Brown: prioritise homes for local people
Gordon Brown has stressed local authorities should prioritise social housing for local people, in a major speech on immigration.
The prime minister was outlining plans for stricter border controls and a strengthened points-based system to reduce the number of people who can work and study here.
‘There are concerns in some areas about how social housing is allocated,’ he said.
‘I want to emphasise the importance of local councils following the new guidance we have just issued asking and encouraging them to give more priority to local people and those who have spent a long time on a waiting list - and to engage more closely with their communities in setting their allocation policies.’
The prime minister’s speech came as the Home Office published a draft immigration bill and consultation paper on welfare support for asylum seekers.
The government is looking at excluding more professions from the points-based system – which ranks migrants according to people’s ability, experience and age – including engineers, skilled chefs and care workers.
All employers and colleges will have to obtain a licence to act as a sponsor for each migrant under the points-based system, and it will be introduced for those seeking permanent residence and citizenship.
Mr Brown said he wanted to ensure ‘people with low skills and poor job prospects are helped into work and to secure decent living standards for them and their families’. He also said it was ‘vital for cohesion’ all people ‘explicitly sign up to the direct responsibilities that come with being part of a community’.
The draft bill aims to simplify the current rules for migrants replacing five current application categories, which would require people either to be simply granted permission to stay or refused.
Proposals include scrapping section nine of the Asylum and Immigration Act 2004 – which currently prevents local authorities giving support to failed asylum seekers, and introducing payment cards and support for people who ‘comply’ and stricter ‘full board’ supervision for those who do not.
Lisa Nandy, policy adviser at the Children’s Society, said her organisation ‘strongly welcomed’ the proposal to repeal section nine, but opposed other suggestions. She said people would have to ‘grow up in extreme poverty because the support provided is at a low level’ and that providing ‘full board’ as a deterrent for people to stay was ‘inappropriate’ for families and would not work.
Jonathan Ellis, director of policy and development at the Refugee Council said: ‘It is of course important to control borders, but this draft bill fails to address the need for a route to safety for refugees.
‘The consultation on asylum support shows the government is determined to make life as miserable as it can for those who do get here.’
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Readers' comments (10)
Gadfly | 14/11/2009 6:33 am
This is a meaningless promise unless the rule which defines a "local" person is changed. Currently anyone who has lived in a district for at least six months entitled to live in the UK (i.e. including a national of any EU country) can "bid" for a dwelling on the same basis as a person who has been on the "waiting list" for a decade. The dwelling is allocated to whoever has the most points, which is why so many foreigners are being housed rather than British people.
Other countries have a more robust policy - for example in Poland, social housing is for Polish people, and Jersey earmarks some of its housing to people born there, to prevent all the houses being bought up by the mega rich.
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| 14/11/2009 8:17 pm
After completely disenfranchising the very people that the Labour party was set up to represent, Brown finally discovers the bleeding obvious. All far to late to save them of course. Nevertheless this is hopefully another nail in the coffin of the socially poisonous so-called "needs" based allocation regime.
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Melvin Brown | 16/11/2009 9:43 am
Yet again I hear the rumble of a forthcoming election and Mr Brown running around trying to round up some extra votes.
Too little too late Gordon.
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stephen west | 16/11/2009 10:53 am
Melvin Brown your spot on this is just a knee jerk reaction from Gordon Brown which has come a decade too late and is just an attempt to better Labours' chances at the next election. Does he really think he is going to get the votes from those very people his party has alienated all these years by his Governments disastrous attempts to stem mass emigration to the UK and that is the masses of UK voters who are unemployed and cannot get on the Social Housing Ladder! Those in genuine need of asylum in the UK bare the brunt of the tens of thousands who have flocked to these shores who are not escaping, torturous regimes abroad with poor Human Rights but are simply economic migrants in search of a better life in the uk. The fact that being apart of a far ever growing European Union is the real cause for UK residents especially those with limited education and work skills having to compete to get jobs and social housing which has added far more to their plight then genuine asylum seekers have.
Stephen West
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Peter | 16/11/2009 10:57 am
So Labour is all about 'local' and Tories are all about 'localism'! Does anybody knows what the Lib-Dem slogan is?
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Andrew Fiske | 16/11/2009 11:17 am
All very interesting and we seem to be moving into some BNP policy areas here. We're spending an enormous amount of time and effort reviewing Council corporate approaches to equalities and diversity (check recent AC inspection reports as they seem to see that this should be our main focus and we've all got our approaches wrong). This "local first" policy ought to raise some interesting questions as to whether the Government's policy has racist undertones. For example how can people from other nationalities who are not from the indigenous population who live and work in the area be given equal status as local people who have lived in an area for longer? Perhaps the answer to my question is political expediency!
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Melvin Bone | 16/11/2009 1:30 pm
'the Government's policy has racist undertones'
Whats race got to do with it?
Its about having lived locally for a period of time. Not race.
It some areas people have to show local ties to the area before they are considered for housing, this is most common in rural areas. It's not all about the big cities!
It does sound a little bit 'Royston Vasey' local homes for local people
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| 16/11/2009 9:32 pm
I was just waiting for someone from the brainwashed looney left sandal wearing brigade to start crying "wacist" like the demented Orwellian parrots of NewSpeak they are. How on earth is it racist for a Government to want to prioritise the interests of its citizens over and above the interests of foreigners who have been allowed to come here of their free will from other sovereign states? Only in England, as they say. Unfortunately, no matter what politicians of any party say or do, the culturally poisonous agenda of so-called "equality and diversity" (translating into privilege for minorities irrespective of behaviour and contribution) pushed by these nuts has, over the last 12 years, seeped into the machinery of the public sector. As Andrew Fiske correctly points out, the Audit Commission, amongst many other public entities, have become paralysed with this NeoMarxist ideological claptrap and until there is mass sackings of the individuals within the public sector who promote this culturally destructive agenda, nothing on the ground will ever change.
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Hannah | 24/11/2009 3:00 pm
Can I just ask for some help with this please? I'm currently a social work student and have been asked to provide a report on this proposal. What would be the benefits and who gain from this change in allocation. And is there any eveidence anywhere to support this?
Thanks
Hannah
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Joe Halewood | 25/11/2009 12:12 pm
ILAG asks:-
"How on earth is it racist for a Government to want to prioritise the interests of its citizens over and above the interests of foreigners ...?"
1. When one actively discrimates for one group over another it is discrimination.
2. When that discrimination is based on race it is racial discrimination.
So, according to ILAG stating the bloody obvious with no ambiguity is Neo-Marxist claptrap - well im sure all the Neo-Marxists out there will rejoice in the fact that a Neo-Conservative says Neo-Marxism is stating the bloody obvious.
To get to the article - The PM is being disingenuous because allocations policies are governed by law not by local fiat or consultation so when he says "engage more closely with their communities in setting their allocation policies" he must know this cant happen.
Local authorities may tinker with their allocation policies but must give reasonable preference in law to prescribed groups of those in need such as homeless and medical need etc....irrespective of the colour of their skin (assuming and dependent upon them having a legal right to be in the country).
ILAG wishes to return to his conveniently remembered halcyon days of the 50s when the allocation of a property was the subjective view of a housing official over whether the applicant was a "good chap" rather than having allocation based on medical need or homeless circumstance - a system open and rife with potential for abuse, and even abuse and discrimination against a white-faced Little Englander!
Anyone think ILAG would still support such a system if the decision makers on allocation were all non-white? Or if they were all non-white Neo Marxists? I doubt it.
Social housing is a benefit that rightly is allocated to those most in need and whether they are local or not. Allocation cant be parochial as its a nonsense if applicant A (who could be white and even a Neo Conservative) applies say in Newcastle and is told sorry you are not from around here go and apply in Cornwall.
Its very easy to spout arguments about local bases and skin colour bases by playing on fears of people, after all that is the strategy of the BNP and other far-right groups and we all see where that has led in the past and no slef respecting person wants that to happen in the future. ILAG would have us all believe that allocation based on need actively discriminates against the indigenous white population. It doesnt it is based on need of the applicant regardless of skin colour, thats all.
It has its problems as any system does, but in theory it is fair and equitable (and as it is based in law in practice too), and until someone comes up with a more equitable system it will remain and rightly so.
Its easy to use such fear-fuelled arguments (that Johnny Foreigner benefits over local white people) when we have a chronic national shortage of anything - the "if we didnt let those immigrants in" knee-jerk strategy - and we have a chronic shortage of social housing. So rather than address the issues of undersupply that have largely been caused by the Neo-Conservative policy of RtB taking 1,800,000 properties out of the supply chain, the ardent 'righteous' fall back on blaming Johnny Foreigner and decry all those that diagree with this as sandal wearing blah, blah...
Equality and Diversity - a poisonous agenda?
I dont know who ILAG is. ILAG maybe male or female. ILAG may have a disability (physical, sensory or learning.) ILAG 's sexuality may differ from others. ILAG may be strongly religious or atheist or even sacrifice live goats to the Great God of Baal. ILAG's skin colour does differ from others as we all do. ILAG could be 3 feet 7 or 7 feet 3 - or whatever the metric equivlents of those imperial measurements.
Yet whatever ILAG is he is part of a diverse nation (irrespective of whether that is a multicultural one - and culture includes D/deaf people, Jewish people and many others not just minority ethnicity) and regardless of ILAGs diversity we all should be treated with Equality and fairness. Any variance to that such as favouring local people - however you define local - is discriminatory and wrong, morally and in law.
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