Not for turning

By Emily RogersChief reporter (maternity leave)

Amid press reports stating that her department was drawing up plans to scrap lifetime tenancies, the room was bristling with anticipation at the seminar organised by think tank the Smith Institute, where she was expected to set out her vision for social housing reform.

But the veteran politician, a physical hybrid of Margaret Thatcher and Princess Anne and oozing the regal haughtiness and stately steeliness of both, made it clear that this lady would not be drawn.

Slipping into the room just moments before she was due to speak, the minister reprimanded any policy speculators like a schoolmistress ticking off a class with mischief makers among them.

Whatever Mrs Beckett’s true feelings on the subject, she is likely to have the breathing space she wants to watch the ballgame from the sidelines.

She had not the slightest intention to anticipate the outcome of her department’s social housing reforms, she said, adding: ‘If there’s anybody getting impressions that my mind is made up… forget it’. She swept out after telling her audience she could not stay for the ensuing discussion, but warning: ‘I have ears here to hear what you say’.

The issue of ending lifetime tenancies is something that appears to have been bouncing around civil servants’ quarters behind the shield of anonymity for some time now. It is like a ball being tossed around that nobody wants to be caught holding, sometimes thrown into the fray by think tanks from the sidelines. The Chartered Institute of Housing recently picked it up and ran a few steps with it, but then appeared to want to put it down, mounting a passionate defence of its proposed move away from a static tenancy for life.

Mrs Beckett meanwhile, has stepped well back from the public ballgame. Hours before this week’s seminar, she appeared to have given some reassurance to members of her party that she wouldn’t entertain the idea of scrapping tenure security. ‘She’s an experienced Labour politician and she knows this is not the direction that a Labour government should be going in,’ said one. Labour MPs too are appealing to what they see as her better judgement. One said: ‘I’ve got much more confidence in Beckett [than Flint] because she’s somebody who will stand up to civil servants.’

But in front of an audience of establishment housing figures, Ms Beckett also reeled out similar arguments to the ones used by those justifying an end to lifetime tenancies. The system had to change, she said. The core of the problem is of course a shortage of homes. But people need better private sector options too.

Whatever Ms Beckett’s true feelings on the subject, she is likely to have the breathing space she wants to watch the ballgame from the sidelines. One parliamentary insider said: ‘My view is that they won’t touch this with a bargepole in the run up to the general election.’

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