Labour’s new Shadow Housing Minister has a full in-tray

In recent years, housing has had a much higher priority in the Labour Party, and a good thing too – the shortage of housing, and particularly affordable housing, is exacerbating inequality, fuelling economic instability, causing recruitment difficulties in critical parts of the public and private sectors, and leading to a growing amount of human misery.

It is an area where Labour has been especially active in policy development. Alison Seabeck, as shadow minister, led a careful assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of Labour’s housing legacy; Jack Dromey did a huge amount to raise the profile of Labour’s housing offer, and in particular emboldened Labour councils to think a lot more positively about council housing. Emma Reynolds was the first shadow housing minister appointed to shadow cabinet – a welcome recognition of the critical need to get housing policy right. She, along with Ed Miliband, set up the Lyons Commission, which came up with a comprehensive blueprint for raising housing production to 200,000 a year, noting the need for substantial change in such wide-ranging areas as the operation of and transparency in the land market, reform of compulsory purchase, reforming the planning system to support infrastructure and affordable housing provision, use of public land, and support small and medium sized builders. The Commission’s work received interest and support from across the political spectrum, and indeed a few of its ideas have even been taken up by the current government. Roberta Blackman-Woods, an astute and effective Shadow Planning Minister, has, in recent months, had the thankless task of leading opposition to the government’s new raft of unwelcome housing changes.

Sadly, the in-tray for the new Shadow Housing Minister is both large and depressing. The government’s reductions to social rents (included in the Finance Bill) will destabilise council and housing association finances, hinder their ability to improve their stock, and, as the Office for Budget Responsibility identified, will reduce their ability to build new dwellings. Expansion of the right-to-buy to housing association tenants, funded by the forced sale of thousands of council properties when they become vacant, is part of an agenda which is as economically illiterate (lumping ever greater costs onto housing benefit as previously social rented properties enter the private rented sector) as it is damaging to vulnerable people and the wider housing market. The planning system is gradually being hollowed out, with a growing use of “permitted development” and “local development orders” to reduce the ability of communities to shape what is built in their areas, and allowing landowners to duck out of paying for infrastructure and affordable housing.

There is nobody better placed to lead the challenge to the government’s toxic agenda on housing, while developing Labour’s package of answers, than John Healey. In government, he had an impressive record – perhaps that with the most positive and enduring legacy since Nye Bevan’s time in the role. John took decisive and successful action to prevent the level of repossessions caused by the global financial crisis reaching the level they did in the 1980s recession. He introduced important changes to council housing finance, empowering local government to recommence substantial new council house building programmes, and he allowed councils to introduce licensing schemes to regulate the private rented sector in their areas (now driving up standards in places like Oxford, Newham and Liverpool, amongst many others).

We can be sure that John will work with Labour local government , and indeed with the wider housing sector, not only to oppose damaging Tory policies but to promote a coherent, deliverable and effective Labour alternative. For those keen to narrow the gap between rich and poor, reduce poverty, promote economic growth and restore economic stability, there is perhaps no more important role.

Ed Turner is Deputy Leader of Oxford City Council and leads on planning for the LGA Labour Group. He was a member of the Lyons Commission.