he had invited all of the leading charities to join the Foundation and all had accepted.  John Bird of The Big Issue (to which Iain Duncan Smith has become a contributor) will be one of the advisors.  Also involved are Thames Reach Bondway, Homeless Link,  Shelter, Crisis (which has Tory origins), the Simon Community and St Mungo's.  It really is a sign of the times that these charities are willing to sign up to a Conservative research organisation.

The Foundation's Advisory Board looks vulnerable to being captured by the big, established charities in our view but Grant insists that smaller groups, following different approaches, like Aquila Way in Gateshead, will also be involved.

Tories relaunch promise to abolish stamp duty for most first-time buyers

It was a policy that Conservatives believe was pretty much drowned out by last year's inheritance tax announcement; the promise to abolish stamp duty for all first-time buyers on properties up to £250,000 in value.

Shadow Housing Minister Grant Shapps MP and Kirstie Allsopp were on College Green a little earlier today to highlight the policy on the day that 120 housing experts gather in Westminster to advise the party's housing policy review.

The fact that 120 industry experts are turning up to a Tory conference is another sign of how fashionable the party is at the moment.  There were four TV cameras and a gaggle of journalists at this morning's photo opp* as if to prove the point.

Kirstie Allsopp is obviously a big attraction and journalists were encouraging her to stand as a Tory candidate.  Interviewed by Channel 5's Andy Bell, Ms Allsopp warned that the housing market was facing a perfect storm with the HIPS fiasco, the credit crunch and high stamp duty all combining to make life very difficult for first-time buyers, in particular. 

* The woman photographed with Grant and Kirstie is Sophie, struggling to get on the housing ladder.

If you see a rough sleeper at Victoria Station tomorrow night, it might be a Tory MP

The Observer, seriously, and The Sunday Telegraph, flippantly, both report that Tory housing spokesman Grant Shapps is to sleep rough tomorrow night to highlight the growing problem of homelessness in Britain. 

The sleep-out will be dismissed by many as a stunt but Mr Shapps hopes it will serve to highlight the growing problem of homeless children.  This is what Mr Shapps recently told the Press Association:

"For 130,000 homeless children in England, this Christmas is unlikely to be much fun. These children are being forgotten and left behind. Lack of permanent accommodation can have a grave impact on a child's health and development with devastating consequences.  The fact that the number of homeless children has doubled over the past 10 years highlights the Government's dismal record in creating more social housing. It is hard to escape the conclusion that their policies have been a dramatic failure in this area."

Mr Shapps follows in a great line of Tories escaping the Westminster village for some 'real life experience'...

• There was Michael Portillo's time as an assistant at ASDA;
• David Willetts sleeping on a council estate in Birmingham after the launch of Iain Duncan Smith's badly-named Help The Vulnerable campaign;
• David Cameron staying with a Muslim family in Birmingham;
• Nigel Evans recently slept out in Parliament Square as part of a Burma protest;
• And a whole series of Tories - including Ed Vaizey - committing to spend weeks with voluntary organisations as part of a Centre for Social Justice initiative.

The CSJ initiative is the hardest to dismiss as a stunt.  It involves our MPs spending serious time with a charity - getting to know their work and challenges.  Over the last two years a number of MPs have got to know much more about the problems of homelessness, addiction and debt because of these 'immersion weeks'.

PS ConservativeHome's Tim Montgomerie can claim to be one of the first Tories to do this work.  In 1994 he lived as a 'single parent' for a week for BBC2's Lifeswaps programme to see if he could survive on benefits (picture above).  He did just about manage!

Cameron: Nationalisation of Northern Rock would be "monumental failure" for Government

David Cameron, interviewed by Jim Naughtie on Today at 8.10am, said that he did not agree with Vince Cable about bringing Northern Rock into immediate public ownership.  The taxpayer should not be exposed to further risk, he said, and a private sale was still the most desirable option.  If the possibilities of a private sale do fall through, however, any nationalisation of Northern Rock would amount to a "monumental failure" by the Labour Government.

The main focus of David Cameron's interview was the housing market - a subject addressed on this page on Sunday.

He will be addressing the Council of Mortgage Lenders later and is set to call for social responsibility from Britain's financial institutions and the pursuit of best practice in dealing with the end of fixed-term mortgage packages and sharing of credit information:

• To avoid a regulatory answer to Britain's looming difficulties in the housing market, David Cameron urged mortgage lenders to "taper" or "stagger" increases in interest payments when periods of fixed-term mortgages come to an end.  110,000 households are seeing fixed-rate packages expire every month and many are facing interest rate payments rising by a third.
• The Conservative leader also called for more sharing of information between financial institutions.  The worst defaults for banks come from people who have already defaulted on previous loans with other institutions.

Currently in the middle of a series of high-level private meetings with major financial institutions, David Cameron is clearly communicating concern about Britain's deteriorating economic situation but he is being cautious in making big policy recommendations.

Related link: Andrew Lilico's Tuesday column examines how British politics would be changed by a recession.

How bad is Britain's housing market?

The editorial in The Business is the best read in British journalism every week.  It's a hard-hitting, fact-based examination of a current issue that I find indispensable reading.

These warnings from this week's Business leader point to real troubles in the UK housing market:

Interest payments are rising fast for hundreds of thousands of families: "According to figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders, interest payment as a percentage of income has shot up from 14.9% in February 2006 to 18.6% in September 2007. Almost all the increase in wages during that time has been gobbled up by higher mortgages; combined with higher taxes, petrol prices and inflation, it is hardly surprising consumers are beginning to feel as if their purchasing power and disposable income is declining.  This will only get worse: 110,000 households a month come to the end of their fixed-rate mortgage deals over the next year; with two-year fixed mortgage rates 1.5 percentage points higher than in October 2005, this means interest payments will shoot up by a third."

The buy-to-let market is a "train wreck waiting to happen": "The second set of statistics to give Mr Brown nightmares is that gross rental yields on buy-to-let properties are about 5.3%, before costs are deducted, when mortgage rates are at about 6%. So this market is set to crash."

House prices are set to drop (but not crash): "HSBC this week warned that house prices are about 30% over-valued. JPMorgan, whose housing model is based on data going back to 1973, estimates house prices are overvalued by 24% – surpassing the 23% at the peak of the late 1980s bubble. The International Monetary Fund last month calculated that homes in Britain were overpriced by up to 40%. Goldman Sachs calculates that if rents do not go up, house prices would have to fall by 20% for yields to return to their historical level. Morgan Stanley is predicting a drop in prices next year.

It's getting harder and harder for first-time buyers: "In analysis updated for The Business, David Owen, Dresdner’s chief European economist, says the price of the average home is 7.23 times average household disposable income. That is higher than previous peaks of 1973 and 1988."

The Business does not predict that there will be a massive crash.  There is likely to be no massive macroeconomic trigger like the ERM debacle.  Growth is forecast to moderate, but not stop.  There is also a "structural shortage of homes [that] will continue to underpin prices."

On Friday Tory housing spokesman Grant Shapps MP launched a review into homebuying.  Mr Shapps has estimated that £339 million is lost in abortive transaction costs each year.  Of 1.8 million transactions each year - taking, on average 8 to 10 weeks - nearly half-a-million (28%) fall through.

The review which will be conducted with industry expert and former Tory PPC Owen Inskip, and TV presenter Kirsty Allsopp, will seek to find ways of making home buying less bureaucratic and less expensive.  The review may recommend an end to 'gazumping'.  The Tories are already pledged to abolish Home Information Packs although they will retain the energy performance certificate.

Download a PDF of the Conservative-Home-Buying-Review.

Cameron promises coherent strategy to manage net immigration and its consequences

Later this morning David Cameron will deliver a speech on population and immigration.  He'll be addressing the Policy Exchange think tank.  I'll be there and will report with more afterwards.

It is expected that Mr Cameron will say that Britain needs a much more coherent strategy to cope with Britain's rising population.  Britain's population is projected to rise by more than ten million over the next 25 years (although population projections are notoriously unreliable).

He is expected to highlight the need to...

• Curb net immigration.  The Conservative Party has proposed an annual cap on immigration from outside the EU but has limited powers to control immigration from within the Union.
• Improve border controls.
• Invest in family life so that we reduce the pressure on the housing stock caused by splits in households.
• Improve the skills base of British workers so there is less demand for qualified workers from overseas.

The Conservative leader will say that the Blair-Brown failure to get to grips with Britain's demographic challenges is a large part of the reason for frustratingly slow progress in the NHS, schools and in housing:

"This country faces a choice. Some people argue that the demographic changes I've talked about are just an inevitable part of the modern world and that policymakers had better get used to it. This assumes that we can't do much about family failure, we can't get significant numbers of people off benefits and into work, and that we use immigration to deal with our capacity shortages. That is Gordon Brown's choice. But I don't think it's sustainable - for a simple reason."

Mr Cameron's focus on immigration - the CCHQ's advance press notice promises a speech on The Challenges of a Growing Population - is a triumph for the traditionalists advising him.  Certain leading modernisers will have opposed this speech and they have been over-ruled.

The speech comes after renewed public anxiety about the level of immigration into Britain.  The issue regularly tops the list of voter concerns.  Simon Heffer and Peter Oborne both wrote about the subject (in characteristically strong terms) on Saturday.

Also well worth reading is the leader in last week's Business.  These were the concluding paragraphs:

"The biggest danger associated with immigration is that it becomes an excuse not to tackle the deep seated problems that have been created by the welfare culture, with migrants used as substitute labour while a British-born underclass is paid not to work. It is a national scandal that, while youth unemployment is increasing, 43% of the Eastern European workers arriving are aged 18 to 24.

Immigration has been at the heart of Britain’s success; newcomers continue to make huge and essential contributions to culture, the arts, the professions, sports, academia and, of course, business. Over the past few years, immigrants have fuelled Britain’s economic renaissance; long may it remain so.

But it is also undeniable that the country is buckling under the strain; to avoid the public turning against migrants, the government must make Britain more like America: a country that accepts that it is a nation of immigrants, seeks to integrate them and builds new homes and schools to accommodate them. Pretending that levels of immigration are much more modest than they really are, or that they are not causing any problems, is no longer a tenable strategy."

Reducing the level of low-skilled immigration into Britain and investing in our own young workforce must be at the heart of the Conservatives' promise of an integrated 'population strategy'.

Only millionaires will pay inheritance tax under a Conservative government

More soon.  Click on the image on the right to enlarge the leaflet that was distributed immediately after George Osborne's well-received speech.

1.40pm: Mr Osborne's plan to lift the inheritance tax threshold to £1m was announced this morning to rapturous applause from Conservative Party members.  This is "the death knell for death taxes," he declared.  It is the third big tax and spending policy announced by the Conservatives that grassroots activists will look forward to selling on the doorsteps.

We've also had the abolition of stamp duty for first-time buyers on all homes up to £250,000 in value.  There was also Saturday's promise to abolish the penalty that penalises 1.8 million two-parent families raising children.

None of these tax cut promises will be funded by the proceeds of growth, however.  They will be funded by a combination of savings from welfare budgets and from a new £25,000 once-a-year poll tax on  businesspeople classed as "non-domiciled" in the UK; non-doms.

Speaking on Radio 4's World at One, Oliver Letwin conceded that many of the savings would only be delivered progressively - over a number of years.  This could mean some delay in full delivery of the tax cut pledges.

8pm: This from Matthew Elliott at The TaxPayers' Alliance: "When taxpayers listen to George Osborne's speech on TV tonight, they'll be very pleased with what they hear. It contained some excellent announcements. The flat fee on non-doms makes the package add up, but before it's implemented in practice, I think the Conservatives should look very carefully at whether it could drive the entrepreneurs out of the country who are making London the world's financial centre and keeping our country afloat."

"Restoring Pride in Our Public Services"

The Conservative Public Services Improvement Group led by Stephen Dorrell MP and Baroness Pauline Perry published its report this morning at the Policy Exchange's Ideas Forum.  There are more than 150 proposals on education, social housing and health.  These are the main ones:

On education

• Establish a Chief Education and Skills officer and a Royal College of Teaching, along the lines of their counterparts in the NHS.
• Reduce the volume of guidelines for schools.
• Abolish "AS" levels
• More disciplinary measures, clearer exclusion powers, anonymity for teachers subject to allegations.
• An "advantage premium": additional per-capita funding for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.
• Encouragement for more academic charities to run city academies.
• Provision of buses to transport children from over-subscribed to under-subscribed schools.

On social housing

• Provision of 10% equity for social housing tenants after five years good behaviour.
• Review of social housing waiting list policy
• "Commitment to mixed communities", i.e., seeking varied incomes, tenures, demographics and ethnicities, subject to local circumstances, as a way to avoid concentrations of deprivation.
• Creation of a national affordable housing fund.
• Measures to make the Right to Buy "more affordable" by altering discounts.

On health

• "Less political interference in the day to day management of the NHS"
• "Greater freedom for individual healthcare professionals, in return for
  clear accountability for outcomes"
• "A service which puts patients before bureaucrats"
• "Greater emphasis on public health objectives", improved powers for the Chief Medical Officer and "separate public health budgets"

Read and debate the report at Stand Up Speak Up.

Thomas Cahill

Government delays introduction of Home Information Packs

The government has climbed down on HIPs.  A huge victory for Michael Gove's energetic campaign against them.

MICHAEL GOVE MP'S STATEMENT TO THE HOUSE

"Can I thank the minister for sight of her announcement which I received just 25 minutes before hand?  Clearly this has been a day for doing everything at the last minute.  Can I ask why, after being warned over a year ago that they were comprehensively mishandling this issue Ministers have seen fit to retreat only now – with eight days to go before Home Information Packs were due to be implemented?  Why didn’t ministers take the opportunity we offered last week to think again? Was it stubborn vanity, or sheer incompetence?

The Secretary of State may argue that this humiliating climbdown was precipitated by the Judgement issued in the High Court Today. But that begs the question which goes to the heart of this matter.  Why did ministers press ahead with a scheme which everyone who knows anything about the housing market was telling them was flawed at the heart?

Uncharitable to the bogeyman

It's probably uncharitable to point out that there's a YouTube movie on Guido's blog in which (if you have the stomach for it) you can see the Chancellor picking his nose during yesterday's PMQs.  It's probably uncharitable but you could say the same about Mr Brown's Budget speech.  Greg Clark MP, Shadow Charities Minister, has just released a press release that notes that the cost to charities of yesterday's 2p cut in income tax will be £70m.  Greg Clark MP commented:

“The Chancellor’s Budget has conned Britain’s charities.  In his Budget speech he was cowardly enough to make no mention of the fact that his tax changes will hit hardest Britain’s good causes.  Gordon Brown must have known about this, but instead he kept quiet and hoped no-one would notice.  It is typical that in robbing Britain’s charities, the Chancellor made no provision to protect them from the impact of this sting.”

Download charity_sting_press release.pdf

As is always the case with Gordon Brown's Budgets the devil is in the detail.  Tonight's main story in the London Evening Standard notes that homebuyers in the capital are being hit by a £3.4billion rise in stamp duty bills.  London homebuyers now pay an average £8,615 in stamp duty compared to just £1,795 five years ago.  This massive increase in tax reflects the Chancellor's failure to raise the higher stamp duty thresholds in line with inflation.  A spokesman for the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors told the Standard:

"The Chancellor should have raised the bottom threshold of £125,000 to at least £150,000 in order to help first-time buyers on to the housing ladder given that up-front housing costs are a key issue for many buyers."

The Year of The Striver?

This morning's Daily Telegraph reports an excellent initiative by Michael Gove, Tory housing spokesman, that might increase the opportunities for young people to get on the housing ladder.  Mr Gove, noting that first-time buyers cannot afford to buy an average property in 93% of British towns, is suggesting encouraging a form of home ownership where young buyers would own the 'bricks and mortar' but the land would be owned by a community trust that could protect the housing stock for local people.

David Cameron has championed the young housebuyer since the beginning of his leadership but there are signs that he is also thinking more broadly of 'striver voters'.  Strivers are described in ConservativeHome's dictionary:

"When public policy goes wrong hard-working families suffer most. They are hit hardest by stealth taxes, the marriage penalty, interest rate rises and long hospital waiting lists. Gordon Brown’s means-testing maze is making a mockery of their efforts to save for their retirement."

Australia's Prime Minister John Howard has made what he calls 'battlers' a core part of his electoral coalition.  Strong policies on housing access, skills (as reported in today's FT), community safety, relief from taxation and faster access to public services will all be essential components of a Tory strategy to reach out to those aspirational voters that were so important to Mrs Thatcher's electoral success.  Mr Cameron made substantial progress in 2006 in terms of winning support from higher income and professional voters.  The challenge for 2007 is to win support among lower income voters and David Cameron's new year message suggested that he understands that.  He talked about the party becoming the champion "of working people" and he has put David Davis in charge of a commission on social mobility.

In an article for The Sunday Times, Mr Davis identified four key routes to wealth and wider success:

• Education and training;
• Working for a large firm;
• Starting your own business;
• The property ladder.

It must be hoped that the Tory leadership studies today's article by Sir Eric Anderson in The Daily Telegraph.  Sir Eric makes it clear that selective education benefits poorer pupils most.  Is it too late for the Tories to embrace this important conclusion?  Failure to do so will leave a big hole in any renewed Tory interest in the aspirational voter. 

Contraceptive house prices

ConservativeHome has long believed that 'the home' could be a defining idea for conservatism.  As John Hayes MP has said in May 2004:

“The idea of the home can define a Conservative agenda for the twenty-first century. Homes are a symbol of social justice – of private ownership – of security – of independence from intrusive government – of local identity - of embryonic community life…”

It is in this light that ConservativeHome warmly welcomes David Cameron's ideas for increasing home ownership - launched yesterday.  Mr Cameron - and shadow housing minister Michael Gove - plan to empower council tenants by encouraging them to convert rental payments into a mortgage (see Telegraph report).

The bottom line objective for the Conservative Party must be to reduce house price inflation.  David Cameron was clear that that required greater supply of housing but was less forthcoming on the need to tackle escalating demand.  In yesterday's speech he talked about the need to incentivise local communities to embrace housebuilding in their backyards but offered nothing on limiting demand through, for example, tackling family breakdown or reducing immigration.  [Downland a pdf of the Tories' ten key housing proposals].

One of the main imperatives for reducing house price inflation is the role that it plays in delaying family formation.  David Willetts has rightly argued that high house prices are "a very powerful contraceptive".  The declining birth rate of western societies - and the demographic timebomb it is producing - are examined in an excellent article in today's Australian by Mark Steyn.  Mr Steyn warns:

"Seventeen European nations are now at what demographers call “lowest-low” fertility – 1.3 births per woman, the point at which you’re so far down the death spiral you can’t pull out. In theory, those countries will find their population halving every 35 years or so. In practice, it will be quicker than that, as the savvier youngsters figure there’s no point sticking around a country that’s turned into an undertaker’s waiting room..."

Up to 25% of voters would consider voting for the BNP

The last few days have seen a flurry of stories about the BNP:

• In last week's Spectator - in an article entitled The Scream of the Forgotten Voter - Peter Oborne went canvassing with the BNP in Dagenham and the local Labour MP told him that the extremist party could pick up six council seats.
• Yesterday's Sunday Telegraph revealed that Labour minister Margaret Hodge believes that eight-out-of-ten white voters in her Barking constituency are threatening to vote for what the newspaper called "the far-Right party".
• Today, on BBC Online, there is news of a Joseph Rowntree report which finds that up to 25% of people would consider supporting the BNP.

Why is this happening?

Is David Cameron about to bulldoze Tory housing policy?

Ahead of a major speech on housing tomorrow, David Cameron has written for today's Independent on Sunday about a big change in Tory policy on homebuilding:

"We're reviewing the whole planning system to ensure that local people are more directly involved in shaping the future of their communities; there are clear rewards for welcoming new development; beauty is built into new houses; and house-building plays its part in the broader fight against climate change. Our goal is a Britain in which there are more beautiful, affordable, eco-friendly homes. And I passionately believe that everyone should have the right to own their own home, and have the chance to enhance our own environment. I think you'd have to be bananas to object to that."

At the last election the Tories supported brownfield developments but strongly campaigned against Labour's plans for housebuilding programmes in rural and suburban Britain.  Victories in seats like Guildford owed much to such local campaigning.

Team Cameron apparently now believe that relaxed planning laws could play a major role in spurring economic growth.  Remembering Margaret Thatcher's sale of council homes to their tenants, the Cameroonians also believe that the building of more homes for lower income and first time buyers should be a big part of the party's new commitment to social justice.  They are apparently strongly influenced by a 2004 book by Ferdinand Mount - Mind The Gap.  Here's what Polly Toynbee said of the book's recommendation to deregulate planning guidelines:

"Mount accepts that setting people free to build will mean more eyesores and landscape blots, as people are allowed to build in ramshackle ways. But if it would transform the lives of all the dispossessed, giving them a real stake, responsibility and a share in wealth, isn't it worth it? The Campaign to Protect Rural England would say no - but here's a conservative willing to argue against a landscape frozen in time by the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act."

There is nothing in David Cameron's IoS article about the demand for housing.  Much housing demand is powered by family breakdown and increased immigration.  The Sunday Times reports a MigrationWatch report which suggests that "more than 1.5m extra homes will be needed to cope with immigration into Britain" over the next twenty years.