‘Kicking foreign nationals out of their council homes is illiberal, immoral and financially incoherent’

With weary predictability, the news drops of the Conservative Party’s latest attempt to outcompete Reform, on the questionable terrain of who can adopt the harshest approach to foreign nationals living in council homes in the UK on a perfectly legitimate and legal basis. Yes, the latest bright idea to emerge from the collective brain of the Conservative Party is to ban foreign nationals from accessing social housing and to kick out of their homes any foreign nationals who are currently social tenants, with the secure tenancies this should entail. But at least they will be given six month’s notice to find a new home. How charitable….

One can only imagine the paroxysms of joy that emanated from CCHQ while this policy was being dreamed up. Bashing a group of council housing tenants? Tick. Infuriating the left and the social housing sector? Tick. Provoking yet another tedious row with Zia Yusuf about whether the Tories or Reform would be better at shaking a fist at foreign nationals. Tick. Yes, the more one looks at this policy, the clearer it becomes that it is designed to tickle the Conservative Party’s erogenous zones, rather than provide a sensible solution to the housing crisis that 14 years of successive Conservative governments helped to create.

For it is clear that this obsession with social housing, and the people who dare to live in these homes, is a fetish that the Conservative Party cannot kick and that it returns to time after time. Indeed, it is almost impossible to spend more than five minutes talking to a Tory activist about housing policy before their eyes start to moisten and they wistfully wax lyrical about Thatcher’s Right to Buy policy. However they do not like to discuss the inconvenient side of this – 2.8 million council homes lost while waiting lists continued to grow and almost half of the council homes sold under Right to Buy now being owned and let out for market rents by private landlords, rather than providing a route to home ownership for working class families as was envisaged.

READ MORE: When nothing works there’s lots to fix

And who can forget Boris Johnson’s nostalgia fuelled attempt to extend Right to Buy to social homes owned by independent housing associations? Of course this plan never got off the ground, with it being unclear what legal mechanism could be created to force independent housing associations to sell their own assets. Maybe someone also considered the thought that forcing the seizure of property owned by others is profoundly un-British and, dare I say, un-Conservative?

So when the Conservative Party from time to time decides to peel off its true blue socks and dip its big toe into the murky waters of deciding who gets to own or live in social housing in this country, it’s important that the proposals are scrutinised and the consequences fully understood. For there is a predictable amount of bombast around these proposals from the Tories, including the boast that ending new tenancies for foreign nationals and kicking the current ones out of their homes would free up 230,000 homes for British families. 

Let us pause there for just one second. For the important part of this equation that is left unsaid is that these foreign nationals and their families are only being housed in council homes because they are eligible under local residence rules, meet their council’s allocation policies and have a legal housing need that requires them to be housed. Yes, these individuals are all living in this country legally, will not be going anywhere and will still need someone to live. So when the boast of “230,000 homes for British families” is lazily made, the other side of that coin is that there will be 230,000 foreign national families that local councils will still need to house somewhere when they are made homeless.

This will inevitably mean councils having to source more so-called “Temporary Accommodation” properties, which almost always means paying landlords for properties in the private rented sector. Councils are already spending around £3 billion a year on temporary accommodation for homeless households that they cannot find homes for elsewhere. Kicking foreign nationals out of their council homes will only increase this financial pressure and who will be asked to pick up the bill? The Council Tax payer. And when, as a result, there is more demand for private rental properties in inner city areas already suffering from acute housing shortages, who will be hit by this? Private sector renters through increased rents. I can’t see either of these very clear and obvious consequences of such a mind-numbingly ill thought through proposal finding their way onto Conservative Party press releases or campaign leaflets – can you? 

Become a friend of LabourList and join our community. Our friends support our vital non-factional work and get access to exclusive content and events. 

So by all means let the Conservative Party and Reform compete with each other in this race to the bottom on how to manage social housing demand and treat foreign nationals as appallingly as possible, but let us be crystal clear about the reality of these proposals. Notwithstanding that it is quite simply wrong and immoral to tear up social tenancies and kick families out of the homes that they are legally living in, by sheer dint of the fact that they are judged to have the wrong colour passports, this is also totally unworkable in practice and there should be no doubt about this. 

For unless the Conservatives also plan to declare all of these legally resident foreign nationals to be persona non grata or they intend to simply add them to the numbers sleeping rough on our streets, they will have to be found somewhere else to live and the Conservatives will have to explain where this will be. Maybe it’s time to go back to the drawing board and come up with some ideas to tackle the housing crisis they helped to create, rather than press releasing half-baked policies formulated in the Conservative Party’s comfort zone and which will only have negative consequences.

Subscribe here to our daily newsletter roundup of Labour news, analysis and comment– and follow us on TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp, X and Facebook. You can also write to our editor to share your thoughts on our stories and share your own. The best letters are published every Sunday.

• • SHARE: If you have anything to share that we should be looking into or publishing about this story – or any other topic involving Labour– contact us (strictly anonymously if you wish) at [email protected].
  • SUBSCRIBE: Sign up to LabourList’s morning email here for the best briefing on everything Labour, every weekday morning.
  • BECOME A FRIEND: If you enjoyed this, why not consider becoming a Friend of LabourList? Help sustain our journalism, and of course Friends do get benefits…
  • PARTNER: If you or your organisation might be interested in partnering with us on sponsored events or projects, email [email protected].
  • ADVERTISE: If your organisation would like to advertise or run sponsored pieces on LabourList‘s daily newsletter or website, contact our exclusive ad partners Total Politics at [email protected].