Hodge, Housing and Henry

Barking Mad Fri Jun 01, 2007 at 05:24:03 PM GMT Print-friendly version Facebook

One aspect of the Hodge affair which has not received attention is the fact that Margaret's husband, Henry, is involved in immigration decision making.



From IRR news:


One aspect of the Hodge affair which has not received attention is the fact that Margaret's husband, Henry, is involved in immigration decision making. Industry minister Margaret Hodge's proposal for a return to housing policies privileging 'indigenous' communities over immigrants has attracted much comment. It has been pointed out, not least by her own constituents whose 'legitimate fears' she claimed to be speaking for, that the real problem in Barking, as elsewhere in the country, is the abandonment by government of responsibility for social housing provision by selling off council housing and not building any more.

Commentators have also observed that immigrants are not entitled to social housing anyway – allocation policies are obliged by law to exclude all 'voluntary' immigrants from provision. (Asylum-seekers are housed by NASS in accommodation no-one would volunteer to live in.) The Refugee Council accused Hodge of 'fanning the flames of racial tension'.

 
One aspect of the Hodge affair which has not received much attention is the fact that Hodge's husband, Henry Hodge, is President of the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal. Like her, he started out on the left, as a founding partner in the committed legal aid firm of Hodge Jones and Allen in Camden. Like her, his politics have moved commensurately with his embrace of and by the new Labour establishment. His recent judgments include rulings that Zimbabweans, Somalis and Darfurians from Sudan do not qualify for refugee status. The Court of Appeal overturned his rulings that persecuted Darfurians should return to Sudan, where they would live in squalid refugee camps in the capital if they were unwilling to return to Darfur, and that returning Zimbabweans would not be persecuted by Mugabe's ZANU-PF thugs.


As a judge, Henry Hodge has expressed cricitism of the government's failure to deport more undocumented migrants from the country.



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Hodge, Housing and Henry | 38 comments (38 topical)

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#1)

by jkitleft on Fri Jun 01, 2007 at 05:26:10 PM GMT

Could you add another option 'She should be deselected'?


Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#2)

by petercoe on Fri Jun 01, 2007 at 07:05:48 PM GMT

And one that most sane people will choose: "She's right and the loony left is as usual in complete denial over a very serious and real problem."


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#3)

by otware on Fri Jun 01, 2007 at 09:36:52 PM GMT

I am sorry, but Margaret Hodge is not right. As far as I can tell you are the only person I know of who actually supports her. The issue is not immigrants in council houses - the issue is that there are not enough council houses. Racialising the issue and using nationalisatic language does nobody any favours, it just deflects attention from the real issue which is a lack of housing and puts the BNP's racist agenda in the public eye. I don't know what Hodge's big plan is: maybe she's got something against immigrants, or more than likely she's just an idiot.

I think most sane people would be shocked that you support Margaret Hodge. I reckon she should be deselected - she's useless and causes nothing but trouble, and her CLP hate her. She shouldn't be allowed to stifle the legitimate deabte on council housing by kicking up all this nonesense immigration bullshit.


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#5)

by petercoe on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 12:10:42 AM GMT

That's you opinion Otware, but to pretend that this ludicrous sham of a poll supposedly offers a genuine choice is ridiculous

If you think I'm the first person to support her comments you should read the longer thread about this elsewhere on Labourhome.

Why does everything seem to be an "either/or" for leftwingers like you - it's either immigrants in council homes (your spin, not Hodge's, incidentally) OR it's not enough homes. It's either total exclusion of the private sector in providing public services or "wholesale privatisation" - and the list could go on and on.

The reality is that yes, there is a shortage of council homes, and I fully support the building of more, as I've also set out elsewhere. But if you seriously believe that there is no problem with the way housing allocations are currently structured then you're in deep denial. And it's this typical leftwingdenial of a genuine grievance many on the waiting list have that is the real recruiting sergeant for the BNP, not the remarks of one MP.Seriously - grow up if you think Margaret Hodge or anyone else just be making an observation about a problem they perceive is responsible for people voting BNP: it's a thoroughly stupid assertion.

Housing need is of course an important consideration when allocating council housing. But it is not, and should not be the sole criterion. Length of residence in a community AND length of time waiting for housing/rehousing are also legitimate factors that are already taken into account, but in my view not given sufficient weight - especially the latter.

Anyone who has been waiting many years for rehousing is clearly going to be aggrieved when they see people apparently being queue-jumped: it's an instinctive human reaction in any circumstance, but especially over something as important as someone's home - and that grievance is (reasonably or not) elevated if the person "queue-jumping" is someone new to the community (whether they be an "immigrant" or someone from elsewhere in the country).

Now, if you seriously think that the response to this grievance is to lecture the unhappy waiting listees about how they're racist to even hold that belief then you're the one responsible for piling up the BNP votes, not those of us saying the current balance is wrong and needs to be corrected.

Stop trying to falsely spin this as a racist attack by an MP you happen to dislike (and I hold no particular candle for her either) and start talking about the issues seriously for once.


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#4)

by Wiseman on Fri Jun 01, 2007 at 10:39:35 PM GMT

Dear Peter I ask you for the party's sake to withdraw support for Margaret on this subject. It is better left to the debate. I have my own opinion, which you know will be different to yours and remember you are in a multi-cultural party that has thrived since immigration has begun in my own city Liverpool eg Caribbean immigartion in the fifties and sixties Wiseman


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#6)

by petercoe on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 12:21:51 AM GMT

John, I support people when they are right, not when it is politically convenient to do so. That tends to be the difference between those who actually want to get things done and the knee-jerk ideologues who shout "racist" whenever a difficult subject is broached.

If you took the time to consider the actual comments Margaret Hodge made rather than the nonsense spin being plastered around by your wing of the Party, you would hopefully soon realise that this is not about immigrants per se - it's about how current housing allocations policy is currently weighted.

I think you and I agree that many more council homes need to be built - but that alone is not going to rectify the problem; even if every council started the process of building thousands of new homes tomorrow they would a) not be on-stream for years, and b) even when we had a glut of council homes there were (long) waiting lists, so let's not pretend that this is solely about supply and demand.

It is, in my view, entirely reasonable for greater priority to be afforded to housing waiting listees the longer they have been on the list than is currently. It is entirely reasonable for economic immigrants (and for that matter British citizens recently moved to a new area), instead of being given the first available council home, to be initially placed in the bed and breakfast accommodation that many on the list for years have to abide within. Neither of these opinions is remotely racist.

Obviously, in some circumstances, need is so great that a recent migrant to an area (be they from another country or another part of the UK) needs to be pushed to the front of the queue. But there is a legitimate grievance that needs to be addressed, and it is the refusal to countenance any discussion about this, and the portrayal as racist of anyone who dares to dissent from this self-imposed trapist silence that is the recruiting sergeant for the BNP, not the people (to me) brave or (to you) foolish enough to raise them in the first place.


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#7)

by Glass House on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 12:55:47 PM GMT

Otware - "Racialising the issue"

How did she do that? She was very careful to say that it was nothing to do with race and that many of the indigenous families she was talking about were non-white.


Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#8)

by otware on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 04:15:47 PM GMT

"In exercising that choice as an economic migrant, should they then presume to have automatic access immediately to public social housing?" - Margaret Hodge. This is misleading. Immigrants do not take preference over local families unless they have real need. A recent report by the Jospeh Rowntree Foundation found that most economic migrants live in privately owned bedsits and other shared accomodation. They are not stealing our council houses. So Hodge's point in the above quote has very little to do with council housing.


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#9)

by petercoe on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 04:38:22 PM GMT

Sorry, but it's not misleading at all. As you say, they do get priority if they are in need. The point - which we evidently disagree on - is what priority need alone should have over other criteria that afford points in the housing hierarchy.

If you can explain why an economic migrant (or anyone else) in need of housing alone should receive a council home rather than make do in B&B accommodation as plenty of those on the waiting list for years have to do, then that'll be an interesting discussion to have. But without that, you're just twisting a perfectly reasonable observation.


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#26)

by donpaskini on Mon Jun 04, 2007 at 09:48:36 AM GMT

Hi Peter, Your (and Hodge's) argument could mean one of two things: Do you mean that councils should continue to have a duty to the unintentionally homeless with young dependents, but when it comes to the allocation of the social rented property (invariably after a time in temporary accommodation), you give additional priority to those who have been in the UK the longest? If so, the result will be piling up migrant families in expensive temporary accommodation. This would be a really clever wheeze to enhance community cohesion - in areas of high housing cost, this would leave them in, as one Head of Service at a London borough called it, a "new form of social housing which is entirely benefit dependent" - the rent is too high for those on lower incomes to ever afford without Housing Benefit. So there'd be more migrants on benefits, fewer in work. Or, do you mean there should be less of a duty to those who have been in the UK a shorter time (but have the immigration status to be here - otherwise they're not eligible for such support anyway)? This doesn't really make sense, because councils either have a duty or they don't - but would presumably mean that migrant families were no longer eligible to be accepted as homeless and in priority need by councils. This would put families, with children, into the same destitute (and, incidentally, disgraceful) circumstances as are currently experienced by failed asylum seekers. So we could have children sleeping on the street. Or, more likely, families of recent migrants split, with the children in (expensive to provide) care, and the adults sofa-surfing.


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#27)

by petercoe on Mon Jun 04, 2007 at 12:38:40 PM GMT

Don, thanks for taking the time to engage sensibly in this debate, but I take issue with your argument in several ways.

First, I don't accept that the consequence of giving ever-increasing priority the longer someone has been on a waiting list would disproportionately fill B&Bs up with immigrant families - need doesn't discriminate in favour of just immigrants alone, does it?

In fact, it would just mean more people of all backgrounds spending some time in temporary accommodation rather than some spending a great length of time while some get a full council or HA tenancy in a matter of days or weeks. In other words, I believe that a system that transparently treats everyone the same and minimises "queue jumping" (not eradicating it entirely, because everyone accepts that in some cases need is so great that urgent priority must be given) does far more good than harm.

The way you're presenting your argument is as if the circumstances you describe don't exist already. I don't find it ideal that anyone spends a long time in "expensive temporary accommodation": it is of no consequence to me whether they're migrant families or indigenous families.

You, however, seem to be arguing that in order to avoid a problem which already exists: namely that we have an underclass (which you characterise by race but not entirely accurately) in temporary accommodation, we should actually move in diametrically the other direction: to engineer housing policy to give priority to immigrants. I disagree.

I mentioned above that the problem already exists: I'd take the "Head of Service" you referred to to any urban London borough and show him or her the tenement blocks that in the 1960s and 1970s were home to affluent middle class private renters and are now largely welfare magnets. They're not welfare

    migrant
magnets - there's no racial discrimination within this underclass - but why pretend that such a problem has anything to do with public sector housing allocations? It's to do with a massive lack of affordable housing which no-one I've come across on this forum at least is arguing against correcting.

We do need to reform housing benefit; it's not just private landlords exploiting the system but (principally Tory) councils who are making the cynical calculation that the majority of those who aren't wealthy enough to have bought their council homes are going to be on HB, and HB is a government awarded grant, so crank up rents as a way of generating additional government funding direct to themselves (and screw the minority who don't claim benefits and are being crippled by the high rents).

Again, I'm not sure why you argue that changing allocations would increase the number of migrants on benefits - benefit eligibility is based on income, not on whether they're in private or social housing (and with the ludicrous policy of equalisation between public and private sector rents it's less and less a factor). In other words, a migrant in a council house is as almost as likely to be eligible for HB as a migrant in private sector temporary accommodation.

No one is talking about changing the duty on councils to house those in need: again, it is really immaterial whether they are immigrants or not. But we aren't debating this from a position whereby those in need get housed and those who aren't don't - we're talking about an awful lot of people who are in need not getting housed because of lack of supply.

Hence, until supply can be expanded in a way that will take at least 20 to 30 years, the debate needs to move on to what are the determinants of need, what relative weighting each of those determinants merits and whether we believe that there should be a maximum time spent waiting allocation (and if so what that time should be).

All I am arguing is that the current weighting is slightly wrong but creating a massive perception problem - time served is not given sufficient weight - and should be redressed in order to ensure that there is a maximum waiting time for housing. That will mean slightly longer for some in temporary accommodation for some and hopefully a good deal shorter for others. And in addition it will be perceived to be fair, hence depriving the far right of major ammunition in deprived communities.


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#28)

by donpaskini on Mon Jun 04, 2007 at 01:53:30 PM GMT

I don't want to engineer policy in favour of immigrants, I want a policy where the family in a two bedroom house with four kids, where there is medical evidence that the bad housing is causing health problems, and who have been in temporary accommodation for one year get housed somewhere suitable before the family who have been waiting for three years with two kids in a two bedroom house who want a bigger house so that their kids don't have to share a bedroom. I would prefer that both were able to get housed quickly by the council, but if there is only one suitable home available, I think it should go to the family in greatest need, regardless of how long they have been waiting. Do you disagree? Temporary accommodation rents are far higher than social housing rents (council or housing association) - they are not the same. It is a benefit trap. If you are in permanent social housing, you can get a job and be better off even without HB. If you are in temporary accommodation in some parts of the country, you would need a huge salary to be better off paying the rent rather than on benefit and claiming HB. There cannot be a maximum waiting time irrespective of need, because then everyone could just put themself on the list and eventually get social housing whether they need it or not. People get points for how long they have been waiting at the moment. To change the system to give this more weighting means giving less weight to factors such as medical evidence or overcrowding. And I don't think that the changes that you are suggesting will do anything to ease the resentment of the people who grew up in a council house, want to live somewhere affordable in the same area, and will never be eligible for social housing.


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#29)

by petercoe on Mon Jun 04, 2007 at 03:59:22 PM GMT

Don, do I think that if only one suitable home is available it should go to the family in greatest need *regardless of how long they have been waiting?* No, not necessarily - usually, but not always.

But I could phrase that another way, because I think time served is not unrelated to need - need usually increases the longer one waits, so I think it is entirely plausible that the family who've been waiting longer could have the greater need even though on other measures of need the lesser-waiting family has priority.

There is no law that says temporary accommodation rents (or rather costs) have to be higher than public sector rents - and as I mentioned previously the difference between the two is diminishing as councils and HAs are obliged to equalise them. But the issue of market rents to me suggests we need to be increasing the powers of rent officers and of authorities to set fair rents, rather than diminishing them as has been the case in the past twenty years.

And tax credits should mean that it is never a better option to be unemployed than working, no matter what the property market is like in your area. Maybe the incentives need to be increased, but again, I disagree that this is a principal factor in allocations policy.

Of course there can be a maximum allocations time - because not everyone is eligible for affordable housing in the first place. It is entirely reasonable - if not essential - though that if someone is eligible they have a realistic timescale to be housed within. There also needs to be more investment in parallel routes to housing: homebuy schemes and grants so that those with lower need but who could potentially afford a private sector house with a little help can be assisted in greater numbers than they are now.

No-one is pretending these are easy issues with simple solutions Don. It's perfectly fine that you're happy with the way the system is structured at present (though perhaps not so fine that the consequences of it are 12 BNP councillors in Dagenham) but I'm not.


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#30)

by donpaskini on Mon Jun 04, 2007 at 05:00:46 PM GMT

Rent equalisation is about housing association and council rents, nothing to do with temporary accommodation. The costs of temporary accommodation in some parts of London are £500 or more *per week*. In Waltham Forest, for example, the average rent in private sector temporary accommodation is £300 per week, compared to £80 in the social rented sector. There is no way that tax credits, or anyone on even quite a good wage, can cover that without HB. Where there is a shortage of social housing stock, local authorities have to use the private sector. In Waltham Forest, Redbridge and Newham, for example, there are 11,000 families in temporary accommodation, 8,000 of whom are in private sector leased accommodation. It is extremely lucrative for private landlords to let houses through the council. Yet another good reason to increase the supply of social housing. Here's a link to a press release with more info http://www.workingfuture.org.uk/pages/press/waltham_forest_news_release.htm On the political implications, I represented for four years an area which had been badly hit by the housing crisis, and have run election campaigns there and elsewhere against parties calling for priority in allocations for local people, and I increased the Labour vote and did my best for everyone in housing need, while campaigning for an urban extension which would have genuinely reduced the problem. I submit that this is a better approach than Margaret Hodge's of being complacent, doing nothing about the issue for years and then publicly suggesting policies which she doesn't even understand the consequences of.


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#32)

by petercoe on Mon Jun 04, 2007 at 08:38:14 PM GMT

Rent equalisation is to bring housing association and council rents closer into line with the private sector, as well as with each other (it generally means increasing them, whatever your take on the meaning of the policy). The private sector is where temporary accommodation mainly is. Hence it is relevant.

I haven't claimed that people can meet their rent in the private sector without tax credits and HB - but that's what they exist for (or at least what they should exist for): to boost people's income.

Again, who here has been arguing against building more affordable housing? The point remains that to reverse the decline in affordable housing will take at least two decades, probably three or four of public sector house building on a scale not seen since the 1950s (and this time hopefully with a little more consideration as to design and quality).

In the meantime we have to manage with what we have, and that means ensuring that the allocations policy is as fair - and seen to be as fair - as possible. You cannot argue that it is perceived to be as fair as possible because there are twelve BNP councillors in Dagenham who can disprove that for you straight away.

I can't comment on Margaret Hodge's grasp of the subject - as a former Leader of an inner London council and as MP for an urban if not inner London constituency for over a decade I'm not sure how she could fail to have a passing appreciation of them at the very least.

However, I'm arguing my position not hers, which may or may not align with Hodge's - it probably does. You can debate me, Don, which I'm delighted to do, or you can continue railing against an MP not present to defend herself. The choice, as they say, is yours. Cheers.


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#34)

by donpaskini on Tue Jun 05, 2007 at 10:37:54 AM GMT

Rent equalisation isn't about raising social housing rents to the same rate as private sector leased temporary accommodation - wherever you've got that from, it is not correct. Even with tax credits, people are going to be better off on benefit in temporary accommodation with their rent paid for than in work having to find £300 or more per week. So your policy would mean migrant families spending longer in temporary accommodation, unable to work and claiming benefits. This matters because your argument appears to be about political strategy and the political consequences of not changing the allocations policy. I think that the political consequences of your suggested course of action are likely to make things worse, not better. If we change the policy in the way that you are suggesting, then the overwhelming majority of people on the waiting list (let alone those who can't get on the waiting list at the moment) who are upset about the current policy will still not be housed because demand will still far exceed supply, and you cannot meet people's aspirations by changing the allocations policy. There will still be lots of migrant families in Barking and other areas (in temporary accommodation), except that more will be on benefits because they cannot afford to work. It is very hard to tell the difference between a former council house which is now owned by a private landlord and is being used as temporary accommodation and a council house, so people will still assume that migrant families are being housed by the council before local people. Allocations policy will still be seen to be unfair, and people simply won't believe us when we say that it has changed, just as they don't believe at the moment that it is allocated according to need and that 'undeserving' people don't jump the queue. The perception about unfairness is based on anecdotes - quite a lot of resentment at the moment is about second generation BME families who are buying their own homes in the area, and local people seeing this as an example of the council giving council housing to immigrants. We have done much better against the BNP recently when we have challenged their arguments, worked hard locally and offered an alternative (of building more social housing). The reason that there are 12 fascist councillors in Barking and Dagenham is that there what happened before 2006 was we didn't do the local work, and the local MP announced before the election that she'd found people switching to vote for them. This is about the worst way to run a campaign against the BNP (or anyone else) imaginable. It is notable that we have been making gains or holding off the BNP in other areas where we didn't follow the Barking strategy. Friends there say that the level of campaigning activity now is much better (and the BNP are proving to be ineffectual councillors), so we should win back those wards in 2010. The guaranteed way to make sure that we don't is to announce that the reason people can't get housed is in any way linked to allocations policy, change the policy, and then still fail to meet people's aspirations about housing.


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#10)

by Glass House on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 05:17:12 PM GMT

Again - how is that racialising the issue.?

Immigrants aren't necessarily of a particular race - and indigenous families aren't necessarily of a particular race.

Hodge wasn't talking about race at all - you're the one doing that.


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#13)

by jkitleft on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 07:06:07 PM GMT

I think though, however (and this is why I hold such views on immigration), that people are more likely to say 'Oh, all those Polish people are stealing our jobs/houses' than, 'Oh, all those Canadians/Australians/New Zealanders are stealing our jobs and houses'. If Hodge's policy was put in place, it would be unfairly targeted at certain immigrants.


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#25)

by Glass House on Sun Jun 03, 2007 at 02:02:03 PM GMT

But that's not Hodge racialising the issue - that's idiots racialising the issue


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#11)

by stuartm on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 06:25:44 PM GMT

In Tower Hamlets in the 1980's the Liberal Democrats operated a 'sons and daughters' housing allocations policy to rehouse anglo-saxon eastenders. The policy was highly controversial because it was discriminatory. Organisations campaigning for the homeless challenged the policy in the Courts and it was declared illegal on the grounds that it was discrimination. The policy was opposed by Labour and teh BNP won a council seat. However the BNP then lost their seat at a subsequent local election and Labour won control of the council by promising to operate a fair allocation policy. Message to Peter: Read, Mark, Learn, and inwardly digest.


Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#12)

by Glass House on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 06:34:33 PM GMT

HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO DAY THIS - MARGARET HODGE DIDN'T SAYS THAT WHITE PEOPLE SHOULD BE GIVEN PREFERENCE!

SURELY PEOPLE HERE ARE INTELLIGENT ENOUGHT TO GRASP THE SIMPLE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TERM "IMMIGRANT" AND THE TERM "NON-WHITE" OR BETWEEN TERM "INDIGENOUS FAMILY" AND THE TERM "WHITE FAMILY"!

For Gods sake! How many times do I have to say it? It really isn't rocket science - I've said it on this thread and the other one. Are you guys just not reading it, do you not believe me, do you not understand the difference, what?

There's a genuine debate to be had here. As I said on the other thread, I'm not an expert on how the system works - but I would have a problem with people deciding off their own backs to come to this country to work, moving into a really bad house and suddenly skipping to the front of the queue because of their need. Sometimes it's legitimate to say "maybe you should have thought about your needs before you came here to work".

However, that debate will not happen properly if people KEEP pretending that Hodge was talking about giving preference to white people - SHE WAS NOT!

/rant


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#14)

by jkitleft on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 07:08:35 PM GMT

I don't think that that was the objective of her statement. However, my problems with the statement are that I believe the policy would unfairly target some people, even if that is not the objective of Hodge's views on housing.


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#17)

by petercoe on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 08:26:59 PM GMT

That's a perfectly legitimate position to hold: yes, the policy would unfairly target some people. But the reality is that the current system unfairly targets some people: you don't get much more unfair than a need for housing which outstrips supply - and as a result you get unfairness.

The great thing about your comment jkit is that we're now onto debating how housing should be allocated rather than indulging in inaccurate, personal smears on a politician you dislike. And I have to say, without Hodge's comments, we wouldn't be debating that at all, would we?


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#15)

by otware on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 07:27:49 PM GMT

Nobody is talking about white people. The issue is that if you start saying people who desperately need housing can't have it just because they haven't lived in the area then you are excluding all the factors. What if the immigrants have jobs in the area, even if they don't live there? What if they have family in the area? The same goes for British people trying to move into a different area. In my opinion, need must come first. Simple as that.


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#18)

by petercoe on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 08:36:22 PM GMT

I'm sorry Otware, but it's just not as simple as that. No housing policy anywhere in the country operates on need alone. It's fine if that's what you want your contribution to this debate to be - you're as entitled to hold that opinion as I am that other criteria matter.

Let me put it this way: you say need must come first. What should come second, third and fourth?

And what weight should be given to those subsequent priorities?

Should amassing a number of the subsequent priorities ever afford someone enough points to trump need?

If so, then it's not as simple as you say is it?

If not, then de fact there are going to be people on the housing waiting list who are never going to be housed, because their need will always be trumped. In which case why even afford them the luxury of hope of putting them on a list in the first place - that's rather cruel, isn't it?

And if you believe that eventually everyone on the list should get housed then a) what maximum waiting time would you set and b) how do you weight the system to ensure that "time served" eventually outweighs need as a priority?

Finally, if you really do believe that need comes first irrespective of all factors then logically you should be arguing for a national housing list; with people obliged to take a home wherever one comes available, regardless of whether that home is in Liverpool, Newcastle or Bristol, for example. I suspect you probably don't believe that to be a reasonable proposition - in which case, need alone isn't the sole priority for you, and locality is a relevant consideration, is it not?


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#19)

by otware on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 09:37:49 PM GMT

Locality is indeed a relevant issue. I'm not denying that. But if you have a family who desperately need housing and they're not from the area then I think their case should be considered equally with those who have been in the area their whole lives.

At the end of the day, housing needs to be allocated locally on a case-by-case basis. Need is a very important factor. Locality is another factor, as you say, and so are other things such as employment or family.

What I object to is the way that Hodge seems to be trying to make the 'need factor' less important. She should have kown better than to make her own controversial views publicly known like this.


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#20)

by petercoe on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 11:48:11 PM GMT

Yes, I have no problem with this view - it's a perfectly legitimate one. I disagree with it; as does Margaret Hodge - but can we now agree that it's not racist to believe either that need should be paramount OR that other factors should be given greater priority than they currently are?

Personally, I don't believe this is a "controversial" disagreement: it's an entirely legitimate one brought about because there is a housing shortage. I also think that if MPs can't be controversial, I'm not sure who can: surely it's actually a duty of MPs to speak their mind on controversial issues. That would at least appear to be your view on, for example, MPs not giving members the choice of a controversial candidate for leadership, or wanting MPs to apologise over their controversial support for the Iraq invasion and so forth.

All I'm saying is that there's a real issue here; I'm absolutely certain it's an issue Margaret Hodge hears a great deal of complaints about in her mailbag - as do most MPs with sizeable amounts of council housing in their patch; and it's entirely reasonable - I'd actually argue it's a duty - for her to express her considered views on how to solve it.

You disagree with her suggested response - fair enough - but please can we just stick to that legitimate and reasonable disagreement and leave alone the rest of the baggage that has, undeservedly, been tagged onto this issue: it's the last thing it needs.

Just one final point - that of the temporary accommodation issue: do you actually have any objection to people in need being placed in B&Bs for a period instead of getting a full tenancy to a council property? They're still getting housed - not in ideal accommodation, but no worse abode than plenty of others who've waited far longer on the list. That would seem to address your concern about need being met, and mine about perceived fairness.


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#21)

by otware on Sun Jun 03, 2007 at 12:26:04 AM GMT

I agree that it's pretty bad that people get put in B&Bs. What needs to be done is more council houses need to be built. Simple as that. And we need to stop privatising the ones that we already have.

And no, her comments were not really racist - but the way she phrased was hardly the best, there was no need to go on about immigrants as they are not really the issue. The issue is whether or not people from outside the area should be given priority over locals if they are in desperate need of housing.

I would agree that as backbench MP she would be perfectly entitled to make her views on council house allocation publicly known - but she is a government minister, and given her track record of controversy I don't think spilling all that to the media was the right forum for her to debate the issues. It would have been wiser to put her ideas forward to the government itself.


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#22)

by petercoe on Sun Jun 03, 2007 at 01:51:39 AM GMT

There's little we disagree with here: I don't like ALMOs but I don't think it's reasonable to call them "privatisation" - unless of course you're actually referring to right-to-buy, which I don't think we could or should stop.

I do think that, as well as councils being given back the power to build houses, a way to mitigate right-to-buy is to give them a "one-for-one" (or even a "two for one") duty - that is, for every council property sold off the local authority has a duty to replace it with a new build.

And I believe that the income raised by the government's intent to close the tax loophole on buy-to-let should be ring-fenced for affordable housing to enable councils to deliver such a policy.

But let's be clear: there are always going to be waiting lists - they existed in the "golden era" of council housing; they'll exist in the future - and the backlog is such that we're talking twenty years at least to get the problem under control even with a radical expansion of affordable house-building.

So the issue of how limited supply is allocated is going to remain a problem that needs to be openly and publicly debated - precisely in order to stop the BNP from misleading people over the issue.


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#16)

by petercoe on Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 08:23:29 PM GMT

Stuart - take your own advice: Margaret Hodge was NOT arguing for a sons and daughters policy. So the whole purpose of that last post of yours was pointless.

When you're actually willing to debate either housing policy or the content of Hodge's actual remarks rather than invent comments that were never made only to then demolish them, let me know.


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#23)

by MatthewStiles on Sun Jun 03, 2007 at 12:05:29 PM GMT

Ken Livingstone in this week's Tribune rebuts Hodge's arguments. It is online at http://www.tribunemagazine.co.uk/Templates/column1.html It's a long article but amongst other points he writes: "Writing in The Observer she (ie Hodge) claimed: "We prioritise the needs of an individual migrant family over the entitlement others feel they have.... Hodge is wrong. Her local council, Barking and Dagenham, was forced to point out that anyone entering the borough from "the new eastern European states has to be a resident in the borough for 12 months and have been in full-time employment for 12 months before they can even apply to be placed on the council's housing register, and even then priority housing is allocated on need and the length of time on the waiting list." And non-European Union "economic migrants" don't enjoy even the most basic rights to housing. Legislation denies them any recourse to public funds for at least four years after their arrival in Britain. ...it is clear that the suggestion of new economic migrants taking social housing is untrue. The job of MPs is to counter such misconceptions, not to cave in to them."


Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#24)

by petercoe on Sun Jun 03, 2007 at 01:29:30 PM GMT

Well, let's look at what Livingstone's claiming, shall we?

First, he's very specifically limiting his definition of immigrants to "the new Eastern European states" - which leaves out the rest of the world.

Second, twelve months to await eligibility is not a long time, especially in the context of the decade-long waits some families stay on the waiting lists.

Third, Hodge isn't wrong in her statement that ""We prioritise the needs of an individual migrant family over the entitlement others feel they have" - because she's not stating a fact: she's reporting a grievance - that may in itself be baseless (though I don't personally think it is), but does not negate the reality that it's commonly held.

Further. it would be interesting to know what B&D's specific allocations policy is - I note they claim to prioritise time on the waiting list, but I wonder how much priority they actually give it. One of my concerns is that there are widely differing allocations policies, and while of course councils should be free to tailor their policy to local circumstance, given the left-wing reaction to Hodge's comments here I would be concerned that Labour authorities generally tend not to give the priority to "time served" I think it should have.

At the end of the day, it's not surprising that Ken takes a view that's at odds with Margaret's - and it's good that instead of solely denouncing it out of hand, as he has a tendency to do, he has at least constructed some semblance of an argument. But it's still a subjective debate - nothing more, nothing less - and one that we need to have. So ultimately I disagree with his last comment that Hoge had no right raising it.


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#31)

by MatthewStiles on Mon Jun 04, 2007 at 07:52:32 PM GMT

Regarding your comment "First, he's very specifically limiting his definition of immigrants to "the new Eastern European states" - which leaves out the rest of the world." If you read again the article, which I quoted, you will see that it reads "And non-European Union "economic migrants" don't enjoy even the most basic rights to housing. Legislation denies them any recourse to public funds for at least four years after their arrival in Britain. .." Are you a Labour man by the way? You come across as a Tory visiting this website to wind us up.


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#33)

by petercoe on Mon Jun 04, 2007 at 08:43:44 PM GMT

If you read the quote you provided again, you'll see it reads: "Her local council, Barking and Dagenham, was forced to point out that anyone entering the borough from "the new eastern European states has to be a resident in the borough for 12 months and have been in full-time employment for 12 months before they can even apply to be placed on the council's housing register"

Did you misquote it accidentally or deliberately?

As for your risible final sentence, when you leave nursery school and actually learn something about the world then perhaps someone like me with 20 years' membership of the Labour Party will start paying attention to someone like you who clearly lacks the intellectual ability to grasp that there's a difference between retarded left-wing knee-jerk reactionary posturing and being "a Labour man" - the two are not synonymous. You're welcome to continue indulging in the former Matthew; I doubt you're capable of anything more.


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#35)

by Barking Mad on Tue Jun 05, 2007 at 06:07:23 PM GMT

Did anyone note these points from the answers to the campaign group news team: Do you believe that criteria other than social need -- such as length of residence in this country, citizenship or national insurance contributions -- should be used to determine the allocation of social housing? Hilary Benn: No. Entitlement should be based on need, but we have to recognise that there is discomfort about a changing society in some communities which the BNP exploits. Building more affordable housing has to be a priority. Hazel Blears: No Jon Cruddas: No. I think social housing should be allocated purely on the basis of need. We must be vigilant in not allowing the housing crisis to be racialised. Peter Hain: No. Social housing should be allocated on the basis of need only. Alan Johnson: Only 1 per cent of social housing is occupied by foreign nationals: they are not the cause of the housing problem - their exclusion is not a solution. We must build more social housing so we can allocate accommodation to those who need it, not just those who need it the most.


Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#36)

by Barking Mad on Tue Jun 05, 2007 at 06:26:25 PM GMT

I will enter into this debate properly soon - but I am too busy dealing with the fallout in Barking. Last week coming home late from work I saw a black couple being abused by a group of white youths on a train heading towards Dagenham - and the justification that they were screaming - 'this is our area - you people can f**k off, even the MP says so.' Now M Hodge is definitely not a racist, she is from the Oppenheimer family after all. But what she has said is incendiary, because when she uses words on the radio like 'my white families' or in the now infamous article 'indigenous families' - they are the words that have been coming through people's letterboxes in Barking for 5 years now - as Nick Griffin pointed out on newsnight a few days later. One thing that no poster has seemed to grasp on this thread is that what M Hodge has said is factually completely incorrect. That is what the problem is. There have been NO families housed in Barking and Dagenham from outside the Borough since 2001. There are no old Eastern European migrants coming to Barking - only young workers, who even if they have a family in tow will not be put to the top of the housing list - because they invariably have jobs. Often with both parents working. As for the poor Black couple getting abused on the train as the pro BNP crescendo reaches an excruciating pitch on the ground in Barking - they are simply following the same pattern as the Dagenhamites from Bow, East Ham and Hackney did 40 years ago - moving to the place where they can afford to BUY or RENT privately accommodation that is bigger and nicer then where they lived before. Dagenham is the ONLY place in London where you can buy a 3 Bedroom house from around 170K!!! No wonder people are moving there! Why dont you just think about that for a second? M Hodge has had over ten years to call for direct investment in housing - she has never done so. She did not even have a permanent office in the Borough until the BNP won 12 Councillors. That is a shocking fact.


Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#37)

by jkitleft on Tue Jun 05, 2007 at 08:12:52 PM GMT

You're kidding me. She didn't have permanent offices. Deselect her. Deselect her now.


[ Parent ]

Re: Hodge, Housing and Henry (#38)

by MatthewStiles on Fri Jun 08, 2007 at 10:16:13 AM GMT

Peter I will obviously have to make this post very clear and simple for you to understand You wrote "Well, let's look at what Livingstone's claiming, shall we? First, he's very specifically limiting his definition of immigrants to "the new Eastern European states" - which leaves out the rest of the world." Your claim is wrong because Livingstone's article clearly states "And non-European Union "economic migrants" don't enjoy even the most basic rights to housing. Legislation denies them any recourse to public funds for at least four years after their arrival in Britain." Livingstone's article mainly deals with immigrants from Eastern Europe but as he states that is because "non-European Union "economic migrants" don't enjoy even the most basic rights to housing" so he feels he doesn't need to go into so much detail about non-EU people. I haven't misquoted anyone. Look at the original Tribune article if you don't believe me. As for the insults about going to nursery, you should be embarrassed with yourself. Sorry if you felt insulted by my wandering if you were in fact a Tory but I did see another post where you were backing Sarkozy in the French elections. So I guess you are a Labour supporter in the UK who is happy to back Tories abroad. To me that is a disgrace but you are in good company with MacShane and Blair.


Hodge, Housing and Henry | 38 comments (38 topical)