Dave'll fix it

Posted by: Jules Birch

03/08/2010

Three months after he fought an election on a pledge to ‘respect the tenures and rents of social housing tenants’ David Cameron has come out in favour of fixed-term tenancies. 

According to reports of a question and answer session in Birmingham today, the prime minister said the change would cause a ‘big argument’ but that it was right to look at a more flexible system for future tenants under which they can be moved on if their circumstances change and homes are freed up for people on the waiting list. 

He was responding to a question from a mother of two teenagers who said she had slept on a blow-up bed for two years because her council could not find her a bigger house. 

According to the Press Association, Cameron said that the government was investing more in social housing. ‘But there is a bigger question here, which is: how do we make sure that people are able to move through the housing chain? At the moment we have a system very much where, if you get a council house or an affordable house, it is yours forever and in some cases people actually hand them down to their children,’ Cameron said. ‘And actually it ought to be about need. Your need has got greater … and yet there isn’t really the opportunity to move.’

‘But there is a question mark about whether, in future, should we be asking, actually, when you are given a council home, is it for fixed period, because maybe in five or 10 years you will be doing a different job and be better paid and you won’t need that home, you will be able to go into the private sector. Do we want to reform tenure to actually enable people to move through housing rather than seeing it as something that you either get - “great, I’ve got my council house” - or you don’t get - “bad, I’m sleeping on a blow-up mattress”.

‘So I think a more flexible system - that not everyone will support and will lead to a quite a big argument … looking at a more flexible system I think makes sense. Not talking about existing tenants but, for future tenants, asking: can we relate more the need you have to the housing that you get, making sure we have more social mobility and people can move through social housing, rather than actually see it as something they get for life?’

Given that Labour flirted with the idea in 2006 when Ruth Kelly was communities secretary it’s no great surprise to see the Conservatives questioning security of tenure too. 

However, Cameron’s comments are not just at odds with his own manifesto (though, interestingly, not with the coalition’s programme for government). They also seem to contradict housing minister Grant Shapps, who during the campaign accused Labour’s John Healey of ‘spreading unfounded and baseless statements about David Cameron, myself and Conservative policies on social tenure and rents’ and said that the Tories had no plans to change security of tenure for existing or future tenants. 

A week before the election, a Conservative spokesman told Inside Housing that the party had ‘no policy to change the current or future security of tenure of tenants in social housing’.

But the signs were clear that there might be a policy after all when Shapps was asked in parliament about an interview he did with me in ROOF in which he said that the rights of future tenants had to be balanced against the needs of people on the waiting list. 

Labour’s Karen Buck asked him: ‘Will he confirm that new tenants -people in housing need coming off the housing waiting list, as he described- will enjoy the security enjoyed by existing tenants?’

His answer immediately raised speculation all over again: ‘As I have said, security of tenure is incredibly important, particularly for people in social housing, and we are keen to protect that. There are 1.8 million families languishing on that social housing waiting list, and it is right and proper that we look at the way in which we can reduce that list. It may include looking at tenure for the future.’

Cameron’s comments will reignite the debate that was started and then squashed under Labour and lead to passionate argument between those who believe that what would amount to the introduction of long assured shortholds in social housing contradicts everything it is meant to stand for and those who argue that a tenancy for life is indefensible when so many people are on the waiting list. 

However, that may not be the only fundamental debate that is about to happen. Conservative councils in London have been arguing that the cuts in housing benefit could leave them with a huge problem unless the homelessness legislation is changed. 

In mid-July, Karen Buck asked Shapps: ‘Given the enormous upheaval that is likely to accrue from the cuts in housing benefit, will the Minister give a guarantee to the House today that he 

will not weaken the safety net of homelessness legislation?’

Just as with security of tenure, his answer was a studied non-answer: ‘I acknowledge the hon. Lady’s considerable knowledge and interest in housing and matters of homelessness, which we have regularly debated. I can provide the assurance that this Government will take issues of homelessness and protection very seriously. I have recently set up a cross-ministerial working group for the first time to bring Ministers together, and we also have a discretionary fund, which we are expanding to £40 million to assist in this way.’