Author: Steve Hilditch

It was a rare moment. Grant Shapps said something with which Red Brick agreed. It was back in January 2011 and Shapps was all over the newspapers and TV news with his views on the housing market, and in particular house prices.

Shapps said that Ministers wanted to ‘engineer’ a period of house price stability, using the example of prices rising 2% a year while incomes rose 4%. The Mail at the time quoted him saying that homeowners should see their house as a home and not an investment and should no longer rely on their houses to fund their retirement.

Ignoring the fact that his figures would mean real terms price reductions, this could have been a crucial turning point in housing policy. House price rises favour those who already own, stable prices favour those who want to own but are not yet in a position to do so. For a nanosecond we glimpsed the possibility that all of the political parties could agree on a major long term housing policy objective.

“The main thing everyone requires for their subsistence is a roof over their head and when that basic human need becomes too expensive for average citizens to afford, something is out of kilter. I think the answer is house-price stability.” Grant Shapps, January 2011.

Of course we were skeptical. The implication is that the state would intervene to achieve the stability objective or at least avoid policies that would inflate prices further.

Two and a bit years later, our skepticism has proved well founded. With the self-same Grant Shapps now chairman of the Conservative Party, we are headed for the opposite end of the line. Rising house prices is now a central feature of the Government’s attempt to convince the population that things are getting better. Existing owners (the majority) feel better when they think they are sitting on an asset that is appreciating, and it might even encourage them to spend a little more on household effects. They quickly forget that it makes it more likely that the back bedroom will be home to their son or daughter for many years yet.

The media are the Government’s accomplices. I will bother you with only one example, from the Express: ‘Booming Britain: Joy for millions as house prices rise’ But I should also mention that rising house prices was included in a list of ‘good news stories’ on BBC News by the normally even-handed Hugh Pym.

Apart from those who directly benefit, it is hard to find anyone who believes that Government’s ‘help to buy’ scheme will boost housing supply rather than increase prices (by raising general demand at a time of shortage). The general view of economists and housing market analysts, from Shelter to the International Monetary Fund, is that the Government is ‘fuelling a boom’. The less than progressive Institute of Directors called it ‘mad’:

“The housing market needs help to supply, not help to buy, and the extension of this scheme is very dangerous. Government guarantees will not increase the supply of homes, but they will drive up prices at a time when it seems likely that house prices are already over-valued. There is a real risk that the housing market will become dependent on the underwriting by government.  The world must have gone mad for us to now be discussing endless taxpayer guarantees for mortgages.” Graham Leach, Institute of Directors

The Priced Out campaign called it simply ‘a moronic policy’ and said: ‘Help to Buy should really be called ‘Help to Sell’, as the main winners will be developers and existing homeowners’. They stress the point that, as a large share of mortgage money is going into buy to let, further excluding first time buyers, the policy is pricing out families even more.

Research by Hometrack suggests that it is not just the prime central London market that is racing ahead like Usain Bolt, it is the traditionally cheaper areas of inner London, like Hackney and Lambeth, where the biggest increases are being experienced. Regional differences are of growing importance. Rightmove shows how national averages mask disparate trends in the regions, with house price growth in some regions overshadowing real term falls in others. The flight from London of young potential home owners, added to the forced removal of many people through benefits caps (including for those in work) is not well understood. But the impact of all these changes on the other regions has scarcely been considered.

In light of all this, we would like to suggest that Grant Shapps, Housing Minister circa 2011, drops a line to Grant Shapps, Tory Chairman 2013, reminding him of the sensible thing he once said about house price stability.

Normally the Taxpayers’ Alliance website is only worth a visit to raise a smile and to see what people pretending to be on the taxpayers’ side are up to. I say pretend because of course everyone is a taxpayer: those who do not pay income tax pay more regressive taxes like VAT, but the TPA prefer a more clearcut world where ‘we’ the taxpayers pay for ‘them’ the non-taxpayers through profligate public spending.
What caught my eye was a new TPA campaign called ‘Stamp Out Stamp Duty’ backed up by a research note that contained some interesting data. In 2012-13 over £4 billion stamp duty was collected, of which £3.6 billion came from transactions on properties with values over £250,000 – only a  quarter of sales by number. What is intriguing is the district-level  figures they provide, showing just how enormously the tax take varies from area to area.  In Westminster, 3,630 transactions in 2012-13 produced total stamp duty revenue of £295,706,632.  97% of transactions were at the rate of 3% or higher (ie property value £250,000 or above).
Towards the other end of the scale, the 2,955 transactions in Stoke-on-Trent produced a total tax take of only £892,259. Only 29 transactions – 1% – attracted tax at 3% or more and these still produced 30% of the total tax take.
Obviously everywhere else was in between these two extremes, but the figures confirmed my suspicions about why the Mayor of London wants to get his hands on the London share of stamp duty income and why Westminster City Council has also recently called for a slice of the tax to remain locally. It is clearly the case that the people of Stoke, and other places with lower property values, would lose out on such a deal, but since when did the Mayor bother about that? It is worth noting that Taxpayers’ Alliance policies always seem to benefit the most well-off, in this case those that can afford the most expensive houses. Equally, by removing a significant source of public income, the most likely losers would be those on low incomes who need public services.
Writing in the Guardian, economist Jonathan Portes made the point that it is fair enough to call for an end to stamp duty – a terrible tax, he calls it – but only if it is replaced by a fairer form of property tax. He argues that simple abolition, apart from leaving a hole in the public finances, would also be a hugely regressive move. Because stamp duty is only levied when a property is sold, removal would tend to push up prices (people would pay less tax and could afford more house). The UK would be a fairer and more productive country with a higher tax burden on land and property, not a lower one. As council tax also charges more to poorer people in relation to their property values, it should also be considered for replacement.
Portes calls for a revamped council tax levied on current property values with no cap. This would, he says, achieve the same aims as the ‘Mansion Tax’ and in a simpler way. Identified problems – like the impact on asset-rich but income-poor pensioners – could be dealt with, for example by deferring payments until the property is sold. And he observes that the people who would lose from such a new council tax would be the vested interests that the Taxpayers’ Alliance actually represents.
There are a lot of proposals around at the moment that look to make property and land taxation fairer. I doubt if he TPA will support any of the progressive ones, but this is a big debate that must be had.

Agreeing with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, is becoming a bit of a habit. But, after his Wonga versus credit unions comments, this was what he tweeted in response to Lord Howell’s view that the ‘desolate’ North East would be a good place to start ‘fracking’: “North-east England very beautiful, rugged, welcoming, inspiring, historic, advancing, not ‘desolate’ as was said in House of Lords today.”
Former Leader of Newcastle City Council Lord Beecham, now a Labour peer, said: “Neville Chamberlain spoke of pre-war Czechoslovakia as ‘a faraway country of which we know nothing’. Lord Howell clearly has a similar view on the north-east and his comments once again highlight the Tories’ problem with the north.”
I am as uncertain about fracking as the next person, but I am certain that I wouldn’t trust Tories like Howell to get it right. So here are some of my favourite scenes of desolation to help us to sit and reflect on the issues.
Bamburgh Castle

Some iconic bridges

Sunset over very desolate South Shields

High Force, Co Durham

Lindisfarne. Aidan found it tranquil, or was it desolate.  More on Lindisfarne here.

Dunstanburgh Castle – old ruin suitable for fracking

St James’ Park. Don’t tell Mike Ashley about fracking. It will just give him ideas.

A niche housing blog like Red Brick doesn’t expect any story to go viral – that’s reserved for royalty, pop stars and funny animals doing tricks. But in October 2011 our attack on a programme on welfare researched and presented by Radio 4’s John Humphrys became our biggest ever hit.
The Red Brick piece – ‘John Humphrys, hubris, and welfare dependency’ – criticised the basic premise of his hour-long BBC documentary – a year in the making, we were told, and involving a (no doubt) all-expenses paid trip to the USA – that ‘a dependency culture has emerged….. A sense of entitlement. A sense that the State owes us a living. A sense that not only is it possible to get something for nothing but that we have a right to do so.’
We pointed out that Humphrys apparently got paid nearly £400,000 a year to be rude to people on the radio in the mornings, which didn’t seem to make him particularly qualified to comment on the incomes or behaviour of the extremely poor.
But our ire was stirred most by the fact that he trailed his programme in a feature article in the Daily Mail built around a large picture of the fictional Gallagher family and the headline ‘Our Shameless Society’. He knew exactly what he was doing. He knew what the Mail stands for, he knew what message the ‘shameless’ imagery would convey, and he knew which audience he was pandering to.
Now, nearly 2 years later, in a rare victory against the forces of darkness, a complaint made by the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) about the programme has been upheld by the BBC Trust, which concluded that the programme breached its rules on impartiality and accuracy.
CPAG Director Alison Garnham commented: “This programme, like too many media stories, failed the public by swallowing wholesale the evidence-free myth of a ‘dependency culture’ in which unemployment and rising benefit spending is the fault of the unemployed.’
The Trust however rejected part of the complaint that Humphrys had presented a personal view in contravention of guidelines for senior current affairs presenters on controversial issues, stating that the sentiments he expressed were: “…judgements based on his personal experience rather than opinions which could be interpreted as a personal view.”
This is arrant nonsense and a whitewash. The programme started with a highly personal recollection by Humphrys of his own background in Splott in Wales and his poor upbringing; it followed him around as he personally visited various (I would suggest carefully researched and selected) claimants to discover their attitudes; and it included a visit to the Centre for Social Justice, the think tank most closely associated with the views and prejudices of Iain Duncan Smith, but no other organisation with a countervailing view – for example CPAG. As most of the controversial comments were made by Humphrys direct to camera, to claim that this was not a personal view is ludicrous. I cannot think that this conclusion is anything other than an attempt to draw a line to prevent calls being made for Humphrys to be sacked. 

Based on watching the programme and reading the Daily Mail piece that launched it, I think that CPAG were spot on in their complaint:

The programme explored the topic from within a partisan and politically interested framing that purports there to be a ‘benefits dependency culture’ and an ‘age of entitlement’.
This framing precluded the exploration of opposing views and relevant factual information, and led to the mischaracterisation of benefit claimants interviewed by John Humphrys as ‘victims of the benefit system’ despite their own focus on problems such as low pay and the high cost of childcare.
The failure to include any expert voices from the UK with views diverging from those of the government compounded the inaccuracy and impartiality and prevented salient facts being brought to the audience’s attention.
These failings resulted in breaches of BBC Editorial Guidelines on both accuracy and impartiality.
Furthermore, the programme gave the appearance of presenting the personal views of one of its senior news and current affairs presenters, in contravention of guidelines. This was compounded by the publication of an article in the national press, authored by the presenter, John Humphrys, and with the headline “JOHN HUMPHRYS: How our welfare system has created an age of entitlement’ (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2052749/Our-Shameless-society-How-welfare-state-created-age-entitlement.html).

This programme was a biased, sensationalised and prejudiced attempt to portray people in receipt of benefits as undeserving scroungers. It was obviously a personal view developed by the presenter, who took a year to research and prepare the programme for broadcast. . The BBC has admitted that it breached its standards for impartiality and accuracy. Their argument that it did not breach their standards relating to senior presenters, who normally have the trust of the public, is flimsy in the extreme.
John Humphrys should be sacked.

Today’s High Court judgement against disabled people seeking to overturn the bedroom tax, on the grounds that it is discriminatory and contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights, is a depressing outcome for all the families involved.
Lawyers for the families have, however, already committed to appealing against the ruling, arguing that the discriminatory impact of the tax on people with disabilities cannot be justified and is unlawful. The statement by the families’ solicitors is an interesting summary of the case and can be found here. We wish the families well: they are fighting on behalf of hundreds of thousands of others.
It is now four months since the Tax was imposed. The evidence from around the country suggests that the impact has been even greater than was feared beforehand, as the National Housing Federation’s David Orr has argued, as detailed assessments from organisations like Aragon Housing have substantiated, and as gruesome case histories from all around the country have piled up (see for example the excellent @Welfare__Reform twitter feed).
Despite its steadfast defence of its ‘spare room subsidy’ policy, the Government has made several U turns on the details already, and it has become so complicated that even David Cameron appears not to know what the policy actually is, as Patrick Butler has documented for the Guardian. Even following this Court success for the Government, they have been embarrassed into making an extra £35 million available for discretionary payments – nowhere near enough, but a sign that the continuous pressure is having an impact.
Although the Court was highly critical of DWP on some aspects of the case, especially in relation to a previous judgement in relation to children, the department responded in the style of its boss, Iain Duncan Smith – never mind the facts, just repeat the same blithering nonsense.
The core of their argument is that applying the bedroom tax to the social rented sector is ‘fair’ because similar rules have applied to private tenants since around 1989. But this ignores two facts. First, since 1989 Governments of both persuasions have argued that the bedroom limits were not appropriate or needed in the social rented sector because housing allocations were subject to Government and landlord policies and procedures which did not apply to the private rented sector: there were levers other than benefits which could be used to ensure a proper size fit between households and accommodation. Secondly, the impact of the bedroom rules on disabled people in the private rented sector has been controversial since they were introduced. Indeed, the rules have been the subject of previous Government promises of remedial action to remove some of the unfairness. (Excellent background material on the policy can be found in this House of Commons Library briefing).
So, the summary position is this: 1) set unfair rules in the private sector; 2) spend 20 years arguing that these should not be extended to the social sector because the system of letting homes in the two sectors is so different; 3) suddenly decide to apply similar rules to the social sector; 4) argue that the rules in the social sector are fair because they are the same as the private sector.
The bedroom tax affects disabled people in a hugely disproportionate manner. In any normal parlance it is a discriminatory policy. The policy is not fair in either sector, and two wrongs do not make a right.

Today is the centenary of the birth of Michael Foot, Leader of the Labour Party from 1980 to 1983 – and during the infamous defeat at the 1983 General Election.
Foot is remembered fondly in the Labour Party for his intelligence, oratory, brilliant writing, wit and charm, and not just for the 1983 defeat. Most of the blame for that is attached to the 1983 Labour Manifesto, which is only ever mentioned alongside Gerald Kaufman’s description of it as ‘the longest suicide note in history’. Foot may well have been the only person capable of holding the Labour Party together at the time. He believed that the only credible Manifesto was one based on the resolutions passed at Labour Conference, and that is what it was. Responsibility should therefore be widely shared.
The most controversial items in the Manifesto – unilateral nuclear disarmament, leaving the EEC, and nationalisation – have dominated the subsequent debate about its merits. But it also included a raft of progressive policies, many of which ultimately became law under New Labour – including devolution to the nations, freedom of information, equal pay and other rights for women, and more action to end racial discrimination. Reading through 30 years on, I think its economic and social policies deserve a more generous retrospective review. It is tempting to agree with Neil Clark, writing a Guardian Opinion piece, about what really happened in that Election: ‘In truth the real “suicide note” in 1983 election was the Conservative party manifesto, which, with its dogmatic espousal of free-market policies, put on us on the road we are today: a debt-ridden, privatised service economy with massive differentials in wealth; a country where the majority of people – working class and middle class – are exploited by an unaccountable, transnational corporate and financial elite.’
The housing policies in the 1983 Manifesto reflect different housing priorities from now: although there were significant housing shortages, there was a general belief that the they could be tackled and overcome. No-one imagined that affordable housebuilding would suffer so spectacularly and for so long under Thatcher, nor that it would fail to revive in the subsequent 30 years. So, although the Manifesto had a commitment to restore the council housebuilding programme ended by Thatcher, the priority for the promised ‘immediate 50 per cent increase in (council) housing investment programmes’ was given to ‘the urgent repair and replacement of run-down estates.’ And there was a commitment on rents: ‘We will freeze all rents for the first full year’.
Then, as now, Labour sought a balanced housing tenure policy rather than a damaging obsession with one tenure: ‘Our aim is a decent home for all with real freedom of choice between renting and owning, on terms people can afford. Labour governments have done more than any others to assist owner occupiers; and we will extend this by giving special assistance to first-time buyers and council tenants.’
Only 6 years after the ground breaking homelessness legislation, and before most people became aware of the bed and breakfast crisis about to explode, Labour committed to go further by extending the ‘priority’ groups under the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act, including more single people, and generally to strengthen the rights of homeless people.
There was a hugely different attitude towards council tenants from the one that has become common today: in addition to a national action programme to repair and improve or replace run-down estates, there was a commitment to ‘strengthen tenants’ rights on security, repairs and improvements, access to files, exchanges, transfers, moves between local authority areas, and rehousing rights on breakdown of relationship’ and a progressive reform agenda: ‘to encourage more responsive and decentralised housing management and maintenance, and promote tenant participation and democracy, including housing co-operatives’.
The policy towards the private rented sector reflected the then common view that absentee private landlordism would become a thing of the past, with home ownership and social renting became the norm. There was a commitment to transfer homes from private landlords to social landlords and home owners, a commitment to repeal shorthold tenure, and policies to strengthen tenants’ right on deposits and harassment. And a right to repair was promised for all tenants irrespective of landlord.
On land, the Manifesto promised to put the interests of local people ahead of property speculators through positive land planning and by enabling councils to buy (non owner occupied) development land at current use value. That would put the cat among the pigeons nowadays.
If I can’t go so far as to agree with Neil Clark’s view that the 1983 Manifesto was ‘not so suicidal after all’, he may be right that it was the missed opportunity to derail the neo-liberal bandwagon. The Manifesto certainly had a strong Keynesian ethic, and a commitment to social justice and ‘affordable housing for all’ that it is helpful to reflect on now.

What goes up may come down.  Only 10 years ago, the growth of home ownership was believed to be inexorable: people would talk of it reaching 90% of households. But without much advance warning, it peaked in 2003 and has fallen from 71% of households then to 65% now (figures for England).
Virtually all net housing growth in the last 10 years has been in private renting. Although the number of home owners has remained fairly constant, in the mid 14 millions of households, and the number of social renters has also been fairly constant at around 3.8m, the number of private renters has grown from 2.2 million to 3.8 million households (in percentage terms from 10.8% in 2003 to 17.4% in 2011-12).  Now people talk about the growth in private renting being inexorable…..
This truly astonishing turnaround in the housing market – which pre-dated and was not caused by the global financial crisis, even if the credit crunch reinforced the trends – has raised a whole new set of dilemmas for policy-makers. Some issues remain the same – the crap end of the market is still crap, and still nothing much gets done about it. But new issues have emerged, and I would highlight four:

• Many of the households coming into the sector are families with children who have been excluded from social renting or from home ownership, but the arrangements in the sector have not changed to reflect the different needs of such families.
• Many new landlords are in a position where the non-payment of rent by their tenant means the non-payment of a mortgage for them – despite high rents and a long-term capital gain they are not necessarily coining it in week by week. Although buying to rent is often described as being ‘the new pension fund’, we still know very little about the new landlords, and in particular whether they are in it for the long term or just until some other investment with a better return comes along.
• Many new landlords are also amateurs at the job and are more likely to be dependant on a lettings agent or manager. Lettings agents in particular are not the friend of the landlord or the tenant – they want turnover because finding new tenants brings in the cash and the possibility of a rent hike, whereas landlords’ business plans are easily wrecked by an unplanned void period. Tenants face an ever-increasing set of fees and charges to access a home.
• One of the effects of the clamp-down on local housing allowances has been to push people out of the more expensive areas into the ‘cheaper’ areas (everything is relative). This has had little or no effect on rents in the expensive areas, where demand is strong, but it is having the effect of pushing rents up in the cheaper areas because there are now more people competing for the same number of ‘affordable’ vacancies.

The upshot of all this is that some new thinking has been needed about the sector. The old remedies – leaving it all to the unrestrained free market, as favoured by the right, and stringent rent control advocated on the left – will not do the job and carry too much risk. There is no silver bullet and a package of new policies are needed. A lot of good policy work has been done (but only outside Government, I am sorry to say) by a range of organisations and think tanks, including landlords’ organisations and responsible agents, and something resembling a consensus is beginning to emerge with the broad aim of stabilising and modernising the sector. This approach is about moderating rent increases, encouraging far longer tenancies, registering landlords, heavily regulating lettings agencies, and reinforcing the role of local authorities in improving standards and stamping out rogues.
Today’s report from the CLG Committee of the House of Commons on the private rented sector is firmly in this new mainstream. Its analysis seems spot on and its key recommendations – around better regulation, the key role of local authorities, ending sharp practice, better court procedures when things go wrong, and changing the culture of the sector so it becomes more family-friendly – allied to the Committee’s continuous exhortation for more house building in all tenures – reflect the emerging view about the best way forward.
Whilst the Government has its head in the sand – the last people to recognise that an unfettered free market doesn’t work for landlords or tenants – Labour has done a lot of work in this area and the Shadow Housing Minister, Jack Dromey, is to be commended for taking time over the detail, consulting widely with all parties, and publishing intelligent policy papers about what should be done.
To get housing right over the next decade, we have to take action in all tenures: we have to enable more people to become home owners, we have to provide far more social rented housing at genuinely affordable rents, but we also have to find a new stable settlement for private renting which is fair to tenants and landlords: homes at good standards on fair terms.

If I said ‘Iain Duncan Smith eats babies for breakfast’ and, when challenged, responded that I didn’t actually have any evidence to prove this but that didn’t matter because ‘I believe it to be true’, you would probably think I’d been out in the sun too long or had one too many Pimms.
At one time, most Europeans believed that the earth was the centre of the solar system. It turned out they were wrong. But this was the line of rationality taken by the same Duncan Smith this morning on the BBC Today programme when interviewed by an unusually tame John Humphrys (unusual but not surprising because he has bad form himself on welfare issues).
Duncan Smith said that, despite the lack of evidence, he believes it to be true that the pilots of the overall benefit cap encouraged thousands of people back into work. This is despite criticism from the UK Statistics Authority about his, shall we say, creative use of statistics on this and other welfare reform matters. Real facts about the number of people in Haringey, one of the pilot areas, who went into work, provided by the Leader of the Council, Claire Kober, were dismissed as he accused his critics of ‘seeking out cases’ and being ‘politically motivated’.
Duncan Smith always reminds me of the ‘swivel-eyed loons’ that David Cameron’s associates believe inhabit local Conservative Associations – except he is in the Government and in charge of one of the departments that has the most impact on the lives of people who are poor. His level of annoyance at being challenged on any of his policies has risen alarmingly as his barmier policies have come into force.
Labour’s position on welfare reform has improved recently, especially with the ‘benefits to bricks’ policy being debated, but the Party still gives the impression of a rabbit startled in the headlights. There are those who, completely mistakenly in my view, believe that Labour is ‘too soft’ on welfare and that the Party must get onside with the majority of people who tell pollsters they support the Government’s policy. I think it is simply untrue that the system is soft – here for example are some recent examples of jobseekers losing benefit for the most trivial and often unfair reasons. I also think that the correct response to a particular public opinion is not to simply fall in line, but to show leadership and argue from your own principles – otherwise we would be supporting capital punishment, Labour in power would have ended immigration, and we would still be campaigning to quit Europe.
On the OBC Labour has said it supports a cap but wants it to be regionally-based to take much better account of rent differentials . Others have argued that Child Benefit, which is available to all on standard tax rates, should be taken out of the OBC. Either option would substantially reduce the dire impact the cap will have on families. Both deserve to be better debated.
Of course it is hard to get to first base with a progressive view on welfare reform when the media are rampant on the issue, the phone-ins are full of bigots, and the (BBC’s best friends) Taxpayers Alliance are telling everyone that there are a very large number of skivers and scroungers out there.
In face of the onslaught against people on benefits, it is vital to remember some key points and to say them over and over again.
The ‘overall benefit cap’ is not ‘fair’ because does not compare like with like. Humphrys started his piece by saying that the cap was set ‘at the average income for a working family’. Wrong, it is set at the average earnings – the average income of a working family would also have to take account the benefits and credits they receive – meaning that their average income is significantly higher. If the OBC was set at average income, there would be nothing to shout about. Despite all the comments to the contrary, it is virtually impossible for an out of work family to be better off than an in-work family.
The way it will work until Universal Credit is introduced means that the overall benefit cap is essentially a further cap on housing benefit. It will hit hardest at families with larger numbers of children living in areas with high rental costs – on any estimate it will increase child poverty, which the Government is supposedly against. It will save very little money (I believe £110m in the first year) and is little more than a political device designed a) to get favourable publicity about clamping down on benefit recipients and b) to set a trap for Labour. Indeed, in public spending terms it is almost certain to be counter-productive – by increasing homelessness, it will push up costs in local government and other parts of the benefits system, probably by a lot more than it saves.

A fascinating paper published yesterday by the Royal Statistical Society and King’s College London – The Power of Perception – reported on a survey undertaken by Ipsos MORI which ‘shows just how wrong public opinion can be on key social issues’.
Several of the report’s top 10 public ‘misconceptions’ are relevant to the topics covered most frequently by Red Brick. They include:

• Nearly one in three think more is spent on jobseekers allowance than pensions (in fact it’s £5bn versus £74bn).
• The public thinks 24% of benefit money is claimed fraudulently (in reality 0.7%).
• Given a list of changes to benefits, 33% say the overall benefit cap will save most money, twice as many as select raising the pension age to 66 for men and women. In fact the cap saves £290m compared to £5bn for the pension age change.
• People think teenage pregnancy is 25 times more common than it actually is (15% of girls under 16 get pregnant each year, reality 0.6%).
• More than half think crime, and violent crime in particular, is rising (in reality it has been falling for many years).
• People think 31% of the population are immigrants, in reality it’s 13%.

The interesting thing about the top ten is that they are all lines that are taken by the right wing in Britain and reflect the screaming headlines of the right wing press. I guess they wouldn’t do it if they thought it didn’t work.
And it’s not just the written media: TV and radio seem to be so denuded of good journalism that they are increasingly dependant on reporting what is in the papers. Almost every news programme features ‘the press’. As a news junky, it’s amazing to note how many times the lead story on The World At One or even Newsnight is the same as whatever led the reactionary media in the morning. Similarly, when the old bore David Dimbleby gets on his high horse when people complain about the selection of questions on Question Time, his defence is that they reflect what most people in the audience wanted to ask about – which, curiously, also closely resembles what was in the papers and on news outlets during the day.
Fortunately we now have Twitter; it’s so much better than shouting at the TV.
The RSS report illustrates the power of propaganda even in a supposedly sophisticated modern democracy. And it is a huge challenge for people of a progressive persuasion. Anyone taking a different line (eg against the overall benefit cap, or in defence of people seeking work) has to swim against the tide, speaking against the common perception and challenging the conventional wisdom.
That’s why I like Owen Jones so much: not for his own prescriptions, but for his bravery and constancy, in face of frequent scorn and disbelief, to continue telling what I regard as the truth about trades unionists, people on social security, working class communities, council tenants, and so on. His book Chavs is an extraordinary antidote to the Daily Crap we rely on for our news (Red Brick view here). I also have a lot of time for others who spend their time debunking myths and trying desperately hard to get debates about vital issues like the welfare state onto a proper factual  footing, like Declan Gaffney.
It’s also why I get so upset when people I think should be on the same side – anybody vaguely progressive – join in the peddling of myths and attacking the poor for their poverty. It’s been a big feature of my attitude to the LibDems in power, people who have adopted the Iain Duncan Smith approach to statistical interpretation and political discourse. And it’s why it is the equivalent of lighting the blue touch paper when I hear people in Labour taking similar lines.
I can only agree with Hetan Shah, executive director of the Royal Statistical Society, introducing their report:
‘How can you develop good policy when public perceptions can be so out of kilter with the evidence? We need to see three things happen. Firstly, politicians need to be better at talking about the real state of affairs of the country, rather than spinning the numbers. Secondly, the media has to try and genuinely illuminate issues, rather than use statistics to sensationalise. And finally, we need better teaching of statistical literacy in schools, so that people get more comfortable in understanding evidence.’
Spot on.

At the CIH Conference last week, Housing Minister Mark Prisk said that the new funding settlement for housing would involve ‘something for something’. To get a small slice of the increasingly tiny Government subsidy for new rented homes, providers will have to make a bigger contribution from ‘their’ own resources.
Government has been in confusion as to whether there would be a second round of ‘affordable rent’ (that’s the one with rents at up to 80% of market levels) ever since the first round was announced. Back in 2011, then LibDem Minister Andrew Stunell said that ‘affordable rent’ would be a ‘one-off that will not be repeated’ and that a new model would be needed after 2015. At the same time, the then Tory Minister Grant Shapps/Michael Green said there would indeed be another round, and that the Government would be looking for increased cross-subsidy from other activities to fund new homes. Not for the first time, Stunell was wrong. Although some providers, mainly those that lost sight of their social purpose years ago, were delighted to be moving away from social rent, most warned that the ‘affordable rent’ model should not be repeated because of the pressure it puts on their borrowings and viability, pushing their capacity to the limit.
Oblivious to these warnings, the Government has gone even further down the road of removing grant, requiring providers to borrow even more on average to build each home in the new programme. Prisk said the cost of this additional borrowing should be met from ‘efficiencies’, ‘conversions’ and ‘disposals’.
Mr Prisk seems not to be aware that there is a difference between ‘efficiencies’ and rent increases and property sales. ‘With all this money and this commitment, there will be expectations about efficiencies,’ he said, ‘In considering bids for grants, we will expect providers to bring forward ambitious plans for maximising their own financial contribution ….  We expect providers to take a rigorous approach when looking at every relet and asking how they can use them to build more homes for more families. I expect the result to be a significant change in the number of homes that are either converted to be let at affordable rent or are sold when they become vacant.’
So there we have it. More homes are to be provided by ‘converting’ more property from social rent at 40-50% of market to ‘affordable rent’ at 70-80% and by flogging off more existing stock. And to get grant, providers will have to demonstrate that they are doing as they are told.
Prisk said that under the current programme ‘a modest level of relets have been converted to Affordable Rent’. The only official estimate I have seen is that it might be up to 82,000 homes stolen from the social rented stock: how many more does he envisage to pay for the new programme? A civil servant had to move quickly to explain what Prisk meant, but it’s not much of an assurance: ‘Landlords will not be expected to convert all re-lets to affordable rents in the new funding programme’ he stressed.
Very helpful. ‘Not all’. But it is odds-on that we are heading for a position where a majority of social rent re-lets are ‘converted’. In essence, the replacement for grant is huge rent increases.
The Government has always claimed that the ‘affordable rent’ product would be let to the same people as social rent. The only likely outcome of that policy, when combined with a high rent regime, is that more new tenants would be on benefit and for higher amounts. A recent study confirmed that new tenants occupying ‘affordable rent’ homes were even poorer than those already occupying ‘social rented’ homes, the opposite of the social housing allocations policy that the Government is trying to pursue.  Once again housing benefit is taking the strain.
The ‘affordable homes’ programme, which includes ‘affordable rent’, has a budget of around £957m a year for 3 years from 2015/16, about £1 for every £20 the Government spends on housing benefit. Given their obsession with cutting HB, there is a clear contradiction within Government policy. We need to intensify the argument for a major switch to capital rather than personal subsidies in the coming months.