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A call for a fairer cut

By Kathryn Rose The Conservative-Liberal coalition is planning to cut people’s housing benefit if people do not work – this is how part of the June 2010 budget is popularly being summarised and with some foundation. A more accurate report would state that the coalition government are not planning to instigate the 10% cuts to housing benefit for the unemployed immediately; they intend to wait until April 2013 when it is hoped that employment levels will be rising. This scheme...
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Oona sets out her pitch to Londoners

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk Today in Tribune Oona King has begun to lay out in greater detail her vision for the capital. As is perhaps to be expected, the pitch begins with what King sees as an advantage held over Livingstone - an appeal to outer London: "London runs from Uxbridge to Upminster - and it is these areas that a Labour candidate has to win back in 2012. After all there are 4.4 million people who live in...
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The accommodation availability gap

By Kathryn Rose During the four years I have been a student, it has been easy to find accommodation; in fact the choice has been impressively vast and there were frequently many bed spaces left over. However, without a job the vast array of flats on offer dwindles into a few that landlords say they might consider you for. Labour endeavored to increase the amount of homes available to people receiving DSS and tried to help young people find work...
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Progress Conference: Reconnecting with working class communities

by Rory Palmer Reconnecting with working class communities is seen as a vital part of Labour's post-election debate. That said, leadership contender Andy Burnham was right to suggest that it was not the case that we had not delivered for heartland communities. Opening this discussion at the Progress Conference Burnham reflected on the last 13 years as being the foundation for our political recovery and not something to be denied or disowned. Social housing was mentioned as a common doorstep...
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Cruddas talks to Prospect about housing, immigration, jobs

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982 In reconnecting with Labour's lost millions of voters - written about today by Liam Byrne and by John Denham - the Labour Party leadership discussion will need focus in part on the sense of disconnection from the traditional core vote, as well as looking at how the party will consolidate its strength in many inner city areas around the country. A new coalition will need to be built - something Anthony Painter has written about extensively....
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Healey signals Labour's moves to put council housing at the heart of radical fourth term agenda

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982 Housing minister John Healey has just announced a "far reaching and radical new deal" on housing, setting out plans to offer local authorities the freedom to fund and run their council stocks without central government subsidy. The deal will replace the current HRA subsidy arrangement, which currently funds 177 local authorities' housing. The plans also promise to release at least 10% more money in every council for maintaining and managing homes, and will create the...
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Darling announces stamp duty measures to help first time buyers

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Housing, immigration and jobs: The working class vote in Harlow

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David Cameron's pitch to Labour voters is worth studying - it may teach us something for our own campaigns

By Diana Smith / @MulberryBush I was alerted to the new David Cameron video "Never voted Tory before...?" via a Tweet by @David_Scameron, who said: "Check out my new blog cast pod. I've gone for the cool, no tie look and I borrowed an unkempt working class back garden." @David _Scameron is wrong of course. The back garden may or may not be working class, but it is certainly not unkempt. This is the garden of someone who is working hard...
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Healey says repossessions should always be a last resort

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982 UPDATE: Tim Montgomerie of ConHome has tweeted that "he tends to agree" with Jim Pickard at the FT, who wrote that John Healey "was right" to say what he did and that this was not a Lamont moment. Yesterday, Guido Fawkes and then ConservativeHome ran a story that John Healey, the Labour housing minister, said it "can be the best option" for people to have their homes reposessed. The story duly made its way to the BBC website,...
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40 Labour MPs call for a radical manifesto

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982 Organised by Michael Meacher's Coalition for Labour Victory, which LabourList reported on last November, over 40 Labour MPs have signed a statement calling for Labour’s election campaign to be based on a "radical redistributive programme", including public investment in housing, public services, de-carbonisation and requiring banks to pursue social objectives and support manufacturing. Michael Meacher said: “Labour can win if it is prepared to be radical. Policies aimed at jobs, homes and redistribution will resound...
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Building for the future - why Labour mustn't forget the construction industry

By Stephen Gummer This week it's official; Britain is out of recession. There are many in the Labour Party, myself included, that think this is largely attributable to the economic recovery package put in place by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. Meeting recession with brutal cuts would have done very little to help anyone and while it may have been the easier path to take we can be very proud of a leadership that opted for the more complex...
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Dear Alex: Responding to the New Ideas series

By Ed Miliband MP / @EdMilibandMP 22 January 2010 Dear Alex, Thank you for your letter about your New Ideas for a Renewed Movement series. I am really sorry for the delay in replying. The New Ideas series was fantastic. I really enjoyed reading the proposals put forward and the debate it generated. I’ve had a look at all of them on the site but I’ll respond to the five in your letter. Increase the National Minimum Wage – as...
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Next week's PBR should extend the stamp duty holiday to help first time buyers

By Jessica Asato / @Jessica_Asato Next week’s Pre-Budget Report should seize the opportunity and provide a boost to first time buyers by extending the stamp duty holiday currently in place but due to expire in the New Year. An EDM tabled by Labour MPs Jon Cruddas, Lindsay Hoyle and others yesterday highlights the issue. It argues that we need to continue helping families and individuals to buy property in the current economic climate, and urges the Government to extend the...
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The difference Labour has made for homeowners is clear

By Chris Williamson In December 1993 a local magazine, Derbyshire Now, published a piece I had written about the aftermath of the late 1980s and early 1990s property boom that saw record numbers of repossessions (left). When I wrote that article 16% of mortgage holders were in negative equity. Now, 16 years later the situation is very different. The worst worldwide economic downturn since the 1930s, fuelled by the collapse of the so-called US subprime property market, could have had...
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Shedding light on Cameron’s favourite Council leader's bizarre comments about homelessness and poverty

By Stephen Cowan David Cameron clearly believes he can have it both ways. This week he argued he wants to tackle poverty. However, back in June, he was in Hammersmith and Fulham to tell Tory councillors how “proud” he is of their agenda - which involves cutting services and introducing new stealth taxes for some of that borough’s poorest citizens. So John Denham was right to call Cameron out on this obvious discrepancy. Yesterday, the story moved on when H&F’s...
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Healey: We need a national crusade for greener homes

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982 Housing Minister John Healey has today urged every homeowner, developer, tenant and landlord to join a "national crusade" to reduce excessive carbon emissions leaking from their homes and businesses - just a few weeks ahead of the climate change summit in Copenhagen. Mr Healey has just finished a speech to the IPPR, in which he said everyone needs to play their part, and that planning systems need to make it easier for homeowners and developers...
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The homes we need

By James Murray Opposition is frustrating. In Islington, we watch the Lib Dem council administration failing to act on the affordable housing crisis with the urgency and conviction we know we would bring to the problem. There are 13,000 households on the waiting list in Islington. But even numbers like this – not uncommon across the country – do not convey the repeated human cost of the situation for individual families. Having three or four children sharing a bedroom, or...
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When it comes to tackling the BNP we have to start from where people are at, not where we want them to be

By Margaret Hodge MP This article is based on the text of a speech delivered to the Progress rally at the Labour Party Conference in September. It has been published in response to the ongoing controversy surrounding Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time this evening, and is being published simultaneously on the Progress website. The task of taking on and defeating the BNP is one of the most challenging that we face. In my constituency in Barking, we’ve spent the...
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What support for 16 and 17 year old parents really means

By Grace Fletcher-Hackwood The Prime Minister’s speech yesterday featured a barrage of new policy announcements. 10,000 new green job placements; free childcare for a quarter of a million two-year-olds; scrapping compulsory ID cards; legislation on international aid in the budget; speedy diagnosis for cancer patients; free personal care for elderly people with the highest need; measures to allow constituencies to recall their MP where there is proven financial corruption; and a referendum on the Alternative Vote. However, there is another policy...
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