Those people thinking about voting Reform “for a change” might well pay attention to the influx of Tories into the party of late. Here’s another one you may not have heard of. Former Tory Simon Dudley, ex-banker, has just been taken on as Reform’s spokesperson on housing and infrastructure. He was the Tory Leader of Windsor and Maidenhead Council from 2007 to 2019.
According to Dudley the reasons for the housing crisis are twofold: not building enough housing and “years of mass migration placing impossible pressure on housing”. Yes, Johnny foreigner is the problem. Stop them coming in, maybe send some home?
In fact historical statistics show this to be complete nonsense. In England there have been only six years in which more than 300,000 homes have been built; all in the ‘sixties under the Wilson government. In those six years just under 2 million homes were built. Of them, more than 800,000 were council homes, 41%. It was the fall in council house building which was a major reason for the fall in housebuilding overall.
In the 18 Tory years from Thatcher through to Major, the 200,000 mark was only just passed in three years. In the last 7 of those years 150,000 or less were built. This might have had something to do with the fact that the number of council homes built fell from 74,900 to 290! It had nothing to do with immigration.
The decline in building figures was, in large part, the result of Thatcher’s opposition to council housing, progressively ending funding for councils to build. Her disastrous policy of Right to Buy is responsible for the fact that there are barely more than 1.5 million council homes left in England. Instead of the bogus ‘home owning democracy’ she spoke of, nearly half of the homes sold have ended in the hands of private landlords, charging ludicrous rents which cost the exchequer a fortune in local housing allowance.
In his dreadful article in the Telegraph, “I’m joining Reform to fix the housing crisis”, Dudley does not even mention council housing. He wants to change the planning system as if that will do the trick and make those jolly big builders build more homes. In fact there are 1.4 million plots of land with planning permission that have not been built on. In reality half a dozen of these companies dominate house building. They build at a scale and pace which is designed to maximise their profit and the dividends of their shareholders. They are not in the business of building for social need, nor building at a scale which will reduce house prices. Home ownership is restricted by the sky high prices of their new build homes.
If you are thinking of voting Reform and you are in the private rented sector take note that they are committed to ending the Renters Reform Act. They are the Party of the exploitative private landlord and the powerless tenant.
The housing crisis is not the result of immigrants as you can see from these statistics from the pre-Blair years. It is the result of successive governments’ relegation of council housing to a minor factor in housing. It is the result of the domination of house building by an oligopoly. The law of supply and demand does not operate in such a market.
Ironically, before Right to Buy, council housing facilitated home ownership insofar as the reasonable rents enabled tenants who wanted to buy, to save enough for a deposit on a house. Then went off and bought one, handed the keys back to the council, which gave it to the next household on the waiting list.
Of the more than 130,000 households on temporary accommodation and 1.3 million households on the waiting lists, Dudley had nothing to say. Home ownership is not a prospect for them. They need good quality social rent council housing to liberate them.
Vote for Reform at your peril and that of your children or grandchildren stuck in the poor quality and expensive private sector. It won’t resolve the housing crisis.
Martin Wicks
Martin Wicks 