“The invisible hand of the market” re-organises society Tory style

By Stephen Cowan

Remember the Conservative Party leadership contest in 2005? “There is such a thing as society” proclaimed David Cameron in an obvious bid to reposition his party by distancing himself from Thatcher’s legacy. But it took another five years, a prognosis that society is “broken” (then needed to be “big”) and a change of government before he would provide us with any details of how he thinks society should be.

Now, the Prime Minister’s fix can be viewed through his government’s recently announced housing benefits and social housing policies. Together, they will (if passed) restructure a significant part of society and change how and where people on lower incomes live for many years to come.

In short, the coalition proposes to cap housing benefits and change the measure to calculate housing allowances. This will mean many will find their payments are no longer sufficient to pay their rents. Shelter says “134,000 UK households will either be evicted or forced to move.” Meanwhile, the government has began to consult on A Fairer Future for Social Housing (note the use of language) which includes proposals to end secure tenancies; encourage social landlords to evict tenants within two years if their circumstances improve and allow social housing rents to be charged at eighty per cent of market rate.

These are deliberate policies designed to drive lower income households out of high value areas. They will bring about a greater degree of polarisation in society as a whole and add unhealthy levels of transience to the larger poorer communities they will engineer. Evidence abounds that circumstances such as these bring greater degrees of crime; educational failure; ill health; break downs in friends and family support and lost life chances.

Ever the PR man, Mr. Cameron has deftly sought to position these changes as about “fairness” – thus tapping into feelings that well deep in the guts of many reasonable people. Last month, while talking about housing benefit claimants, he told parliament:

“Our constituents working hard to give benefits so people can live in homes they couldn’t even dream of? I don’t think that’s fair.”

But the Prime Minister must surely know that these policies will bring about a less fair society. Crisis has taken the unusual step of saying:

“The coalition government is misrepresenting the reality of benefit claimants.”

And if Mr. Cameron really believed his approach to social housing is fairer then why did he and his associates run scared from discussing these exact housing policies once Principles for Social Housing Reform was published eighteen months ago? In fact, having first identified the Conservatives’ emerging housing policies, I worked with a plethora of media who bombarded Cameron and his people to clarify their position – but they refused to engage. This excellent short film made by the Guardian in 2009 foretells what is now happening but the refusal of any senior Tory to be interviewed is telling. Indeed, John Healey MP, Labour’s then housing minister, wrote this letter to Mr. Cameron ten months before the general election. There was no response. The devils in these policy details were considered electoral dynamite before people voted.

So, when we have the opportunity to peer beneath the Cameron gloss it appears the Conservatives’ vision for society in the 21st century seems all too familiar. As was the case in the 1980s, “the invisible hand of the market” will efficiently reorder social structures. Many Tory-run local authorities, such as my own, will accelerate this process by demolishing existing stocks of genuinely affordable housing.

Ed Miliband has been wise to instigate a policy review. By the dawn of the next general election our platform must include new commitments to address the supply of affordable rented homes; and new opportunities for affordable home ownership and reform of the tax and benefits system. Labour’s response must be comprehensive and robust. Voters must be able to contrast the Tory offer of segregated communities with spiralling social problems with an alternative direction of travel proposed by the Labour Party. We can take this Tory vision of society apart – and given what’s on the immediate horizon we have a duty to do so.