Author: Steve Hilditch

Poor old Dot Branning is facing the loss of her council house in EastEnders.
Having left the property for several months in the hands of more than one lodger, none of whom paid the rent, she has returned to find herself in arrears (more than £4,000, which seems a lot for six months away). In one slightly bizarre scene she was interviewed under caution by Council Fraud Officers about her lodgers. She has not made an arrangement to pay off the arrears so the Council is taking her to Court for possession.
The storyline isn’t about housing management procedures, but about the devastating emotional consequences of Dot potentially losing her long-term family home. There are some minor deficiencies in the story (she appears not to have a housing officer, so her first contact is with the Fraud Officers, and I can’t recall a notice of seeking possession being served or her), but my main observation is that Walford Council can only end the tenancy by going to a Court to obtain possession. That is the real meaning of security of tenure.
(As an aside for EastEnders aficionados, Dot’s supposed long occupation of the house seems a bit odd because she hasn’t always lived there and I’m sure the property was once owned by another character, but let’s not get picky about continuity).
It appears that the good burghers of Hammersmith and Fulham have not been moved by Dot’s story because they have scrapped security of tenure for future social housing tenants. New tenants will get a two or five year tenancy depending on their age and behaviour. Under their policy Dot Branning presumably would have been moved on years ago as her fixed tenancy came to an end.
The Council’s cabinet member for housing says the ‘tenancy for life’ is unfair and antiquated, that it creates ‘disadvantaged communities’, and he described council housing as ‘a welfare benefit in the form of a heavily subsidised house’. He said ‘we want to create neighbourhoods where a broad mix of social households all live side-by-side.’
We will excuse the cabinet member for his ignorance in not knowing that council housing is no longer subsidised, indeed makes a profit. But anyone with experience of some of London’s Tory councils will be sceptical that they want to create broadly mixed neighbourhoods. Since the days of Lady Porter phrases like that have come to mean selling off homes and estates, gentrification, and getting rid of the poor in favour of higher income groups who might, coincidentally, be more likely to vote Tory. H&F certainly likes selling off estates.
Language and imagery is important in politics. The term ‘bedroom tax’, which so annoys Cameron, is a recent example of winning an argument via a brilliant slogan. ‘Lifetime tenancies’ is an earlier example, invented as an adjunct to the campaign to demonise the poor as undeserving scroungers.
There is of course no such thing as a ‘tenancy for life’, but it has gained such currency that it has entered common usage, even in the Guardian Housing Network. Tenancies with security of tenure are an entirely different concept. A tenant can only stay if they continue to qualify, if they do not breach a wide range of tenancy conditions, if they have not been awarded an introductory or a temporary tenancy in the first place, and if the landlord does not otherwise have a ground for possession.
People opposed to the whole concept of social rented housing used the term to make it seem unreasonable that a tenant should have security, and to give the impression that no-one ever got removed, no matter what they did. Far from it: tenants can be removed for arrears, domestic violence, neglect, misrepresentation, overcrowding, major works, and under-occupation on succession. It is the existence of such wide grounds for possession that made the argument for removing security such a sham. Identified issues can be tackled by amending the grounds for possession rather than ending security – for example where there is under-occupation but subject to a test of reasonableness and the availability of suitable alternative accommodation.
We should watch the development of the Dot Branning eviction story with interest. They don’t usually get housing-related stories right on EastEnders. Maybe they will this time. One thing is for certain: as the Government’s policies force more and more tenants into arrears, Dot will not be alone.

Monimbo
Three years of ad hoc changes to social sector rents have left them in chaos. What do we do now to restore a sensible rents policy?
A new report from CIH and London & Quadrant, We need to talk about rents, is an attempt to begin a much-needed debate. Much needed because rents are not only crucial to the sector’s affordability, but also because they drive investment and are a key element in defining the purpose of social housing.
Why is policy a mess? Although the rents policy which Grant Shapps inherited from Labour had in its time been controversial, at least it embodied affordability and consistency, and was known and accepted by lenders. Shapps didn’t so much dismantle the policy as ignore it, sticking on new bits without any regard to the overall outcome.
Furthermore, while the remnants of the policy still embrace the crucial link to average regional incomes, most of Shapps’ initiatives have pulled in the opposite direction, eroding affordability and – surprise, surprise – helping push up the housing benefit bill.  So as pointed out in the latest UK Housing Review, not only will we eventually have 67,000 new houses let at rents that are far much less affordable, but we have so far sacrificed lower rents on over 70,000 properties that have been switched to ‘Affordable Rent’ to support the borrowing needed to build the others.  The ratio of homes removed from the social rent portfolio to pay for AR homes is likely to be 3:2, i.e. three are lost from social rent for every two gained for AR.  This confirms the result of a Freedom of Information request done by Red Brick last year.
As everyone suspected would happen, and as the Review also points out, the limited experience of the new AR lettings at higher rents shows that they are nevertheless going to the same target group as social lettings, i.e. 79% of lettings are to tenants partly or wholly dependant on HB in both cases: there is no sign of more AR lettings going to better-off tenants.  In other words, housing benefit will again ‘take the strain’ and tenants trapped in benefit dependency will face higher barriers to escape it.  Duncan-Smith must have been looking the other way when this policy change was slipped through.
As the CIH and L&Q discussion paper points out, even more important than the immediate practical effects are the longer-term consequences.  One of course concerns the sustainability of an investment model which reduces the average grant input to only 14% of the cost of a new dwelling (from a previous average of 39%), relying for the rest to be loaded onto rents or to come from asset sales or free land.
But arguably even more important is the role that rents policy plays in any vision for what the aims of social housing are.  Here, Shapps and now Prisk have vacillated between aiming the sector at higher earners through AR rents, penalising higher earners through the still-threatened pay-to-stay policy, pushing more benefit dependent families into the sector through LHA changes, pushing them back again through the bedroom tax, and encouraging local authorities to give the impression they can reward long-term, working residents through their allocations policies – even though in practice landlords are struggling with the chaos caused by the combination of rising homelessness and the tenant transfers now needed because of the bedroom tax.
The only comfort to be drawn is that it is not only in England that policy is in confusion. The report makes clear that policy changes in Australia, Canada, France and Sweden have also had unintended consequences. In Canada for example, a programme very like our Affordable Homes Programme and with almost the same name now caters for new, better-off tenants previously excluded from Canada’s small social sector, but adds nothing to the much needed supply of lettings at ‘rents geared to incomes’, leaving providers unable to cope with demand.
The report doesn’t reach conclusions, as it’s a call for debate, but it does ask if rents could support a redistributive element so that richer tenants help keep rents down for poorer ones.  Something similar has just been proposed in a report by Demos for Family Mosaic and Home Group.  While this may be a desirable objective, it seems unlikely that it can squared with rents being relied on as a source of investment, unless grant rates can be restored to something much more generous than 14%.
The lesson for Labour’s housing policy is that it can’t put rents policy into the ‘too difficult’ box, it is too important for that.  The risks of ignoring the issue are evident from the way the Tories’ half-baked policies have pulled in conflicting directions. A debate is needed about social rents and the wider issue that lies behind them of what the sector is for.  The Tories have ducked it; Labour shouldn’t.

My main criticism of the LibDems is not that they went into Coalition with these appalling Tories, nor even that they are implementing the Coalition Agreement. It is that they have backed so many housing policies that were not in the Tory manifesto, the LibDem manifesto or the Coalition Agreement.
Many of the Tories worst policies are drawn from an agenda that was developed in opposition through the think tank Localis, published in the form of a pamphlet that was written with the help of some leading figures in the housing world, to their shame. Thus policies such as privatising social housing estates, pushing social rents towards market levels, removing security of tenure, and further shifting from capital to revenue subsidies were an undeclared plan in the minds of Tory politicians, and primarily Grant Shapps, before the election was called.
These policies, and others developed since the Election, like the bedroom tax and the ending of the homelessness safety net, have been ruthlessly pursued despite there being no democratic mandate for them. It is no surprise that Eric Pickles and Iain Duncan Smith promote these policies with unbridled enthusiasm. But the LibDems would have been well within their Coalition rights to have refused to back them. At the very least they could have won some amendments or even distanced themselves from them and shown more reluctance. But the LibDems have rolled over every time with Ministers like Andrew Stunnell, Don Foster and Steve Webb promoting this Tory agenda with great conviction.
One worm has seemed more likely to turn than the rest. Dr Vince Cable has recently shown some semi-detachment from the Coalition’s investment policies. In the New Statesman  this week Cable calls for ‘greatly expanded’ capital spending to be funded through greater borrowing not cuts elsewhere. It is an axiom of Red Brick that we should be borrowing more to invest in housing; because of the multipliers involved the Treasury would get most of the money back in greater receipts and reduced benefits. Injecting more demand into housing would bolster one of the weakest areas of the economy, construction, and would create few inflationary pressures. Cable’s specific focus is to remove the cap on council borrowing for investment: borrowing that could be funded through the reformed housing revenue account and would be entirely prudential.
Even in the context of Coalition policies Cable says the argument is strong. The IMF has warned that the public finances may deteriorate as a consequence of continued lack of growth, and Cable argues that borrowing for growth would not undermine the central objective of reducing the structural deficit.
Cable goes about as far as collective cabinet responsibility allows. He also repeats an argument that has appeared on Red Brick that any further quantitative easing should be used more creatively; instead of just bolstering bank balance sheets the Bank of England should be acquiring assets like infrastructure bonds.
Whether George Osborne is listening to Cable’s message will not be clear until the Budget, but with Cameron and Osborne increasingly under pressure from their right wing for tax cuts, it seems unlikely that there will be a strong shift in Cable’s direction. The ball will then be back in the LibDem court. The budget and forthcoming votes like the one on Mansion Tax will test their intentions. Mired in problems themselves, will they at last flex their muscles within the Coalition?

‘Squalor’ was one of Beveridge’s ‘five great evils’. For most people the word probably conjures up Victorian slum conditions that were gradually overcome, over many decades, by better housing standards, state intervention, and the building of millions of new homes.
The belief that things gradually get better has been undermined over the last 35 years, at least in housing. Something, somewhere has gone seriously wrong and it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that, while the majority are better housed than ever, a significant section of the population is now being returned to Victorian squalor. We don’t build enough. Housing is too expensive to rent or buy. Now we punish the poor for living. More people are expected to share, more are becoming overcrowded, homelessness remains a scourge, more people are insecure in their home. The consequences of bad and expensive housing, severe enough in themselves, can be seen across the piece: it affects the health of adults and children, it affects educational attainment, it makes it hard for people to work, it makes people poor.
Duncan Bowie’s exceptional paper for Class explains why we have arrived at such a bad place. But what sets his essay apart is not only the strength of its description of events unfurling but also its consistent analysis of the economics and the politics of housing over the long term.
Bowie focuses on the importance of social housing as the tenure primarily responsible for the great improvement in standards – before and after Beveridge – and he looks in detail at the deliberate policy, since the 1980s, of residualising the sector and blaming it, and its tenants, for many of society’s other ills.  He observes how the seemingly progressive policy of ‘mixed communities’ has been used as a cover for reduced commitment to social housing, and argues that the only way to create genuinely mixed communities is to build more social housing in areas that are predominantly owner occupied now. He argues for a major increase in social housing to widen access to a secure and decent home environment to many more people.
He puts a lot of the current British housing problem down to the obsession with home ownership as a means of wealth appreciation and the political association of home ownership with citizenship and personal worth. These arguments were ‘swallowed’ by many on the left and by Blair government, which introduced a formal policy of increasing home ownership for the first time.
In the event, of course, home ownership went into decline for the first time in living memory as the failure to build homes to meet demand, and the all-too-obvious effect of years of hidden subsidy (mortgage tax relief, relief from property taxes), worked through into ever higher prices. Desperate policies to maintain the drive for homeownership – primarily the excess of credit – led inevitably to boom followed by bust.
Rather than privatising the social rented sector, Bowie argues for the ‘socialisation’ of the private rented sector with a stronger system of regulation, security and managed rents. It is carrot and stick, because he also supports incentives for landlords such as direct payments to encourage letting to benefit recipients and grants for improvements.
Bowie also takes on the current hot issue of ‘benefits versus bricks’, whether public subsidy should go into paying benefits to enable people to live in increasingly marketised housing or into investment to get more genuinely affordable homes built at lower rents. He argues strongly that the advantages of subsidising new social housing, creating an appreciating public asset that lasts several generations, are much stronger than the option of continuing a de facto subsidy to landlords.
As a Planner, Bowie is strongly critical of the move towards ‘localism’ without adequate checks and balances, because it reinforces the power imbalance between richer and poorer neighbourhoods which will in practice lead to further social polarisation.  He decries those on the left who have adopted the localist philosophy on the grounds that ‘It is not acceptable for any national government to be neutral on the key issue of where people will live, work and play in the future.’  He supports the return of regional planning and the adoption of a national strategy that accepts the need for a spatial redistribution of investment.
In addition to setting out a broad strategic view of what needs to be done, Bowie also proposes the adoption of a series of new policy priorities around investment, taxation and subsidy. Each of his 11 propositions is worthy of a blog post in its own right.
Bowie has produced a sweeping overview of housing strategy and policy which looks back over 150 years and looks forward two or three generations. It is a strong denunciation of the failed policies of the last 30 years, examining housing policy in a structural and long-term way. It adds to the growing reputation of The Centre for Labour and Social Studies, otherwise known as Class think tank, for producing challenging and controversial policy analysis which is also expert and evidence-based. Of course it is possible to disagree with Duncan Bowie on some of his specific prescriptions but it is incredibly refreshing to read a thought-through and holistic alternative to the policy muddle of recent decades.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s newly published review of the evidence on the links between housing and poverty makes fascinating reading and has some important conclusions for future housing policy.
They conclude that there is a better understanding of the ways in which poverty affects people’s housing circumstances than there is of the ways in which people’s housing affects their poverty.
Over decades, one of the objectives of housing policy has been to break the automatic link between being poor and living in the worst housing. People on the lowest incomes have had a number of buffers to protect them from the extremes of the housing market – access to social housing at relatively low rents, a statutory safety net if becoming homeless, and access to a housing benefits system to help meet the costs of renting. These buffers are currently being removed one by one.
JRF observe that ‘social housing is highly targeted on people with low incomes and has been shown to be the most ‘pro-poor’ and redistributive major aspect of the entire welfare state.’  Even with the lower rents that have prevailed in the sector, the proportion of social renters living in poverty rises from 29% to 43% when housing costs are taken into account.
One weakness in the housing support system has been a lack of awareness that housing benefit is also available to people in work (made worse by some politicians who like to make out that benefits are only claimed by the workless). JRF say that only half of eligible working tenants receive the benefit.
Current changes in the housing system – for example, the ending of new social homes at lower rents in favour of ‘affordable rent’ homes at up to 80% of market rents, caps to housing benefits and the overall benefit cap, discharge of the homelessness duty in the private rather than the social sector, and bedroom tax – are increasing the gap for all renters between the rent they have to pay and the housing benefit they will receive. JRF say these measures ‘are likely to increase poverty, however it is measured’.
JRF make the point strongly that poverty is not only found in the rented housing sectors. For the last 20 years, home owners have made up more than half of people poverty (before housing costs are taken into account). The figure falls to 37% of those in poverty after housing costs, because many are in a position where they have low incomes but have paid off their mortgages and therefore have low or no housing costs.
The impacts that bad housing has on poverty are many and various. Poor conditions affect health, of children and adults, which in turn tends to push people into poverty. Educational attainment is affected. The move away from low cost housing makes it harder for people to ‘make work pay’. The housing benefit system, JRF argue, is caught between the two stools of preventing poverty on the one hand and avoiding a ‘poverty trap’ (benefit withdrawal as income rises) on the other.
As a result of their review, JRF draw a number of conclusions for policy. More attention should be given to measures of poverty after housing costs are taken into account and to understanding how some groups of people are in poverty because of their housing costs. Reducing housing costs is vital to reducing poverty. In terms of encouraging people into work, lower housing costs are of vital importance to those who can only command low wages.
This is an excellent review that raises many issues. It should be well read by people with progressive views looking to develop housing policies for the next General Election. As JRF say in their understated way, ‘Efforts to reduce poverty need to consider limiting rent costs, maintaining good housing conditions in all tenures and monitoring the impact of welfare reform cuts.’ Quite.

Labour Party Members in London are invited to a London Labour Housing Group Conference to be held on Saturday April 13 at a venue near Paddington/Westbourne Park.

LONDON BOROUGH ELECTIONS 2014: HOUSING POLICIES FOR LABOUR

SATURDAY APRIL 13     10.30-16.00

Keynote Speaker: JACK DROMEY MP Shadow Housing Minister

With * Karen Buck MP * Sir Steve Bullock * Cllr James Murray * Jacky Peacock * Cllr Hitesh Tailor * John Gray *

This Conference is for any Labour Member in London involved in or interested in housing but will be especially useful for Members standing for councils in 2014 or involved in writing Borough Manifestoes.

More details and a background discussion paper are available on the LHG website

To register for the Conference, email the chair of London LHG, Steve Hilditch, at [email protected] with name, contact details, CLP and Borough. There will be a charge of £5 on the day to help cover costs.

Sponsored by Unison Greater London

Join LHG at http://www.labourhousing.co.uk/join-lhg

A few days away in the glorious Arctic – with a two hour long view of the Northern Lights in their full splendour (see pics, included here as light relief because the rest of this piece is about filthy slimeballs rather than beautiful scenery) – were rather ruined by picking up a free copy of the Daily Mail in Oslo airport on the way home.  A mistake – even at free, the Mail is overpriced.
 
More fool me for reading it.  There were two highly contrasting stories: an attack on Hilary Mantel for criticising the Duchess of Cambridge, who, according to the paper, has suffered terrible invasions of her privacy. And a big splash on Heather Frost, 36, who lives with her 11 children in two houses that have been knocked together and who will be moving into a new home shortly.  Ms Frost also became a major feature story in the Sun, who appeared to have exactly the same information as the Mail, and dubbed her ‘the dole queen’. Her life and family were then splashed across virtually all the media.
Two points arise about this coverage. First, there were no limits on what the papers thought they could reveal about Ms Frost. We were given details of her childhood, her relationships, her health issues, and the names and ages – and pictures – of all the children, including 7 under the age of 16. We were treated to the strong opinions of ‘neighbours’, one of whom was quoted as saying: ‘It’s a disgrace. She treats her womb like a clown car’. (In fact it appears she is recovering from cervical cancer). Well I’m glad I don’t live next to her neighbours, but I wonder how long it took a journalist to get such a juicy quote?
Second, much of the information was later shown to be wrong or is hotly disputed by the victim. Her back story was very different from that presented by the rags. Her local authority seemed to be rather decent and restrained in face of the media barrage, with the lead member at Tewkesbury Borough Council telling the Today programme that the only true part of this story is that that Heather Frost has 11 children that have to be found accommodation by the council under the law of the land. Bravely facing a TV studio interview on ITV’s breakfast show, Heather categorically denied the newspapers’ accusation that she had said that if she doesn’t like the new house she has been offered she’ll just tell the council to ‘build her another one’.
To present the Duchess of Cambridge as a victim of intrusion at the same moment in time as they were ‘exposing’ Heather Frost is the height of hypocrisy. Heather Frost’s children have been exposed to ridicule and hatred and heaven-knows-what  else. This story demonstrates the nasty politics that both papers – and plenty of others in the media – play with the lives of real people, whether you like them or approve of them or not. Surprise, surprise, the right wing so-called Taxpayers Alliance also had plenty to say in condemnation (of Heather, that is, not Kate). And guess which story David Cameron condemned? At the very least it can be said that Heather Frost showed more dignity and a bit more class than the newspapers.
This all made me wonder where Lord Justice Leveson is at the moment. I was often concerned that the emphasis of his inquiry was on media intrusion into the lives of celebrities and politicians when a glance at any of our great tabloid newspapers shows gross intrusion almost every day in to the lives of very poor people who then have the weight of moral indignation thrown at them: people who do not have fancy lawyers and security guards to protect them or their children.
So what are these so-called ‘newspapers’ really up to? On Red Brick we have covered the demonisation of the poor as a deliberate political strategy on many occasions, and yesterday there was also an excellent piece on the same theme by Hayley Meachin, the press officer of the British Association of Social Workers, on Huffington Post.
As Hayley says: ‘Make no mistake, it is no coincidence that as the government seeks to make cuts to benefits, we have seen a deluge of negative stories about claimants over the past year.’

Ed Miliband made two statements this week that are of importance to housing: on the ‘mansion tax’ and on ‘trickle down’ economics.
Support for the mansion tax hits a number of targets. It is an important message that the burden of additional taxation will be felt most at the top. It is a useful source of additional revenue. And it will help control the superheated London luxury housing market, a global market that has had a significant rippling effect on the price of property across the capital.
I have a natural tendency to disagree with Simon Jenkins, and his Guardian piece saying that the income from a mansion tax should go to local government rather than the national exchequer is no exception. Given that a large proportion of ‘mansions’ are in the boroughs of Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea, there is no reason on earth why those boroughs should benefit disproportionally.  Instead, a different argument should be applied: the money should be used specifically to put more grant into the affordable housing sector to get more homes built at genuinely affordable rents.
An even bigger Miliband theme was his attack on ‘trickle down’ economics: the theory that has dominated global economic policy for three decades. By reducing taxes and removing regulation at the top, so the theory goes, more economic activity will be generated and the benefits will be felt by everyone. Miliband has previously argued that the saying ‘a rising tide would lift all boats’ cannot be applied to economics where the evidence suggests that recent economic growth has disproportionally benefited those who are rich already: wealth drifts upwards and doesn’t trickle downwards.  He quotes Henry Ford, who used to say: ‘I have to pay my workers enough so they can buy the cars they are producing’, and he sees a British equivalent in housing, once understood by Macmillan but now needing to be re-learned: for houses to be built, people have to have the income to buy or rent them.
Trickle down ideas have had a bad effect on housing policy over the decades. For many years the assumption was made that an executive house built on a new estate in the sticks helped the poor because in theory everyone could move up one leaving an extra home for someone at the bottom.  The theory never worked in practice of course because of pent-up demand and the propensity of household formation to increase when supply increased.  However the theory still dominates Tory thinking and especially that of Boris Johnson, who seems to believe that any house built anywhere in London will eventually help the poor because any extra supply will help bring prices under control.
The imbalance of supply and demand means that we will not see any benefit from trickle down for many years to come, even if the theory works. The only effective way to help people on low incomes, the homeless and people on waiting lists is to build homes that have sufficient capital grant (or an equivalent like free land) at the start to enable them to be let at genuinely affordable rents. Even these homes will eventually pay for themselves and produce surpluses that will, in time, help to subsidise more new homes, just as council housing is doing now.
The two Eds, Miliband and Balls, are slowly challenging the economic assumptions and misguided dogma that have been in place since Thatcher, revealing a more radical economic policy, and one that is good for housing prospects: tackling debt not through scorched earth policies but by promoting growth – and construction will be key.

The enormous gap between the world inhabited by David Cameron and Iain Duncan Smith and the real world of social housing residents is well illustrated by a report from the Circle Housing Group based on a survey of 1444 people across their tenure types.
Faced with what Circle’s Chief Executive, Mark Rogers, calls a ‘perfect storm’ of ‘substantial, high impact changes in their external environment, arriving all at once’ the survey aimed to uncover the financial realities faced by residents. Even before the storm arrives, 30% said they lie awake at night thinking about money issues. Only 38% save on a regular or even an occasional basis although a large majority agreed that saving is important. 57% agreed that they would ‘like to be able to save but I never seem to have any money to put by’.
With Universal Credit on the horizon, which will be predominantly an online service, less than half felt confident using technology and only 55% have internet access at home. 4% do not have a bank account but many more are ‘underbanked’ in that they have a bank account but do not use it because they prefer to use cash. Circle says that ‘Many of our customers are not aware of the changes to welfare that are facing them and how these will affect them’.
Research by the National Housing Federation discovered that 89% of social landlords expect rent arrears to increase under Universal Credit and direct payments on a monthly basis. The Government says it will switch back to payment to the landlord if a tenant gets into trouble – but by then for many of them it will be too late. Once in debt, the fragile finances of many tenants – well illustrated by the Circle survey – will make it very difficult for them to get back on course.

From an anonymous correspondent
As welfare ‘reform’ and housing cuts bite ever harder, when do we reach the point where the government concedes that the hardship caused is an inevitable consequence of rebalancing the public finances and reducing the deficit?  So far, they seem to be in deep denial.  This contrasts with the Thatcher era, because when she increased unemployment as a tool of economic policy, she at least admitted that the growth in joblessness was a price which was (on her reasoning) worth paying.
The Cameron government seems either to deny that there is any hardship or to blame anyone other than the ministers who have instituted the cuts.  Whenever some new example of the horrendous effects of their policies (here’s a good example – Ed) is presented to them they have a range of stock responses.  We’ve been wondering if there is a standard Whitehall crib sheet for ministers.  Well by sheer chance, we’ve been sent what looks like the housing and welfare crib sheet in a plain brown envelope.
In the interests of open government, here it is…
Say the cuts are avoidable. This is Eric’s favourite. The trick is to give the impression that all the cuts can be made painlessly by eliminating luxuries and sacking backroom staff.  You can use his little list.  Even the Prime Minister makes this excuse: at PMQs last week he accused councils of making high-profile cuts ‘to try to make a point’, not because they need to.  Some people will believe him.
Blame the victims.  This works well too.  Extravagant housing benefit claims may only happen in a few isolated cases, but even so the press will lap them up, especially if they are large families, unemployed, migrants or – even better – all three.  Give the impression that such claims make up most of the welfare budget.  Whatever you do, don’t admit that over half of welfare spending goes to older people as they are seen as deserving of it.  If talking about housing benefit, try to give the impression that it’s spent by the tenants themselves to fund their indolent lifestyles – whatever you do, don’t admit that the money goes to landlords who are pushing up rents because there are insufficient houses.
Use the keywords. We know it sounds boring, but you have to repeatedly refer to ‘scroungers’, ‘strivers not skivers’ and talk about ‘subsidised housing’ not council homes.  This helps confirm the impression that most welfare spending is a waste of money.  Suggestions for new and even more derogative terms are always welcome.  IDS has made a good attempt to link welfare recipients in the public mind with drug addicts and alcoholics. Follow his lead.
Blame the previous government. It’s their fault we have too few homes.  Focus on the fact that housebuilding in Labour’s last year was the worst they achieved, even though we know that was because of the credit crunch.  Don’t admit either that (a) housebuilding under the coalition is on average 45,000 homes less per year than the output under Labour, or (b) that 2010/11 and 2011/12 were the two worst years since the war for English housebuilding.
Blame local government. So Westminster’s putting homeless families up in expensive hotels and Camden’s sending them to Coventry (or Leicester, or somewhere else absurdly far from London).  Brilliant: we can say how stupid this is and tell them to stop, even though we know they can’t.
Don’t admit that policies to cut the welfare budget affect anything else.  For example, some academics argue that cuts in benefits for private tenants mean that more of them will become homeless, or that more people will need accommodation with lower rents in the social sector.  Deny that this will happen.  If any evidence emerges that shows you’re wrong, under no circumstances must you agree with it.  Better still, don’t read the evidence then no one can accuse you of knowing the facts but ignoring them.  Alternatively, officials may be able to find an obscure or outdated source that on the surface appears to contradict the evidence: use it!
Deny that cuts are taking place.  For example, is there any part of your budget that you have decided to protect, however small? Grossly exaggerate its importance.  Take a lesson from Grant Shapps: every time someone said funding for homelessness was being cut and decimating services he would point to his department’s small fund for homelessness prevention, and claim that because it hadn’t been reduced then either services had been unaffected or – yes! – any cuts were local councils’ fault.
Apply a sticking plaster.  It’s obvious to a fool that the scale of the welfare cuts must – in reality – mean massive hardship.  Furthermore, Labour will find deserving cases (people dying of cancer, homeless ex-servicemen, that sort of thing).  First, always offer to investigate the particular case, implying you might do something (even if you won’t). Second, point to the money that’s been set aside for special cases (e.g. discretionary housing payments).  Never fail to give the impression that this is sufficient to deal with any genuine hardship.  Mention the amount e.g. DHPs total £60 million in 2012/13. This will seem a large sum to the public even though it’s only a tiny fraction of the cuts taking place.
We’re dealing with it. Unfortunately some problems are so big and so obvious that you’ll have to pretend you’re doing something about them.  For example, every fool knows builders have virtually stopped building.  Given that the housing budget had one of the biggest cuts of all in the Spending Review there’s precious little we can do, but you must pretend otherwise.  First, argue that output is going up even when it’s going down (NB. Don’t appear on Sunday Politics, choose programmes where they don’t do their research).  Second, have some useful initiative available that sounds like it might solve the problem even if it’s far too small to make any difference.  Grant gave us NewBuy and FirstBuy, which both sound sufficiently impressive, but we might need to invent one or two more when people realise how inconsequential they are.  Say we are selling more homes under right to buy as if this helps solve the problems, even if we aren’t and it doesn’t.
Joking aside, Richard Vize made the excellent point in the Guardian last week that Cameron and Co. are undermining local government and failing to prepare people for the depth of the cuts that are now hitting them – with much worse still in the pipeline.  He says that ministers are ‘giving the impression that public services can indeed manage cuts without pain or profound change. They can’t.’  How can the coalition expect to be taken seriously as a government, if they make cuts on an unprecedented scale over a dangerously tight timescale, but refuse even to admit there might be consequences for public services?