The disastrous LBC interview changes nothing - we need to turn the heat back on the government that caused the housing crisis
Natalie Bennett should have been better prepared. That’s really all there is to take from her interview with LBC yesterday, in which she crumbled under scrutiny of her housing policies. It’s not that the whole Green Party is discredited, or that she is stupid, or that she has her sights set on ‘the economy being wrecked and much-loved traditions destroyed’.
We need a bit of perspective. The Greens have some bad policies and some good ones; as Zoe Williams writes in the Guardian today, Bennett’s main mistake was in trying to answer a question rather than describe her vision. Most politicians skirt around the questions they are asked in interviews, instead reiterating the part they are proudest of again and again. It is certainly not uncommon for interviewers to be unable to get hard figures out of their subjects.
The difference is that normally these evasions are delivered smoothly, and most speakers have been extensively polished by PR teams so that they know not to incriminate themselves with coughs and pauses. Natalie Bennett somehow missed this training and she’s paying the price in jeers from all sides.
But voters should not let the circus distract them from housing policies that desperately need changing.The Conservatives have many policies and plans for housing which ought to be bigger news than the Green leader forgetting her figures.
For example, the vacant building credit that the government introduced in December 2014, exempts any housing developer who turns an empty building into private housing from paying to build further affordable units. So even if the developer is making good profits, they do not have to contribute to affordable housing.
Super-rich investors will profit from the change; among the first to do so are the redevelopers of an apartment block in Mayfair that was bought in 2013 by Abu Dhabi’s investment fund.
And what about Iain Duncan Smith’s plans to ‘gift’ recent benefit claimants with council house as a reward for being in work for one year? There are around 1.7 million people on the social housing waiting list. These are all people badly in need of a home. IDS’s proposal not only lets these people down, but it assumes that unemployed people choose to be so, and that all they need is a financial incentive to get back to work – as if the promise of a steady income and not having to use food banks was not enough.
There is also David Cameron’s proposal to scrap housing benefit for school leavers in a misguided attempt to improve the work ethic of young people. Again, this proposal overlooks all the complex economic reasons people are out of work and assumes the unemployed just can’t be bothered. Anger about this policy came even from within the prime minister’s own party – Health Committee chair Sarah Wollaston told the BBC:
“I would not support personally taking housing benefit from the most vulnerable. I would not personally support taking away housing benefit from the very young.”
House building is also at its lowest level since 1924. Since the last election, an average of just 201 social and affordable homes have been built in each Conservative-held local authority, according to research obtained by Shadow Local Government secretary Hilary Benn, compared with 403 in Labour-held councils.
In London the problem is especially bad, despite the capital’s growing population. According to the last census, London needs at least 40,000 new homes every year just to keep up with this growth, yet in 2010/11 less than half of that number were built.
All over the country people are finding it harder than ever for people to pay their rents, and home ownership is a laughable dream for a whole generation. Worse, homelessness charity Shelter reports that the number of homeless children is at a three-year high. So let’s take the heat off the Green leader for a second and start holding the government who have actually caused these problems to account.
Natalie Bennett apologised for her interview which, to be fair, hasn’t actually hurt anybody. The same cannot be said of the Conservatives, or of the policies they have introduced.
Ruby Stockham is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow her on Twitter
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112 Responses to “Forget Natalie Bennett’s interview from hell, here’s the real problem with housing”
Guest
…By absolutely no standard measures at all.
GDP (nominal) – 6th
GDP (PPP) – 28th
GDP (Per capita) – 9th (or 10th)
GDP (PPP Per capita) – 26th
But hey, you didn’t read my earlier post.
Guest
More fireproof than the sort of shanty construction you’re talking about, for houses which won’t last. It’s not cheaper after the necessary treatments, and it’s marginally faster.
Lots of *old* housing is made partly from wood. At much greater expense that modern housing, and little of it in the countryside survives with the original wood for good reason. Mass housing is made e of wood until better materials come along,
And I see, no reason in your world to build anything but slipshod, slashdash housing to terrible standards for the peons. So it can be replaced with proper housing owned by private companies, no doubt!
Guest
I answered that to you today already.
And it won’t be you who funds it, I understand you, as you demand short-lived housing, ignoring what I actually said in favour of blind denial of allowing social housing to be built, as you also refuse to admit that investing in profit-making assets, borrowing for it, is a good thing. Heck, with our inflation rate, just print the cash.
Guest
Ah yes, I’m an idiot for not finding a “soloution” to your problem of the threat of social housing, as you talk about your massive boondoggles to prevent it, as you talk about preventing excessive housing and ignore the fact he called for zero social housing and leading with confiscation.
But hey, facts make you an idiot if you’re name is Kevin Stall.
Guest
Ah, so you can provide some quick google map references, eh?
And now you’re trying to define what profits others are allowed again.