Hi bedunkalilt ……. Unlike politicians I rarely make unqualified political statements about the problems this country faces, as I am getting on, have three children over 21 years old I am concerned about who will have to pay for our mess, and while I remember lots from the 1970’s when their age onward, what detail I can’t remember, I look up rather than rant blaming ‘the other party’. Mr Miliband please take note.
Firstly you are correct, the current housing problem COULD re traced back to Thatcher’s 'Right To Buy' council homes scheme, which few Conservative’s would ever apologise for, as to this day, trying to help people that want to get onto the housing ownership ladder, has been a core Tory policy since John Wayne was a cowboy – if any apology is due, it is on the build rate of replacement council/social homes, by successive governments STILL selling them.
But that isn’t the whole picture as there are two home building sectors, the public/social sector and the private sector, both of which the Labour administration somehow failed abysmally to support and provide for our population as we hit the 21st century - when over their first 10-years the tax receipts/spending doubled mainly due to the financial bubble AND they were stimulating NON EU migration, before the prospects of a large 2004 EU migrant workforce was known.
Taking council/social homes; using Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLC) figures, and using the full 18-year term of the last Conservative government (including a few recessions) but only the first 11-years under Labour (before the worst recession in nearly a century), the Conservatives averaged 50,761 new social housing sector homes a year, while the last Labour government averaged 24,299 per year.
Putting the decline rate in context, the new social housing sector build HIGH was 88,530 new homes in 1980 (around the time ‘Right to Buy’ was a policy) and the LOW was 130 new social homes in 2004 at the height of an immigration boom – no doubt STILL selling off Right to Buy Homes, with a resulting large NET REDUCTION of council housing stock for that year.
Taking Private Sector homes; Remembering that under the last Labour government the TOTAL builds of new homes averaged 115,000 a year, yet they knew early on that the declining new home trend was a major pre immigration issue (see ‘main findings’ below), one has to ask why only north of 100,000 new homes were built?
The (2004) Barker review: key points
www.theguardian.com/money/2004/mar/17/business.housing
“Kate Barker, a member of the monetary policy committee, was asked a year ago by Gordon Brown and the deputy prime minister John Prescott to carry out a review of the housing market in the UK.”
”She was specifically required to look at what was behind the lack of supply of housing in the UK and the inability of the housing market to respond to this. Also within her remit was the role of the house-building industry, the level of competition within it, its capacity, technology and level of finance.”
”The final review has now been published, just in time for Gordon Brown's budget.”
“The main findings”
• In 2001, around 175,000 houses were built in the UK. This was the lowest number since the second world war. Over the past 10 years, the number of new houses built has fallen and is now 12.5% lower than in the previous decade.
I will stop there bedunkalilt, so you now be the judge whether I have any right to wonder why more was not done to rectify this problem when the ‘boom’ tax money was no object.
Why it is a tough audience that blames the Conservatives when their previous housing record was better, while receiving a ‘bust’ £157 bil annual overspend in 2010 to address it – and why I was sceptical to any current Labour Housing Minister claims, that they can say they can NOW build 200,000 homes a year, when that nice Ms Barker told them to a decade before, yet they couldn’t, as our numbers under them increased by 4 million?*
P.S. I do not blame Labour for the sub prime crisis that triggered the inter bank money market closure, that triggered the financial crash, that triggered the economic collapse.
I blame Labour (see links below) for the extent of our banking problems, by forming in 1997 an ineffective regulatory tripartite including the new FSA, that relaxed banking regulations, allowing our banks to massively over leverage their balance sheets (lending to us in the main) – after all, how many other western countries had to virtually nationalise their main banks in 2008 (and after) to stop them going under due to their balance sheet weight i.e. RBS and Lloyds?
metro.co.uk/2011/04/11/gordon-brown-i-made-big-mistake-on-banks-before-financial-crisis-650630/
www.theguardian.com/business/2011/dec/12/labour-regulations-city-rbs-collapse
